with Elaine
Uncovering the extraordinary stories of our ancestors!
Have you ever looked at the names of your ancestors on your family tree and wondered what life was like for them? Did they live ordinary lives or did they take the path less travelled? Everyone has a story to tell and our ancestors are no exception. Follow me on my genealogy journeys as I delve into the lives of ordinary people who lived extraordinary lives.
Patrick Coll Hartigan (1881-1951)
‘Last Rites Set for Film Pioneer Patrick Hartigan’
Rosary will be recited at 7pm tomorrow for Patrick Hartigan, 69, a pioneer producer, director and actor in the film industry, at Utter McKinley-Strother Chapel in Hollywood.
Mr Hartigan died last Tuesday at his home, 1516 N Harvard Blvd. Although he had been retired for 10 years as a director and producer, he played a number of character roles during his years of retirement. Mr Hartigan leaves no close relatives.’ (The Los Angeles Times, 12th May 1951).
Perchance you should be visiting Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Hollywood, you may happen upon the final resting place of Patrick Coll Hartigan, a long way from where he was born on 21st December 1881 in the district of Bruree, County Limerick, Ireland. Patrick was the fourth son of Luke C Hartigan, a farmer, and Catherine Coll. On finishing school, he attended Trinity College, Dublin, before enrolling in the British Army and fighting in the Boer War. A yearning for adventure took him from there to Canada where he was to join the Mounted Police. Dreaming of a career on the stage, Patrick travelled to London and began to learn his art, crossing paths at one time with the great actor Sir Henry Irving. The first decade of the twentieth century saw Patrick travel to New York where he began acting under the management of David Belasco. He used the stage name Patrick Coll Hartigan, taking the maiden name of his mother. New York at this time was an exciting place, the emergence of silent movies was changing the social pastimes of the theatre going public. Nevertheless, there remained a snobbery in the acting world that acting on a theatre stage was far superior to participating in the moving pictures. David Belasco strictly forbade his actors from doing so. (The Monroe News-Star 10th October 1924).
Patrick Hartigan was later to tell the story of how he lost his job with Belasco in 1907. Wanting to make some extra money, he succumbed to an offer from the old Vitagraph Company to take part in an action movie, filmed on the roof of an office building on Nassau Street, New York. One afternoon Patrick and his stage manager dropped into a movie house to kill some time. He had no idea that the picture in which he appeared would be shown until it was suddenly flashed on the screen. “I can still remember the uncomfortable feeling as I felt the indignant eyes of my companion on me. He was so enraged that he could scarcely speak.” Hartigan recalled. “That night I received my notice.” (The Los Angeles Evening Express, 4th January 1923).
Patrick Hartigan went on to work at Vitagraph and from then on remained in the movie industry. An early American film studio founded in New York City in 1907 was the Kalem Company. It was one of the first movie companies to make films overseas and also to film on location around America. In 1910 the Kalem Company travelled to Ireland and shot several movies, including ‘The Lad from Old Ireland’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YgJikVi23Y
The films were a great success, especially with the Irish Americans who could relate to the themes of the movies. Patrick Hartigan, a lad from old Ireland himself, began working for the Kalem Company and moved from New York to Hollywood. He directed many films from his Santa Monica location and was responsible for giving many actors their first roles before moving on to stardom in later years, such as Ruth Redmond and Marshall Neilan. Neilan went on to become a very famous and well-respected director of movies for Louis B Meyer’s Goldwyn Pictures.
Early in 1914 Hartigan returned to New York where he began directing short films, which became known as The Hartigan Comedies, for the Pathe brothers of Jersey City. He located the company to the old Kalem station in Santa Monica taking with him members of the new company. The Long Beach Daily News reported on 23rd May 1914 that ‘The Pathe company will pass 20 weeks in Los Angeles producing plays at the studio of First and Court Streets. The company headed by Miss Frenyear and Peggy Hart, who play dramatic leads for the Pathe Company, arrived in Los Angeles yesterday afternoon from New York. The new plays will be produced under the direction of P C Hartigan, the leading director for Pathe Freres in the United States’. Peggy Hart, otherwise known as Margaret Cagney, was to marry Patrick Hartigan in 1915. Together they starred in many films, namely ‘I love the Nurses’ and ‘Forcing the Force’ in 1914 and ‘Love and Skates’ in 1915.
The marriage was not to last and they divorced a few years later.
As World War One broke out, European firms based in America started closing down their plants and the Pathe French, German and Russian studios had all but suspended business. Hartigan returned to New York and enlisted for the military in September of 1917. Following the war, he returned to his acting career and in 1922 starred in the film Conceit along with big names such as Maurice Costello and Hedda Hopper, who went on to make an even bigger name for herself as Hollywood’s gossip columnist during the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford era.
Hartigan’s physique often led to him being cast as ‘the heavy’, as was the case when he was cast as ‘Big Mike’, the bully of the ghetto, in the movie ‘The Darling of New York’ in 1923. Directed by King Baggot the movie featured the child star Baby Peggy, otherwise known as Peggy-Jean Montgomery. Hartigan was to push her out of the way and escape a burning building. In an interview in 1992 Peggy recalled the making of The Darling of New York and how, at the age of four years, she was made to escape from a burning window. King Baggot warned her that there would only be one take as the set would be completely burned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y2HowNwuvI
Baby Peggy would change her name to Diana Serra Cary and was to become an advocate for child actors, improving their working conditions and giving them more rights.
Patrick Coll Hartigan appeared in 72 films between 1909 and 1940. He also directed 14 films between 1911 and 1919. A newspaper described his life ‘as that of a true soldier of fortune, the atmosphere in which he spent his childhood being conducive to that mode of existence’. (The Monroe News Star, 10th October 1924). The silent movies made way for the ‘talkies’ and Hollywood all but forgot about the early pioneers of the silver screen. Their legacy lives on, however, and Patrick Coll Hartigan, a young man from Ireland, made his mark on Hollywood, paving the way for those that followed.
Read about more ordinary people who did extraordinary things! Eliza Lynch was born in 1833 in Charleville, Co Cork. Fate took her to Paraguay where she became First Lady and National Heroine. https://genealogyjourneyswithelaine.com/move-over-evita/