by Hans J. Wollstein
biography
A dignified stage actor who had earned accolades for The Senator, a play apparently written especially for him, James Neill entered films in the early 1910s with the pioneering Jesse J. Lasky Company (later Paramount). A top supporting actor in the early silent era, Neill portrayed Louis XIII to Murdock MacQuarrie's Richelieu (1914), played General Warren in the first version of William de Mille's The Warrens of Virginia (1915), was Aaron in The Ten Commandments (1923), and played Bessie Love's father in The Idle Rich (1929). The husband of character actress Edythe Chapman (1863-1948), James Neill died of heart disease.
