Hugo Ballin

Hugo Ballin studied in New York and worked in his early years for the film company Goldwyn Pictures. He created and wrote the screenplays for his own silent films such as Jane Eyre (1921) and Vanity Fair (1923), and soon married actress Mabel Croft, one of the great stars of the silent film era.

After the ascent of talking films, he left this industry and became one of the most important muralists in Los Angeles. He also designed the seventeen-foot medallion of Pallas Athena which hung over the entrance to the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. Ballin also published several novels.