Thomas Meighan was Pittsburgh's gift to a motion-picture public that liked its heroes on the strong-arm side.
He was handsome, stood 6 feet 1, carried his roles easily and had a fine sense of humor easily translatable into pantomime in the days before the screen found a voice.
Success attended his efforts on the stage before his entry into motion pictures in 1916, but the work that made him an actor for the American public was a film called "The Miracle Man." It was a story about crooks redeemed from sin and from the moment of its release proved a box-office smash.
In the days of the silent pictures, Meighan made his stake with such films as "The Fighting Hope," "M'Liss," "The Heart of Wetona," "The Prince Chap," "The City of Silent Men," "A Prince There Was," "The Bachelor Daddy" and numerous others.
At one time Meighan was reputed to draw one the more fabulous salaries in Hollywood, $10,000 a week. That figure, published in 1925, was heralded as a high mark for the film industry.
Of late years his screen work had been spasmodic. He was idle almost two years, from 1929 to 1931, before returning to Hollywood to face the cameras and another long period of inactivity followed before he made his last film, "Peck's Bad Boy" in 1934.
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