Travers Vale

Travers Vale, born Solomon Flohm, (31 January 1865 – 10 January 1927) was an English-born silent film director, theatre impresario, playwright, and actor. Raised primarily in Victoria, Australia, he worked as a photographer, playwright and theatre manager in Victoria, Southern Australia, and New Zealand prior to his career in film. In his early career in theatre in Australia he was known by the name S. F. Travers Vale under which name he authored his first known play, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1888); an adaptation of the 1886 novel of the same name by Fergus Hume. He established his own theatre troupe, The Travers Vale Dramatic Company, which was in residence at the Theatre Royal, Adelaide in 1889 and the Auckland Opera House in New Zealand in 1890. In 1892 and 1893 he was the business manager of the American husband wife magician team of Charles N. Steen and Mrs. Steen.

Sometime after September 1893, but before the birth of his eldest daughter, Vale and his wife, Leah "Lily" Vale, left Australia and resided in India for a brief period before traveling to the United Kingdom. The couple's first child, Violet Rachel Flohm Vale, was born in Cardiff, Wales in May 1894. By 1898 the family had moved to the United States with Vale's first original play written in that country being After the War (premiered October 7, 1898, Athens, Georgia). In 1901 he established the Travers Vale Stock Company which performed his original plays and with whom he also starred in productions of his own works. In the summers of 1901-1903 the troupe was in residence at the Heim brothers Electric Park Theater in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1904, Lily Vale died in Alabama.

After continuing to perform in vaudeville, Vale transitioned into a career as a director for silent films; directing more than 70 films between 1910 and 1926. He began his career in film with the New Jersey based Champion Film Company in 1910. He continued to make films with companies on the East Coast of the United States over the next several years, including works for the Pilot Films Corporation, the Biograph Company, and Peerless Pictures Studios. From 1916-1920 he worked mainly for the World Film Company out of their studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In 1921 he established his own film production company in New York City, Travers Vale Productions, which made the film A Pasteboard Crown (1922). He then moved to Hollywood, California where his first film made on the West Coast was The Street of Tears (1924, Rayart Pictures). His final film, Western Pluck (1926), was made by Universal Pictures. Several of his films made prior to his move to California featured his second wife, the actress Louise Vale, who died during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.