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A graduate of Harvard, on whose famous baseball team he once played, American silent-screen writer/director Charles Thomas Horan began his professional career as a stock company actor and, according to his publicity, also appeared in grand opera. In films from the early 1910s as an actor, Horan played Melchior the Magician in the 1912 Thanhouser three-reel production of A Star of Bethlehem and also pitched for the little company's much-heralded baseball team. Working on and off for Thanhouser through 1914, Horan was created an assistant director for World in 1915 and the following year helmed his own productions for Metro. Often supplying the scenarios as well, Horan went on to direct a series of popular potboilers, the best remembered of which is probably an early version of Polly of the Circus (1917, which starred Mae Marsh and was also the first film released under Samuel Goldwyn's banner. Horan's directorial career seems to have ended in 1923, but he continued to supply scenarios until his early death in 1928.