Tom Ricketts

Thomas B. Ricketts was born on January 15, 1853, in Greenwich, London, the son of Rosa (née Penniall) and Robert Ricketts. His father worked as a painter, and at the age of 17 Ricketts emigrated to the United States, initially taking up the same trade before transitioning to a career in the theatre. He went on to become a stage and film actor, director, and book writer whose Broadway appearances spanned from 1889 to 1905, and whose later work in the film industry placed him among the pioneers of American cinema.

On the stage, Ricketts directed plays for producer Charles Frohman and served as a stage manager for the Shubert family. He sang baritone with the Carleton Opera Company and wrote and starred in his own play, Henri Duvar, which was also among his Broadway credits. Additional Broadway appearances included Miss Simplicity, Once Upon a Time, and Over a Welsh Rarebit.

In 1906, after four years with the Shuberts, Ricketts joined Essanay Studios in Chicago. There he portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol (1908), the first American film adaptation of the Dickens novel, and subsequently starred in The Old Curiosity Shop (1909). Having mentioned to the company that he had toured with a comedy he wrote called A Cure for Gout, he was asked to adapt it into a 600-foot film, the standard length limit for comedies at the time. He advanced to directing at Essanay, taking over comedies and melodramas while Broncho Billy Anderson concentrated on Westerns. Among the performers Ricketts discovered during this period were Ethel Clayton, Jack Conway, J. Warren Kerrigan, Bryant Washburn, and Josephine Ditt, whom he later married. He served as chief dramatic and general producer at Essanay for two years before helping to organize the American Film Manufacturing Company in 1910, for which he made six films before departing.

In 1911, Ricketts traveled to California with Canadian film pioneer Al Christie with the intention of establishing a new studio. The two arrived in Los Angeles without a predetermined location and, on the suggestion of a real estate agent who overheard their conversation, investigated a site in Hollywood at Sunset and Gower. They leased a former roadhouse for sixty dollars a month, and the Nestor Film Company opened its studio there on October 27, 1911. Ricketts directed one of the first motion pictures made in Hollywood, The Best Man Wins (1911), photographed by Charles Rosher, with a cast that included Harold Lockwood, Dorothy Davenport, Josephine Ditt, Victoria Forde, Gordon Sackville, Eugenie Forde, and Alice Davenport. Allan Dwan served as his assistant on the production. Over the following eighteen months, Nestor produced between fifty and sixty films, roughly half of them directed by Ricketts. On May 20, 1912, Nestor merged with the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, with Ricketts having directed The Dawn of Netta (1912), the first film released under the Universal banner.

In 1914, working on an independent contract, Ricketts directed Richard Bennett in Damaged Goods for American. Three of Bennett's daughters — Joan, Constance, and Barbara Bennett — made their film debuts in the production as flower girls in a wedding scene. The film cost approximately twenty-five thousand dollars to produce and earned one and a half million dollars on its first run. Ricketts continued directing features for American through 1916, including The Lure of the Mask (1915) and The Other Side of the Door (1916), both featuring the studio's prominent romantic pairing of May Allison and Harold Lockwood.

Ricketts returned to acting in 1919 and remained consistently employed in character roles into his eighties. His later film appearances included Top Hat (1935), After the Thin Man (1936), Pennies from Heaven (1936), The Young in Heart (1938), and Son of Frankenstein (1939), and he was recognized as the oldest working actor in Hollywood. He died on January 19, 1939, at Hollywood Hospital of pneumonia, which he contracted after reporting to work at Universal Studios while ill with a cold. He was 86 years old. The New York Times reported that he left no funds and that his funeral expenses were covered by the Motion Picture Relief Society. Ricketts was buried in an unmarked grave at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.