JOHN BUNNY

John Bunny was a stage and film actor from the late 1800s to 1915. He was born in New York City in 1863 (to an English father and Irish mother), and he spent decades as a stage actor, and made it to Broadway around the turn on the 20th century. When he saw that movies were displacing stage plays, he switched to movies and signed with Vitagraph around 1910, where he starred in 150 comedy shorts, often paired with Flora Finch, many times in domestic comedies. Sadly, he passed away in 1915 at the age of 51 from Bright's disease, so he did not live to see the great success movies had in future decades, and because he passed away so early in film history, he is largely forgotten today, except by major film buffs. That is especially sad, because his contemporaries said he was one of the finest comic actors of his time!