Career Highlights: Ruggles of Red Gap, The Man With Two Lives, Too Busy to Work
First Major Screen Credit: Ruggles of Red Gap (1918)
Biography
A former opera singer, tall, dignified Frederick Burton began making films in 1919. One of Burton's better early movie roles was Matthew Cuthbert in the silent version of Anne of Green Gables (1919). In the first years of the talkie era, he was seen in such sizeable roles as Pa Basom in The Big Trail (1930) and Samuel Griffiths in An American Tragedy(1931). Thereafter, Frederick Burton was often as not confined to one-scene assignments, playing scores of doctors, reverends, judges, senators, governors, newspaper editors and murder victims. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide