Between 1907 and the mid-1920s, while working for Edison, Rex Motion Picture Company, Famous Players, Fox, and other studios, he directed more than 300 short films and 56 features, which include many of the early releases of stars such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Pearl White, Marguerite Clark, Harold Lloyd, and John Barrymore.

[4] While film direction and screenwriting comprised the bulk of Dawley's career, he also had earlier working experience in theater, performing on stage for more than a decade and managing every aspect of stagecraft.

[6][a] According to his physical description recorded on his 1918 military registration card, Dawley as a child permanently lost sight in his right eye, an impairment that no doubt posed additional challenges for him later as a stage performer and as a film director, especially in composing scenes on sets and on location.

[1][b] On September 9, 1895, at the age of 17, Dawley performed professionally on stage for the first time at the Grand Opera House in New York City, cast as François in the Lewis Morrison Company's production of Richelieu.

[7] It was at that time when Morrison, the head of the theatrical group, urged the young actor to stop using his nickname "Jay" Dawley as a performer and to choose a better, more distinguished credit for the company's cast listings.

[7] Three years later, now billed as J. Searle Dawley, he was serving as stage manager for Morrison while still performing in several of the company's most popular presentations such as Faust, Yorick's Love, Master of Ceremonies, and Frederick the Great.

Edwin Porter, the head of production for Edison Studios, hired him that day, agreeing to pay him $60 a week ($2,025 today) to serve as a director at the company's main film facilities, which were located in the Bronx at the corner of Decatur Avenue and Oliver Place.

[c] Dawley's numerous frustrations working with that production's feline star and problems with the film's supporting actress prompted the director to remark later, "'I hardly thought I was going to like the motion picture business.

[13][14] Both of those productions required Dawley to oversee the creation of large maritime sets inside Edison's Bronx studio, including the construction of upper and lower decks of sailing vessels, as well as fabricating simulated views of sea battles using small-scale models and silhouettes of warships.

The burning of a papier-mâché human figure molded around a skeletal frame was filmed separately in reverse or "back-cranked" in the hand-driven camera, then that footage was spliced into the master negative for producing the final prints for release and distribution.

[18][f] The reversal of the action on the red-tinted footage produced a "creation" scene in which the monster, with its wired arms flailing, appears to form slowly and then rise from within "a cauldron of blazing chemicals".

As specimens of his work may be mentioned "The Stars and Stripes," "Through the Clouds," "The Red Cross Seal", "Eldora, the Fruit Girl," "An Eventful Evening," "The Black Bordered Letter," "The Doctor" and "The Price of Victory.

The production was based at "Villa Monticello", an estate near to Flatts Village, with filming locations scattered about the archipelago including the Prospect Camp Garrison Golf Links clubhouse (originally a private home built around 1700, and now a Bermuda National Trust property named "Palmetto House" due to the still-extant ornamental stand of palmettos visible in front of it in the film),[22] "Walsingham House" (an historic home built in 1652 that is currently the location of the Tom Moore's Tavern restaurant),[23] and the walled streets of St. George's town.

[24][25][26] The Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda and its garrison was also used as the location for another Edison film, For Valour, in which two army officers vie for the affections of a Bermudian woman during the Second Boer War.

[34] Dawley departed Famous Players to join Frank L. Dyer and J. Parker Read, Jr. in establishing the film company Dyreda, the name of which was formed by combining the first two letters in each man's surname.

In addition to encouraging responsible professional and personal behavior in the film community, the MPDA also pledged in its founding principles to aid any of its "distressed members" as well as "their wives, widows and orphans.

[42] In its December 30, 1923 review of Broadway Broke, the trade paper The Film Daily judges Dawley's direction as being "particularly good", adding that he "certainly made fine use of [the] material and provided [A-1] entertainment".

[42] Months later, Dawley made his final directorial works, two experimental sound shorts he did in collaboration with American inventor Lee de Forest: Abraham Lincoln (1924) and Love's Old Sweet Song (1924).

[10] In a seemingly odd job for a highly accomplished film director, Dawley between late July and November 1930 wrote a syndicated human-interest and romance column for The Arizona Republican newspaper in Phoenix.

Titled "Sweet Arts Of Sweethearts", Dawley's column entertained and instructed readers with stories and history lessons about courtship, betrothal, and wedding customs in different countries and religions around the world.

Later in 1949, Grace Dawley donated a selection of her husband's personal papers, scrapbooks, and several of his Edison production scripts to the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California.