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William John Hughes was Wales' first Broadway and Hollywood star! He began acting at a very young age, first in Wales, then later at 17 years of age he went to London to pursue his passion for acting. He later joined the Welsh Players and traveled on tour with them to America. When they returned to the UK (the tour was a flop) he decided to stay on in America and eventually became very successful on Broadway. He appeared in many productions such as "Little Miss Llewellyn", "Change" and a play by J.M. Barrie called "The New Word", and later went on to star in a film based on another book written by Barrie, Sentimental Tommy (1921). Even though he had already appeared in many films before, he always regarded "Sentimental Tommy" as his favorite and most successful. He made 45 films altogether, spanning 1918 to 1931, and was also the Welsh dialect coach on The Corn Is Green (1945) with Bette Davis (another Welsh connection). His stage name was Gareth Hughes, and at the height of his popularity he was earning as much as $2000 a week. He was under contract to such major studios of the time as Fox and MGM. He, like millions of others, lost his fortune in the 1929 Wall Street crash and was left penniless. He continued to make films, though, until 1931 when, after finishing Scareheads (1931), he decided to leave Hollywood and return to his first love, the theater. His last performance ran for 18 weeks in 1938 at the Hollywood Playhouse and University of Michigan, where he starred as Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice". In the early 1940s he decided it was time to leave acting and the secular life altogether--he had come to the conclusion that, having led a full and exciting but also lavish and selfish life, he now wanted to change and give something back to others. Adopting the name of Brother David, he became a missionary to the Paiute Indians on the Pyramid Lake Reservation of Nevada. He spent almost 14 years (1944 to 1958) with his "children", as he liked to call them, and is still loved and remembered as Bro to this day. In 1958 he decided to return to Llanelli to spend his last years there. He longed for the sunshine of California, however, and after five months he returned to the US. He went on to spend his retirement at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, California, where he died on October 1, 1965, after a long illness. His remains are at the Masonic garden of remembrance in Reno, Nevada.

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Gareth Hughes

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