Shelley Hull

Shelley Vaughan Hull (June 17, 1884 – January 14, 1919) was an American stage actor who also appeared in two silent motion pictures. His Broadway popularity as a suave handsome leading man was continually on the rise until his early death at age 34 in the Influenza pandemic of 1918. Early life Hull was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the middle son of William Madison Hull, a theater manager and drama critic, and his wife, Elinor Bond Vaughn. After the family moved to New York City in 1902, the three sons eventually went into the theater business: the eldest, Howard, married acclaimed actress Margaret Anglin, and younger brother Henry Hull, became a well-known actor on stage and in Hollywood films. In 1910, Hull married actress Josephine Sherwood, who, as Josephine Hull, was a successful stage performer throughout her long life and became an Oscar-winning character actress. Career For fifteen years, from 1903 to 1918, Hull appeared in 17 Broadway plays, enhancing his acting reputation in comedy and serious drama with each production. A frequent description of his stage work is that he "combined boyishness with an incontestable manliness, and grace with a telling force, as the best young actor in his field." Hull was a particular favorite of the young Billie Burke and costarred with her in three consecutive plays over a year's time. In 1917, he costarred in Why Marry?, the first play to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In Bertie Thomas's Under Orders, a British import that opened in August 1918, he impressed critics with his dual casting as an American (Arthur Ford) and his German cousin (Captain Hartzmann of the Imperial Guards), who find themselves fighting on either side of The Great War before taking refuge in each other's countries. His ability to portray both young men as decent human beings trapped in the fog of war won critical raves from, for one, Dorothy Parker, who wrote, "If the author had let Shelley Hull get killed, not a woman in the audience would ever have smiled again."