Kismet

Motion Picture Director, Actor. Often billed as Jack Dillon. Born in New York City, he entered films in 1913 as a performer in Keystone shorts and began directing his own films the following year. He continued to appear as an actor in supporting roles through 1927, usually playing charming but ineffectual would-be lovers. During the 1920s Dillon was known as a proficient director of commercially successful melodramas and comedies with Jazz Age themes, such as “Flaming Youth” (1923), “The Perfect Flapper” (1923), “The Half-Way Girl” (1925), and “Man Crazy” (1927), and with sound he turned to musicals and crime dramas (“The Finger Points”, 1931, “The Big Shakedown”, 1934). He is probably best remembered today as the director of “It Girl” Clara Bow’s best talkie, the salacious pre-Production Code gem “Call Her Savage” (1932). Dillon died of a heart attack at a party in Beverly Hills. He was the brother of screenwriter Robert Dillon, and was married to actress Edith Hallor from 1914 until his death. —Robert Edwards