1921 vice president and Scenario Editor of Otis B. Thayer's Art-O-Graf film company in Denver.

There were plans by the "Mountain Plains Enterprise Company" to build "Sunshine Studios" at Tim McCoy's Owl Creek Dude ranch in order to shoot a film titled, "The Dude Wrangler" written by Caroline Lockhart.

On October 4, 1913, Townsend married Lillian Francis Rennick in Chicago, Cook County, Illinois.

In 1926, he moved to Los Angeles, California and began work for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios as an art director and set designer.

On August 5, 1935 while scouting locations at Sonora Pass for the film, "The Robin Hood of El Dorado," the car he was riding in with Lowell L. Ralph, Mrs. Lottie Mundello, and Miss Agnes McMullen, went off the road and plunged 200 feet below.