Film director, producer, playwright, screenwriter, actor.
W. J. Lincoln's early career in the entertainment industry was as a
Melbourne-based playwright and actor. Towards the end of the first
decade of the twentieth century, however, he began to establish himself
as both a screenwriter and film exhibitor. He managed J. C. Williamson's
Bio-Tableau tours of Australia and New Zealand and later managed the St
Kilda Paradise Gardens, a Melbourne outdoor cinema. After directing his
first feature, It is Never Too Late to Mend (1911), for Amalgamated Pictures he became the company's principal director, making at least six films in 1911. These were: The Mystery of the Hansom Cab, The Luck of Roaring Camp, Called Back, The Lost Chord, The Bells, and The Double Event.
When owners J. and N. Tait
withdrew Amalgamated Pictures from feature production in 1912 Lincoln
almost immediately formed his own company with actor Godfrey Cass. The
pair went on to produce a series of short features in Melbourne but the
enterprise eventually failed, due in part to Lincoln's problems with
alcohol. Among the films produced were: The Sick Stockrider (1913), followed in quick succession by Moondyne, The Remittance Man, Transported, The Road to Ruin, The Reprieve and The Crisis.
Lincoln-Cass Films was bought out by J. C. Williamsons
in 1914 and Lincoln was subsequently hired to write scenarios for
several films the following year. His last films as a director were his
own productions, but none succeeded commercially. He died in 1917 while
working on the screenplay for The Worst Woman in Sydney.
[Adapted from Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper's entry in Australian Film 1900-1977, A Guide to Feature Film Production (1980), pp. 16-17.]
