Mickey & Harry Sweet; Thelma & Bert Gilroy Inn registration bookChef Bud Jamison wishbones Harry Sweet in this Wid's Daily 1921 ad.Harry Sweet Exhibitors Trade Review December 17, 1921Harry Sweet Lee Moran Baby Peggy Exhibitors Trade Review 1922
Harry Sweet (October 2, 1901 – June 18, 1933) was an American actor, director and screenwriter. He appeared in 57 films between 1919 and 1932. He also directed 54 films between 1920 and 1933, including one Harry Langdon short, two of the Tay Garnett- penned comedies Stan Laurel made for Joe Rock, and fifteen of the earliest entries in the Edgar Kennedy "Average Man" series.
Sweet was an acrobat before he became an actor, which led to his doing his own stunts in films.[1]
Death
On June 18, 1933, Sweet was location scouting by private plane in the vicinity of Big Bear Valley.[2] That night, at 7:15 pm, a plane crashed and sank to the bottom of Big Bear Lake, with the authorities initially uncertain as to the identity of the pilot as well as the number and identity of the plane's passengers; on June 19, Bert Gilroy, a film associate of Sweet's, left Los Angeles for Big Bear after efforts to contact the director in that city failed.[3] Hours after the accident, when the plane was pulled from 28 feet of water, the bodies of Sweet, actress Claudette Ford, and scenario writer Howard (Hal) Davitt, were found in the cockpit; the coroner's investigation determined Sweet had drowned and that his companions had both died from fractured skulls suffered in the crash.[4]
