Monte Blue
1887 - 1963Monte Blue (January 11, 1887 – February 18, 1963) was a movie actor who began his career as a romantic leading man in the silent film era, and later progressed to character roles.
Blue was born as Gerard Montgomery Bluefeather in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father was half French, half Cherokee Indian. One of five children, his father died and his mother could not raise five children alone. Along with another brother, they both admitted to the Indiana Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's Home. This did not stop him working his way through to Purdue University.
When growing up, Blue built up his physique to become a football player (he grew to six feet three inches tall). He not only played football, but he was also a fireman, railroad worker, coal miner, cowpuncher, ranch hand, circus rider, lumberjack, and finally, a day laborer at the studios of D. W. Griffith.
He had no theatrical experience when he came to the screen. In his first movie, The Birth of a Nation (1915), he was a stuntman and an extra in the movie. In his next movie, he starred in another small part in the movie, Intolerance (1916). Gradually moving to supporting roles for both D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, Blue earned his breakthrough role as Danton in Orphans of the Storm, starring sisters, Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish. Then he rose to stardom as a rugged romantic lead along with top leading actresses such as Clara Bow, Gloria Swanson, and Norma Shearer. His most prolific female screen partner was Marie Prevost with whom he made several films in the mid 20s at Warner Brothers. Blue's finest silent screen performance was as the alcoholic doctor who finds paradise in MGM's White Shadows in the South Seas (1928). Blue became one of the few silent stars to survive the talkie revolution. However, he lost his investments in the stock market crash of 1929.
He rebuilt his career as a character actor, working until his retirement in 1954. One of his more memorable roles was the sheriff in Key Largo. He divorced his first wife in 1923 and married Tova Jansen in 1924. He had two children, Barbara Ann and Richard Monte. During the later part of his life, Monte Blue was an active Mason and the advance man for the Hamid-Morton Shrine Circus; while on business in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he had a heart attack because of complications from influenza, dying at age 76.
Monte Blue has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6286 Hollywood Blvd.
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The Man Upstairs
Roy Del Ruth
Monte Blue, Dorothy Devore
The Man Upstairs is a lost 1926 silent film comedy directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Monte Blue. It was produced and distributed by Warner Brothers. The film is based on a novel, The Agony Column by Earl Derr Biggers.
The Man Upstairs
Key Largo
John Huston
Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson
A hurricane swells outside, but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco holes up - and holds at gunpoint hotel owner James Temple, his widowed daughter-in-law Nora, and ex-GI Frank McCloud.
Key Largo
The Purple Highway
Henry Kolker
Madge Kennedy, Monte Blue
Two inmates and a cleaning girl at a home for struggling artists achieve success and fame when they pool their talents and produce a smash hit Broadway musical. Edgar ( Monte Blue ), the playwright, is in love with April ( Madge Kennedy ), the ex- leading lady, but she doesn't discover that she loves him until it's almost too late.
The Purple Highway
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
D. W. Griffith
Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
Bitter Apples
Harry O. Hoyt
Monte Blue, Myrna Loy
John Wyncote's father dies, leaving him a bankrupt business. He instructs the family attorney, Thorden, to sell the business and all of his father's other interests. One of the now bankrupt company's investors, facing financial ruin, kills himself, leaving a son and a daughter, both of whom blame the Wyncote family for their loss and vow to take their revenge on them.
Bitter Apples
Orphans of the Storm
D. W. Griffith
Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish
France, on the eve of the French Revolution. Henriette and Louise have been raised together as sisters. When the plague that takes their parents' lives causes Louise's blindness, they decide to travel to Paris in search of a cure, but they separate when a lustful aristocrat crosses their path.
Orphans of the Storm
The Goddess of Lost Lake
Wallace Worsley
Louise Glaum, Lawson Butt
Mary Thorne is the quarter-breed daughter of prospector Marshall Thorne. She has just returned from college and when a pair of hunters, Mark Hamilton and Chester Martin, come along, she decides it would be fun to dress in native garb and fool them. Both men find themselves attracted to her, even though Indians were taboo for whites in the racist days of the 1910s.
The Goddess of Lost Lake
The Limited Mail
George W. Hill
Monte Blue, Vera Reynolds
Bob Wilson, who becomes a tramp after being jilted by his fiancée, prevents the Limited Mail from being wrecked during a mountain storm and becomes fast friends with Jim Fowler, a railway mail clerk. Jim gets Bob a job on the railroad, and Bob works himself up to the position of engineer on the Limited. Both of the men fall in love with Caroline Dale, but she prefers Bob.
The Limited Mail
The Mask of Dimitrios
Jean Negulesco
Sydney Greenstreet, Zachary Scott
A mystery writer is intrigued by the tale of notorious criminal Dimitrios Makropolous, whose dead body was found washed up on the shore in Istanbul. He decides to follow the career of Dimitrios around Europe, in order to learn more about the man. Along the way he is joined by the mysterious Mr. Peters, who has his own motivation.
The Mask of Dimitrios
