by Hans J. Wollstein
biography
Dignified-looking silent character star Robert Edeson is best remembered for stepping into the role of the American envoy when Rudolph Christians succumbed to pneumonia and died during the protracted filming of Erich von Stroheim's Foolish Wives (1922). Edeson had begun his screen career with Cecil B. DeMille in The Call of the North (1914) but then spent the remainder of the decade mostly at Vitagraph. He returned to DeMille in the 1920s and became the director's first choice whenever a script called for an imposing, well-heeled man-of-the-world. Edeson, who was married to actress Mary Newcomb (1893-1966), died of heart failure.
