Chester Withey(1887-1939)

On 6 February of 1937, writer, actor and pioneer movie director, Chet Withey was critically injured in Santa Monica after stepping out from behind a trolley car and into the path of an oncoming automobile. Press reports at the time were pessimistic about his survival. Whether this accident was the ultimate cause of Withey's death, some nineteen months later, is unknown to this writer.Chet Withey was the son of Chester H. and Mary E. Withey. His father was employed as a mill worker in Park City, then a bustling mining town thirty-two miles southeast of Salt Lake City.Withey, who began working in the film industry not too many years after its conception, directed the sisters Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge in some of their earliest productions.