American actor Raymond Hitchcock (1865-1929) / Sometime / (Tierney; Jerome) / from the 1916 Broadway musical comedy \"Betty\" / Recorded: 1916 --
Raymond Hitchcock (October 22, 1865 November 24, 1929) was a silent film actor, stage actor, and stage producer, who appeared in or produced 30 plays on Broadway from 1898 to 1928, and who became famous in silent films of the 1920s.
He appeared first as a star in the character of Abijah Booze in The Yankee Consul, and sang In the Days of Old. In his stage career, Hitchcock went back and forth between dramatic roles and ones in comic opera. Hitchcock also made several phonograph recordings of which many survive to lend an idea of what he sounded like.
In 1925, Hitchcock appeared in a test film made by Lee DeForest in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process, in which Hitchcock performed a sketch from his revue Hitchy-Koo, which was originally produced on Broadway in 1917, 1918, 1919, and 1920. Cole Porter wrote the music for the 1919 version.
Hitchcock was married to Freda Bowen from 1891 to 1903, and then was married to beautiful actress Flora Zabelle (1880-1968) from 1905 to his death in 1929. In one of her few movie roles, Zabelle appeared in the silent film The Red Widow (1916) opposite male lead John Barrymore. Barrymore's role had been played by Hitchcock in the 1911 Broadway production of The Red Widow. Hitchcock and Zabelle appear to have had no children. (wikipedia)
