A Little More Regarding Inherited Talent

(or un-inherited for some of us)

Before I continue, some background:

I had written earlier about known theatrical talents of my ancestors and how those talents had bypassed me and spread itself to four of my five children. 

My great grandfather, William Clark Newman, was born in New York in 1856 and died in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in 1927. Before moving his family to Canada in 1902, William had run a grain dealership in New York City, in an area now referred to as Tribeca (Triangle below Canal).

I first learned about William in 1964 when I became interested in genealogy, but I didn’t get much information at that time, possibly because I never asked the right questions. All I knew was that he took his family to Canada to live. From family photos I knew that that he had occasionally returned to the U S, and I had heard that his son who worked in Hollywood, Edwin de Baun Newman, had gotten him occasional bit parts in the movies.

This week I ran across a newspaper article about movie extras from a 1924 Sunday edition of the Utica (NY) Observer Dispatch, which I shall quote, in part.

“Local color” they call many of them... Wonderful faces, these, of men from 50 to 70 years of age, and all with a life story as interesting as any ever pictured on the screen written in their expressive faces.

Many are actors, “in the heel of their time,” others from the audience side of life. Most of them are simply “background” …

The article first describes one person who did not want to be named, then:

Another old timer is W. C. Newman, better known as “Billy Newton.” He is making his debut in pictures, but he began his theatrical career many years ago as call boy in a theater where the famous “Julius Caesar Combination” was showing, with Booth Barrett, Bangs and Davenport in the company. He married “in the profession,” and with his wife, who had a glorious contralto voice, appeared in every one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, as did later their son Edwin de Baun Newman.

It was in those days that he first knew Tom and John Ince, and after all those years, Edwin de Baun Newman, about their age, supplementing a career as actor, writer and motion picture director became general manager for Thomas Ince studios. He sent for his father to come on from New York to spend his days in idle ease…

But “Billy” Newton, at the smell of grease paint as eager to get back in the harness as an old fire horse at the sound of the gong, decided to try his face in pictures. Unbeknown to his son he donned the old corduroys and sold himself for an “extra” to Director Ralph Ince, and hopes, in the course of time and human events, to “work up” to a regular part.

So, add another two members of the family to those with talent, William Clark Newman and his wife, Marietta Sharott Newman, and add to the talent of Edwin de Baun Newman, all recognized actors and singers.

And, add another name to research, Billy Newton.