Philippe De Lacy

Philippe De Lacy

Born: July 25, 1917
Died: July 29, 1995
in Nancy, France
Philippe De Lacy a.k.a. Philippe deLacy (July 25, 1917 – July 29, 1995) was a former silent film era child actor.

Born during World War I, the already fatherless Philippe lost his mother and five siblings when a German shell devastated the family home. Only two days old at the time of tragedy, the boy was kept alive, but barely, in the basement of his grandmother's house. He was adopted by Mrs. Edith De Lacy, who was associated with the U.S. Woman's Overseas Hospital. After the war ended, Mrs. De Lacy brought Philippe to America, where his stunning looks soon created opportunities for him as a model for magazine advertisements. His modeling assignments brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and he appeared in his first film in a bit part at the age of four.

Phillipe's childhood story was used as the subject of a fictional children's book, Little Philippe of Belgium, written by Madeline Brandeis as part of her "Children of the World" series.

De Lacy freelanced for several studios in the 1920s, but mostly for Paramount. In 1924 he played the role of Michael Darling in the classic silent version of Peter Pan, with Betty Bronson. He played the young Don Juan at ten years of age in John Barrymore's Don Juan (1926), and in 1927 he played the young prince Karl Heinrich in Ernst Lubitsch's memorable The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, which also starred Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. Also in 1927 he starred with Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in Love, an updated version of the Tolstoy novel Anna Karenina in which he played the young son of Anna, Serezha Karenin. When the sound era arrived De Lacy's acting career was declining, and he never made the transition from child actor to adult. Apart from his films, De Lacy also did some work in the theatre. However he had lost his boyish charm by his early teens and retired from the screen in the early 1930s.

De Lacy concentrated on the production end of films as a producer, director and cinematographer. He became an assistant to director Louis De Rochemont and worked with him in the 1940 film The Ramparts We Watch. Eventually he became an executive with the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, a position he held for over 25 years. De Lacy’s first credit was in 1942 as an editorial associate for the US armed forces propaganda film We Are The Marines. Radio and television announcer Westbrook Van Voorhis provided the narration for the documentary, which was effectively a full-length fighting feature. In 1944 De Lacy was involved in another documentary, this time for the US Navy, filmed aboard the carrier Yorktown. The narrators in this documentary were actors Robert Taylor (who was actually a lieutenant in the navy at the time) and Charles Boyer who supplied the French narration. De Lacy was the cinematographer in The Fighting Lady and had three real life naval commanders to assist him. This film won the 1945 Oscar for Best Documentary. De Lacy then turned his hand to directing a television series in 1950, and in addition, he also became manager of a local Hollywood television station.

Movies for Philippe De Lacy...

The Sins of the Children
Title: The Sins of the Children
Character: Rudolph Wagenkampf as a Child (uncredited)
Released: June 27, 1930
Type: Movie
A barber turns down a promising business venture in order to take his sick son to a drier climate out west.
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One Romantic Night
Title: One Romantic Night
Character: Prince Georg
Released: April 30, 1930
Type: Movie
A princess is forced to choose between a charming tutor and a rakish prince.
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Sarah and Son
Title: Sarah and Son
Character: Bobby
Released: March 14, 1930
Type: Movie
A ne'er-do-well husband, after years of abusing his wife, disappears with their son, and winds up selling him to a wealthy family. Years later, the wife, now a world-famous opera singer, finally has enough time and money to begin a search for him.
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General Crack
Title: General Crack
Character: Christian, as a boy
Released: December 16, 1929
Type: Movie
The film takes place in the 18th century Austria and revolves around Prince Christian, commonly known as General Crack. His father had been a respectable member of the nobility but his mother was a gypsy. General Crack, as a soldier of fortune, spent his adult life selling his services to the highest bidder. He espouses the doubtful cause of Leopold II of Austria after demanding the sister of the emperor in marriage as well as half of gold of the Empire. Before he has finished his work, however, he meets a gypsy dancer and weds her. Complications arise when he takes his gypsy wife to the Austrian court and falls desperately in love with the emperor's sister.
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The Marriage Playground
Title: The Marriage Playground
Character: Terry Wheater
Released: December 12, 1929
Type: Movie
A delightful pre-code cocktail recipe. Take three couples (add gin and tonic), their several divorces and the seven children/stepchildren of their intermarriages and blend thoroughly, and you have a mixture a too-young-to-believe Frederic March will try to straighten out.
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The Four Feathers
Title: The Four Feathers
Character: Harry Faversham - age 10
Released: June 1, 1929
Type: Movie
An Englishman (Richard Arlen) fights in the Sudan after receiving white feathers of cowardice from his fiancee (Fay Wray) and friends.
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Square Shoulders
Title: Square Shoulders
Character: Eddie Cartwright
Released: March 10, 1929
Type: Movie
Tad's dream is to attend a military academy so he can grow up to be a great soldier and a war hero, like his father. What he doesn't know is that his father, Slag, is actually a thief and a derelict. Slag robs a factory in order to get the money to send Tad to military school, then gets a job at the academy's horse stables to be close to his son, who doesn't know he's alive.
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The Royal Rider
Title: The Royal Rider
Character: King Michael XI
Released: February 17, 1929
Type: Movie
Dick Scott takes his Wild West show to the Balkan kingdom of Alvania where the boy king of the country commands the troupe to give a performance. The king is greatly impressed with the American cowboys and makes them his palace guard. The prime minister starts a revolution, and Dick and the Americans put it down. The boy king sanctions a romance between Scott and Ruth Elliott, the royal governess.
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The Redeeming Sin
Title: The Redeeming Sin
Character: Petit
Released: February 16, 1929
Type: Movie
The Redeeming Sin (1929) is a crime drama part-talking silent film with Vitaphone music and sound effects. It was produced and distributed by Warner Bros. and stars Dolores Costello. This film is currently a lost film.
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Napoleon's Barber
Title: Napoleon's Barber
Character: The Barber's Son
Released: November 24, 1928
Type: Movie
Arthur Caesar's classic about the barber who held the fate of France in his hands, has been produced on lavish feature-film scale by John Ford, the man who made The Iron Horse and Four Sons.
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The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
Title: The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
Character: Heir Apparent
Released: January 30, 1928
Type: Movie
A young prince falls in love with a beautiful barmaid while at university in old Heidelberg.
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The Broken Mask
Title: The Broken Mask
Character: Pertio, as a boy
Released: January 1, 1928
Type: Movie
Pertio, an Argentine dancer, has a severely scarred face that has kept him from succeeding in his chosen career. He is persuaded by Caricia, an Argentine dancer who has become a star, to have a plastic surgeon repair his face. The surgery is successful and the two dancers team up both professionally and personally. However, the doctor who performed the operation has fallen madly in love with Caricia, and his determination to have her leads him to perform a procedure on Pertio that makes his scars reappear.
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Mother Machree
Title: Mother Machree
Character: Brian - Child
Released: December 19, 1927
Type: Movie
Ellen McHugh, a poor Irish immigrant to America, finds work in a carnival and is thus able to send her son Brian to a fine school. But when her position is found out, the school expels Brian. Mrs. McHugh feels compelled to allow the school principal and his wife to adopt Brian. The widow McHugh becomes a housekeeper and raises her employer's daughter Edith, who grows up to fall in love with Brian McHugh.
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Love
Title: Love
Character: Serezha Karenin (as Philippe de Lacy)
Released: November 29, 1927
Type: Movie
In Imperial Russia, Anna Karenina falls in love with the dashing military officer Count Vronsky and abandons her husband and child to become his mistress.
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The Tigress
Title: The Tigress
Character: Pippa
Released: October 21, 1927
Type: Movie
In Spain, a band of gypsies poach the deer in a neighboring estate. The gypsy chief, Tser (Harold Truesdale), is murdered in cold blood, and the estate owner Winston Graham (Jack Holt) is blamed. The chief's daughter Mona (Dorothy Revier) is an expert knife-thrower and sets out to avenge her father.
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The Way of All Flesh
Title: The Way of All Flesh
Character: August, as a child
Released: October 1, 1927
Type: Movie
The story takes place in Milwaukee during the early 1900s with a bank clerk named August Schiller who is happy with both his job and his family. He is tasked with transporting $1,000 in securities to Chicago. On the train he meets a blond seductress who convinces him to buy her a bottle of champagne, and takes him to a saloon. The next morning he awakes alone in a dilapidated bedroom and without the securities.
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The Magic Garden
Title: The Magic Garden
Character: John Guido Forrester, as a child
Released: June 30, 1927
Type: Movie
Story about a little boy and girl that meet in a beautiful garden and the little girl promises the boy that some day she would meet him there again. He goes off to study the violin in Italy and when he returns he finds the girl in the garden.
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Is Zat So?
Title: Is Zat So?
Character: Little Jimmy Parker
Released: May 15, 1927
Type: Movie
A rich man hires a pair of brothers, one to teach him to box and the other to manage him. Meanwhile, the rich man must fend off his brother-in-law, who is after the family inheritance. The film is lost.
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Flesh and the Devil
Title: Flesh and the Devil
Character: Leo as a boy (uncredited)
Released: December 25, 1926
Type: Movie
When lifelong best friends Leo and Ulrich return home after completing their military training, Leo meets the stunning Felicitas at a railway station and is mesmerized by her beauty. A scandal follows, for which Leo is sent away. Returning home three years later, he discovers that much has changed.
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Beau Geste
Title: Beau Geste
Character: Digby Geste - younger
Released: August 24, 1926
Type: Movie
Michael "Beau" Geste leaves England in disgrace and joins the infamous French Foreign Legion. He is reunited with his two brothers in North Africa, where they face greater danger from their own sadistic commander than from the rebellious Arabs.
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Don Juan
Title: Don Juan
Character: Don Juan - at age 10 (uncredited)
Released: August 6, 1926
Type: Movie
If there was one thing that Don Juan de Marana learned from his father Don Jose, it was that women gave you three things - life, disillusionment and death. In his father's case it was his wife, Donna Isobel, and Donna Elvira who supplied the latter. Don Juan settled in Rome after attending the University of Pisa. Rome was run by the tyrannical Borgia family consisting of Caesar, Lucrezia and the Count Donati. Juan has his way with and was pursued by many women, but it is the one that he could not have that haunts him. It will be for her that he suffers the wrath of Borgia for ignoring Lucrezia and then killing Count Donati in a duel. For Adriana, they will both be condemned to death in the prison on the river Tigre.
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A Lover's Oath
Title: A Lover's Oath
Character: His Son
Released: September 29, 1925
Type: Movie
"The plot introduces Omar as a leader of his people but deals rather with the love of his nephew, Ben Ali, for the fairest daughter of the tribe" (Variety, 7 Oct 1925, p44).
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The Happy Warrior
Title: The Happy Warrior
Character: Ralph (at 8 years)
Released: July 5, 1925
Type: Movie
Malcolm McGregor joins the circus and falls in love with Olive Borden but his life changes when he finds out he is a titled Lord.
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Peter Pan
Title: Peter Pan
Character: Michael Darling
Released: December 29, 1924
Type: Movie
Peter Pan enters the nursery of the Darling children and, with the help of fairy dust, leads them off to Never Never Land, where they meet the nefarious Captain Hook.
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Rosita
Title: Rosita
Character: Rosita's Brother
Released: September 3, 1923
Type: Movie
The King tosses Rosita in jail and when Don Diego, who Rosita loves, tries to defend her, he too is thrown in jail. While Don Diego is sentenced to be executed, the King lusts after Rosita and decides to put her up in a luxurious villa. To give her a title, he marries her to a masked nobleman, who turns out to be Don Diego.
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A Doll's House
Title: A Doll's House
Character: Ivar
Released: February 12, 1922
Type: Movie
Nora Helmer has years earlier committed a forgery in order to save the life of her authoritarian husband Torvald. Now she is being blackmailed.