Niles Welch, also known as Niles Welsh, (29 July 1888 - 21 November 1976) was an American performer on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

, and a leading man in a number of silent

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 and early talking motion pictures from the early 1910s through the 1930s.

Early life

A native of Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford, Connecticut

Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...

, after graduating from St. Paul's School, Welch attended Yale

YALE

RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...

 and Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. Later he joined a stock company, and from there toured the U.S. in vaudeville. The first photoplay he worked in was with the Eastern Vitagraph Studios in a picture entitled The Stranger in Grey.

Career

After spending four years on the legitimate stage, Welch started his screen career appearing with World Film Corporation, Universal

Universal Studios

Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....

, Pathé Studios

Pathé

Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...

 and Goldwyn Pictures

Goldwyn Pictures

Goldwyn Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company founded in 1916 by Samuel Goldfish in partnership with Broadway producers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn using an amalgamation of both last names to create the name...

. Among his earliest works were two Thomas Ince

Thomas H. Ince

Thomas Harper Ince was an American silent film actor, director, screenwriter and producer of more than 100 films and pioneering studio mogul. Known as the "Father of the Western", he invented many mechanisms of professional movie production, introducing early Hollywood to the "assembly line"...

 productions, Stepping Out and The Cup of Life, followed in rapid succession by Miss George Washington, with Marguerite Clark

Marguerite Clark

Marguerite Clark was an American stage and silent film actress.-Early life and theater:Born to a farming family in Avondale, Cincinnati, Ohio, Clark was educated at a Roman Catholic boarding school in Cincinnati...

; The Courage of Marge O'Doone, with Pauline Starke

Pauline Starke

Pauline Starke was an American silent-film actress born in Joplin, Missouri.She made her acting debut appearing as a dance extra in D.W. Griffith's film Intolerance...

; and The Gulf Between (1917) with Grace Darmond

Grace Darmond

Grace Darmond was an American actress from the early 20th century.-Early life:Grace Darmond was born Grace Glionna in Toronto on November 20, 1893. Her parents were James Glionna, a U.S.-born musician who had lived in Canada since 1877, and Alice Glionna, an Ontario native.-Career:Darmond was...

, the first feature film produced in the short-lived additive

Additive color

An additive color model involves light emitted directly from a source or illuminant of some sort. The additive reproduction process usually uses red, green and blue light to produce the other colors. Combining one of these additive primary colors with another in equal amounts produces the...

version of Technicolor. His career continued well into the sound era but mainly in bit roles. Later in life, he did wartime foreign-language broadcasts for the Voice of America.

Sources

• The New York Times
• Silent Gents
• Niles Welch portrait NY Public Library (Rose Collection)