In 2011, the highly acclaimed film The Artist was released. The movie told the fictional tale of George Valentin (played by Jean Dujardin) who finds the idea of making the transition between silent films to talkies absolutely unbearable. The reason for his resistance to the sound test becomes clear when you finally hear his voice and realize that he has a thick accent, completely unsuited to talking pictures. But like all good Hollywood movies, however, the story has a happy ending and by the finale the hero has a new role and a new love.
The film could, of course, be based on all the actors and actresses in Hollywood who found the transition into talkies impossible, but one actor’s story stands out among all others for being similar to that of George Valentin. Karl Dane, who once earned a mammoth $1,500 a week, was a legend, loved by audiences around the country, but like George Valentin, he found his career imploding after the onset of sound. Unlike Valentin, however, there was no hope of a happy ending; it was tragedy all the way for the beloved Karl Dane.
Born in Denmark as Rasmus Karl Therkelsen Gottlieb on 12 October 1886, Karl grew up to work as a machinist before beginning military service and then marrying his girlfriend Carla in 1910. The couple had two children but Dane was not content with staying in his home country and decided to move to the United States in 1916, leaving his family behind in the hope that they would follow him shortly afterwards.
The journey to the States was a long one, but once he had arrived Dane wasted no time in setting up home in New York. However, a job was not easy to come by in the great city, so on hearing that he would have more chance of gaining employment in Nebraska, he moved to Lincoln where he found temporary work as a mechanic. He was happy for a while but working in a garage in Nebraska was not exactly his big dream, so as soon as the job was finished, he returned to New York, where he discovered that he could make $3 a day as a bit player in the film industry.
Dane auditioned for and got many small parts in the movies, and it was not long until he made his first film with Vitagraph Studios, though details of the shoot remain sketchy and his part was eventually cut out. Meanwhile, the long-distance relationship he had with his family back in Denmark had – not surprisingly – broken down, with his wife Carla becoming too ill to travel even if she had wanted to. The pair decided that it was best for them both to go their separate ways and they eventually divorced in 1918.
However, this small hiccup in his private life was not enough to deter Karl from making a living as an actor, and he worked successfully for a time in New York before marrying a young woman by the name of Helen Benson in 1921. Together they headed to the West Coast, but not to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune . . . Instead, they settled in Van Nuys, where Dane surprised friends by deciding to give up the acting business in favour of something more reliable – running a chicken farm. The couple also discovered they were to be parents, and concentrated for the next few months on running their business and readying themselves for the birth of their first child.
Unfortunately their joy was short-lived as complications arose in childbirth, and both Helen and their daughter sadly died. Dane was heartbroken, and after mourning his wife and child, he eventually returned to acting, this time in Hollywood. He also married a telephone operator by the name of Emma Awilda Peabody Sawyer, which was – to say the least – a decision made on impulse and most definitely on the rebound from the loss of Helen.
It would be fair to say that Dane knew he had made a mistake almost as soon as the ring had been slipped on to his fiancée’s finger, and the pair separated after just six tumultuous months. Another relationship would come in 1928, with a Russian dancer, Thais Valdemar, but although they lived together for several months in Dane’s home, their union was never officially sealed and Valdemar soon moved out.
For the moment Karl gave up on women and instead threw himself into his career. One of his successes came when he began work on The Big Parade with John Gilbert, a film which went on to make $6.5 million at the box office – a staggering amount of money at the time. This film boosted his career no end and it was not long before he had advanced to parts acting alongside the legendary Rudolph Valentino in The Son of the Sheik and Lillian Gish in The Scarlet Letter.
Great stardom came when Dane was cast alongside actor George K. Arthur to create a comedy duo, and together they appeared in both films and a vaudeville tour. They were a huge hit and fans followed them around the country while many newspaper articles were written about their work. Sadly, however, the walls were slowly but surely coming in on their success with the advent of sound, and it was not long before the requirement for the infamous test came knocking at Dane and Arthur’s door.
During the subsequent sound tests, producers were happy to see that although Arthur’s Scottish accent was rather unfortunate, it was still workable. Dane didn’t have the same luck, however, when it was decided that his Danish accent was too thick and often could not be understood. Subsequently, the duo’s days as a successful double act were numbered and they eventually parted in 1931.
Dane continued to struggle in the movie business, and by December 1932, his last film was released - The Whispering Shadow featuring Bela Lugosi. Unfortunately, however, after that film was complete, nobody seemed to want to hire the actor any more and he had to accept the fact that his beloved career might be over. Not afraid to undertake any kind of work that would ensure his livelihood, Dane then tried his hand at various other jobs, including forming a mining company, and working as a waiter and then as a carpenter.
He even tried going back to mechanics, the work he had done as a young man in Nebraska, but having only recently been a big MGM star, it was inevitable that no “normal” job would ever work out to his advantage. Both Dane and his colleagues found it exceptionally hard to adjust to having a film star in the workplace, and ultimately he was left unemployed. Lonely and without any means of support, Dane spent his time pottering around his apartment, thinking about old times and wondering if he would ever find acting work again. In those bleak, dark days, the likelihood seemed very far-fetched indeed.
In 1933, when he was down but not yet out, Karl Dane bought a drink-and-sandwich stand, and every day wheeled it down the road to stand outside MGM, the studio he had formerly called home. Once there, the sad ex-star would try to sell hotdogs and refreshments to passers-by, though he was left intimidated and embarrassed when his former friends refused to buy anything from him. It took strength and nerve to try selling hotdogs outside his former workplace, and perhaps deep in his heart he was spurred on by the hope that his former employers would see the stall and have the heart to hire him back.
But even though they were driven past his cart every single day, the executives neither invited him back into the studio nor ever bought anything from him. Dane was still determined to make a living, but the lack of custom inevitably caused his business to fail. He gave up the stand and went back to odd jobs, even applying at MGM to become an extra or labourer – he didn’t mind which. However, it would seem that the great studio wanted nothing more to do with their former star in any capacity, and this knowledge caused Dane to fall into a deep and dark depression.
In April 1934, Karl Dane was understandably at a very low ebb. On 13 April he was robbed of what was to be the last of his money, and this seems to have been the event that caused his life to finally implode. The very next day, instead of meeting a friend as he had previously planned, he decided to retire to his apartment at 626 South Burnside Avenue. There he dressed himself in a shirt, trousers and slippers, and sat down to write a goodbye note to his remaining friends.
That done, Dane then took out his old newspaper articles, contracts, photographs and reviews, and looked through them one last time. Only he knows how long he thumbed through his past achievements before finally laying them down on a nearby table, reaching for his revolver and ending his life with a single gunshot to the head. Dane’s body was later found by his landlady and the friend who was supposed to meet him that day. There was nothing they could do for the former actor; he was beyond saving.
Newspapers mentioned Karl Dane’s tragic passing only in short articles, limited to one or two small columns. There was no real tribute to the once great star; no huge obituary or tearful comments from former co-stars. To make matters worse, no one came forward to claim the body since his family were all unaware of his death and living thousands of miles away in Denmark.
Reports surfaced that if the body was not claimed, he would be buried by the county in a pauper’s grave; and with that announcement, people finally began to sit up and take notice. No matter what had happened in Dane’s career at the end, there was no denying that he was once a big star and the thought of him being buried in an unmarked grave with no proper goodbye was horrifying.
Finally, a decision was made at MGM to take charge of the funeral themselves; while they had spurned their former employee just months before, they now proudly announced their plans to the press. Karl’s funeral took place on 18 April and was a quiet but respectful affair. The goodbye – which nobody had been interested in just weeks before – now consisted of a plot at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, a casket covered in roses and the help of Dane’s co-stars as pall-bearers.
The tragic twist in the tale of the Karl Dane story is that just days after his death, it was revealed that Fox had been considering him for a part in their upcoming movie, Servants’ Entrance. The only reason they had not told him, they said, was because the script was still in development and the casting had not yet been called.