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A former newsboy and boxing coach, David H. Thompson made his stage debut with the Proctor Stock Company in 1902. He later appeared with James K. Hackett, Blanche Bates, and Amelia Bingham and by 1908 he was acting in front of the Edison cameras. Thanhouser, a minor firm located in New Rochelle, NY, hired him as production manager in 1911, but he continued to appear in front of the cameras as well, notably as Thomas Jefferson in The Declaration of Independence (1911). On a trip to Europe in April of 1912, he moonlighted with the traveling Kalem troupe, appearing in The Kerry Cow (1912), filmed on location in Ireland. Leaving Thanhouser in 1915, he later became an assistant to director William Nigh and, later still, functioned as a production manager for Metro and First National. In the 1930s, he founded his own talent agency, the David H. Thompson Agency.