20 Facts About Howard Kyle

Howard Kyle was an American stage and screen actor and lecturer active for over 50 years.

Howard Kyle was a founding member and one-time recording-secretary of Actors' Equity and a sixty-year member of The Players Club.

At home Howard Kyle received private instructions in French and literature and after high school studied law for two years.

Howard Kyle began his acting career in amateur theatre as Kyle Vandergrift and made his professional stage debut at the age of 23 under the name Howard Kyle.

Howard Kyle's debuted as Guildenstern and the Second Grave Digger in Shakespeare's Hamlet at the Meyer's Opera House in Janesville, Wisconsin, on September 10,1884.

Howard Kyle spent the following twelve seasons in tours with a number of large classical repertory companies and made his first appearance in New York in 1887 at the Windsor Theatre as Lucius in the James Sheridan Knowles play Virginius.

In late 1897 Howard Kyle began a two-year run at the Manhattan Theatre and national tour of the Grismer and Parker pastoral play Way Down East, playing David Bartlett to Phoebe Davies' Anna Moore.

Howard Kyle was Sir Jasper Thorndyke, the lead character in a 1904 tour of Louis Parker's four-act comedy, Rosemary, and the next year played the title role in a tour of Louis Shipman's adaptation of the Frederic Remington western, John Ermine of the Yellowstone.

Howard Kyle later toured with Rose Coghlan's company playing Henry Beauclerc to Coghlan's Countess Zicka in the Victorien Sardou play Diplomacy.

Howard Kyle played Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Ivy Ashton Root's The Greater Love at Madison Square Theatre on March 19,1906, and on September 30 of the next year, performed the title role in Henry Arthur Jones' The Evangelist at the Knickerbocker Theatre.

In 1908 Howard Kyle toured as Mr Johnson in a vaudeville sketch entitled This Woman and That Man.

At Maxine Elliott's Theatre on February 22,1909 Howard Kyle played Scarus in Antony and Cleopatra, and on November 6 played the same part in the first performance held at the recently built New Theatre.

In 1910 Howard Kyle played Manson, with Henry Miller's Associate Players in Charles Rann Kennedy's The Servant In the House, and that November 30 acted the part of Castor, with the Coburn Players in Electra, staged at the Hudson Theatre.

Later in 1911 Howard Kyle toured with the Coburn Players in classical repertory productions and in July of the following year with his own company played Malvolio in Shakespeare's comedy, Twelfth Night, at the Greek Theatre, Mt.

Over his career Howard Kyle often appeared on the lecture circuit giving talks on subjects relating to the theatre.

Howard Kyle performed in a handful of silent films between 1912 and 1918, such as Don't Pinch My Pup with Riley Chamberlin; A Star Reborn with Florence La Badie; National Red Cross Pageant with Ethel Barrymore; The Purple Lily with Frank Mayo and Kitty Gordon; and Wild Honey with Frank Mills and Doris Kenyon.

Howard Kyle was a founding member of the Actors' Equity Association and served as their first recording secretary.

Howard Kyle resigned in 1919 over a schism involving the direction the organization was going after the members voted to join the American Federation of Labor.

Howard Kyle married actress Amy Urcilla Hodges, a sister-in-law of the writer Louis Joseph Vance, at Fort Lee, New Jersey on June 28,1915.

Howard Kyle died aged 89, at a New York City nursing home on December 1,1950.