A Look at Lydia Knott and Lambert Hillyer

…And Adelbert Knott (1858-1933), as well, for he came onto the scene first. Hailing from Tyner, Indiana (about a half hour from South Bend), Knott was both a writer and an actor. He was only 21 years old when he published a book called The Queen of Huckleberry Marsh, about Mary Helms, a former circus acrobat who settled in the area and became a trouble-making local madam. Two copyrighted sketches penned by Knott, “A Maid’s Wooing” (1902) and “The Rube and the Devil” (1902) indicate a background in vaudeville and/or stock theatre. Knott appeared on Broadway as an actor a couple of times, and had supporting roles in nine silent films between 1919 and 1925, almost certainly through the agency of his sister and nephew, who had become fairly big wheels in the medium by them. These were they:

Adelbert’s younger sister Lydia Knott (1866-1955) barnstormed the midwest with stock companies and in vaudeville for years. For a time she was leading lady to an equally forgotten regional actor named David Higgins. She appeared in nearly 100 films, beginning with As Ye Sow (1914), starring Alice Brady, Douglas MacLean and Johnny Hines. She was fourth-billed in that pictured, a relatively respectable status. Today her best remembered role may be as Jean’s mother in Charlie Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris(1923). Some other notable films include The Perfect Flapper (1924) with Colleen Moore and the all-star 1925 version of East Lynne. In the sound era she was mostly a bit player and crowd extra. In that capacity, for example, she was in If I Had a Million (1932). Her last appearance was in the Gene Autry western Git Along Little Dogies (1937).

Knott’s son Lambert Hillyer (1893-1969) had also acted with stock companies and in vaudeville, though he also graduated from Drake College in Iowa and worked as a journalist for a time. Hillyer was a director and screenwriter in films and television for nearly 40 years. In the silent days he often worked for Thomas Ince and directed westerns starring the likes of William S. Hart, Buck Jones, Tom Mix, et al. The 1923 version of The Spoilers is a better remembered one from this period. When sound hit, he was relegated to B pictures and serials. Some of these are well remembered. For example, in 1936 he directed The Invisible Ray and Dracula’s Daughter, both of which enjoy status as semi-classics of the horror genre. He also directed the original 15 part serial adaptation of Batman in 1943, which was largely the basis of the sit-com parody in the ’60s. Most of his sound pictures were also westerns. He turned our programmers starring Tex Ritter,Charles Starrett, Tim Holt, Johnny Mack Brown, and others of that ilk. For television he directed 40 episodes of The Cisco Kid (1953-56), seven of Highway Patrol (1955-56), and eight of the now-forgotten I Led Three Lives (1953-56) starring Richard Carlson.

From time to time, mother and son worked together, in pictures such as The Super-Sex (1922), Clyde Fitch’sBarbara Frietchie (1924) with Florence Vidor, and Those Who Dance (1924) with Blanche Sweet,Bessie Love, Warner Baxter, and Lucille Ricksen.

For more on the history of vaudeville,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on early film please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.