24 Facts About George Beban

George Beban was an American actor, director, writer and producer.

George Beban was best known for his portrayal of Italian immigrant characters, including his starring roles in the play The Sign of the Rose and the 1915 silent film classic The Italian.

George Beban grew up on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill and was one of four sons of Rocco Beban, a Dalmatian immigrant, and Johanna Dugan, from County Cork, Ireland.

George Beban then acted in juvenile roles for the California Theater stock company in San Francisco.

At age 22, George Beban began a career as a Broadway theater actor in New York.

George Beban had previously played French characters in Marie Cahill's production Ben Bolt, and in Lew Fields' About Town.

For many years, George Beban was typecast as a French character actor.

George Beban studied the language and mannerisms of the Italian immigrants by spending weeks observing Italian workers building a tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey.

George Beban even purchased clothes from the workers that he later used for his character in The Sign of the Rose.

The sketch was written by George Beban and was called The Sign of the Rose.

George Beban says he is going to play, and continue to play, 'The Italian in America.

Just at present George Beban's talents are finding abundant expression in 'The Sign of the Rose,' a remarkable Orpheum headliner, in which, as Pietro Massena, this character actor delineates the loves and sorrows of a poor Italian emigrant.

George Beban's passions are so manifest that they are the very essence of the theatre.

George Beban loves intensely, he adopts children, he is fiery in his friendships and hates alike, and his experiences in getting Americanized furnish a far greater fund of comedy than the wearisome peanut-stand mirth to which the 'scene-in-one' artists have accustomed us.

In 1917, George Beban revealed to a reporter the irony that he could not speak a word of Italian.

In 1915, Beban made his debut in the motion picture business as the lead actor in Thomas H Ince's production, The Italian.

The story is full of human interest, requiring a full understanding of the character, and George Beban by look and gesture is at all times in fullest sympathy with the difficult role.

That Barker [the director] and George Beban are able to create so much sympathy for Beppo, despite their own, occasionally quite obvious condescension to the character, is a mark of emerging maturity in the movie business; no longer are films dealing in one-dimensional 'types.

George Beban's train was greeted at the Southern Pacific station, and he was taken to a waiting automobile filled with roses.

George Beban was married to Edith MacBride, a stage actress who appeared with George Beban in Moonshine, About Town, The Girl Behind the Counter, The American Idea, and Anna Held's All Star Variete Jubilee.

In 1927, George Beban began assisting aspiring actors to break into the motion picture business.

George Beban described his goal in an interview with the Los Angeles Times:.

In 1928, George Beban died from injuries sustained when he was thrown from a horse while on vacation at the June Lodge dude ranch in Big Pine, California.

George Beban died from complications from the accident at the California Lutheran Hospital in Los Angeles.