J.P. McGowan
1880 - 1952John Paterson McGowan (February 24, 1880 – March 26, 1952) was a pioneering Hollywood actor and director and occasionally a screenwriter and producer. J. P. McGowan, as he was usually known, remains the only Australian to have been made a life member of the Screen Directors Guild (now Directors Guild of America).
Born in the then-bustling railway centre of Terowie in South Australia, McGowan grew up in Adelaide (Islington) and Sydney. He was a capable horseman and served in the Second Boer War with Montmorency's Scouts as a special dispatch rider.
McGowan directed and often acted in the first 33 episodes of Kalem's 1914 adventure film series, The Hazards of Helen, which eventually ran to 54 episodes, some still with McGowan's participation. While filming he began a relationship with Helen Holmes, the film's star, and the two married. They left Kalem to set up their own production company, Signal Films, which successfully made a series of railroad melodramas but lost out when their distributor (Mutual) failed. The collaboration ended when they divorced in 1925. There was an adopted daughter, Kaye.
McGowan successfully made the transition from silent film to talkies. While never a major star, in a busy career that spanned four decades he is credited with acting in 232 films—mostly strong roles like sheriff or villain—writing 26 screenplays and directing 242 productions. In 1932 he directed a young John Wayne in the 12-episode rail vs airplane serial The Hurricane Express for the independent Mascot Pictures. From 1938 to 1951, as Executive Secretary of the Screen Directors Guild, he fought to secure recognition for the director within the studio systems of the film and emerging television industry.
J.P. McGowan died in 1952 in Hollywood and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Desperate Chance
J.P. McGowan
Bob Reeves, Ione Reed
Girl's father who is in sore financial straits because of a corporation man is aided by stranger who reveals that his father was ruined same way by the same person. When this man is found dead suspicion falls on girl's father but the employer of murdered man confesses.
A Desperate Chance
Barriers of the Law
J.P. McGowan
J.P. McGowan, J. P. McGowan
When a woman who belongs to a bootlegging gang asks the gang for help when her father is arrested, they refuse. She quits the gang, but the gang's leader locks her up in a brothel. She escapes and hides in the apartment of a man who turns out to be the chief of the government agents pursuing her gang. Complications ensue.
Barriers of the Law
The Manager of the B & A
J.P. McGowan
Helen Holmes, Leo D. Maloney
Dan Oakley becomes a railroad manager and his attempt to slash expenses by layoffs and lengthening hours incurs the workers' wrath. With the help of Griffith Ryder, labor leader and newspaper editor, they call a strike. The water main which supplies the railroad yards is cut, and a hot engine starts a fire. With water unavailable, the fire spreads to town, but through his superhuman efforts, Oakley gets it under control. His heroic moves win favor with the workers, and the strike is history.
The Manager of the B & A
The Fiddler’s Requiem
Sidney Olcott
J.J. Clark, Gene Gauntier
The old musician playing his fiddle in his garret home dreams of his youth and his lost love. As the past unfolds itself he sees his sweetheart, Dolores, forced by her parents to sign a contract of marriage with Don Carlos, and he again reads over in memory her message of farewell: "My on Love, This is my marriage ever, the death day of my soul. I cannot go without one last farewell to you, whom I will never see again. Wait for ma by the lake until you hear the bells chime. Yours in spirit until death, Dolores." Meeting her at the lake as requested, she gives him her old violin, saying, "I have breathed my soul into this violin. Whene'er it plays, it is my soul that speaks."
The Fiddler’s Requiem
Headin' Westward
J.P. McGowan
Bob Custer, Mary Mayberry
Concern for her father, who is being slowly ruined by cattle rustling, prompts Mary Benson to do some investigating in a distant cattle town, where she briefly encounters drifters Oklahoma Adams and Sneezer Clark. They follow her back to Arizona, go to work on the Benson ranch, and discover the ranch foreman to be responsible for the rustling and the robbery of a rodeo box office.
Headin' Westward
Blackbirds
J.P. McGowan
Laura Hope Crews, Thomas Meighan
Leonie Sobatsky (Laura Hope Crews) belongs to a ring of international thieves, headed by Bechel (George Gebhardt). She meets English crook Nevil Trask (Thomas Meighan), and they fall in love -- however, neither one knows of the other's criminal ways.
Blackbirds
Whispering Smith Speaks
David Howard
George O’Brien, Irene Ware
O'Brien is "Whispering" Smith, so named because he speaks softly but knows how to fend for himself. The son of a railroad president, Smith is determined to learn the business from the ground up, so he gets a job as a track walker for his dad's rail line. While going about his duties, he meets Nan Roberts (Irene Ware), who is about to sell her Colorado ranch. Smith finds out that there are valuable tungsten deposits on her land and makes certain she won't be cheated by the villains
Whispering Smith Speaks
