B.F. Clinton

(b. 29/06/1879 - d. 13/10/1918?). American actor, director. Benjamin (Ben) Franklin Clinton probably came to South Africa at the suggestion of Lorimer Johnston, whose wife, Caroline Frances Cooke, had acted with him in The Light In A Woman's Eyes (1915), a short on which Johnston had been associate producer. In The Moving Picture World of 12 February 1916 it was announced that he would be in charge of the studios of the African Film Trust, but after his arrival he apparently only directed three shorts for African Film Productions: A Kract Affair, The Water Cure and £20,000. The last of these was released in August 1916 and on 25 September Clinton was back in the United States, having travelled via Liverpool.

Prior to his months in South Africa he was a stage actor and also directed one of the theatre companies that toured with Girl of the Underworld (1913), appearing at the La Salle Theatre in St. Louis. Some sources also credit a B.F. Clinton with supplying the story for The Enemy’s Baby (1913), a short starring Lionel Barrymore that may have been directed by D.W. Griffith, but which is not listed in all of Griffith’s filmographies. That same year he joined the General Film Co., a patents company based in New Jersey.

Interestingly, between 1911 and 1913 a Mrs. B.F. Clinton, who also used the name Edith Clinton, acted in a number of shorts for Vitagraph, including Charles Kent’s version of Vanity Fair (1911). In 1906 an Edith M. Rose had married a Benjamin F. Clinton in Chicago. After his return to the United States he went to work for Prizma, Inc., one of the first companies to experiment with the production of colour films. However, according to the U.S. Census, by 1920 the widow B.F. Clinton was staying with her parents and there is a record of a B.F. Clinton having died on 13 October 1918. He is buried in Burlington County, New Jersey. According to his gravestone he served in the 1898 Spanish-American War. (FO)

Sources

The Moving Picture World, 12 February 1916

Le Roux, André I. & Fourie, Lilla – Filmverlede: geskiedenis van die Suid-Afrikaanse speelfilm

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