Robert Milasch

At six and a half feet tall, Robert Emmet Milasch might have made a great circus performer. In fact, early in his career, that's exactly what he was. Born April 18, 1885, in New York City, Milasch ran away as a youngster and joined a circus, becoming a contortionist. He then joined another circus which toured South Africa. When he joined his last circus, in England, he performed as a clown. Returning to the United States when he was about fifteen years old, he got a job with the Gaumont Film Company, earning a few dollars a day. He then joined the Edison Company. Some sources claim his first film was "Babes in a Barrel," a 300-foot short produced by Edison around 1900. He was paid three dollars to appear as a brakeman and a train robber in the famous 1903 Edison film The Great Train Robbery (1903). In the early days of films, Milasch would write scenarios, erect sets, handle props, and even cast the parts. Often he would find extras in neighborhood saloons, offering customers five dollars for a day's work. He appeared in the first talkie, entitled "The Chimes of Normandie." The dialog was recorded on cylinders and played on a phonograph behind the movie screen. In 1912, he began filming a semi-documentary entitled "The Great Diamond Mystery," based upon a real diamond theft in Europe. His camera crew followed the police every time there was a new lead. Apparently the film was never completed. In 1913, while filming the two-reel short Hard Cash (1913), produced by the Edison Company, Milasch escaped serious injury. He was on a ship's mast during a fire scene, and his shoes and socks were scorched from the flames. Milasch was able to stay on the mast until the scene was over. Years later, Director Henry King offered him a role in Tol'able David (1921). Milasch was already committed to something else, but he had a friend who looked a lot like him and told King about him. The friend's name was Ernest Torrence, who got the part, and also a career start. Milasch had an extensive filmography, and claimed he had appeared in about 3000 films. He also claimed he had appeared in three versions of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame": the 1939 Charles Laughton version, the 1923 Lon Chaney version, and the 1917 version entitled The Darling of Paris (1917), which featured Theda Bara as the gypsy Esmeralda. He worked steadily into the early 1950s, in uncredited roles. After retiring from the screen, he ran a gift shop in Plattsmouth, Nebraska. Milasch died on November 14, 1954, at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Los Angeles. He was married twice, and was survived by a son named Wally.