Biography
Sam De Grasse
Samuel Alfred De Grasse (born June 12, 1875; died November 29, 1953) was a Canadian actor. Born in Bathurst, New Brunswick, he trained to be a dentist. After his older brother Joe had gone into the fledgling movie business, Samuel decided to also give it a try. He traveled to New York City and in 1912 he acted in his first motion picture.
At first, Sam De Grasse played standard secondary characters but when fellow Canadian Mary Pickford set up her own studio with her husband Douglas Fairbanks, he joined them. He portrayed the villanous Prince John in Fairbank's 1922 Robin Hood. As a shifty-eyed villain, after this, De Grasse began to specialize in the role of the "bad guy".
Sam de Grasse married actress Ada Fuller Golden and had a daughter, Clementine. De Grasse was the uncle of successful cinematographer Robert De Grasse. Sam De Grasse lived on the west coast until his death in Hollywood. He is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
During his career, Sam De Grasse appeared in 107 films. A few of them are:
The Birth of a Nation - (1915)
The Good Bad Man - (1915)
Intolerance - (1916)
Wild and Woolly - (1917)
An Old Fashioned Young Man - (1917)
Blind Husbands - (1919)
Robin Hood - (1922)
The Spoilers - (1922)
Forsaking All Others - (1922)
Slippy McGee - (1923)
Painted People - (1924)
The Black Pirate (1926)
The Fighting Eagle - (1927)
King of Kings - (1927)
Our Dancing Daughters - (1928)
The Man Who Laughs - (1928)
Wall Street - (1929)
Captain of the Guard - (1930)
See also: Other Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood
