Introduction
William Elmer Booth (9 December 1882 - 16 June 1915) was an American actor. He was born in Los Angeles, California and was the elder brother of film editor Margaret Booth.
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 1903-1906. 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. 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. His groundbreaking performance created a new character type and paved the way "for all the Cagneys, Bogarts, and Robinsons who later shot their way across the screen."
Booth died at the age of 32 in a car crash in Los Angeles, caused by actor and director Tod Browning. D.W. Griffith, who had planned to give Booth an important role in Intolerance, delivered the actor's graveside eulogy.
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)