JOHN BUNNY

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2490, 17 June 1915, Page 9

JOHN BUNNY

One of the most popular celebrities that the moving pictures have produced, Mr. John Bunny, died in Now York on April 26. He had an international reputation, and it is probably Ho exaggeration to say that his features were known to throe hundred millions of people. His beaming countenance, flashed simultaneously on tens of thousands of screens throughout the world, delighted tho young and old alike. Whenever he walked on the street he was sure to be followed by an admiring throng. Ho had to give up dining in restaurants because he grew weary of being gazed at continually. Three years ago Mr. Bunny made his first trip to England. He said he did not believe he personally knew a soul in the islands. But when he walked in the streets of London the attention he created was as great as in New York. "There's funny Bunny!" the children would cry as they fell into the procession that dogged his footsteps. In Paris and Berlin tho experience of- this odd genius were tho same Not until 1910 did Mr. Bunny discover that ho could capitalise his face and make it earn a fortune. For years he had been earning less than £20 a week as a legitimate actor and in musical comedies. He wont into the movies at £8 per week, and in threo years he had worked up to £200. Early this year he temporarily left moving pictures to head a vaudeville company, and it was while in this work that he became ill. He had! been able to name his otvn salary, so eager wore the people to see the real Bunny in the flesh. The actor was 52 years old. He was bom in Brooklyn. His father had como from Penzance, England, snd the son was the first of nine generations that had not adopted a seafaring life. In spite of his weight—lßst. 81z. — there was no feat too hazardous for Bunny. He drove racehorses, flow in aeroplanes, fell from moving vehicles, performed any feat, in fact, that the agile brain of the scenario writer could imagine. His mail brought hundreds of tenders 1 of admiration and affection; letters came to him from oil parts of the world, written in every tongue, and countless tokens, many of them of a curious nature, wore shewered' on him by unknown worshippers. Even to the interior of 01) in a had Bunny's face been carried. This widespread fame often caused amusing mistakes and frequently brought embarrassment to big men, physioally. Perhaps the most ludicrous mistake'of all was when former President Taft was followed through the streets of New Haven shortly after he had loft the Presidential chair by a number of email boys who shouted greetings to their Bunnv. The former President often told the story.