Herbert Yost (also credited as Barry O'Moore and Bertram Yost; December 8, 1879 – October 23, 1945) was an American actor who in a career that spanned nearly half a century performed predominantly on stage in stock companies and in numerous Broadway productions. Yost also acted in motion pictures, mostly in one-reel silent shorts released by the Biograph Company and Edison Studios between November 1908 and July 1915. By the time he began working in the film industry, Yost already had more than a decade of stage experience in hundreds of dramatic and comedic roles and was widely regarded in the theatre community "as one of the country's finest stock actors"."Inside the Playbill: Morning's at Seven - Opening Night at the Longacre Theatre" , profile of Herbert Yost in Playbill (Manhattan, New York: The New York Theatre Program Corporation, 1939), 30 November 1939, p. 16. Retrieved 18 April 2021. Reportedly, to reduce the risk of tarnishing his reputation as a professional actor by being identified as a screen performer, Yost often billed himself as "Barry O'Moore" while working in films.Ramsaye, Terry. "Griffith Evolves Screen Syntax", A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964, image and caption facing page 510. Internet Archive (IA), San Francisco, California. Retrieved 21 April 2021. He was ultimately cast in scores of motion pictures in the early silent era, although with the exceptions of appearing in three more films in the sound era, Yost spent the remaining decades of his career acting in major theatre productions, almost exclusively on Broadway.
Early life and early stage career Born in Harrison, Ohio, in December 1879, Herbert was the youngest of three sons of Angeline Leona (née Bennett) and Peter H. Yost."Tenth Census of the United States: 1880", digital image of original enumeration page, Peter Yost family, 9 June 1880, Covington, Kenton County, Kentucky; microfilm files, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C. Copy of NARA microfilm files in FamilySearch (FamS). The following year, the decennial federal census documents the Yost family living in northern Kentucky, in Covington, where Herbert's father owned and operated a prosperous retail grocery and a dry goods store. After working in the family business in his youth, Herbert at age 17 chose to leave home and pursue a career in show business like his older siblings Walter and Harry."Herbert A. Yost Dies; Character Actor was 65", obituary, New York Herald Tribune, 25 October 1945, p. 20. ProQuest Historical Newspapers (ProQuestHN), Ann Arbor, Michigan; subscription access through The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library. Harry, in fact, guided or "sponsored" his little brother's entry into performing on stage by getting Herbert a job in 1897 with the Murray-Hart Comedy Company, which specialized in "one-night stands". In its travels to various cities and towns, that troupe presented single performances of satirical plays such as When London Sleeps and A Life for a Life.
After one full season working for Murray-Hart, Yost joined the Frost Stock Company and did a multitude of jobs in its traveling shows for a salary of six dollars a week ($ today). He portrayed several characters in the company's staging of The Three Musketeers and The Two Orphans, and was responsible as well for entertaining audiences by playing the piano before each show, during intermissions, and giving concerts following every performance. By 1901, Yost had left Frost to work for seven years with a series of other stock companies in Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Toledo, and elsewhere. During that time he was also cast in several Broadway productions. He portrayed, for example, Lieutenant Pierre d'Norville in the 1900 musical farce The Military Maid and the character Jimmy Burnett in the Broadway drama The Measure of a Man at Weber's Music Hall in 1906."'The Measure of a Man' Produced at Weber's", The New York Times, 21 October 1906, p. 9. ProQuestHN.
Films By 1908, with more than a decade of experience traveling and performing with various companies, Yost had established himself a "considerable reputation" as a stage actor.Henderson, Robert M. D. W. Griffith: The Years at Biograph. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970, p. 61. Near the end of that year he began working as well in the rapidly expanding motion-picture industry. At that time, in the opinion of many theatre actors and producers, performing on screen in the new medium of film was an inferior, far less prestigious occupation than acting on stage in the "legitimate" theatre.Arvidson, Linda. "Chapter X: Wardrobeand a Few Personalities", When the Movies Were Young. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1925, p. 76. IA. Retrieved 20 April 2021. Yost therefore adopted the name Barry O'Moore during his early years as a film actor to distinguish his screen work from his stage career, allegedly in an effort to conceal his identity and, at least to some degree, to distance himself professionally "from the shame of the cinema". Nevertheless, Yost during the motion-picture portion of his career was not credited as Barry O'Moore in all of his films or referred to consistently as O'Moore in studio production records or in release advertisements in either the silent or sound eras. Yet, outside the film industry, in the realm of theatre, he was invariably credited for decades as Herbert Yost in his many Broadway roles and in other stage productions.
Biograph Company, 19081909
In October 1908, Yost joined the growing number of "photoplayers" at the Biograph Company, which then had its headquarters and main studio inside a sprawling, renovated brownstone mansion at 11 East 14th Street in Manhattan. It was there where Yost started working for D. W. Griffith, who was just beginning his legendary career as a film director. Under contract to produce at least two motion pictures and sometimes as many as three pictures each week for the company, Griffith was given a "virtual carte blanche" by Biograph to make all decisions regarding story, casting and shooting.Schickel, Richard. Chapter Six: "Mastery", D.W. Griffith: An American Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984, pp. 111, 122-125. IA. Retrieved 25 April 2021.Graham, Cooper C.; Steve Higgins, Elaine Mancini, and João Luiz Viera. "Introduction", D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company] (DWG&BC). Metuchen, New Jersey and London: The Scarecrow Press, 1985, pp. 1-3. IA. Retrieved 6 April 2021. It was therefore Griffith who officially hired Yost.
The use of a screen name to hide or obscure one's identity proved to be an irrelevant issue for Yost at Biograph. The company, as a matter of official policy, did not publicly identify its performers and production crews, not even Griffith himself, with on-screen credits or in film advertisements in trade publications or newspapers. Such public recognition of cast and crew would not begin at Biograph until 1913, nearly four years after Yost left the company."Biograph Identities Revealed", Motography (Chicago), 5 April 1913, p. 222. IA; refer to Kelly R. Brown's Florence Lawrence, the Biograph Girl: America's First Movie Star (1999) about Biograph's policy of using anonymous or "unnamed" actors. Linda Arvidson, who was one of Yost's fellow actors at Biograph, was also at the time the wife of D. W. Griffith. In When the Movies Were YoungArvidson's 1925 memoir about the early years of the American film industryshe takes exception to accounts that Yost adopted a screen name to avoid the "shame" of working in films:
Since Biograph did not publicly credit its actors on screen or acknowledge them in print prior to 1913, confirming the casting and presence of any one of the company's actors in a production prior to that year requires direct references to a performer in primary-source material such as original Biograph production records, contemporary personal notes, period correspondence, or footage from a surviving film in which the actor is clearly identifiable. Some modern filmographies relating to Yost or to his screen name Barry O'Moore include his casting in some 1908 and 1909 Biograph releases but do so without any source citations."Barry O'Moore", filmography, Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Amazon, Seattle Washington. Retrieved 1 May 2021."Herbert Yost", filmography, American Film Institute (AFI), Los Angeles, California. Retrieved 22 April 2021. One modern referencethe 1985 volume D. W. Griffith and the Biograph Company by Cooper C. Graham and othersrelies heavily for its content on the D. W. Griffith Papers preserved at the Museum of Modern Art.Graham and others, pp. 4-10. Those papers include details on Biograph's development of Griffith's scenarios as well as casting and filming schedules. The company's "Cameraman's Register" for 18991911, its Biograph Bulletins from 1908 through 1912, entries in contemporary studio directories, and print copies of Biograph's 1908 and 1909 releases preserved in the Library of Congress provide documentation that Yost performed in no less than 20 productions for Biograph during his employment there.Graham and others, p. 308.Niver, Kemp R. Early Motion Pictures: The Paper Print Collection in the Library of Congress, "Herbert Yost" searches throughout volume for related films. Washington, D.C.: Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, 1985. HathiTrust Digital Library. Retrieved 29 April 2021.
Even though Yost was a highly experienced theatre actor by 1908, the performance techniques required for silent films were very different from those used on stage, with the most obvious difference being the total absence of spoken dialogue. Intertitles provided audiences with some context for storylines, but Yost, like other screen actors of that period, had to convey his characters' intent and emotions solely through facial expressions, hand gestures, and by other subtle and exaggerated body movements. In his first few films for Biograph, Yost served as minor supporting characters, likely casting assignments made by Griffith to acclimate the veteran stage actor to film sets and performance methods before placing him in starring roles.
Yost's first confirmed screen appearance for Biograph is in the 14-minute Civil War drama The Guerrilla in which he is among a group of Confederate and Union soldiers.Niver, pp. 126-127. His second verified role is in the 10-minute drama The Criminal Hypnotist, which was filmed at Biograph's Manhattan studio on December 8 and 21, 1908 and released the following month, on January 18.Graham and others, pp. 34, 308. Griffith cast Yost in that short to serve simply as one guest among a small crowd of partygoers.
After Yost performed in two other supporting roles, in The Fascinating Mrs. Francis and The Brahma Diamond, Griffith assigned him to star in the 1909 short Edgar Allen Poe . Released by Biograph on February 8, the historical drama, which has a running time less than seven minutes, is loosely based on actual events in the life of the 19th-century American writer and poet. More specifically, the film's action focuses on the death of Poe's wife Virginia Clemm, who is portrayed on screen by Linda Arvidson.Schickel, pp. 135-136. Copies of this film survive, and they show that Yost in his 19th-century costume, wig, mustache, and makeup presents a very credible representation of Poe. A few other examples of 1909 releases in which Yost performed at Biograph are the comedy The Suicide Club; the dramedy The Road to the Heart; The Deception, a drama with the "Biograph Girl" Florence Lawrence; and Yost's final film for company, The Cardinal's Conspiracy, released in July 1909.Graham and others, pp. 34-67, 308. Shortly after completing the latter film, the now-experienced screen actor signed a contract to work for Edison Studios, also located at that time in New York City, in the Bronx.
Edison Studios, 1909, 19121915