Photo Album
This is the printer optimized version. Click here to return to the more graphic layout.
Actor, born in England on the 8th of January, 1879, died on the 7th of August, 1948.
Gay: 8 out of 9 |
Lesbian: N/A |
Trans: N/A |
Queer: N/A |
Bryant was gay, privately out but publicly maintaining a sham marriage with lesbian Alla Nazimova.
Charles Bryant was born on the 8th of January, 1879 in Hartford, Cheshire, England. He studied at Ardingly before leaving to become a stage actor at the age of 14*. Three years later, he traveled to the USA to begin work on Broadway, his first show being 1897’s The First Born in which he played Man Low Yek.
In 1914, he began acting in films, making A Train of Incidents and several other shorts with the Vitagraph company and a feature film, War Brides, with Brenon-Selznick Pictures in 1916, which was also the first film his beard wife, Alla Nazimova, featured in. Both he and Nazimova signed with Metro in 1918 and starred in many films together, including The Revelation, Out of the Fog in 1919, and Billions, which would be his last film as an actor, in 1920.
In 1918, Nazimova founded Nazimova Productions and Bryant moved into directing, the two creating the masterfully realized 1923 film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. The pairing was short lived, however. Salomé was far ahead of its time and failed miserably at the box office, bankrupting the company and ending Nazimova’s producing career.
Bryant never worked in film again, instead making a successful return to Broadway to star in numerous and popular musicals and comedies, as well as a handful of serious dramas. He divorced Nazimova after leaving Hollywood, the marriage having been only one of convenience and no longer necessary back on stage.
He died in Mount Kisco, New York on the 7th of August, 1948.
* This seems rather young and it makes me doubtful if 1879’s his actual birth date. A 1924 celebrity tabloid gives his birth as 1857, but that seems even more unrealistic. He went straight from Ardlingly to the stage, where he remained for 21 years before moving into film in 1914—if he were born in 1857, he would have to have still been in school at age 36.
Films
[ Gay feature | Lesbian feature | Trans feature | Queer feature ]
This is the printer optimized version. Click here to return to the more graphic layout.