Talk:James Mason (American actor)

College and fraternity affiliation
There's a mystery on this fellow, which I haven't been able to resolve. A record of famous alumni in Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities indicates membership for this same actor, James P. Mason, in the American collegiate fraternity Phi Sigma Kappa. I note an IMDb database trivia item that "he graduated from Cornell University." Yet my fraternity alumni reference shows our only James P. Mason from that era as having been a member of the Iowa State University chapter.

Can anyone verify Mason's college record and where he lived? He would have been in college about the time of the First World War, when many his age would have been off to service. We show no service record here on this Wikipedia page, which is primarily focused on his film résumé. Also, there is a Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, often mistaken for the more famous upstate NY school, and so I wonder if he may have graduated from the Iowa Cornell, rather than Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

For the present, I've listed both schools in the bio, but if you have further information, please confirm. Jax MN (talk) 13:39, 3 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for raising this. Is it def. the same James P. Mason that is the subject of this article? For the time being, I've removed the line as it fails WP:V.  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 17:52, 3 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Every indication I have is that our Iowa State member was one and the same as the actor, born in Paris, and with the long career as listed in IMDb. We announced him as one of ours, proudly, back in that era. It's the IMDb Cornell reference that I cannot square, as it itself is an unattributed bit of trivia.  Fraternity magazines are good sources for alumni noteworthies, since they allowed cross-referencing with so many of a man's contemporaries. That Cornell College in Iowa is only a few miles away from Iowa State, so it wouldn't be a bad guess to think he went there to finish his degree.  I've got all our published historical records but will ask the fraternity HQ for anything else in the file. Jax MN (talk) 18:32, 3 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Nice work. As IMDB is a self-published, unref'd source, then that can be omitted. Please add the sources with what you have. Thanks!  Lugnuts  Dick Laurent is dead 19:00, 3 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I will, as soon as I have a definitive answer from the fraternity HQ. Jax MN (talk) 19:22, 3 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Here's another good reference, with genealogical information and photos.


 * He would have been in college in 1907, not during WWI. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:47, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Phi Sigma Kappa's records have him in the "Class of 1911" or leaving school in that year. Whether he graduated or no, or if he attended haphazardly, I cannot answer. While it is common for students today to attend college right out of high school, and to remain for four or five years consecutively, this was less common in the early 1900s (and for that matter, pre-1900). You may be correct that he began school in 1907. That still puts him in the range of graduating or finishing his studies in 1911.


 * It just occurred to me that, while I called Cornell (NY) and Cornell (IA) asking about graduates, perhaps one of those school's records may be incomplete, and not list early students who didn't graduate. Jax MN (talk) 15:17, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

French
It looks like his parents were from Manhattan and he was born in Paris while they were there, does that make him a "French emigrant" or a "French expatriate"? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:00, 17 December 2016 (UTC)