J. W. Johnston

J. W. Johnston
Johnston in 1913
Born	(1876-10-02)October 2, 1876 County Kildare, Kilkea, Ireland
Died	July 29, 1946(1946-07-29) (aged 69) United States
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1901–1946

J. W. Johnston (October 2, 1876 – July 29, 1946) was an Irish American stage and film actor who started as a supporting actor and, briefly, leading man in the 1910s and early 1920s, continued as a character performer from the mid-1920s, and ended as an unbilled bit player during the 1930s and 1940s. He was also an early member of Cecil B. DeMille's repertory company of actors, appearing in five of the director's features released between July and December 1914. Although J. W. Johnston was his most frequent billing, other appellations included J. W. Johnson, Jack W. Johnson, Jack Johnson, F. W. Johnston, John W. Johnston, Jack Johnston, Jack W. Johnston and Jack Johnstone.

Born in the County Kildare village of Kilkea, about 75 km (47 mi) from Dublin, Johnston traveled to the United States as a young man, with Variety mentioning that his initial Broadway appearance was in Paul Potter's stage adaptation of Ouida's popular historical romance, Under Two Flags, starring Blanche Bates, which opened at Garden Theatre on February 5, 1901 and closed in June. 24 years old during the show's run, Johnston persisted as a theatre actor for another ten years and made his first film, a Pathé Frères short entitled The Reporter in 1911. Continuing to perform in numerous other short films (virtually all productions of the early 1910s were between one and three reels in length), the following year he joined filmmakers' exodus to the newly formed West Coast motion picture mecca of Hollywood. Seen in at least eight films in 1912, he made twenty-six in 1913 and sixteen in 1914, with six of the 1914 titles extended to feature length, including the five DeMilles, in first of which, The Man on the Box, a comedy-drama released in July, he had a prominent supporting role as a character named Count Karloff. Playing the title character's best friend, Steve, who is lynched as a cattle thief in The Virginian, the director's first major success, was next, in September. There were two titles in November, The Man from Home and Rose of the Rancho, and his fifth DeMille, The Ghost Breaker, opened in December. Johnston was also the male lead in one of the earliest movie serials, filmed in 1914 and released in mid-January 1915, Runaway June, which spotlighted, in the title role, Norma Phillips, whose short-lived nickname, during her brief (1913–17) film career, came from the appellation of her 1914 feature, Our Mutual Girl.