William Norton Bailey (born Gardner Warren Reineck; September 26, 1886 – November 8, 1962) was an American actor and director.

Personal life

William Norton Bailey was born Gardner Warren Reineck on 26 September 1886 in Omaha,

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...

. His parents, Rebecca Gardener Phillips and Jesse P. Reineck, his father was a

Western Union The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company chang ...

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

operator. The family moved around the country based on Jesse’s work. The Reineck’s divorced after 1900 when Jesse was arrested, along with five other telegraph operators, for defrauding

American Express American Express Company (Amex) is an American multinational corporation specialized in payment card services headquartered at 200 Vesey Street in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The company was found ...

. William's mother settled the family for a number of years in

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...

. Bailey was married on 1917 in Philadelphia to Mary Cannon, an actress who worked under the professional names of Polly Vann and Mary/Polly Bailey. They had no children. After their marriage, William, his new wife, and his mother moved to New York City where he was a director at

Vitagraph Studios Vitagraph Studios, also known as the Vitagraph Company of America, was a United States motion picture studio. It was founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, as the American Vitagraph Company. By 1907, ...

. After her death in 1952, he married a second time to Mrs. Aletha Hamilton Fadden in Los Angeles. They died within a few months of each other and are buried at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Film career

Bailey's initial work in motion pictures came with Cosmopolitan Pictures, for which he directed one-reel and two-reel films. Bailey appeared in more than 300 films between 1911 and 1959, but his roles were often

uncredited In general, the term credit in the artistic or intellectual sense refers to an acknowledgment of those who contributed to a work, whether through ideas or in a more direct sense. Credit in the arts In the creative arts, credits are an acknowledg ...

. Bailey also starred in the original cast of '' No, No Nanette'' (1925), a smash hit on Broadway. Born in

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...

, Bailey died in

Hollywood, California Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Columbia Pictures, ...

in 1962 at the age of 76.

Selected filmography

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bailey, William 1886 births 1962 deaths Male actors from Nebraska American male film actors American male silent film actors American male stage actors American male television actors 20th-century American male actors