Actors - Robert Harron

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	Actors - Robert Harron

Robert "Bobby" Harron (April 12, 1893 - September 5, 1920) was a highly successful and publicly popular American motion picture actor of the early silent film era. Although he acted in scores of films, he is mostly remembered for his roles in the D.W. Griffith directed classics Intolerance and The Birth of a Nation
. He was also the older brother of film actor John Harron.

Born Robert Emmett Harron in New York City, New York, USA, he was second oldest child of nine siblings in a poor, working-class Irish-Catholic family. He attended the Christian Brothers school in Greenwich Village and beginning at the age of thirteen found work as a messenger boy for American Biograph Studios to help support his family. Within a year of working for Biograph, Robert Harron and Christian Brothers friend and classmate James Smith were noticed by newly hired director D.W. Griffith who put both young boys under contract and the pair began appearing in bit parts for the studio. His first film was the now lost 1907 Biograph short Bobby's Kodak. Harron quickly became a favorite of Griffith and Griffith began to give the fourteen year old increasingly larger film roles.

The teenaged Robert Harron was often cast by Griffith in the role of the "sensitive" and "naïve" boy, who was overwhelmingly sympathetic and appealing to American film-goers in the very early years of American motion pictures and not far removed from Harron's real-life persona; Harron was often described as a quiet and soft-spoken youth. It was these traits that helped garner much public interest in the young actor, especially amongst young female fans. In 1912 alone, Robert Harron appeared in nearly forty films at Biograph.

Harron is probably best recalled for his roles in the two epic Griffith films: 1915's controversial all-star cast The Birth of a Nation, and 1916's colossal multi-scenario Intolerance opposite such popular stars of the era Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Wallace Reid, Harold Lockwood, and Mildred Harris.

Robert Harron's film career continued to flourish throughout the 1910s and he was occasionally paired with leading actresses Mae Marsh and Lillian Gish with romantic plots, often in roles that cemented his "sensitive boy" image. Harron had, in fact, a burgeoning off-screen romantic relationship with Gish. By 1920 however, it was reported that film director D. W. Griffith's interest in the young actor had waned and when Griffith hired film actor Richard Barthelmess to star in his 1920 film Way Down East
Harron was inconsolable. On Sepetember 5, 1920, while in New York City to attend the film premier of Way Down East, Harron fatally shot himself in the left lung in his hotel room with a revolver that he had placed in his dinner jacket. Although the death was officially ruled accidental, many historians believe that Harron committed suicide because of his resentment of Griffith passing him over for the role in Way Down East in favor of Griffith's newest protegé.

Robert Harron was 27 years old at the time of his death and had never married. His film career spanned nearly fifteen years and Harron had appeared in over two hundred films.

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