Elmer Booth

William Elmer Booth (December 9, 1882 – June 16, 1915) was an American stage and film actor. He was born in Los Angeles, California and was the elder brother of Margaret Booth, a renowned film editor for Hollywood productions for nearly 70 years.^[1]

Elmer Booth
Booth as Jack Doogan in the 1913 play Stop Thief!
Born	William Elmer Booth (1882-12-09)December 9, 1882 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Died	June 16, 1915(1915-06-16) (aged 32) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Stage and film actor
Years active	1901–1915
Spouse	Irene Outtrim ​ (m. 1908)​
Children	1
Relatives	Margaret Booth (sister)

Career

Elmer began acting in touring stock companies as a teenager and achieved great success in the stock company at the Central Theater in San Francisco from 1903 to 1906. Between 1910 and 1915 he starred in 40 movies; one of those was D. W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), cited by many film experts as the first gangster movie.^{[citation needed]}

Playing "The Snapper Kid", a Manhattan street tough engaged in a turf war on the Lower East Side, Booth interpreted the gangster as a cocky, entertaining antihero, far different from the standard teeth-gnashing movie bad guys of his time.^{[citation needed]}

Death

In the early hours of June 16, 1915, Booth died in an accident in California while riding in a car driven by Tod Browning, an actor and new director with Reliance-Majestic Studios in Hollywood.^[2] Actor George Siegmann was also a passenger in Browning's car. The day after the accident, the Los Angeles Times reported that the three men were returning to downtown Los Angeles from a roadhouse when Browning's car crashed into a train of the Salt Lake Railroad:

Elmer Booth was killed instantly. The motor car in which he was speeding towards Los Angeles with his two companions rammed the rear part of a flat car loaded with steel rails at Santa Fe avenue and Salt Lake tracks early yesterday morning. The conductor of the train, Harry Jones, approaching, had waved his lantern as a danger signal, and then had come to the crash that sent Elmer Booth, who was just realizing his dramatic ambitions, headforemost into the rails.^[2]

Browning and Siegmann survived, although they both suffered serious injuries.^[2][3] Later reports blamed the accident on heavy fog; nevertheless, Elmer's sister Margaret never forgave Browning for the loss of her brother.^[3][4]

D. W. Griffith, who had planned to cast Booth in an important role in Intolerance, delivered the actor's graveside eulogy.^{[citation needed]}

Personal life

Booth married actress Irene Outtrim in 1908. That same year, their son was born; he died of pneumonia in March 1910.^[5]

Selected filmography

• A Beast at Bay (1912)
• An Unseen Enemy (1912)
• The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912)
• Gold and Glitter (1912)
• The Adopted Brother (1913)
• Mrs. Black is Back (1914)
• Gasoline Gus (1915)
• A Chase by Moonlight (1915)