British-born Thomas B Ricketts (1853-1939) emigrated to the USA aged seventeen. After a career on the stage as actor and singer, he became a cinema pioneer, making his debut in A Christmas Carol (1908), the first actor to play Ebenezer Scrooge. In the thirty-year career that followed, Ricketts was incredibly prolific, acting in well over 200 pictures, directing around 180 and writing twenty or so.
In 1911, Ricketts and a partner set up the Nestor Film Company and he directed The Best Man Wins (1911), one of the first films to be made in Hollywood.
Ricketts had a busy year in 1914, when he directed 48 pictures. One of them was Damaged Goods, a film about the current hot topic of venereal disease. It starred Richard Bennett and saw the first appearance on film of his three daughters, Barbara, Constance and Joan.
Ricketts’s directing career ended in 1919, after which he restricted himself to screen acting, eventually becoming one of the oldest actors working in Hollywood. He made his final film, Son of Frankenstein (1939) shortly before he died, aged 86.
In all that activity, Tom Ricketts only had time for one MGM musical: he played, Mr Lorraine, Fred’s father, in Stage Mother.
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