Frank Bacon (actor)

Bacon was born on his parents’ farm about five miles west of Yuba City, California, not far from Bogue Station on the old Southern Pacific Railroad line. His parents, Lehella Jane McGrew and Lyddall Bacon,[1] came from Kentucky and were married at Prairie City on October 2, 1853 by the Rev. Alex Graham in a double ceremony with Sarah Emma McGrew and E. H. Heacock.[2][3][4][5]

Bacon was raised in San Jose where he attended school before dropping out in his early teens to work at a nearby sheep ranch. At around the age of 17 Bacon became a photographer’s apprentice and with a brother would eventually open his own studio in San Jose. After several years he abandoned photography for newspaper work and became an advertising agent for the San Jose Mercury. A few years later he purchased The Napa Reporter and not long afterwards founded The Mountain View Register.[5]

Bacon as Lightnin' Bill Jones

After a failed foray into politics and growing disenchantment with the newspaper business, Bacon chose to “turn respectable” and joined a San Jose stock company. By 1894 he was a member of a dramatic company with D. K. Higgins and Georgia Waldron playing the villain in Higgins’ melodrama, The Plunger. He later formed a small company with his wife and a few other actors and toured mostly California venues for a number of seasons.[5][6][7] During this period, eight-year-old Roscoe Arbuckle made his stage debut with Bacon's company at Santa Ana, California.[8]

Bacon was a member of the repertoire company at the Alcazar Theatre for many years and only left after the theatre fell victim to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Afterwards he became a popular comedian at Oakland's Ye Liberty Playhouse and toured with theatrical and vaudeville companies.[9] Bacon made his Broadway debut at the Gaiety Theatre in December 1912 playing Papa Carr in Carlyle Moore’s long running comedy, Stop Thief. In late 1914, Bacon played Hiram Higgins at the Astor Theatre in George M. Cohan’s moderate success, The Miracle Man (from the novel by Frank L. Packard) and, over the first seven months of 1916, he scored a hit at the Hudson Theatre as Jerry Primrose, The Shebear’s Servant, in the Edward Childs Carpenter drama, The Cinderella Man.[5][10]

John Ford adapted Lightnin' as a silent film in 1925 with veteran actor and director Jay Hunt taking the part of Lightnin' Bill Jones. Five years later in an early talkie, Will Rogers played Jones opposite Louise Dresser and Joel McCrea.

Between 1915 and 1916 Bacon appeared in four films, The Silent Voice, from the play by Jules Eckert Goodman; Rosemary, from a play by Lois N. Parker and Murray Carson; Her Debt of Honor, from a scenario by William Nigh; and A Corner in Cotton, from a story by Anita Loos.[12]

Jennie Weidman, actress wife of Frank Bacon

On June 27, 1885, Bacon married actress Jennie Weidman, whom he had known since grammar school. Their daughter, Bessie Bacon Allen (1886–1952), became an actress and writer, and their son, Lloyd Bacon, a Hollywood director.[5]

Bacon died at the Hotel Del Prado, Chicago where he had gone after his final performance of Lightnin’ at the Blackstone Theatre to be under the care of his friend, Dr. Robert A. Black.

Bacon’s manager later said of the actor:

A kindly man, of simple tastes, who gave much to the public that he served and asked little in return. Bacon was known to his friends in the profession as much for the big, human man he was as for his sterling qualities as an actor. He really died the Saturday night he gave his last performance – and his greatest. George Kingsbury, 1922[5]

Bacon was laid to rest at Oak Woods Cemetery after a brief Christian Science service and eulogy by Judge Kenesaw Landis. The pallbearers were drawn from the cast of Lightnin'. The family eventually dropped a plan to someday remove Bacon's remains to a cemetery nearer his birthplace.[13]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frank Bacon (actor).

• Works by Frank Bacon at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Frank Bacon at Internet Archive