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Conflicting information about date of birth
A director of avant-garde films from the 1920s-1930s, Melville Webber, has his birthdate listed as July 1871 in some sources (including IMDb), whereas other sources list it as 1895.
1871 sources:
1895 sources:
Articulated Light: The Emergence of Abstract Film in America, monoskop.org/images/d/d2/OGrady_Gerald_Posner_Bruce_eds_Articulated_Light_The_Emergence_of_Abstract_Film_in_America.pdf. Accessed 1 Mar. 2024.
Eagan, Daniel. America’s Film Legacy the Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry. Continuum, 2010.
This is just my two cents, but the 1895 birthdate seems a lot more plausible to me, as it is closer to the age of Webber's collaborator James Sibley Watson, who was born in 1894 and whose biographical info is more well-documented. Is it technically possible that the co-directors could have collaborated despite a substantial gap in age? Sure, but it would be highly unusual and contrary to expectations. How did they meet? What was Webber busy doing in those twenty or so years before Watson came along and they started making films? If he's twenty-some-odd years older, why is there virtually no information about Webber's prior career?
Anyway, the dilemma here is that both birthdates have been cited in at-least-somewhat reputable sources, so how does one go about determining which one is correct, and why has IMDb selected the 1871 option? Is it because they've carefully weighed the odds or are they totally unaware that other sources conflict with this information?
Note: some of the sources I used above are not available online (or are only available if granted access by an academic institution). The book by Daniel Eagan is one that I currently have checked out from a local library.
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50 Messages
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978 Points
2 years ago
After I saw this post I did a little digging on my own. Using a newspaper search, I found an article from 1975 in which James Sibley Watson commented that he met Webber in the 1920s when Webber was the director of the Memorial Art Gallery. I then pulled the 1920 census which verified Webber’s occupation and age. I cross checked that with ancestry.com and verified that Melville Webber was born October 8, 1895.
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Fran
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3.6K Messages
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36.3K Points
2 years ago
Hello timothy_gray_el34lojg1aih1,
Since there is not much of evidence from reputable sources about Melville Webber's date of birth, we can't determine what the correct date is. We are a contributor based page, if you feel that you have enough evidence to submit the correction and include all of the evidence that you have found, feel free to do so and we will take a look at it for you, however the provided evidence might not be enough for us to change the listed data. Sometimes other users would come up with more evidence and post it on this thread.
You can find more information in our Biographical Data guidelines.
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majfoalbkeopaza
369 Messages
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8.4K Points
2 years ago
As I stated in the post, I personally feel that the 1871 birthdate strains credulity, but cannot be dismissed out of hand as the sources for it are at least equally as (un)reliable as the sources for the 1895 birthdate. I agree with Marco that the 1871 date should be deleted for this reason.
On Wikipedia, in instances where conflicting sources exist, they would simply write it out as "1871 or 1895", with footnotes/citations explaining the discrepancy. Why can't something similar to this exist for IMDb? Why must we rely on this all-or-nothing-at-all approach that doesn't account for uncertainty? For that matter, why doesn't IMDb reveal its sources?
Oftentimes, when trying to research a historical figures date of birth, one comes across articles or other data sources saying that a person is so-and-so years old. A bit of simple addition and subtraction can let you use this data to narrow down their birthdate to one of two years, but you can never be entirely sure of which year unless you also know their birthday. Ideally, one would be able to write it out as "1894-1895" or "circa 1895", but IMDb's system does not allow users to submit dates with "circa" in front of them. The only option then is to pick one out of the two possible years, without actually knowing for sure, and just guessing/assuming that it is correct. This is not an ideal system because it can easily lead to misinformation and cause a "woozle effect" when people accessing this data assume what is presented to them is a known fact, and not guesswork. IMDb is better than some other databases in this regard in that they at least allow a year to be entered without month and day. Every time I find a source listing someone's date of birth as January 1st, I have to be skeptical because I know so many sources will just default to the first of the year if they don't have exact data. I only bring this up as an example, of course. While IMDb is not as bad as some others, it can still paradoxically become unreliable if it doesn't allow for more vagueness and uncertainty.
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Bethanny
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58.9K Points
2 years ago
Hi @timothy_gray_el34lojg1aih1 -
Again, if you find evidence for the correct date, please submit the correction through our online form.
Cheers!
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