John B. Mason

John Hill Belcher Mason (October 28, 1858 – January 12, 1919) was an American stage actor popular during the decades surrounding the start of the twentieth century.

Early life John Hill Belcher Mason was born in Orange, New Jersey the son of Daniel Gregory and Susan W. (née Belcher) Mason. He was the son of a publisher and a grandson of Dr. Lowell Mason, a well–known educator and composer of Christian music. Mason was a cousin to composer and music critic Daniel Gregory Mason and could trace his American lineage back to Robert Mason, an Englishman who settled in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1630. His mother was a direct descendant of Jonathan Belcher, a colonial governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. John Mason was educated in private schools in America and overseas at the Frankfort Gymnasium, before enrolling at Columbia University in 1876. Their marriage would prove to be an unhappy affair that began with an injury to her vocal cords. This was compounded by financial set backs due to the failure of the Mason-Manola Company and a mental breakdown she suffered in 1894 that was most likely fueled by alcohol and opium. Though she later recovered, their marriage would end in divorce by the close of the decade. Marion Manola died in 1914 at New Rochelle, New York, after a failed gallstone operation. Adelaide Mould, her daughter from a previous marriage, became the bride of the novelist and playwright Rupert Hughes.

Mason married actress Katherine Grey not long after his divorce from Marion; the same fate that befell this union in 1905. Mason spent some time in the Ludlow Street Jail in 1902 after Marion convinced a judge he was not meeting his alimony obligations. A decade earlier, Mason and his brother Lowell served a brief time behind bars in a dustup over an unpaid bill with a former business partner.

Death John Mason died on January 12, 1919, at a sanitarium in Stamford, Connecticut. He had fallen ill a few days earlier at Providence, Rhode Island during a premier performance of The Woman in Room 12. Death was attributed to complications from Bright's disease.

Filmography Jim the Penman (1915) The Fatal Card (1915) The Reapers (1916) The Libertine (1916) Moral Suicide (1918)