Travers Vale

Infobox actor
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name = Travers Vale


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birthdate = 31 January, 1865
location = Liverpool, England
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deathdate = 10 January, 1927
deathplace = Hollywood, California, USA
yearsactive = 1910-1926
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Travers Vale (31 January, 1865 – 10 January, 1927), was an English-born silent film director. He directed 78 films between 1910 and 1926. He was born in Liverpool and died in Hollywood, California from cancer. Travers Vale's actual birth name was Solomon Flohm, son of Joseph Flohm and Esther Flegeltaub who were both Russian Polish Jews who had emigrated to the UK during the Crimean War.

Biography

Soon after Solomon's birth, they set sail to Australia on the SS Great Britain with other family members and ended up settling in Ballarat, Victoria although had spent time prior to this in Sandhurst [Bendigo, Victoria] and Pleasant Creek [Stawell, Victoria] .

Travers Vale [Solomon Flohm] married his first cousin, Leah Flegeltaub [daughter of Esther's sister Rebecca] on the 24th July 1893 in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. By this time he had been working as a photographer [his father-in-law, Aaron Flegeltaub was a respected photographer of this time] .

However Travers had also taken an active interest in stage where he worked for a period as a stage manager in Melbourne. The extended family also had an interest in the Arts - stage and music - so it is fair to say that he would have as a child been influenced by the family around him.

Family myth suggests that his first independent stage production [in which he used the name, Travers Vale] was when he produced a stage version of 'The Mystery of the Hansom Cab' - a ripping murder mystery novel written in Melbourne in the 1880s by Fergus Hume and contains many descriptions of Melbourne life at that time.

Sometime late 1890s / early 1900s, he ventured with his wife [who had changed her name to Leah Vale] to India and then onto London, some time later arriving finally in New York, USA where he became involved in the early days of Vauderville before the film industry headed enmass across the continent to Hollywood in the 1920s.

Travers lost his first wife Leah it is believed a few years after arriving in the USA but not before she had given him two girls. Travers married twice thereafter but no further children are known to exist from these marriages.

Trivia

*Travers' first cousin Hannah Flegeltaub who also lived in Ballarat married Sidney Myer, of notable fame in Australia.

elected filmography

* The Abandoned Well (1913)

External links

*imdb name|id=0883920|name=Travers Vale

Persondata
NAME= Vale, Travers
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Film director
DATE OF BIRTH= 31 January, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH= Liverpool UK
DATE OF DEATH= 10 January, 1927
PLACE OF DEATH= Hollywood, California USA