the richness of the performances.” Film historian Charles Higham issued this appraisal of Brenon's Beau Geste, for which the director was nominated at the Academy Awards in 1927: Style and personality Brenon's reputation as a director who reliably extracted fine performances from “temperamental” actors was widely acknowledged. Indeed, Brenon praised the virtues of “temperament” in an article from Motion Picture Magazine (February 1926) entitled “Must They Have Temperament?”: Richard Koszarski adds that “Pola Negri, Lon Chaney, Nazimova and Norma Talmadge had some of their finest moments in Brenon’s films, (while carrying on uncontrollably elsewhere)...his directorial success with the widest range of silent stars remains unparalleled.” Brenon, described once as an “Irish curmudgeon” while on the set, was typical of the old-school “auteur” directors of the early film era, but this behavior became anachronistic when corporate studio executives were ascendant in the 1920s. In a 1978 interview, Louise Brooks recalls Brenon's able direction in her first film appearance The Street of Forgotten Men (1925). She noted, however, a demonstration of the hostility to the domineering director when a sandbag dropped from the rafters by technicians, nearly hit Brenon. Screenwriter and director Edward Bernds had no fond memories of Brenon. In the 1997 book The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926–1930, he issued these comments on his colleague: Later years and death Brenon's film career in the United States faded with the transition to sound films. Biographer Charles Higham observed that “the talkie revolution firmly closed an era for many figures...Herbert Brenon and James Cruze never made another interesting picture.” Brenon's career revived when he moved back to England in the mid-1930s and made a number of pictures at various studios. He completed his last film, The Flying Squad in 1940. Before his death, Brenon was working on his autobiography. When he collaborated with Mary Brian, who played Wendy in Peter Pan, and asked her to paint her idea of what Never-Neverland looked like and the painting was to be included in the photos of the book. He died before it was completed. Herbert Brenon died in Los Angeles on 21 June 1958. He was interred in a private mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. Partial filmography All of Her (1912) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1913) Ivanhoe (1913) Kathleen Mavourneen (1913) Absinthe (1914) Neptune's Daughter (1914) The Kreutzer Sonata (1915) The Heart of Maryland (1915)