Born in New York City. The son of a clothes designer, he ran away to sea as a boy and later broke horses in cattle drives in Mexico, Texas and Montana. He did some stage acting from 1910 and entered films in 1912 as an actor and assistant director to D. W. Griffith at Biograph. It was Griffith who gave him his first directorial assignment, in collaboration with Christy Cabanne, THE LIFE OF GENERAL VILLA (1914), a seven-reel mixture of staged scenes and authentic footage of Pancho Villa's military campaign starring the Mexican bandit himself. Walsh's most notable appearance as an actor was in the role of John Wilkes Booth in Griffith's THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915). He subsequently appeared in occasional films but by and large devoted his career to directing. Over the next half-century he distinguished himself as one of the most durable, prolific and proficient of Hollywood's directors. A straightforward storyteller, he made many fine, unpretentious, smoothly-paced films with the accent on entertainment and slick production values. He tackled a variety of genres but was at his best with virile outdoor action dramas, which he often mellowed with moments of genuine tenderness. Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Errol Flynn, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper and Clark Gable were among the masculine symbols that typified his screen heroes. A dynamic, instinctive director, he is considered by many critics as one of the great primitive artists of the screen. Walsh lost an eye while shooting IN OLD ARIZONA (1929), Hollywood's first outdoor talkie, and wore an eye patch ever after. He was replaced by Irving Cummings, who received the Oscar nomination for directing the film. Nearing blindness in his other eye, he retired from film work in 1964. His brother, George Walsh, was a popular silent star. Raoul's first (1916-1927) of three wives, Miriam Cooper, starred in many of his early films. Autobiography: Each Man in His Time (1974). No nominations