Karl Dane
by Susan King
Probably very few people saw the small paragraph on page 30 of the New York Times on April 15, 1934, announcing the death of actor Karl Dane at the age of 47 by suicide. Less than a decade before, the lanky tall Danish actor was commanding over a $1,500 a week earning good reviews as John Gilbert’s buddy in the landmark 1925 World War I epic, “The Big Parade.” Then his career had taken such a downturn that he shot himself in the head.
“It was believed in the film colony that he had brooded over his inability to find roles in recent pictures,” the article stated. “He had been idle for two years.”
As witnessed in “Sunset Boulevard,” the four “A Star is Born” flicks, and the film that inspired them, “What Price, Hollywood?” Hollywood is a harsh mistress. One could even say Sunset is the boulevard of broken dreams. And Dane is just one of many performers including silent superstars, Gilbert and Richard Barthelmess, who had a difficult time making the transition to talkies.
So, who was Karl Dane?
The 6’4” actor, born Rasmus Karl Therkelsen in Copenhagen on Oct 12, 1886, was inspired to act when he created a toy theater as a youngster and began performing with his brother for the crowds who came to see the theater. He would apprentice to be a mechanic before being called up for compulsive military service. After marrying and having two children, he returned to military duty with the outbreak of World War I. The year 1916 found Dane taking a ship to the U.S. He had promised to send for his wife and children. That never happened. Working as a mechanic in New York, he got a bit part in a 1917 Vitagraph short and made his feature debut in the 1918 “My Four Years in Germany.” Other film roles followed but he gave up acting when he married a Swedish immigrant in 1921. The couple moved to Van Nuys, California where they started a chicken farm. Two years later, she died in childbirth, and he returned to acting.
In 1924, MGM’s casting director who had worked with Dane at Vitagraph suggested him to director King Vidor for the role of Slim opposite Gilbert and Renee Adoree in “The Big Parade.” The critically acclaimed drama was one of the biggest films of the year. Dane is memorable as the comic relief who befriends Gilbert’s wealthy playboy and Tom O’Brien’s saloon keeper during basic training only to be killed in a solo mission.
He followed “The Big Parade” with another box office success 1926’s “Son of the Sheik” which was released after star Rudolph Valentino’s death. That same year, Dane signed a contract with MGM where he excelled in comic relief roles in such films as 1926’s “The Scarlett Letter,” “La Boheme” and “Bardeleys the Magnificent.”
MGM partnered Dane with the diminutive English actor George K. Arthur to become the comedy team of Dane & Arthur. Their first silent short, 1927’s “Rookies,” was a big hit. But with the rise of sound films, the studio ended the series in 1929. The problem was that Dane had a very strong Danish accent. The only talkie the duo appeared in at the studio was a bit in the all-star “The Hollywood Revue of 1929.”
He made a few talkies with MGM including 1930’s “Montana Moon” and “The Big House” and then the studio terminated his contract. Dane would later say that MGM wanted to renew his contract but that he declined because he had suffered a nervous breakdown. Dane & Arthur did more shorts for RKO and then was signed to a six-month vaudeville tour by Paramount. They would do four shorts for Paramount —you can check two of them out on YouTube. The one I watched was humorless. Arthur has most of the dialogue in the short.
By 1933, Dane had been reduced to a bit part in his last film, “The Whispering Shadow” with Bela Lugosi. He was forced to return to mechanic and carpenter work, but his depression was so bad that he couldn’t even hold on to those jobs. There were stories that he opened a hot dog stand next to the MGM gate; he did work as a waiter at a luncheonette near the studio even buying into the café. His former partner Arthur wrote about Dane in his memoir: “His own feeling of despair must have served across the counter with the hamburgers. People could not bear to watch it. So, they didn’t come by to buy his hamburgers.”
He was robbed the day before his suicide of all the money he had — a mere $18. The day of his death he was supposed to meet his friend Frances Leake. She found him dead in his apartment. His suicide note read: “To Frances and all my friends goodbye.”
According to an April 17 AP story, he was surrounded by “seven-year-old photographs and press clippings of the days when he was famous,” adding he “never quite gave up gave up hope of returning to the screen." The book, devoted entirely of tributes to Dane, lay open on a table beside where he shot himself.”
The body was unclaimed and there was fear he would end up in a pauper’s grave. Finally, fellow Dane
Jean Hersholt, who had no problems making the transition to sound, convinced MGM to pay for his funeral. Some 50 people attended the service at what is now the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Hersholt was one of the pallbearers as was Dane’s “Big Parade” co-star Tom O’Brien. Gilbert, who would die two years later, sent a bouquet of flowers. Dane died with only $197 to his name.
He may have been forgotten in the 1930s, but that isn’t the case now. Just scroll YouTube. There’s also Laura Peterson Balogh’s well-received “Karl Dane: A Biography and Bibliography,” published 15 years ago. And several of his surviving films pop up on TCM; “The Big Parade” is also available on Amazon. And he even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Susan King was a film/TV/theater writer at the Los Angeles Times for 26 years specializing in Classic Hollywood.
Comments