A former stage actor, tough-looking Rockliffe Fellowes, from Ottawa, Canada, will forever be remembered as the gangster Owen in Raoul Walsh's gripping The Regeneration from 1915. With an animalistic sex appeal not dissimilar to that of the much later Eric Roberts, the hardened-by-life Fellowes is redeemed by the love of society belle turned welfare worker Anna Q. Nilsson. It remains a wonderful performance in one of the most revived, and admired, films of the 1910s. Fellowes continued to star onscreen -- often in society melodramas with Ethel Clayton or Clara Kimball Young -- but he would never again be given such a rewarding part to play. By the 1920s, he was increasingly seen in supporting roles, often villainous, and sound more or less destroyed his career. In one of his final credited performances, Fellowes played nasty rancher Bart Quillan, a megalomaniac scheming to possess an entire valley, in the low-budget Tim McCoy melodrama Rusty Rides Alone (1933). Rockliffe Fellowes was at one time married to character actress Lucile Watson.
by Hans J. Wollstein
biography
