Edward Sloman

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Sloman directed the 1928 Universal Pictures film The Foreign Legion, starring actors Mary Nolan (centre), Norman Kerry (right) and June Marlowe (left).

Edward Sloman (19 July 1886, London - 29 September 1972, Woodland Hills, California) was an English silent film director, actor, screenwriter and radio broadcaster. He directed over 100 films and starred in over 30 films as an actor between 1913 and 1938.

[edit] Career

Sloman grew up in London's Westend but left home at age 19 to become an actor. He spent several years in the British theater and later became a director in both legitimate theater and vaudeville. After a quarrel with a powerful booking agent which resulted in his being effectively shut out of the British theatrical circuit, Sloman took an actress friend's advice and headed for Hollywood, emigrating in 1915.

Introduced to director Wilfred Lucas at Universal Pictures, Sloman was soon employed as an actor paid $7.50 a day. To make ends meet, he wrote scenarios, which he sold for $25 apiece. Sloman wrote a script for a war film which was acknowledged by Thomas H. Ince, a major film director in Hollywood at the time, and on the basis of his work was hired by Lubin Pictures as a director, beginning his first film in late-1915. After directing several short films such as The Sequel to the Diamond from the Sky, the studio suggested that Sloman act in his films too.

However after several months of working arduously as a director and actor Sloman quit Lubin Pictures and was later hired by independent producer Benjamin B. Hampton in 1919 and given the directorship of a big-budget western of that year, The Westerners (1919). The film was quite a success and led to Sloman securing steady employment with other independent producers.

He was eventually hired by Universal Pictures and directed His People in 1925. Another success, Universal secured Sloman again under contract and he remained at the studio for over five years.

Sloman's most successful film in 1927, Surrender starred Russian actor Ivan Mozzhukhin in a story of a beautiful Jewish girl whose Russian village is invaded by Cossacks, and she is given a choice by the Cossack chieftain of either sleeping with him or seeing her village destroyed. Sloman's The Foreign Legion and We Americans (1928) were also well received, but his career declined after the adventation of sound in film.

[edit] Post-cinema work

After directing over 100 films and starring in over 30, Sloman made his last film in 1938 and in 1939 left the film industry to enter radio broadcasting as a writer, producer and director.

Unfortunately the majority of Sloman's works have been lost.

He died in Woodland Hills, California in 1972 aged 86.