Elmer Booth
William Elmer Booth was an American stage and film actor. He was born in Los Angeles, California and was the elder brother of Margaret Booth, a renowned film editor for Hollywood productions for nearly 70 years.
Career
Elmer began acting in touring stock companies as a teenager and achieved great success in the stock company at the Central Theater in San Francisco from 1903 to 1906. Between 1910 and 1915 he starred in 40 movies; one of those was D. W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley, cited by many film experts as the first gangster movie.Playing "The Snapper Kid", a Manhattan street tough engaged in a turf war on the Lower East Side, Booth interpreted the gangster as a cocky, entertaining antihero, far different from the standard teeth-gnashing movie bad guys of his time.
Death
In the early hours of June 16, 1915, Booth died in an accident in California while riding in a car driven by Tod Browning, an actor and new director with Reliance-Majestic Studios in Hollywood. Actor George Siegmann was also a passenger in Browning's car. The day after the accident, the Los Angeles Times reported that the three men were returning to downtown Los Angeles from a roadhouse when Browning's car crashed into a train of the Salt Lake Railroad:Browning and Siegmann survived, although they both suffered serious injuries. Later reports blamed the accident on heavy fog; nevertheless, Elmer's sister Margaret never forgave Browning for the loss of her brother.D. W. Griffith, who had planned to cast Booth in an important role in Intolerance, delivered the actor's graveside eulogy.