Biography: Filmmaker James Edward Davis (June 4, 1901 - 1974) was raised in West Virginia and attended college at Princeton University; save for some years of study in France, and a period in the 1930s during the Depression, when he taught in West Virginia, he spent most of his life at Princeton. He was a painter as well as a member of the art department at the University. His interest in experimentation led him, in the 1930s, to paint on glass and on plastic instead of canvas.