page_title: Lowell Sherman
section_title: Early life and career
hierarchical_section_title: Lowell Sherman / Early life and career
caption_attribution_description: Lobby card for the 1932 film What Price Hollywood.
context_page_description: Lowell J. Sherman was an American actor and film director. In an unusual practice for the time, he served as both actor and director on several films in the early 1930s. He later turned exclusively to directing. Having scored huge successes directing the films She Done Him Wrong and Morning Glory, he was at the height of his career when he died after a brief illness.
context_section_description: Born in San Francisco in 1888 to John Sherman and Julia Louise Gray, who were both connected with the theater; John as a theatrical management agent and Julia as a stage actress. His maternal grandmother had been an actress, starring with the famous actor Edwin Booth (brother of actor-assassin John Wilkes Booth). Sherman began his career as a child actor appearing in many touring companies.
  As an adult he appeared on Broadway in plays such as Judith of Bethulia (1904) with Nance O'Neil and in David Belasco's 1905 smash hit The Girl of the Golden West with Blanche Bates where he was a young Pony Express rider. 
  By 1915 Sherman was appearing in silent films usually playing playboys, until D. W. Griffith cast him as the villain in the classic film, Way Down East (1920). He continued playing villains or playboys in films, as he had in the theatre, throughout the 1920s, in such films as Molly O' (1921), A Lady of Chance (1929) and later in talkies such as Ladies of Leisure (1930), and What Price Hollywood? (1932).
  In 1921 Sherman was in San Francisco attending a party as a guest of friend Roscoe Arbuckle at the St. Francis Hotel. He was in an adjoining room with madam Maude Delmont when Arbuckle was with Virginia Rappe. Rappe died four days afterwards. Lurid allegations circulated that Arbuckle had raped her at the party and inflicted injuries which directly caused her death. Arbuckle was arrested for murder (later downgraded to manslaughter), and Sherman had to testify during the ensuing trial.
  Sherman's career did not significantly suffer from the fallout of his attendance at the party. On Broadway in 1923, Sherman played the aptly suited Casanova in a play of that name; his leading lady was Katharine Cornell. His sole Broadway directing credit was in 1923's Morphia, in which he also starred. His suave reputation was built after many years appearing in popular Broadway farces. Even after he became a successful silent film star, he continued to perform on Broadway, his last role being in The Woman Disputed, which ran from September 1926 through March 1927.
  Though successful, Sherman was not entirely happy with his career as an actor, stating "Nothing becomes so monotonous as acting on the stage, especially if you are successful ... working in the movies seemed even duller." In 1930, RKO executive William LeBaron gave him the opportunity he was looking for; allowing him to star in and direct the film, Lawful Larceny. Sherman had starred in the Broadway production of the play the film was based on, and reprised his role. Over the next three years, he starred and directed himself in seven more films, including Bachelor Apartment (1931) with Irene Dunne, The Royal Bed (1931) with Mary Astor, and The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932) with Joan Blondell.
  In 1933, he focused on his directing duties. 1932's The Greeks Had a Word for Them was his last acting role, either on stage or screen. The five films where his sole responsibility was directing were all critical and financial successes. He directed Mae West in her first starring film She Done Him Wrong (Paramount Pictures, 1933), and followed that with Katharine Hepburn's Oscar-winning performance in Morning Glory (RKO Radio Pictures, 1933). He also directed Broadway Through a Keyhole (Twentieth Century Pictures, 1933) with Russ Columbo, and Born to Be Bad (United Artists, 1934) with Loretta Young and Cary Grant (who he had worked with on She Done Him Wrong). His final work, Night Life of the Gods (Universal Pictures), was released in 1935, after Sherman's death, and was another critical and financial success.
caption: Sherman (left), Neil Hamilton and Constance Bennett in What Price Hollywood? (1932)
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