Herbert Brenon (born Alexander Herbert Reginald St. John Brenon; 13 January 1880 – 21 June 1958) was an Irish-born U.S. film director, actor and screenwriter during the era of silent films through the 1930s. Brenon was among the early filmmakers who, before the rise of corporate film production, was a genuine “auteur”, controlling virtually all creative and technical components in crafting his pictures. The quality of Brenon's artistic output rivaled that of film pioneer D. W. Griffith. Brenon was among the first directors to achieve celebrity status among moviegoers for his often spectacular cinematic inventions. Among his most notable films are Neptune's Daughter (1914), Peter Pan (1925), A Kiss for Cinderella (1925), and the original film version of Beau Geste (1926). Early life Brenon was born at 25 Crosthwaite Park, in Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire), Dublin to Edward St. John Brenon, a journalist, poet, and politician and his wife Francis Harries. In 1882, the family moved to London, where Herbert was educated at St Paul's School and at King's College London. In 1896, at age 16, Brenon emigrated to the United States and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1918. Film career In his late teens, Brenon served as an office boy for the theatrical agent Joseph Vivian and as a call boy at Daly's Theatre on Broadway. While still in his twenties, and before becoming a film director, he performed in vaudeville and operated a small-town nickelodeon establishment. Brenon married Helen Violette Oberg in 1904 while they were both working vaudeville circuits. Their son, Cyril, was born in 1906. IMP: 1909–1914 At the age of 29, Brenon advanced to screenwriting and film editing for the Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP), later to become Universal Studios. In 1911 he directed his first film, the one-reeler, All For Her (1912), starring George Ober. In 1913, he directed another short silent film, Kathleen Mavourneen, starring Jane Fearnley as the eponymous heroine. Brenon acted in many of the films he directed for IMP, including the studio's first three-reel production Leah the Forsaken (1909), starring Leah Baird. Brenon took his IMP production unit to Europe in 1913, and made a number of films in England, France and Germany. The most “spectacular” of these was his adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s novel Ivanhoe, starring celebrity aviator Claude Graham-White as Ivanhoe and filmed at Chepstow Castle. The journal Illustrated Films Monthly bestowed fulsome praise on the