Biography and Career
Around 1906, Maine resident and aspiring writer Laurence Trimble moved to New York City with his dog, Jean. An article he sold to a local magazine paved the way for the two of them to visit Vitagraph Studios to do a story on film making. Trimble and his pet just happened to be on the set at a time when the company needed a dog to play opposite Florence Turner ("the Vitagraph Girl"). As a result, dog and master were asked to stay and both became members of the Vitagraph stock company.
Jean became quite popular and was soon known as "the Vitagraph Dog", starring in her own films along with "the Vitagraph Girl" all directed by Larry Trimble. One- and two-reelers with titles such as, Jean and the Calico Doll, Jean and the Waif, and Jean Goes Fishing were made by Trimble as their troupe filmed along the coastline in his native Maine.
By 1910, Trimble became Florence Turner's exclusive director and continued to make films with his lucky pet, Jean, until 1913, when Trimble, Turner, and Jean left Vitagraph and started up Turner Films, Ltd. in England. World War I interrupted most of their work and, in 1916, Trimble returned to the states. That same year, Jean died.
Trimble worked with another dog, Strongheart, in the pictures, but eventually retired at age 40 and became a trainer of guide dogs for the blind. Nearly all of Jean's Vitagraph films are now lost with the exceptions of one film dating from 1908 (see article on Jean and Trimble below) and Jean Rescues(1911) in paper print at the Library of Congress.
Read more about this topic: Vitagraph Dog
Famous quotes containing the words biography and, biography and/or career:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)