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A debonair silent-screen leading man with a mustache, Scottish-born David Powell had appeared on stage with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the legendary West End star Ellen Terry, and Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson prior to making his screen debut with Famous Players in 1914. The following year, he played the handsome crook whom London waif Mary Pickford falls for in The Dawn of Tomorrow, from Frances Hodgson Burnett's romantic play, and they were reunited in 1916 for Less Than the Dust. He was a British officer and she a Hindu maiden who, almost needless to say, also proves to be of British descent behind all that brown pancake makeup. Pickford dismissed the film as "Cheaper Than Dirt," and Powell is not one of her better-known leading men. He also played Billie Burke's leading man in the 20-chapter Kleine serial Gloria's Romance, but the public rejected this romantic tomfoolery and Powell never really gained top stardom. He continued to busily portray men of breeding, often co-starring with important actresses who tended to overpower him, and remained a popular leading man until his early death from bronchial pneumonia.