Charles Bryant
1879 - 1948Charles Bryant (8 January 1879 – 7 August 1948) was a British actor and film director.
Bryant was born in Hartford, Cheshire on 8 January 1879. He was educated at Ardingly College in Sussex. He left school at the age of 14 to become a stage actor, and three years later travelled to America to begin working on Broadway, starring in The First Born in 1887.
Bryant starred in A Train of Incidents (1914), and War Brides (1916), which was also the first film his wife, Alla Nazimova featured in. Bryant and Nazimova signed with Metro Pictures in 1918 and starred alongside each other in a number of films including Revelation, Out of the Fog, and Billions. In 1918, Nazimova founded Nazimova Productions and it was there that Bryant began directing, with the pair creating a film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé in 1923. Bryant and Nazimova's pairing was short lived. Salomé was ostensibly too far ahead of its time and failed at the box office bankrupting Nazimova Productions. Bryant never worked in film again, instead returning to Broadway. He divorced Nazimova shortly after leaving Hollywood, their marriage apparently having been only one of convenience and no longer necessary.
He claimed to have married Alla Nazimova on 5 December 1912, but the marriage was never performed or consummated.
On November 16, 1925, Bryant, 43, surprised the press, Nazimova's fans and Nazimova herself by marrying Marjorie Gilhooley, 23, in Connecticut. When the press uncovered the fact that Charles had listed his current marital status as "single" on his marriage license, the revelation that the marriage between Alla and Charles had been a sham from the beginning embroiled Nazimova in a scandal that damaged her career. Charles and Marjorie divorced in 1936.
Bryant had two children with Gilhooley, Charles Bryant Jr. and Sheila Bryant. Charles and Marjorie divorced in 1936.On June 8, 1948, Sheila married the American novelist Richard Yates.
Bryant died on 7 August 1948 in Mount Kisco, New York at age 69.
Revelation
George D. Baker
Alla Nazimova, Charles Bryant
Joline, a cabaret singer in Paris, models for her lover, painter Paul Granville. Paul becomes famous for his paintings of Joline in the guise of famous women like Cleopatra and Salome. But when he paints Joline as the Madonna, a miracle occurs which transforms her life and ultimately saves his.
Revelation
Stronger Than Death
Herbert Blaché
Alla Nazimova, Charles Bryant
Sigrid, A French dancer, diagnosed with a weak heart, is ordered by her doctor never to dance again. But when her dancing skills are needed by her lover's father to help quell a native uprising on the East Indian frontier, she determines to dance whatever the cost.
Stronger Than Death
Out of the Fog
Albert Capellani
Alla Nazimova, Charles Bryant
Faith’s life is shattered when her lover dies. Her brother Job locks her away in a lighthouse, but she jumps from the tower rather than be imprisoned. Faith's daughter, however, lives on. The girl Eve grows into her teens, sheltered from the world by her puritanical uncle. But Eve nevertheless manages to encounter a young man, Phillip Blake. When Phillip returns for Eve, he has to deal with her crusty, malevolent guardian….
Out of the Fog
The Red Lantern
Albert Capellani
Alla Nazimova, Noah Beery
Mahlee and Blanche Sackville are half-sisters, Blanche the daughter of an Englishman and his wife, Mahlee of the Englishman and his Chinese mistress. Mahlee rejects her people and attempts to find a life for herself among the Europeans. But she finds the color line impossible to pass and returns to lead her Chinese people in rebellion.
The Red Lantern
War Brides
Herbert Brenon
Alla Nazimova, Charles Hutchison
Joan is loved by a young man of the village and they are married. In a few weeks the husband, a soldier, is sent to the war-front along with his three brothers. Word is received that her husband has been killed in battle and Joan's first impulse is suicide by she is pregnant and her prospective motherhood makes her realize her new responsibility. The military authorities start a movement to get the young women of the country to marry departing soldiers, so that the empire may have another generation of fighting men. Word is received that the King is to pass through their village and Joan organizes the women in a general protest against the war. She leads them all, dressed in black, in a long procession to meet the Monarch. The soldiers threaten to shoot her unless she turns the women back, buy Joan comes face-to-face with the ruler and kills herself, as her message from the women that they refuse to make another generation victims of a ruthless militarism.
War Brides
Billions
Ray C. Smallwood
Alla Nazimova, Charles Bryant
Princess Triloff, an emigrée from Czarist Russia, escapes to America where she becomes a patron of the arts. She falls in love with the verses of impoverished poet Owen Carey and becomes his anonymous benefactor. When Owen inherits a fortune from his rich Uncle Krakerfeller, he assumes his uncle's identity and confers his own upon an impoverished friend, Frank Manners. At a resort, Owen meets the princess and falls in love with her, but is chagrined to discover that she is enamored with Manners. The princess finally discovers Owen's real identity and the two fall in love.
Billions
