Karl Dane

Without a doubt he is the saddest case of what can happen to a silent film star who could not make it into sound films. Carl had such a thick accent, that he could not make sound movies. He had pretty much given up on acting, with the exception of a few small parts, one of each was given to him by his pal Buster Keaton. In 1934, he had started taking classes to become a plumber. To support himself, he bought a hot dog cart. It all was too much for him when was selling hot dogs outside the gate at MGM, the same studio where just a few years before he was a star. He came back to his home on Burnside Avenue in the Fairfax district, and sat down on a chair and shot himself in the head.

Karl was also an auto racer and an aviator, being one of the first Danish aviators with the Danish Flying Corps.

Before being in movies Dane worked as a carpenter.

He and George K. Arthur formed the early comedy team of "Arthur and Dane."

Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith. pg. 28-29 (article titled 'Arthur and Dane'). New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387

His second wife died in childbirth as did his child, a daughter.

Lived with Russian dancer/actress Thais Valdemar for several months in 1928. Though they told people they were married, in reality they never wed. In December 1928, after their split, she filed a lawsuit against him for $75,000 claiming breach of promise.

Following his suicide with a gun in 1934, fellow Danish actor and MGM star Jean Hersholt, concerned that Dane would be placed in a pauper's grave, insisted that MGM step in and give him a proper burial. They did and he is interred in Hollywood Memorial cemetery. Hersholt and actor/former "Big Parade" co-star Tom O'Brien served as pallbearers.

A noted animal lover, he rescued two dogs following the making of his movie The Trail of '98 (1928).

The son of a Danish glove maker, he had an older brother (by a year), Reinald Marius Gottlieb. His parents divorced in 1903. He and his brother apprenticed as machinists for a railroad equipment company during their teens.

Was involved in Children's Theater, or "Dukketeater" (doll theatre) in his early career, which was instigated by his father's love for Toy Theatre, a popular art form throughout Europe during the Victorian era.

Quite athletic in his youth, he was an excellent swimmer, bicyclist and horseman. In his early years in Hollywood he was a sometime stunt man.

Emigrated to the United States (Ellis Island) on 11 February 1916 and settled in Brooklyn, taking on various jobs as a machinist, carpenter and auto mechanic. His wife and children stayed in Copenhagen. His wife, too ill to make the journey to America, eventually divorced him and he lost touch with his children, until the success of "The Big Parade" when they regained contact.

Became a star in King Vidor classic silent The Big Parade (1925) as the tobacco-chewing riveter Slim. The popularity extended to Denmark

Watch free The Whispering Shadow (1933)

With customary lack of restraint, Bela Lugosi tore into his role of Professor Strang, a foreign agent masquerading as a wax museum proprietor, in this the first of Mascot Pictures' five serials of 1933. Bela is smuggling jewels into the country as security for a loan. The "jools," however, are stolen by an escaped convict and sought by the omnipresent Whispering Shadow, a mysterious megalomaniac out to gain control of the entire world. A science wizard, the Shadow uses radio waves to kill his enemies, but no one knows who he is. In typical Mascot fashion, suspicion falls at various times on most of the cast members -- Lugosi, needless to say, most of all. As it turns out, despite a plethora of menacing close-ups, Bela is indeed only a red herring, the real culprit, in typical Mascot style, revealed instead to be a heretofore minor comic relief. Considering the fate of the actor in question, we shall break with tradition and name him. A major comic star of the late '20s, Karl Dane could only watch as his career collapsed at the changeover to sound due to an impenetrable Danish accent. All but unemployable, Dane was given this last chance to shine by producer Nat Levine, but audiences felt cheated by the serial's somewhat unfair denouement and The Whispering Shadow proved less a comeback than a debacle. Reduced to selling hot dogs from a stand outside his former studio, MGM, Dane ended his own life on April 14, 1934, one of the best remembered victims of the sound revolution. The Whispering Shadow marked the directorial debut of Colbert Clark, formerly of the script department, who was helped along the way by the veteran Albert Herman. The serial was also released in a truncated feature version.