- Born
- Died
- Birth nameNoble Mark Johnson
- Height6′ 2″ (1.88 m)
- African-American movie actor and producer Noble Johnson was born on
April 18, 1881, in Marshall, Missouri. His family moved to Colorado
Springs, Colorado, when Noble was very young, and it was there that he
met Lon Chaney at school. They became friends
as children, and later got re-acquainted when both were making movies
in Hollywood and became friends all over again (surprisingly, they
never made any movies together).
Johnson was built like a bull, standing 6'2" at 215
pounds. His impressive physique and handsome features made him in
demand as a character actor and bit player. In the silent era he
essayed a wide variety of characters of different races in a plethora
of films, primarily serials, westerns and adventure movies. While
Johnson was cast as blacks in many films, he also played Native
American and Latino parts and "exotic" characters such as Arabians or
even a devil in hell in
Dante's Inferno (1924) (the old black and white orthochromatic film stock of the early days was less
discriminating about a person's color, as were B+W stocks in general,
permitting some African-American actors a break, as their "color" was
washed out or less obvious when photographed in B+W. As late as the
early 1960s, there were very few African-American members of the Screen
Actors Guild, since there was a lack of opportunity for them as black
performers were confined mostly to race films until the 1960s). In all
his roles, Johnson lived up to his Christian name: his was a noble and
dignified presence that exhibited great power and substance.
Johnson also was an entrepreneur. In 1916 he founded his own studio to
produce what would be called "race films", movies made for the
African-American audience, which was ignored by the "mainstream" film
industry. The Lincoln Motion Picture Co., which was in existence until
1921, was an all-black company, the first to produce movies portraying
African-Americans as real people instead of as racist caricatures
(Johnson was followed into the race film business by
Oscar Micheaux and others). Johnson, who
served as president of the company and was its primary asset as a star
actor, helped support the studio by acting in other companies'
productions such as
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916),
and using the money he made in those films to invest in Lincoln.
Lincoln's first picture was The Realization of a Negro's Ambition (1916). For four years Johnson managed to keep Lincoln a going concern,
primarily due to his extraordinary commitment to African-American filmmaking. However, he reluctantly resigned as president in 1920, as he no longer could continue his double business life, maintaining a demanding career in Hollywood films while trying to run a studio.
In the 1920s Johnson was a very busy character actor, appearing in such top-notch films as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) with Rudolph Valentino, Cecil B. DeMille's original The Ten Commandments (1923) andThe Thief of Bagdad (1924). He made the transition to sound, appearing in the 1930 version of Moby Dick (1930) as Queequeg to John Barrymore's Captain Ahab. He was also the tribal leader on Skull Island in the classic King Kong (1933) (and its sequel, Son of Kong (1933)) and appeared in Frank Capra's classic Lost Horizon (1937) as one of theporters. One of his last films was John Ford's classic She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949),
in which he played Native American Chief Red Shirt. He retired from the movie industry in 1950.
Johnson died on January 9, 1978, in Yucaipa (San Bernardino), California, at age 96. He is buried in the Garden of Peace at Eternal
Valley Memorial Park in Newhall, California.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
- SpousesRuth Thornton(October 19, 1912 - ?)Gladys Mae Blackwell(? - January 9, 1978) (his death)May F. Johnson
- Co-founder with his brother George Johnson of the Lincoln Motion Picture Co.,
Johnson was one of the first successful African-American film
producers. - He was born in Marshall, MO, but when very young his family moved
to Colorado Springs, CO, birthplace of Lon Chaney. They attended the
same school, became friends and knew each other many years later when
both were making movies in Hollywood. - Interred at Eternal Valley Memorial Park, Newhall, CA, in
the Garden of Peace, A-270.
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