French-born American actor and producer.
A protégé of Sarah Bernhardt, Gaston Glass began acting on stage in adolescence. He accompanied Bernhardt on her last American tour in 1917-1918, appearing on Broadway (New York) in a play presented in September 1918.
In the cinema, except for a French film released in 1917 (Les Frères corses by André Antoine, marking his screen debut), he made his career in the United States, where he settled permanently (Americanizing his name to Gaston J. Glass, short for Gaston Jacques Glass). After his first five American films were released in 1919, he obtained a notable role in Frank Borzage’s Humoresque (1920).
In all, he acted in seventy-four silent films, the last one released in 1929. After the move to talkies, he appeared in another twenty-nine American films (often in small roles, sometimes uncredited) from 1929 to 1943. His first Western role was in La Piste des géants (by Pierre Couderc, released in 1931), a French-language version of The Big Trail (by Raoul Walsh, released in 1930), in which he replaces John Wayne, alongside Jeanne Helbling replacing Marguerite Churchill. He is also noted for his performance in John Ford’s Marie Stuart (1936), having previously appeared in Ford’s Little Miss Smiles (1922, with Shirley Mason).
Glass co-starred with Ruth Clifford (two films), Miriam Cooper (four films), Viola Dana (two films), Grace Darmond (two films), Dorothy Dwan (two films), Alice Lake (four films) and Edith Roberts (three films).
Gaston Glass was assistant director on 19 films including two productions by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (A Letter to Three Wives in 1949 and All about Eve in 1950). Also, he was director of production on twenty-one films.
In television, he was director of production from 1959 to 1965 on the soap opera Peyton Place (two episodes, 1964), and especially on thirteen series (aired until 1966), including Adventures in Paradise (nineteen episodes, 1959-1962) and Daniel Boone (thirty-seven episodes, 1964-1966).
He died in Santa Monica, California on 11 November 1965, aged 65.
He was the father of the composer Paul Glass (born in 1934).
Link to Wikipedia biography