The script for the production was written by Lloyd F. Lonergan , who employed the deus ex machina dramatic technique in the conclusion of the plot . In film , this is the sudden inheritance and parents finding their children in the theater . The two children , Orilla Smith and Yale Boss , was child actors with prior film experience and did not have any further known connection to the Thanhouser Company after the production . The cameraman , Blair Smith , used a camera rented by the Columbia Phonograph Company and had its inventor , Joseph Bianchi , assist in the camera 's operation and use . The director of have both been credited to Barry O 'Neil and Lloyd B. Carleton in numerous trade sources . Smith was the first cameraman of the Thanhouser Company , but this film was not the Thanhouser Company 's first subject . Instead , it was The Mad Hermit produced in autumn 1909 and shelved until August 9 , 1910 . The exact order of the productions is not known , but a work titled Aunt Nancy Telegraphs was filmed in December 1909 and never released . Certain parts of The Actor 's Children was produced in the last week of February 1910 .