Robert Symes Entwistle, who was born in London on 1 January, 1872,
worked on Broadway as a character comedy actor and as producer
Charles Frohman's stage manager. He also
appeared in the film
The Beautiful Adventure (1917),
that was based on a Frohman theatrical adaption of a popular French
play by Robert de Flers and
Gaston Arman de Caillavet.
Not long after Charles Frohman was lost at sea during the sinking of
the Lusitania, Entwistle retired from the stage and opened a small shop
in New York on Madison Avenue and Fifty-Fourth Street that sold
designer gift boxes to upscale clientele.
In 1904 Entwistle married Emily Stevenson in Birmingham, England. Their
daughter, Lillian Millicent
(Peg Entwistle), became known as one of
the more tragic Hollywood figures, when, in 1931, she leaped to her
death from atop one of the letters in the landmark Hollywoodland sign.
Emily died in 1912 around the time Entwistle was brought to America by
Charles Frohman. In 1914 he married, probably in New York, his
sister-in-law, Lauretta Amanda Ross. Their union produced two sons,
Milton and Robert, before her untimely death in 1921 at the age of 37
from spinal meningitis.
On the evening of 2 November, 1922, Entwistle was run down by a
limousine at the intersection of Park Avenue and Seventy- Second
Street, as he was walking home from his place of business. Witnesses to
the accident told police that the limousine's chauffeur stopped, got
out of the vehicle for a moment and looked down on Entwistle's broken
body before speeding off. Neither the driver nor the limousine was ever
found.
Robert Entwistle lingered for forty-eight days in a body caste with a
broken spine before dying on 19 December at Prospects Hospital in
Brooklyn, New York. He was survived by his three children, who were then
raised by his brother, actor
Harold Entwistle and his wife, former
actress Jane Ross.
Robert Symes Entwistle was interned at the Oak Hill cemetery, Glendale,
Ohio in a grave that he now shares with his daughter Millicent.
