Divas_classic beauties
Pioneers of cinema like these women did not have to be very beautiful, they were distinguished by the elegance.
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The grand, highly flamboyant Russian star Alla Nazimova of Hollywood silent films lived an equally grand, flamboyant life off-camera, though her legendary status has not held up as firmly as that of a Rudolph Valentino today.
Alla Nazimova was born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon in 1879, in Yalta, Crimea, in the Russian Empire, to Jewish parents, Sonya Horowitz and Yakov Leventon. She was the third child in an abusive, contentious household. Most of her sad childhood was spent in foster homes or in the care of other relatives and she showed a strong penchant for outrageous behavior to cope. Nazimova also showed a great aptitude for music at a young age and began violin lessons at age seven. She changed her name to Alla Nazimova when she began appearing on stage--her father insisted on it, as "performing" was not considered respectable at the time.
She began acting lessons at age 17 and joined Konstantin Stanislavski's company of actors as a pupil of his "method style" at the Moscow Art Theatre. During that time she supported herself by being kept by rich, older men. A failed love affair led to her only marriage, to an acting student named Sergei Golovin, but they separated quickly. She grew discontented with Stanislavsky and later performed in repertory. She met the legendary Pavel Orlenev, a close friend of Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky, and entered into both a personal and professional relationship with him. They toured internationally throughout Europe with great success and came to New York in 1905, where Nazimova was saluted on Broadway for her definitive interpretations of Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler" and "A Doll's House." Orlenev returned to Russia but Nazimova stayed.
She made her screen debut with War Brides (1916), which was initially a 35-minute play. By 1918 she was a box-office star for Metro Pictures and completed 11 films for the studio over a three-year period. A torrid, stylish and rather outré tragedienne who played exotic, liberal women confronted by great personal anguish, she earned personal successes as a reformed prostitute in Revelation (1918), a suicide in Toys of Fate (1918) and dual roles as half-sisters during the Boxer Rebellion in The Red Lantern (1919), not to mention the title role of Camille (1921) with Rudolph Valentino. At the same time she maintained a strong Broadway theatrical career.
In accordance with her rise in the film industry, she began producing her own efforts, which were bold and experimental--and monumental failures, although they are hailed as great artistic efforts today. Her Salomé (1922) was quite scandalous and deemed a failure at the time. The monetary losses she suffered as producer were astronomical. The Hays Code, which led to severe censorship in pictures, also led to her downfall, as did her outmoded acting style. She was forced to abandon films for the theater, scoring exceptionally well in Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard." She did return to films briefly in the 1940s in a variety of supporting roles, but she made these solely for the money.
Nazimova's private life has long been the subject of industry gossip. As a Hollywood cover to her well-known bisexual lifestyle, she coexisted in a "marriage" with gay actor Charles Bryant for well over a decade. Her "Garden of Allah" home was the centerpiece for many glamorous private parties. She died in 1945.- Actress
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Norma Talmadge was born on May 26, 1895, in Jersey City, New Jersey. The daughter of an unemployed alcoholic and his wife, Norma did not have the idyllic childhood that most of us yearn for. Her father left the family on Christmas Day and his wife and three daughters had to fend for themselves. Her mother, Peggy, took in laundry to help make ends meet. By the time Norma was 14 she took up modeling. She was successful enough that she attracted the attention of studio chiefs in New York City (where the Vitagraph studio was located at the time). Norma landed a small role in The Household Pest (1910). With her mother's prodding, she landed other small roles with the studio in 1910, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin (1910), Love of Chrysanthemum (1910), A Dixie Mother (1910) and A Broken Spell (1910). By 1911 she was improving as an actress, so much so that she landed a good part in A Tale of Two Cities (1911). By 1913 she was Vitagraph's most promising young actress. In August of 1915 Norma and her mother left for California and the promise of success in the fledgling film industry there. Her first film in Hollywood was Captivating Mary Carstairs (1915). The film was not only a flop but the studio that made it, National Pictures, went out of business.
During this time her sister, Constance Talmadge, was working for legendary director D.W. Griffith. Constance managed to get Norma a contract with Griffith's company. Over the following eight months Norma made seven feature films and a few shorts. After the contract ran out, the family returned to the East Coast. In 1916 she met and married producer and businessman Joseph M. Schenck. With his backing they formed their own production company and turned out a number of films, the first of which was Panthea (1917). It was a tremendous hit, as was Norma. In 1920 the production company moved to Hollywood, where the big hits of the day were being produced. Her company produced hits such as The Wonderful Thing (1921), The Eternal Flame (1922) and The Song of Love (1923).
By 1928 Norma's popularity had begun to fade. Her film The Woman Disputed (1928) was a flop at the box-office. Her final film was Du Barry, Woman of Passion (1930). By that time "talkies" were all the rage, but Norma's voice did not lend itself to sound and she was out of work. She divorced Schenck and married George Jessel. Jessel had his own radio show and Norma was added to the cast to help its sagging ratings. She thought this might be the vehicle by which she would revive her stalled film career, but the show continued its decline and was ultimately canceled, and with it the hopes of rebuilding her shattered career. She was finished for good.
She divorced Jessel in 1939 and married Dr. Carvel James in 1946. She remained with him until she died of a stroke on Christmas Eve of 1957 in Las Vegas, Nevada. She was 62 and had been in a phenomenal 250+ motion pictures.- Lyda Borelli was born on 22 March 1884 in Rivarolo Ligure, Genoa, Liguria, Italy. She was an actress, known for Malombra (1917), Satan's Rhapsody (1917) and Love Everlasting (1914). She was married to Vittorio Cini di Monselice. She died on 1 June 1959 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.
- Pina Menichelli was born on 10 January 1890 in Castroreale, Sicily, Italy. She was an actress, known for La dama de Chez Maxim's (1923), Il fuoco (la favilla - la vampa - la cenere) (1916) and The Rival Actresses (1913). She died on 29 August 1984 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy.
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Francesca Bertini was undoubtedly one of the first divas of cinema, a lady not only on screen but also in real life. She made her film debut in La dea del mare (1907) and after that producers fought for her services. In 1921 she married European nobleman and banker Alfred Cartier. She tried her hand at directing films as well as acting in them and turned out two well-received efforts, Assunta Spina (1915) and Tosca (1918)). She made the transition from silent films to talkies, although her output slowed down considerably. Her final role was in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900 (1976).
A "diva" to the end, she died in a "grand hotel" in Rome, Italy, in 1985, receiving friends and fans on her deathbed in a sumptuous salon.- Actress
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Danish leading woman of German films who became one of the greatest stars of the silent era. A native of the Copenhagen suburb of Vesterbro, Nielsen was the daughter of a coppersmith and a washerwoman, both of whom died before Nielsen was fifteen. Her stage debut came as a child in the chorus of the Kongelige Teater's production of Boito's opera "Mephistopheles." She studied at the Royal Theatre School of Copenhagen and embarked upon a stage career in her late teens. She toured Scandinavia and became one of the highest-paid and most popular stage actresses of her time and place. In 1909, director Urban Gad suggested that the silent screen would allow her to transcend her Danish language barrier, and she agreed appear in his film 'Afgrunden (1910)'. The film was successful and Nielsen was encouraged to continue in this new art form. A German distributor, Paul Davidson, invited Nielsen to Germany, where he was building a film studio which would eventually become Europe's largest--the Universum Film Union A.-G. (or Ufa). Nielsen and her director, Gad, whom she had married, went to Germany and spent the next quarter century there. She became one of the true superstars of the silent screen, a tragic heroine whose photograph during the First World War accompanied German and also British and French troops into battle. Among her notable films after the war was a version of "Hamlet, " which was not so much a Shakespearean film as it was an exploration of a then-current theory that the real Hamlet had been, in fact, a woman. Nielsen played the title role. She continued to play a wide variety of roles in Germany and occasionally in Denmark and Norway, never losing the respect and popularity she had maintained almost from the beginning of her career. She abandoned her film work just as sound was taking over the industry. Aside from one or two brief forays in talkies, her acting was thereafter confined to the stage. She died in 1972 at the age of 89, shortly after her fifth marriage.- Actress
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Famed singer and author Geraldine Farrar was educated in public schools and then became a music student of Mrs. J.H. Long, Trabadello, Emma Thursby, Lilli Lehman and Graziani. Her 1901 debut was at the Royal Opera House in Berlin, in the role of Marguerite in "Faust". From 1906-22 she was a member of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. During World War II she was active in the Red Cross and the AWVS, and also made many lecture tours. She wrote two autobiographies. Joining ASCAP in 1936, her songwriting credits include "Ecstasy of Spring", "Here Beauty Dwells", "The Tryst", "The Alder Tree", "The Mirage", "Oh, Thou Field of Waving Corn", "Morning", "The Fountain", "The Dream", and "Love Comes and Goes" (all based on the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff), "The Whole World Knows", "Dear Homeland", "Fair Rosemarin" (all based on Fritz Kreisler themes") and "Tears" (based on a theme by Modest Mussorgsky).- Effervescent, blond star of sophisticated Broadway comedy in the 1920s. Born Ina Fagan, of Irish descent, her father died in a road accident four months before she was born. Without a breadwinner in the family, she was forced to live in a boarding house with her mother. From earliest childhood, she displayed a precocious talent for impersonating other people, which eventually led to her abandonment of school (Holy Cross Academy) at age 17 and her entry into the world of vaudeville.
Performing under her mother's maiden name as an imitator of established stage performers made her a popular name in revues on both sides of the Atlantic. Ina's first extended run on the stage (more than a year) was as Prudence in the 1911 musical "The Quaker Girl", where a very young F. Scott Fitzgerald became enamored with her. In 1915, she appeared in the Ziegfeld Folies, and in the following year, had her first major hit as the titular heroine in the comedy "Polly With a Past" at the Belasco Theatre.
Between 1919 and 1928, Ina Claire was almost continuously employed in one theatrical success after another in comedic plays penned by the likes of S.N. Behrman, W. Somerset Maugham, Anthony Trollope and T.S. Eliot. She had huge hits in the title role of "The Last of Mrs. Cheyney" (1925) and, as Lady Grayston, in "Our Betters" (1928). Her curtain call was as the star of "The Confidential Clerk" in 1954, at the Morosco Theatre. John Mason Brown, writing for the New York Post (December 13, 1932) called her "the ablest comedienne our theatre knows". Immensely popular with audiences and critics alike, she was noted for her deft delivery, her wit and charisma and for her elegant, stylish costumes and coiffure. She also had the ability to carefully select her roles to suit her special talent for sophisticated high comedy (though in later years blaming producers for typecasting her and not allowing her the opportunity to shine in dramatic parts). Regardless, Ina Claire has long since been inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Her screen career, brief as it was, seemed desultory - possibly because Claire regarded film making as 'a director's art'. She reprised the role she had originated on Broadway in 1922 in her first talking picture The Awful Truth (1929), but, like many other early talkies, the film turned out decidedly static and ponderous. It was successfully remade by Leo McCarey in 1937 with Irene Dunne in the Claire role. Ina was then slated to play the lead in "Holiday" , an adaptation of a play by Philip Barry, but the nine months remaining of her contract with Pathe proved insufficient and Ina was paid $55,000 instead to settle the contract. Paramount picked up the option of signing her for The Royal Family of Broadway (1930), spoofing the private lives of the Barrymore dynasty. Claire essayed a very good likeness of Ethel Barrymore - in fact, it annoyed the real Ethel enough to threaten legal action against Paramount. Another eight years elapsed until Ina offered a glimpse of her Broadway panache in the classic comedy Ninotchka (1939) as Greta Garbo's elegant nemesis, the Duchess Swana. Her last film role was as the mother of movie debutante Dorothy McGuire in the domestic comedy Claudia (1943).
An intensely private person, Ina Claire successfully shunned the limelight, except for the duration of her much-publicized, and brief, marriage to fading star John Gilbert (on the rebound from Garbo). She died at age 91 of a heart attack in San Francisco, California on February 21, 1985. She was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Salt Lake City, Utah. - Actress
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A prominent German film actress born on 30 September 1887 at Madiven, Java, the daughter of a forest ranger in the service of the Dutch authorities. Sent at the age of ten to Baden-Baden to study, she later entered the cinema thanks to her marriage in 1917 to the actor Fritz Dagover who was 25 years her senior. They divorced in 1919 but not before he had introduced her to director Robert Wiene and other notables of German cinema. She made her screen debut in Fritz Lang's Harakiri (1919). Immediately after she appeared in Wiene's classic expressionist film, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (aka The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)). Apart from three trips -- one to Sweden in 1927, another to France in 1928-9 and one to Hollywood in 1931 -- most of Lil Dagover's career and fate was linked to that of the German cinema, where her role was usually that of the frail, menaced heroine. She continued to star in a great number of films during the Nazi era. Among her best performances were her roles in Congress Dances (1931), in Gerhard Lamprecht's The Higher Command (1935) and in Veit Harlan's The Kreutzer Sonata (1937). She also acted in the Deutsches Theatre Berlin, the Salzburg Festival, at forces shows and at war theaters. At one time, she was reported to have been a close friend of Adolf Hitler. In 1944, she received the War Merits Cross. Dagover continued her career in post-war Germany, playing many supporting parts until the late 1970s.- Born on her father's farm in Green Ridge, Missouri, the youngest of five children. Moved with her family to Springfield, Missouri, where she grew up. Joined the Diemer Theatre Company during her second year of high school, and went on the road with a touring stock company at age 18, in 1907. Signed by the Powers Film Co. in New York in 1910, and proceeded to work thereafter for many companies in starring roles. In 1914, she starred in Pathe's The Perils of Pauline, the fifth serial chapter play ever made. She became an international star therein and was the leading heroine of serial films for the next several years. Following an unsuccessful attempt to achieve the same success in feature films, and with her health deteriorating, she retired in 1923, living in France until her death in 1938.
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Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Elsie Charlotte (Hennessy) and John Charles Smith. She was of English and Irish descent. Pickford began in the theater at age seven. Then known as "Baby Gladys Smith", she toured with her family in a number of theater companies. At some point, at her devout maternal grandmother's insistence, when young Gladys was seriously ill with diphtheria, she received a Catholic baptism and her middle name was changed to "Marie".
In 1907, she adopted a family name Pickford and joined the David Belasco troupe, appearing in the long-running The Warrens of Virginia". She began in films in 1909 with the 'American Mutoscope & Biograph [us]', working with director D.W. Griffith.
For a short time in 1911, to earn more money, she joined the IMP Film Co. under Carl Laemmle. She returned to Biograph in 1912, then, in 1913 joined the Famous Players Film Company under Adolph Zukor. She then joined First National Exhibitor's Circuit in 1918. In 1919, she co-founded United Artists with D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and then-future husband, Douglas Fairbanks.- Actress
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Henny Porten was born January 7, 1890, in Magdeburg, Germany. She had one of the longest careers of any German actress and was highly sought after because of her wonderful thespian skills. Henny's career would stretch over six decades, from 1906 to 1955. Her first film was in Apachentanz (1906), making her one of the earliest film actresses anywhere in the world. At the age of 65, Henny filmed her last production entitled Die Schätze des Teufels (Das Fräulein von Scuderi (1955)). Henny died in Berlin, Germany, on October 15, 1960, at the age of 70.- Actress
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Mabel Normand was one of the comedy greats of early film. In an era when women are deemed 'not funny enough' it seems film history has forgotten her contributions. Her films debuted the Keystone Cops, Charlie Chaplin's tramp and the pie in the face gag. She co-starred with both Chaplin and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in a series of shorts. She was a star in the first Keystone Comedy as well as the first feature film comedy. She was the only comedian to work with Charles Chaplin , Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Mack Sennett, D.W. Griffith, Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford, Hal Roach, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Fred Mace, Fred Sterling and John Bunny (she and Buster Keaton never had a chance to work together but they were friends.)
Born in Staten Island, New York to Claude and Mary Normand. Normand started out as an artist model for Charles Dana Gibson (creator of the Gibson girl). Friends suggested she try out for the new medium of film and she did, working as an extra in Kalem and Biograph shorts. With Biograph's move to California she went to work for Vitagraph where she made a series of comedic shorts as 'Betty', one co-starring the first comedy film star John Bunny.
Eventually Normand returned to Biograph where she began working with Mack Sennett on comedic shorts that would eventually turn into Keystone Comedies. Normand and Sennett were lovers, close friends and close co-workers. All of Sennett's early ideas seemed to revolve around Normand. His creation of Keystone was contingent on Normand joining him; and though he would underpay her as he underpaid everyone he worked with, he insisted Normand have credit and say in the company. When Normand eventually left Keystone for Goldwyn, Sennett left soon after.
By 1912 Normand was writing her own films and by 1914 she was directing her films. By this point she was a major star, continually topping fan polls by new movie magazines. While the discovery of Charlie Chaplin varies from telling to telling, everyone involved agreed Sennett would not have hired (or kept him on) had it not been for Normand. Chaplin's second short for the company was Normand's "Mabel's Strange Predicament" which she starred and directed in. This was the first film Chaplin created his iconic tramp character for.
Chaplin and Normand had a comedic chemistry and would go on to team in a series of shorts until Chaplin left Keystone in 1915. As Chaplin's star rose many fan magazines began to call Normand a 'female Chaplin'. Normand and Chaplin had similar subtle mannerisms and the influence Normand had on Chaplin can not be understated. Before Chaplin left Keystone, they starred, alongside Marie Dressler, in "Tillie's Punctured Romance" the first full length comedy film.
With the loss of Chaplin, Normand and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle began to team together in a series of shorts (though they had acted together before). This series was also popular and the pair continued acting together until they both left Keystone for better pay.
Sennett and Normand became engaged around this time, though the engagement ended when Sennett was caught cheating on Normand. Friends report she suffered a severe head injury when Sennett's fling threw a vase at Normand's head. Those who knew Normand all believed Sennett was the love of her life; and she his. However they would never reconcile romantically. Sennett did convince Normand to create her own production company "Mabel Normand Film Company" to make her own features. The first project was "Mickey" and Sennett's handling of her business affairs resulted in the film not being released until 1918 (or having a definite version).
Normand dissolved the company and signed with Goldwyn where she went on to make comedy features. These movies would be more akin to sitcoms: they were shorter than a lot of features, but still features. Many are lost though several have turned up in the past 10 years.
Normand once again signed with Sennett to make features and this would result in her final feature films. However this would be a rocky venture. Normand's health was hit or miss (she had been diagnosed with tuberculosis when she was 10) and seemed to be worse than better. She also was drinking heavily. In 1922 her friend William Desmond Taylor was murdered. This case would become 'the case of the century' and became a media circus, it is still unsolved. Though Normand was cleared (she had been seen leaving his house with him waving goodbye to her; she was likely the last person to see him alive), the association left an unwelcome tarnish on her soon after the scandalous death of her friend Olive Thomas, and the unfair trial of Roscoe Arbuckle.
Normand continued working, making The Extra Girl. Soon after its release in 1923 she was again near another crime (a butler was shot at a party she attended; though he survived.) Soon after Normand took a break from film.
By 1926 Normand was ready for a comeback. She signed with Hal Roach to make comedy shorts. These were well received and by 1928 she had signed with the William Morris Agency to make talkies. However she did not realize how sick she was and her health soon interrupted these plans.
Over the years Normand's tuberculosis has turned into rumors of a drug addiction. This started during the Taylor scandal when it was claimed that maybe he had been killed for interrupting a drug ring, and maybe Normand was part of it. While not prominent during her life it has become more commonly believed as time has passed despite no evidence. Normand's family, estate and personal nurse were all adamant she had never used any drugs. Sadly this rumor has become common place in Hollywood lore.
Normand's drinking increased as did her partying. During one party she decided to marry longtime friend Lew Cody at 2am. She instantly regretted the marriage and they continued living separately. As Normand's health decreased and she was committed to a sanitarium (akin to a hospital/hospice in modern terms) by 1929. She died in 1930 from tuberculosis.- Actress
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Oliva R. Duffy was born on October 20, 1894, in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, the eldest of three children, with two younger brothers. Olive or Ollie, as she was known to family and friends, did not have much of a childhood. Life in industrial Pittsburgh (at the time, spelled "Pittsburg") was depressing and grim with its smoky factories and hard living. She married Bernard Krug Thomas at the age of 16 (which wasn't uncommon at the time), but the marriage wasn't happy, and they divorced two years later.
By that time, Olive had left Pittsburgh for New York, where she found work in a department store. On a lark, she entered a competition for the most beautiful girl in New York City and, unsurprisingly, won. With the ensuing publicity, she caught the eye of Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. and immediately joined his famed Follies. An outstanding addition, men went wild over her beauty. She also posed nude for the famed Peruvian artist Alberto Vargas. As a result of her sudden fame, she was signed to a contract with Triangle Pictures. Her first film was Beatrice Fairfax (1916). Later that year, she married Jack Pickford, brother of screen star Mary Pickford.
The relationship was a stormy one. In 1917, she starred in four more films: Madcap Madge (1917), A Girl Like That (1917), Broadway Arizona (1917), and Indiscreet Corinne (1917). With five films on her resume, Olive was the toast of Hollywood. She made three films in 1918 and six in 1919. By 1920, Olive was at the top of the film world. She continued to make good pictures, most notably, Youthful Folly (1920) and also The Flapper (1920), which was an overwhelming success. After finishing Everybody's Sweetheart (1920), Olive and Jack sailed to France for a much-needed vacation.
The couple finally seemed happy, which seems odd in light of what was to follow. Olive accidentally ingested bichloride of mercury from a French-labeled bottle in a darkened bathroom, believing it to be another medication. Found unconscious, she died five days later. The death made worldwide headlines. Olive was only 25 when she died.- Florence Lawrence was the first film player whose name was used to promote her films and the studio (Independent Moving Pictures Company [IMP]) for which she worked. Before her, actors and actresses worked anonymously, partly out of fear that stage managers would refuse to hire them if they were found to be working in films and partly because movie executives didn't want to put much money into the production of these short, practically disposable films, and didn't want their players to become well known and start demanding higher salaries. Lawrence was on the stage from age three, appearing in musicals and plays, whistling and playing the violin. At 20 she was cast in the Edison production of Daniel Boone (1907), and that led to work at Vitagraph Studios. From there she was hired by Biograph, where she refined and perfected her craft under the direction of D.W. Griffith. In 1909 she left Biograph to seek more recognizable employment at another film company. As a result she was blacklisted by the Motion Picture Trust, headed by Thomas A. Edison, to which most motion-picture producers belonged and which held the patents on most film production equipment and would not allow any companies that did not belong to the Trust to use them. Carl Laemmle started IMP in late 1909, and refused to join the Motion Picture Trust. The Trust took action--both legal and otherwise--to discourage Laemmle from producing films on his own. Lawrence and her husband, director Harry Solter, signed on as IMP's first featured players. In 1910 Laemmle, partly out of anger over the Trust's actions--such as hiring thugs to attack his film crews and wreck his equipment--decided to advertise the fact that he had Miss Lawrence. She made the first personal appearance of a film star in St. Louis, MO, that March, and the resulting publicity made her famous (and also increased the grosses on her--and Laemmle's--films). Other film companies soon followed suit, and the names of film actors and actresses began to appear in all segments of the media. Lawrence worked for IMP for a year, then spent another year at Lubin before she began her own production company, Victor, where she worked on and off until 1914. After a stage accident in which she injured her back, she retired from films, only to be lured back in 1916 for her first feature, Elusive Isabel (1916). It was unsuccessful. She tried a comeback again in 1921; that, too, was unsuccessful. She settled into bit parts and character roles through the 1920s and 1930s. She committed suicide in 1938 after years of unhappiness and illness. She was found in her apartment on Dec. 27, 1938 and died soon afterward in hospital.
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Widely publicized as "The Vitagraph Girl," dark-haired silent film actress Florence Turner was one of the screen's first celebrities to be called by the term "movie star." Born in New York City in 1885, she was pushed into the business at age 3 by an overzealous stage mother, performing on the vaudeville stage as Eugenie Florence. Audiences took delight in her talents as an impressionist of well-known stage actresses of the time such as Marie Dressler. Florence was a full-fledged professional by the time she hooked up with Vitagraph Studios in 1906 as a wardrobe mistress/cashier/actress.
Making her film debut in Cast Up by the Sea (1907), Turner was prominently displayed in front of the camera within a short period of time. Appearing in the company's more quality pieces, she formed a sturdy pairing with Maurice Costello and other matinée idols of the day. The diminutive, forlorn-looking performer eventually tested the acting waters in London in 1913, and was directed frequently by long-time friend Lawrence Trimble, occasionally collaborating on screenplays. She also contributed to her livelihood making appearances in music halls, still amazing audiences with her impersonations of everybody from Alla Nazimova to Charles Chaplin. She organized her own production company, Turner Films, and made more than 30 shorts, becoming the first star of the screen to take on producing chores. In 1915 she was the top box-office star.
Florence maintained a highly visible transatlantic career for nearly a decade while appearing both here and in England in everything from classic Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice (1908), Richard III (1908)) and historical epics (A Tale of Two Cities (1911), The Deerslayer (1913)) to classic drama (Far from the Madding Crowd (1915), Through the Valley of Shadows (1914), My Old Dutch (1915)). Her career started slipping after WWI, however, and by 1924 she was forced to settle permanently in Hollywood when the British film market dried up completely. At this point she had to make do as a stock player for MGM. The advent of sound was the final nail in her career's coffin, unfortunately. It was a respectful MGM that kept her on the payroll for the next decade, albeit in bit parts and extra roles.
She died practically forgotten at the Woodland Hills, California, Motion Picture Country Home in 1946 at age 61.- Houston-born-and-bred Florence Vidor was one of the great beauties of early Hollywood. But while her photogenic looks went a long way, audiences would not get to enjoy or really experience her voice as she abruptly left the silver screen after her first disastrous attempt at a talking picture.
Born Florence Arto on July 23, 1895, she was the daughter of realtor John F. Arto and his wife Ida. Educated in both public and finishing schools, she was also a student at the Convent of the Sacred Heart for a time. Her fate was sealed after a happenstance but eventful first meeting of two aspiring filmmakers: future directors Edward Sedgwick and King Vidor. Vidor, a freelance photographer, cast Florence in his very first 2-reel picture although she had no real designs on being an actress. The two became a romantic item, married in 1915, and welcomed one child together, Suzanne Vidor Parry, in 1919.
King set his sites on Hollywood and the couple made the big move, financing their trip by filming travelogue for the Ford Motor Company. The couple settled in Santa Monica and soon found employment at Vitagraph Studios. Florence knew actress Corinne Griffith from her days in Houston and was introduced around the sets. The studio, quite taken by her exquisite beauty, quickly signed her to a contract, starting with some minor roles in such comedy shorts as The Yellow Girl (1916) and Curfew at Simpton Center (1916). Meanwhile, husband King sought work as a scriptwriter and occasional movie extra.
Florence first turned heads portraying tragic seamstress "Mimi" in A Tale of Two Cities (1917). Audiences took notice and the beautiful brunette was immediately promoted to leading-lady status opposite such established stars as Sessue Hayakawa and chic "drag" performer Julian Eltinge. She and Hayakawa made several pictures together, including Hashimura Togo (1917), The Secret Game (1917), and The White Man's Law (1918), among others. With the popular Eltinge, who often outdressed his leading ladies, the actress graced the comedies The Countess Charming (1917) and The Widow's Might (1918). Within a short time she was starring in quality pictures for both William C. de Mille and his brother Cecil B. DeMille, but still preferred to work for her husband King, who had by this time established himself as a formidable director after opening his own studio in 1919.
A mature, opulent presence, Florence became a huge star under her husband's guidance, operating under the banners of King Vidor Productions and Florence Vidor Productions. With such silent classics as The Other Half (1919), Poor Relations (1919), The Family Honor (1920), The Jack-Knife Man (1920), Real Adventure (1922), Dusk to Dawn (1922), and Conquering the Woman (1922), Florence came to the forefront. Her best-regarded film of that period was King's comedy-drama Alice Adams (1923), remade successfully a decade later by Katharine Hepburn.
King and Florence divorced in 1924 and Florence went on to appear for other well-known directors, notably Ernst Lubitsch, in such glossy pictures as The Marriage Circle (1924) and The Patriot (1928). She also portrayed famous female Revolutionary War character Barbara Frietchie in Barbara Frietchie (1924), but she earned most of her kudos specializing in sophisticated comedy. She was well represented in that genre with Marry Me (1925), The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926), and The Magnificent Flirt (1928). Her stylish humor coupled with a charming sensitivity put her squarely on top throughout most of the 1920s opposite such other well-tailored charmers as Adolphe Menjou, Clive Brook, and William Powell.
Florence's first major talking film would also be her last. The unhappy experience and end-result of working on Chinatown Nights (1929), which used highly experimental sound equipment, was enough to convince her to leave films altogether. By that time Florence had married a second time, to famed violinist Jascha Heifetz, and preferred to raise a family. The couple had two children. Following their divorce in 1946, Florence continued to remain completely out of the limelight. She later moved to Pacific Palisades, California and stayed there for the rest of her life. She succumbed to heart failure in 1977 at age 82. - Actress
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Theda Bara was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, as Theodosia Goodman, on July 29, 1885. She was the daughter of a local tailor and his wife. As a teenager Theda was interested in the theatrical arts and once she finished high school, she dyed her blond hair black and went in pursuit of her dream. By 1908 she was in New York in search of roles. That year she appeared in "The Devil", a stage play. In 1911 she joined a touring company. After returning to New York in 1914, she began making the rounds of various casting offices in search of work, and was eventually hired to appear in The Stain (1914) as an extra, but she was placed so far in the background that she was not noticed on the screen. However, it was her ability to take direction which helped her gain the lead role as the "vampire" in A Fool There Was (1915) later that year, and "The Vamp" was born. It was a well-deserved break, because Theda was almost 30 years old, at a time when younger women were always considered for lead roles. She became the screen's first fabricated star. Publicists sent out press releases that Theda was the daughter of an artist and an Arabian princess, and that "Theda Bara" was an anagram for "Arab Death"--a far cry from her humble Jewish upbringing in Cincinnati. The public became fascinated with her--how could one resist an actress who allowed herself to be photographed with snakes and skulls? Theda's second film, later that year for the newly formed Fox Studios, was as Celia Friedlander in Kreutzer Sonata (1915). Theda was hot property now and was to make six more films in 1915, finishing up with Carmen (1915). The next year would prove to be another busy one, with theater patrons being treated to eight Theda Bara films, all of which would make a great deal of money for Fox Films, and in 1917 Fox headed west to Califoria and took Theda with them. That year she starred in a mega-hit, Cleopatra (1917). This was quickly followed by The Rose of Blood (1917). In 1918 Theda wrote the story and starred as the Priestess in The Soul of Buddha (1918). After seven films in 1919, ending with Lure of Ambition (1919), her contract was terminated by Fox, and her career never recovered. In 1921 she married director Charles Brabin and retired. In 1926 she made her last film, Madame Mystery (1926), and promptly went back into retirement, permanently, at the age of 41. She tried the stage briefly in the 1930s but nothing really set the fires burning. A movie based on her life was planned in the 1950s, but nothing ever came of it. On April 7, 1955, Theda Bara died of abdominal cancer at the age of 69 in Los Angeles, California. There has been no one like her since.- Actress
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Alice Brady was born in New York City on November 2, 1892. She was interested in the stage from childhood, as her father was famed Broadway producer William A. Brady. After a few stage productions, Alice was discovered by movie producers in New York, since this was the film capital at the time. Her first film was at the age of 22 when she starred in As Ye Sow (1914). She was immediately put to work in a number of film projects. Although she appeared in three films in 1915, the following year saw her in nine productions. Alice was one of the fortunate actresses to make a successful transition from the silent era into the sound age. In 1936 she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in My Man Godfrey (1936). One year later, she won the Oscar for the same award in In Old Chicago (1938), in which she turned in a tremendous performance. Alice died of cancer in New York City on October 28, 1939. She was only 46 years old. Her final film that year was Young Mr. Lincoln (1939).- Actress
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Aud Egede-Nissen was born on 30 May 1893 in Bergen, Norway. She was an actress and producer, known for Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Das Phantom der Oper (1916) and Deception (1920). She was married to Paul Richter and Georg Alexander. She died on 6 November 1974 in Oslo, Norway.- Jeanne Delvair was born on 19 December 1877 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Marie Tudor (1917), Mysteries of Paris (1912) and Blessée au coeur (1917). She was married to Georges Le Roy. She died on 13 January 1949 in Levallois-Perret, Hauts-de-Seine, France.
- Julienne Mathieu was one of the earliest French silent film actresses who appeared mostly in French silents between 1905 and 1909. Mathieu was married to the Spanish director and producer Segundo de Chomón; appearing in many of his films. She appeared in the Spanish silent film "El Hotel eléctrico" released in 1908, one of the first films to incorporate stop animation.
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Gene Gauntier was born on 17 May 1885 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for A Hitherto Unrelated Incident of the Girl Spy (1911), The Scarlet Letter (1908) and Evangeline (1908). She was married to J.J. Clark. She died on 18 December 1966 in Cuernavaca, Mexico.- Actress
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A stage actress who was an alumni of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Helen Gardner made her film debut with Vitagraph Pictures in 1911. In that year she appeared in Vanity Fair (1911), to critical acclaim. The next year she formed her own film production company, Helen Gardner Productions--as far as is known, the first film actress to do so--to make feature films that would be directed by her husband, Charles L. Gaskill. Her best known picture during that period was Cleopatra (1912). After making films on her own for a few years, she returned to Vitagraph in 1915 only to retire shortly thereafter, although she did return in the early '20s for a few small parts.- American character actress famed for roles as mothers. Born in a Philadelphia suburb as Mary Kennevan, she became a schoolteacher, but soon gave it up for work as an actress in touring companies. She married actor William Carr and toured extensively with his company. After the turn of the century, he became involved in film production as both an actor and director, and he brought Mary and their six children into the film business with him. Mary made her film debut in 1916, but it was her appearance in Over the Hill to the Poorhouse (1920) which made her a success in movies. It was a tremendous success due in large part to her touching portrayal of a poverty-stricken mother. She followed it with similar roles in scores of films throughout the silent period. A fallow period arrived with the talkies, and Carr found herself nearly destitute, but publicity about her status rallied help to her cause and she found help and occasional work. She spent her later years appearing infrequently, often in films directed by her son Thomas Carr. She died at the age of 99 in November 1973.
- Faire Binney was born on 24 August 1900 in Morristown, New Jersey, USA. She was an actress, known for Open Your Eyes (1919), The Girl from Porcupine (1921) and What Fools Men Are (1922). She was married to David C. Sloane and Sering D. Wilson. She died on 28 August 1957 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Miriam Cooper was born to Julian Cooper and Margaret Stewart in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1891. The family was Roman Catholic, and the Coopers were fairly well-to-do. After the birth of five children in five years (one of whom died in infancy), Julian Cooper deserted his family and fled to Europe. Margaret Cooper raised Miriam and her siblings Nelson, Gordon and Lenore with financial assistance from her mother-in-law. After grandmother Cooper died, the family lived in abject poverty and was forced to move from Washington Heights to Little Italy. At one point, Miriam spent time in an orphanage when her mother was too sick to take care of her. Miriam was educated at St. Walburga's Academy, a convent school, and at Coopers Union Art School. Before stumbling into the nascent motion picture industry, she was a model for artists Harrison Fisher and Charles Dana Gibson. Her first film role was as an extra in D.W. Griffith's A Blot on the 'Scutcheon (1912). She next traveled to Florida where she played the ingénue in nearly 30 films for Kalem studios. Most of the films were Civil War dramas and romances, and Miriam did all of her own stunts, including horseback riding, running along the tops of trains and swimming a horse across a river, only to be fired in 1913 for asking for a raise.
In 1914 Griffith rediscovered a screen test she made for him and brought her into his circle. Miriam had leading roles in both The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). She also fell in love with one of Griffith's assistant directors, Raoul Walsh. Knowing that Griffith would not like the idea of their getting married, Miriam and Walsh were secretly married on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona in 1916. Walsh eventually left Griffith for Fox Films. When Miriam joined him, their marriage became public. Miriam lost interest in her film career after their marriage, but Walsh preferred to direct her, and she made quite a few movies for him at Fox, the most popular of which was probably Evangeline (1919).
Miriam wanted to be a wife and mother, but the couple was unable to have children, so they adopted two boys. Eventually Miriam tired of Walsh's philandering and divorced him in 1925. She never remarried, and although she felt some bitterness and resentment, it was obvious that she continued to love and admire him after the divorce. Miriam made her last film in 1923. She was tired of Hollywood and the film industry, and once she left it, she never looked back. The money she had saved was adequate for her to live very well. She became a golfing enthusiast and hit holes-in-one in three different states. In the 1960s she was rather surprised to be rediscovered by film historians and college students, but she enjoyed their attention. She completed her autobiography "Dark Lady of the Silents" in 1973, before dying of a stroke in 1976.- A Pennsylvania Dutch girl who moved to New York in the late 19th century to pursue a theatrical career, she became one of early silent pictures' better known character actresses. Between 1910 and 1920 she appeared in over 90 films, but then her acting career all but ended, and she devoted the rest of her life to the study and teaching of an occult religion. In 1918 she had begun a correspondence with the English writer and occultist Aleister Crowley. In 1920 she left Hollywood to join Crowley at his "Abbey of Thelema" on the Italian island of Sicily where she lived for several years, becoming his student Soror Estai, and accepting his new religion of sex, drugs, and magick in the name of personal liberation. Later she returned to Southern California where she continued to represent Crowley, and taught his doctrines for many years until her death in 1958.
- Violet Horner, the second daughter of music hall performers Sidney Herbert Horner (born Wales) and Pauline Tranter (born Belfast), grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where she performed in amateur productions and was discovered singing in a church choir when she first got into film. In an interview (Gertrude M. Price, "Went From Church Soloist to Leading Lady," (Chicago) "Day Book", 21 January 1913, pp. 30-32), when asked about whether her life as an actress was different as her work as a church soloist, Horner stated "Yes, it was certainly a jump and something different...But I wanted more excitement and a chance to climb over the fence and look out over the world. That's why I took up pictures." After her movie career faded, she went into vaudeville as a singer until her second marriage to a Brooklyn dentist, and until their retirement to Florida, spent her time giving voice and acting lessons and putting on amateur productions with various local groups including the Ladies Auxiliary of her husband's American Legion Post.Ten Nights in a Barroom
- Actress
Valeska Suratt was born in Owensville, Indiana on June 28, 1882 to parents of French ancestry. She moved from Terre Haute to Indianapolis, where she worked at a department store in 1899 before moving to Chicago in 1900 to pursue an acting career. She appeared in vaudeville before debuting in Broadway in 1906 in the musical The Belle of Mayfair. The following year she starred in Hip! Hip! Hooray! She became known for voluptuous movements and her very expensive glamorous costumes and gowns, some of which are said to have cost up to $25,000. Some magazines of the time called her the most elegant woman on stage. Her third Broadway musical, The Girl with the Whooping Cough, was cancelled shortly after its debut in 1910 by New York City mayor William Jay Gaynor who claimed the show was too sexually suggestive. From 1915 to 1917 she moved on to movies and made 11 feature films all of which are considered lost today. In the late 1920s her fame waned and she quickly disappeared from public view, never to return. Suratt died in a Washington DC nursing home on July 2, 1962 at the age of 80.
Valeska Suratt married twice but had no children. In 1904 she married William J. Flannery (1869-1950) better known by his stage name Billy Gould. Gould had been one of her first partners on the Chicago scene and together they created an act where Valeska performed several exotic dances including an Apache dance. They divorced in 1911 and that same year Suratt married Fletcher Norton. They remained married until his death in 1941.- Kitty Gordon was born on 22 April 1878 in Folkestone, Kent, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Wasp (1918), The Scar (1919) and Forget-Me-Not (1917). She was married to Ralph Ranlet, Captain Henry W.W.H. Beresford, Michael Levenston and Maxwell James. She died on 26 May 1974 in Brentwood, Long Island, New York, USA.
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Virginia Lee Corbin was born on 5 December 1910 in Prescott, Arizona, USA. She was an actress, known for Bare Knees (1928), Hands Up! (1926) and The Forbidden Room (1919). She was married to Theodore Elwood Krol and Charles Jacobson. She died on 5 June 1942 in Winfield, Illinois, USA.- Lidia Quaranta was born on 6 March 1891 in Turin, Italy. She was an actress, known for Beffa di Satana (1915), Lo scrigno dei milioni (1914) and La corsa alla morte (1917). She died on 5 March 1928 in Turin, Italy.She had two sisters, both actressess
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Fern Andre's show-business career started as an aerialist with a troupe that toured the U.S. and Europe. In Vienna she became a student of famed director/teacher Max Reinhardt and appeared in several of his plays and films. She soon settled in Berlin, where she starred in several productions for UFA Studios, some of which she also produced and directed. She also appeared in British and French films. In the sound era she returned to the United States, but after making only two films, she retired.- Kathleen Clifford was born on 16 February 1887 in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. She was an actress, known for Richard the Lion-Hearted (1923), When the Clouds Roll by (1919) and Who Is Number One? (1917). She was married to Miomir Peter Illitch (banker). She died on 28 December 1962 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Winifred Kingston was born on 11 November 1894 in England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Squaw Man (1914), The Virginian (1914) and Cameo Kirby (1914). She was married to Carman Runyon and Dustin Farnum. She died on 3 February 1967 in La Jolla, California, USA.The Corsican Brothers
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In the 1910s, waifs and child-women like Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish and Mary Miles Minter were dominant forces at America's box offices. Audiences welcomed Marguerite Clark into this group, especially those who preferred her dark brown hair and large brown eyes to the blonde-haired, blue-eyed looks of Pickford, Gish and Minter. She was tiny (about 4'10", weighing about 90 pounds) with a very pretty, Kewpie-doll face that never seemed to age. Even at the end of her career, at the age of 38, make-up artists had little trouble making her look 12 years old. Marguerite began life on a farm southeast of Lima, Ohio. As a child she was sent to a convent southeast of Cincinnati for her education, remaining there until the age of 16, when she made her stage debut with a stock company in Baltimore. DeWolf Hopper Sr. saw her and brought her to New York as his co-star in the play "Happyland". For over a decade she appeared in some of the most popular plays and musicals on Broadway, including "Anatol" with John Barrymore. In 1914 she signed with Famous Players, which, along with its sister companies Paramount and Artcraft, would produce all but her last movie. Her looks and acting talent quickly made her one of the top movie stars of the time. However, she was dissatisfied with the acting life. In 1918 she married a New Orleans plantation owner and took up residence there. She split her time between New York (where she made most of her movies) and New Orleans, all the time planning to quit acting and move permanently to the plantation. Her only wish was to go out on top. In 1921 she got her wish. The annual Quigley Publications poll of motion picture exhibitors ranked her as the nation's top movie actress of 1920, and the second-place movie star overall to Wallace Reid. She had just completed Scrambled Wives (1921), produced by her own newly formed production company, for First National. After the release of the Quigley poll, she disbanded her production company and retired to her husband's plantation, where she lived until his death in 1936. She moved back to New York City shortly thereafter. She was also the model for Snow White in Walt Disney's masterpiece Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). She died following a short bout with pneumonia in 1940.- Coming from a theatrical family (her mother was an actress), Pauline Curley was an actress from the age of five, and toured the vaudeville circuit with her family. Her first known film role came in 1913, and although her movie career lasted 16 years, she never made the top, or even the middle, ranks of stardom. She made a few well-received serials for Vitagraph, and was in one of Douglas Fairbanks' more popular swashbucklers, Bound in Morocco (1918), but she doesn't seem to have been able to capitalize on it, as she was soon appearing in very low-budget, two-reel Leo D. Maloney and Jack Perrin westerns. Soon the pictures got even cheaper, her roles got even smaller, and by 1929 (the year of her last known film, The Locked Door (1929), in which she had an unbilled bit part) she had apparently left the industry altogether. She was married, from 1922 to his death in 1988, to cinematographer Kenneth Peach. Two of their children followed them into the film business: Kenneth Peach Jr., who became a cinematographer, and Martin Peach, who had a career as a key grip.
Pauline Curley died in 2000 in Santa Monica, CA, aged 96. - Pauline Frederick was born Pauline Beatrice Libby in Boston, Massachusetts on August 12, 1883. She was fascinated with show business from an early age and throughout her childhood, she was bred for a career in music. It has been said she had a terrific soprano voice, but Pauline also dabbled a bit in acting. It was her acting ability that would make her famous. She starred in several stage productions with her manager, Benjamin Teal, guiding her every step of the way. Before long, Pauline was making a name for herself up and down the East Coast, especially in the hallowed halls of Broadway. The hard line critics raved of her appearances in productions such as "Samson" and "Joseph and His Brothers". Before long, it was recognized that a stage play with Pauline starring in it signified a top quality production. Pauline was at the pinnacle of her career, but with the fledgling film colony, then located in New York, it was only a matter of time before the movie moguls wooed her from the stage and into a film studio. They did. Pauline's first film on the silver screen was THE EMERALD CITY in 1915. She was 32, an age where most newcomers were much younger, but Pauline's reputation preceded her. Her name was a virtual drawing card for the flick and it turned out to be a success. Pauline was out of the gate and running. She had two other very successful films that year, BELLA DONNA and LYDIA GILMORE. The next two years saw Pauline in a number of high quality motion pictures. 1918 turned out to be a banner year for Pauline as her star power would shine bright with the critics and public alike in films such as FEDORA, RESURRECTION, and LA TOSCA. The latter film solidified Pauline's star power. In 1920, Pauline played Jacqueline Floriot in MADAME X in probably her greatest performance in her personal history. By now she had arrived in the new film colony of Hollywood, California to make films for Samuel Goldwyn. She quickly adapted to her new home. She began to pare back her film appearances, balancing her film work with continued acting on the stage in New York. But homesickness for her adopted home brought Pauline back to California and more starring roles. Because of her stage work and great screen presence, Pauline never had any trouble when movies switched from the silent era to sound. In 1932, Pauline she successfully played in WAYWARD with Nancy Carroll and Richard Arlen. Seven more sound films followed, each greeted with great success. Her final film was made in 1937 in THANK YOU, MR. MOTO. She may have continued to play on the big screen, after all she was only 54 years old. She had asthma which limited her activities somewhat. On September 19, 1938, Pauline died from that condition in Beverly Hills, California. She was just 55 years old.
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Viola Dana (real name Virginia Flugrath) was born in Brooklyn, NY, on June 26, 1897. She was the middle sister of three sisters (the other two were Edna Flugrath and Shirley Mason). She made her film debut in 1914 in Molly the Drummer Boy (1914). The following year she received top billing playing "Gladiola Bain" in Gladiola (1915). She was in top demand as evidenced by securing another lead in The Innocence of Ruth (1916). She continued to turn in great performances, particularly as Katie O'Doone in Bred in Old Kentucky (1926). Viola's final silver screen role was in 1929's One Splendid Hour (1929). The last the general public saw her was in a documentary about 'Buster Keaton' called Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow (1987).
Viola died on July 3, 1987, at age 90.- Actress
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Bebe Daniels already had toured as an actor by the age of four in a stage production of "Richard III". She had her first leading role at the age of seven and started her film career shortly after this in movies for Imperial, Pathe and others. At 14 she was already a film veteran, and was enlisted by Hal Roach to star as Harold Lloyd's leading lady in his "Lonesome Luke" shorts, distributed by Pathe. Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife. The two eventually broke up but would remain lifelong friends. Bebe was sought out for stardom by Cecil B. DeMille, who literally pestered her into signing with Paramount. Unlike many actors, the arrival of sound posed no problem for her; she had a beautiful singing voice and became a major musical star, with such hits as Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In 1930 she married Ben Lyon, with whom she went to England in the mid-'30s, where she became a successful West End stage star. She and her husband also had their own radio show in London, and became the most popular radio team in the country--especially during World War II, when they refused to return to the US and stayed in London, broadcasting even during the worst of the "blitz".
They later appeared in several British films together as their radio characters. Her final film was one in that series, The Lyons Abroad (1955).- Her parents were both stage actors, so Priscilla Dean began her career as an infant in their productions. She made her film debut at age 14 in a series of one-reelers for Biograph and several other studios. In 1911 she was hired by Universal Pictures and soon gained popularity as the female lead in the comedy series of Eddie Lyons and Lee Moran. Her appearance in the serial The Gray Ghost (1917) propelled her to stardom, and she began appearing in many of Universal's most prestigious productions. The coming of sound damaged her career, however, and by the early 1930s she was appearing in low-budget films for minor independent studios.
- Clarine Seymour born to Albert and Florence Seymour in Brooklyn, New York in 1898. Her father ran a ribbon manufacturing business, in 1917 her father became so ill that he had no choice but to close his successful business and so Clarine secured work through the Thanhouser Film Company, which was located in New Rochelle, as a result of her work through that company , she obtained work through Pathe in a Pearl White serial and also in 1917 she appeared opposite Mollie King in 'Mystery of the Double Cross', followed in Toto the Clown comedies for the Robin Film Co and also appeared in many Al Christie comedies, she excepted an offer from D.W. Griffith who directed her in 'The Girl Who Stayed at Home' (1919) and 'True Heart Susie' (1919) opposite Lillian Gish and in Scarlet Days (1919). In 1920 Clarine became famous after starring in 'The Idol Dancer' the public loved her, shortly after that film's release she signed a four year contract, her next role was 'Way Down East' However, half way through production Clarine suddenly died unexpectedly from an intestinal ailment following an operation at Misericordia Hospital in New York at the age of 21. Mary Hay took over her role and the film was a box office success.
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Born Bessie Harrison in Santa Barbara in 1890. Her father Edgar Thomas Harrison was a musician. Bessie starred in at least 200 melodrama, action westerns and crime films. In the 1910 she was visiting the Selig Film studios with a party of friends, when a director saw and liked her red hair because he said it would photograph a beautiful black, so he offered her a minor role, she had no formal training on stage, as did many early film actors, she was talented and soon rose to be one of Selig's most popular stars. Her first major role as a leading actress was under the direction of Francis Boggs in 'The Sheriff of Tuolomne' starring Tom Mix in 1911. Bessie will be perhaps be best remembered as Helen Chester in 'The Spoilers' directed by Colin Campbell with co-star William Farnum in 1914 and as Virginia Carvel in 'The Crisis' based in Winston Churchill's sprawling novel, co-starring George Fawcett and Matt Snyder, Bessie remained with selig until 1918. She was last seen in a supporting role as Ada Tremaine in John Ince's 'The Girl of Gold' starring Florence Vidor and Malcolm McGregor for the Regal Film Co in 1925. She returned to the screen in the 1930's as a extra. Bessie reportedly had a terrible argument with her mother Claribel, walked out of her Hollywood home, and was never seen or heard from again. Her brother Elbert spent years searching for her but was unsuccessful.Bessie married at 19 to Selig film producer Charles Eyton they divorced in 1915. She died from congestive heart failure in 1965 age 74.- Starting her career in stock in Wisconsin, Kirkham trained in dramatic schools before acting on the screen. Kirkham often played the vamp in films and also played mother roles to women who were older than she was. She played several roles as the "woman you loved to hate," roles she could never overcome. At the time of her death, Kirkham was working as a cook in a private residence in Santa Barbara, California.
- Mildred Harris was born on 29 November 1901 in Cheyenne, Wyoming, USA. She was an actress, known for The Doctor and the Woman (1918), For Husbands Only (1918) and The Price of a Good Time (1917). She was married to William Peter Fleckenstein, Everett Terrence McGovern and Charles Chaplin. She died on 20 July 1944 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Phyllis Haver was born Phyllis O'Haver on January 6, 1899, in Douglas, KS. When she was a child her family moved to California. Young Phyllis got a job playing piano at a local movie theater. Producer Mack Sennett saw her and hired her to be one of his "Sennett Bathing Beauties". Between 1916-20 she appeared in more than 35 short films. With her curvy figure and blonde hair she quickly became one of the most popular of Sennett's bathing beauties. Eventually she left Sennett compact and signed a contract with Cecil B. DeMille. She co-starred with Olive Borden in Fig Leaves (1926) and with Victor McLaglen in What Price Glory (1926). She also won rave reviews for her performances as Roxie Hart in Chicago (1927).
In 1929 she married millionaire William Seeman. Although she was at the peak of her career, she decided to retire from acting. She and William moved into an 11-room penthouse in New York City. Phyllis said she loved being a wife and never wanted to return to Hollywood. Sadly, after 16 years of marriage she and William divorced. The couple had no children. As she grew older Phylis became more reclusive. She lived in a large house in Connecticut and rarely had visitors. Her only companion was her longtime housekeeper. She reportedly made several suicide attempts and was devastated when her former boss Mack Sennett died.
On November 19, 1960, 61-year-old Phyllis took her own life with an overdose of barbiturates. She was found in her bed fully dressed and wearing make-up. Phyllis was buried at Grassy Hills Cemetery in Falls Village, CT. - Actress
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Though the circumstances of Helen Holmes' birth are somewhat hazy (sources place it in either Chicago or Louisville, KY, in mid-June or early July of 1893), what isn't hazy is that she was, with Pearl White, the queen of the railroad serials of the mid-teens and early '20s. Holmes always played a strong-willed, independent and resourceful heroine, just as capable of running after, jumping on and stopping a runaway train as she was batting her eyes at the male "hero". Although she was convent-educated, her parents were poor and could barely afford her education, so as she got older she became a photographer's model to help pay the family bills.
Her brother's ill health necessitated a family move from cold, damp Chicago to the hot, dry climate of California's Death Valley. It was there that her taste for adventure was given full rein. In that desolate, sparsely populated country she prospected for gold and for a short time lived among a local Indian tribe. Her brother soon died, though, and in 1910 Helen moved to New York and began appearing in local plays. She had become friends with film star Mabel Normand, and after a short correspondence Normand invited her to Hollywood, where she got her friend some modeling and movie work. Holmes soon achieved success, and by 1913 was starring in her own films. She met her husband, director J.P. McGowan, at Kalem Studios while she was acting in, and he was directing, The Hazards of Helen (1914) serial. The two soon formed their own production company, and their films, both serials and features, achieved great success. By 1919, though, Mutual Films, the company that distributed their movies, had gone under. Without Mutual's financial backing the budgets on their films shrank precipitously, and not being able to afford to make railroad serials anymore, Helen was now turned into a newspaperwoman, a switch that did not sit well with her fans. Although she continued to make films and serials, many of them weren't starring roles anymore, and the fact that a good percentage of them were for the cheap independent market meant that relatively few audiences actually saw them.
Her marriage to McGowan broke up in 1925. She subsequently married a movie stuntman, and basically retired from the screen in 1926, although she made a few appearances in small parts over the next 20 years.
She kept her hand in the business by becoming a trainer for animals used in the movies, but that lasted until her husband died in 1946. Her health had been deteriorating for several years by that time, and she died of a heart attack in 1950.- Helen Lynch was born on 6 April 1900 in Billings, Montana, USA. She was an actress, known for Romance of the Underworld (1928), Minnie (1922) and Bustin' Thru (1925). She was married to Carroll Nye. She died on 2 March 1965 in Miami Beach, Florida, USA.
- Actress
- Stunts
Helen Gibson was one of the earliest serial stars. In 1915 she took over the title role in The Hazards of Helen (1914) from Helen Holmes. Known for her athletic abilities and willingness to do dangerous but exciting stunts, she made the transition from serials to features easily. She was the second wife of cowboy star Hoot Gibson. After her starring days ended in the early 1920s, she went on to become one of the industry's best stunt women, while also taking small acting parts, until her retirement in early 1962.- Juanita Hansen's career goes back to at least 1915, and she worked for D.W. Griffith before becoming one of Mack Sennett's "Bathing Beauties." Sennett was so struck by her beauty that he often featured her over the other girls, which caused some friction among them. That could well be the reason she left Sennett in 1918 for Universal, where she began doing straight dramatic roles rather then the slapstick comedy of the Sennett one- and two-reelers. She soon began performing in Universal's serials, and from there she went on to do serials for William Nicholas Selig, Warners and Pathe, among others. Before long her success brought her a contract for $1500 a week - a huge salary in those days - but it also brought her a penchant for fast cars (she was being constantly arrested for speeding), all-night partying and, worst of all, a taste for cocaine, to which she soon became addicted. Her drug use caused Pathe no end of trouble and she had difficulty finishing the studio's 1921 serial The Yellow Arm (1921). When it was finally completed, over schedule and over budget, the company dropped her. After a few small roles in independent films, she found herself unemployable.
She was next heard from in 1928, after apparently cleaning herself up and getting off drugs, when she was hired for a Broadway play. However, an accident in the hotel where she was staying resulted in her being burned with scalding-hot water, and to ease the pain she was given morphine - to which she became almost immediately addicted. Although she received a large settlement from the hotel, much of the money she got went for lawyers and hospital bills, and either drugs or drug cures. She went back and forth between bouts of drug use and sobriety, and by 1934, having apparently cleaned up again, she began lecturing at carnivals and traveling shows on the evils of drug abuse.
Her life took another turn for the worse in 1941, when she attempted suicide by an overdose of sleeping pills. She finally gave up all hopes of resuming her career, took a job as a clerk for a railroad, and died of a heart attack in 1961. - Making her film debut as an extra in 1917, Leatrice Joy soon graduated to playing opposite comics Billy West and Oliver Hardy. Director Cecil B. DeMille took her under his wing and starred her in several of his films. Often playing career girls dressed in mannish suits, or sophisticated society girls, she is generally credited with starting the bobbed-hair craze in the 1920s. She retired shortly after the advent of sound, but made occasional appearances in small supporting roles over the years.
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Annette Kellerman was born on 6 July 1887 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. She was an actress, known for Venus of the South Seas (1924), Jephtah's Daughter: A Biblical Tragedy (1909) and Queen of the Sea (1918). She was married to James R. Sullivan. She died on 5 November 1975 in Southport, Australia.- Unlike many serial heroines, Ann Little actually was a daughter of the West. Born in a small town near the foot of northern California's Mt. Shasta, she was raised on a ranch in the shadow of the great mountain. After graduating high school, she joined a traveling stock company, winding up in a play in San Francisco. She entered the film business making one-reel westerns with Broncho Billy Anderson, and soon relocated to Southern California, where she made a variety of films for many different companies. Since she was proficient at such outdoors activities as riding, shooting and swimming, she began to get more work in wsterns, especially as Indian maidens, which pleased her no end as she had engaged in a lifelong study of Indian culture (her faithful portrayal of a young Indian girl in The Squaw Man (1918) won her the respect and friendship of the Indian extras in that film). She began making serials during her tenure at Universal, where she would make the first (in 1915) of six. By 1917, however, she had tired of westerns, and relocated to New York City to try her hand at straight drama. However, she find herself back in the serial field, although this time even more successfully, and returned to Calilfornia. Her career was going great guns when, in 1925, she gave it all up and left the industry. Nobody knew why and she apparently never told anybody she was planning to do it; she just upped and did it. There were rumors that she found religion (Christian Science) and left to devote herself to religious work, but, although she still lived in the Los Angeles area, she refused to speak of her years in Hollywood and never gave a reasn for leaving. She died in 1984.
- Claire Anderson was born Claire Mathes on May 8, 1895 in Detroit, Michigan. She moved to Hollywood and became one of Mack Sennett's first bathing beauties. Claire was five feet, five inches tall and 132 pounds. She started making movies with Keystone in 1914 (she also used the screen name Cora Anderson). Claire appeared in dozens of comedy shorts including His Baby Doll (1917) and A Clever Dummy (1917). While filming The Lion and the Girl (1916) she bravely got into a cage with an actual lion. Mack Sennett signed her to a long term contract for $675 a week. In 1918 Claire was given starring roles in Mlle. Paulette (1918), The Mask (1918), and Mile.
After leaving Keystone she worked for Fox. She co-starred with Tom Mix in The Road Demon (1921) and with John Gilbert in The Yellow Stain (1922). Claire married auto dealer Harry H. Anderson but they divorced in 1926. He had been having an affair with bathing beauty Florence Omley and Claire sued her for "alienation of affection". Florence responded to the lawsuit by challenging Claire to a fist fight. Claire retired from making movies and moved to Venice, California. She died on March 23, 1964 at the age of sixty-eight. - A former stage actress, Dorothy Phillips was married to actor/director/producer Allen Holubar. They were known as two of the screen's most prominent players--her the star, he the director/producer. Dorothy was well known in Hollywood as one of the most warm-hearted, approachable stars in the business. After the advent of sound, however, her career faded and she could be seen in a handful of films as an extra. Although a major star in her time and one of the best loved of that era, her passing was barely mentioned, other than in local papers.
- Edna Purviance began working as a stenographer in San Francisco. Charles Chaplin invited her to join him at Essanay Studio in 1915, the year of her film debut in Chaplin's His Night Out. Over the next seven years she appeared as his leading lady in over 20 Chaplin films made by Essanay, Mutual, and First National, including the classics The Tramp (1915), The Immigrant (1917), Easy Street (1917), The Kid (1921), and The Idle Class (1921). As a repayment for years of work with him, Chaplin intended real stardom for her with A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923). The movie was a commercial failure though it advanced the career of Adolphe Menjou. She remained on Chaplin's payroll until her death, her last two appearances being non-speaking extra parts in his Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952).
- Little Mary Miles Minter was a child star who was dominated by her mother. At the age of 5 she first appeared on the stage in the play "Cameo Kirby". From that time on she worked steadily without a single vacation. Her greatest stage success was in "The Littlest Rebel", with William Farnum and Dustin Farnum. In 1911, at the age of 9, a New York paper described her as " . . . a ragged, straight-haired, woman-faced little one". She continued on the stage until 1915, when she started her film career. She was being groomed as a Mary Pickford star - a child of innocence. Her early pictures carried this theme with such titles as Lovely Mary (1916), Faith (1916) and Dimples (1916). Mary was described by the press as "of the screen as a sweet, pretty little girl with an abundance of blonde curls, a picture actress slightly bigger than a faint recollection, a little queen with delicate features and endearing young charms". She later worked for Adolph Zukor at Realart Pictures and one of her favorite directors was William Desmond Taylor. While at Realart Mary made a number of films including Anne of Green Gables (1919), Judy of Rogues' Harbor (1920), Jenny Be Good (1920) and The Little Clown (1921). Her salary, which started at $150 per week in 1915, increased to $2250 per week. At that time she also became involved with Taylor, but it is not known whether Taylor was looking out for his biggest star or if there was any real romance.
Then everything crumbled. On February 1, 1922, Taylor was shot to death in his Hollywood bungalow. His unsolved murder was one of Hollywood's major scandals, coming at the same time as the Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle incident. Though she was never considered a suspect in the murder, when the public learned of Mary's involvement with a man who had questionable dealings with women and was more than twice her age, they boycotted her films. The discovery of her belongings in Taylor's bungalow effectually killed her career in pictures. Mary was so weak from grief that she was barricaded in her home for a month. By the next year she had moved out of the home she shared with her mother and was out of pictures forever. - Pauline Starke was born on 10 January 1901 in Joplin, Missouri, USA. She was an actress, known for Captain Salvation (1927), A Royal Romance (1930) and Salvation Nell (1921). She was married to Jack White and George Sherwood. She died on 3 February 1977 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
- Having worked as a telephone operator at age 13 and a fashion model afterwards, Alice Joyce joined the Kalem film company at 20, making her debut in The Deacon's Daughter (1910), and achieved popularity as a charming, proper leading lady in many shorts. After Vitagraph bought out Kalem, Joyce began appearing in the company's features, and her career soared. She was so popular as an ingénue that she was still playing those parts into her late 20s, but eventually she switched to older, more mature roles. She played Clara Bow's mother in Bow's wildly popular film Dancing Mothers (1926). After retiring from the screen, she married director Clarence Brown.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Billie Burke was born Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke on August 7, 1885 in Washington, D.C. Her father was a circus clown, and as a child she toured the United States and Europe with the circus (before motion pictures and after the stage, circuses were the biggest form of entertainment in the world). One could say that Billie was bred for show business. Her family ultimately settled in London, where she was fortunate to see plays in the city's historic West End, and decided she wanted to be a stage actress. At age 18, she made her stage debut and her career was off and running. Her performances were very well received and she became one of the most popular actresses to grace the stage. Broadway beckoned, and since New York City was now recognized as the stage capital of the world, it was there she would try her luck. Billie came to New York when she was 22 and her momentum did not stop. She appeared in numerous plays and it was only a matter of time before Hollywood came calling, which is exactly what happened. She made her film debut in the lead role in Peggy (1916). The film was a hit, but then again most films were, as the novelty of motion pictures had not worn off since The Great Train Robbery (1903) at the turn of the century. Later that year, she appeared in Gloria's Romance (1916). In between cinema work, she would take her place on the stage because not only was it her first love, but she had speaking parts. Billie considered herself more than an actress--she felt she was an artist, too. She believed that the stage was a way to personally reach out to an audience, something that could not be done in pictures. In 1921, she appeared as Elizabeth Banks in The Education of Elizabeth (1921), then she retired. She had wed impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. of the famed Ziegfeld Follies and, with investments in the stock market, there was no need to work.
What the Ziegfelds did not plan on was "Black October" in 1929. Their stock investments were wiped out in the crash, which precipitated the Great Depression, and Billie had no choice but to return to the screen. Movies had become even bigger than ten years earlier, especially since the introduction of sound. Her first role of substance was as Margaret Fairlfield in A Bill of Divorcement (1932). As an artist, she loved the fact that she had dialog, but she had to work even harder because her husband had died the same year as her speaking debut - and work she did. One of her career highlights came as Mrs. Millicent Jordan in David O. Selznick's Dinner at Eight (1933), co-starring Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore and Jean Harlow - heady company to be sure, but Billie turned in an outstanding performance as Mrs. Jordan, the scatterbrained wife of a man whose shipping company is in financial trouble and who was trying to get someone to loan his company money to help stave off disaster. Her character loved to give dinner parties because a dinner affair at the Jordans had a reputation among New York blue-blood society as the highlight of the season. With all the drama and intrigue going on around her, her main concern is that she is one man short of having a full seating arrangement. The film was a hit and once again Billie was back on top. In 1937, she had one of her most fondly remembered roles in Topper (1937), a film that would ultimately spin off two sequels, and all three were box-office hits. In 1938, Billie received her first and only Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Emily Kilbourne in Merrily We Live (1938). This was probably the best performance of her screen career, but she was destined to be immortalized forever in the classic The Wizard of Oz (1939). At 54 years of age - and not looking anywhere near it - she played Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. The 1940s saw Billie busier than ever--she made 25 films between 1940 and 1949. She made only six in the 1950s, as her aging became noticeable. She was 75 when she made her final screen appearance as Cordelia Fosgate in John Ford's Western Sergeant Rutledge (1960). Billie retired for good and lived in Los Angeles, California, where she died at age 85 of natural causes on May 14, 1970.- Ms. Nesbit, artists' model and chorus girl, was at the heart of what was known at the time as the Crime of the Century. Her abusive husband, Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw, murdered 52-year old architect and socialite Stanford White (of the firm McKim, Mead, and White), who had taken advantage of 16-year old Evelyn and subsequently become her lover a couple of years before she married Thaw. Harry Thaw's mother mother quickly financed propaganda, even a film, to portray her son as a protector of women's virtue; at the same time, the media reported the very-married White's many other transgressions involving young women. After his first trial ended in a hung jury, Thaw was retried in 1908 and found insane. He was sent away to a mental institution for the criminally insane in upstate New York, from which he which he escaped once; in 1915 he was released with reputation untarnished--a homicidal hero.
- Mary Maguire Alden was born in New York City on June 18, 1883. She appeared in her first film when she was 31 years old in the production of The Second Mrs. Roebuck (1914). From that point on, Mary was kept very busy in the studios in New York. When the film companies moved west, Mary went with them. She continued her torrid pace in filmmaking. Mary did make the switch from silent to sound movies, but she retired from work in 1935 after The Great Hotel Murder (1935). She died in Woodland Hills, California, on July 2, 1946.
- Viola Allen was born 1869 in Alabama and educated in Boston, Toronto and New York. She made her stage debut on July 4th, 1882. Since then she starred in many other stage plays. At the beginning of the 20th century she could also be seen in a lot of Shakespeare revivals. Viola Allen passed away 1948 in New York.
- Born in Rising Fawn, GA (youngest of 5 children) Parents: Dr. John S. Allison and Nannie Virginia Wise Sisters: Maude, Verda, Zetta Brother: Herschel Mother Lived with her in California until her death. After Quirk's death, she met C. N. Osborne in NYC, they were married for over 40 years until his death in '82 and lived in Cleveland Ohio. Had a Home in Tucker's Town, Bermuda for many years. Patron of The Cleveland Symphony for many years.
- Mary Anderson was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 28, 1897. She broke into films with C.O.D. (1914) in 1914 when she was just 17 years old. Unfortunately, she didn't get the roles she wanted as the competition for the parts were extremely fierce. Mary's career lasted until 1923, when she made her last appearance in Shell Shocked Sammy (1923). Little is known of this actress after she left motion pictures.
- Mignon Anderson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1892. Her father was a former vaudeville performer and opera singer who left the stage to go into the insurance business. Her mother, Hallie Howard, was also a former vaudeville performer. Mignon got her show-business start at a very early age--at six months old she appeared in a stage production as the infant daughter of the leading lady. She grew into quite a beautiful young woman, and easily found work as an artists' model.
She made her film debut in 1911 with the Thanhouser Company in Robert Emmet (1911). Her popularity grew and she became renowned not only for her beauty and acting work, but for her somewhat notorious (for the time) private life--her nickname among her fellow Thanhouser actors was "Filet Mignon". She was romantically linked to such show-business personalities as Val Hush and Irving Cummings. She and Cumming eventually became engaged, but the relationship fell apart and they never married. She did, however, wind up marrying another Thanhouser actor, J. Morris Foster, in 1915. They remained married until Foster's death in 1966.
In 1917 she signed with Universal Pictures but left the studio a year later. While there she appeared in such pictures as The Hunted Man (1917) and A Young Patriot (1917). After leaving Universal she freelanced, appearing mainly in films for small independent studios, such as Metro's The Claim (1918), Republic Distributing's Mountain Madness (1920) and Peerless' The Heart of a Woman (1920). She and her husband took about a year off from films in 1919 to appear on the stage, and did it again in the late 1920s.
Mignon Anderson died in Los Angeles, California, on February 25, 1983. - Actress
- Art Department
Born Tsuru Kawakami, Tsuru emigrated to the U.S. in 1903 with her aunt and uncle, who were in the theater business. She found work on stage before moving to film. She worked in L.A., then moved to San Francisco and New York before returning to California. At a time when even in her home country female leads were non-existent, she garnered top billing in a series of films by Thomas H. Ince, who had seen her on stage in L.A., including 1913's "The Oath of Tsuru San". She met her future husband Sessue Hayakawa on the set of O Mimi San (1914). They married in 1914 and went on to star together several times. She retired from acting 10 years later to raise her adopted children and only returned once, which was just prior to her death. This last performance was her sole speaking role.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Leah Baird first made a name for herself in summer stock and traveling stock companies. After playing several leads in the William F. Brady troupe opposite Douglas Fairbanks Vitagraph signed her to a contract. Her peak years in film were from 1916-1918 at which time she was a very popular player. However, her career had faded by 1925, and she retired to concentrate on scriptwriting. Later in life, she became a bit part player.- Mabel Ballin entered the film business in 1917 when Hugo Ballin, her husband, was having little success with his painting career. She played quite a few leading roles at the World Film Co. and was a well-known and popular actress at the time. However, after World War I her career momentum slowed down, and she retired from the film business in 1925.
- In 1906, Madge went to New York City to study at the Art Students League where she hoped to become an illustrator. This lasted until she appeared in a student musical, which led to a full time job in a traveling stock company. By 1912, Madge was a Broadway Star with the bedroom farce "Little Miss Brown". For the next five years, Madge continued to find success on Broadway appearing in similar roles. Within 3 months of the formation of Goldwyn Pictures, Sam Goldwyn had signed Madge Kennedy to a big movie contract. Goldwyn was at his best when it came to publicity. It was Goldwyn himself who gave Madge the title of "winsome", and Madge was as winsome and sweet as her light comedies suggested. Some of her films were 'Baby Mine (1917)', 'Our Little Wife (1918)', The Kingdom of Youth (1918)' and 'Dollars and Sense (1920)'. While at Goldwyn, Madge shared a dressing room with actress Mabel Normand. After 21 films, Madge left Goldwyn Pictures and appeared in a handful of films produced by her husband, Harold Bolster. These films included 'The Purple Highway (1923)' and 'Bad Company (1925)'. After that, Madge retired from the screen and returned to the stage. After a few years and her remarriage, Madge retired from acting altogether. In 1952, Madge was coaxed out of retirement by George Cukor for the small role of Judge Carroll in 'The Marrying Kind (1952)'. With that, she started another career as Character Actress appearing in films like 'Lust for Life (1956)', 'The Catered Affair (1956)', 'North by Northwest (1959)' and 'The Day of the Locust (1975)'. On the small screen, Madge played the part of Aunt Martha on "Leave It to Beaver (1957)".
- Actress
- Producer
Bessie Barriscale was born on 30 September 1884 in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for Rose of the Rancho (1914), Home (1916) and The Painted Soul (1915). She was married to Howard Hickman. She died on 30 June 1965 in Kentfield, California, USA.The Devil(1915)- Viola Barry was born on 4 March 1894 in Evanston, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for Evangeline (1911), The Sea Wolf (1913) and Martin Eden (1914). She was married to F. McGrew Willis and Jack Conway. She died on 2 April 1964 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Writer
- Actress
- Casting Director
Diminutive red-headed actress, playwright and screenwriter. Her marriage to star actor Basil Rathbone was one of the most enduring in show business, lasting from 1926 until his death in 1967. The Rathbones were legendary in the 1930's for giving the most lavish Hollywood parties at their luxurious mansion in the Los Feliz Hills, replete with a 60-foot dining hall. The villa had once been home to famed heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey and his wife, actress Estelle Taylor.
Ouida was of Spanish, French and English extraction and moved to America in her early teens. After completing her education, she joined the Shubert Stock Company in Brooklyn. Having gained experience in vaudeville, she starred in the 1911 Broadway melodrama 'The Stranger' with Wilton Lackaye at the Bijou. A multi-faceted woman, she ran a talent agency during World War I, whose illustrious clients included Adolphe Menjou, Lionel Atwill and Alla Nazimova. From 1915, she forsook the stage for a career as a writer, at once doing articles and short stories for The New York Herald and scenarios/screenplays for motion pictures. In 1921, she wrote the script and designed the costumes for 'Peter Ibbetson'. Her screen writing career lasted until 1923 and included work for Goldwyn, Pathe, First National and Paramount (at one time heading their scenario department).
In 1921, Ouida saw Basil Rathboon on stage in the Broadway play 'The Czarina' and was smitten. After meeting at a party two years later, the feeling turned out to be decidedly mutual and Ouida forthwith retired from films to become Hollywood's premier socialite, and, after 1926, Mrs. Basil Rathbone. She continued to write occasional plays, notably 'Sherlock Holmes' in 1953, as a vehicle for her husband.- Dorothy Bernard was born on 25 June 1890 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She was an actress, known for The Rainbow (1917), The Little Gypsy (1915) and The Wild Goose (1921). She was married to A.H. Van Buren. She died on 15 December 1955 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
The daughter of a poet, Doris Kenyon made her stage and screen debuts in 1915. She was often cast as a pleasant heroine in many silent films. She co-starred with popular silent-era actors like Rudolph Valentino and her future husband Milton Sills. Due to her stage experience she made a smooth transition to sound films. She could still be seen on television in the mid-'60s.- Actress
- Writer
Vivian Rich was born on 26 May 1893 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for In Trust (1915), The Girl and the Greaser (1913) and A World of Folly (1920). She was married to Ralph W. Jesson. She died on 17 November 1957 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Sylvia Breamer was one of a flock of Australians who came to Hollywood in the early silent era. She had been a stage actress in her native Sydney for several years, and had played in several Australian productions of American stage plays, which met with great success. Hoping to capitalize on that success, she traveled to the US to try her luck on Broadway. She wasn't there long before word got to Hollywood of an extraordinarily beautiful young Australian actress who had just hit Broadway, and soon she found herself making screen tests for several different studios.
Breamer hit Hollywood in 1917 and was put in several Charles Ray comedies for Triangle, and soon was working with such leading men as William S. Hart, Thomas Meighan, and Herbert Rawlinson. She continued making films until 1926. She tried her hand at talkies and made one in 1936, Too Many Parents (1936), but apparently either didn't care for them or was intimidated by them, and left films for good.
Breamer died in New York City in 1943, at the tragically young age of 45. No details of her personal life or death are available. - The daughter of actress Billie Brockwell, Brockwell first appeared on the stage at the age of three. She made her screen debut in Philadelphia for the Lubin Company in 1913, later working with D.W. Griffith. Joining Fox Studios, Brockwell was one of the busiest actresses in town and easily made the transition to sound films. Married to director Robert Broadwell, she was also married for a brief period to Harry Edwards, former husband of actress Louise Glaum. On June 27, Brockwell was a passenger in a car with her boyfriend, advertising man Thomas Stanley Brennan, when the car plunged over a 75 foot embankment in Calabasas. Brockwell was pinned under the car and sustained compound fractures to her jaw, a fractured skull and several other serious injuries Brennan was seriously hurt and survived his injuries. While hospitalized, Brockwell received four blood transfusions and died from peritonitis which developed as a result of her several injuries. Brennan stated that dust and cinders blew into his eyes causing him to lose control of the vehicle, he was exonerated of blame by the coroner's jury.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Gladys Cooper was the daughter of journalist William Frederick Cooper and his wife Mabel Barnett. As a child she was very striking and was used as a photographic model beginning at six years old. She wanted to become an actress and started on that road in 1905 after being discovered by Seymour Hicks to tour with his company in "Bluebell in Fairyland". She came to the London stage in 1906 in "The Belle of Mayfair", and in 1907 took a departure from the legitimate stage to become a member of Frank Curzon's famous Gaiety Girls chorus entertainments at The Gaiety theater. Her more concerted stage work began in 1911 in a production of Oscar Wilde's comedy "The Importance of Being Earnest" which was followed quickly with other roles. From the craze for post cards with photos of actors - that ensued between about 1890 and 1914 - Cooper became a popular subject of maidenly beauty with scenes as Juliet and many others. During World War I her popularity grew into something of pin-up fad for the British military.
In the meantime she sampled the early British silent film industry starting in 1913 with The Eleventh Commandment (1913). She had roles in a few other movies in 1916 and 1917. But in the latter year she joined Frank Curzon to co-manage the Playhouse Theatre. This was a decidedly new direction for a woman of the period. She took sole control from 1927 until other stage commitments in 1933. She was also doing plays, some producing of her own, and a few more films in the early 1920s. It was actually about this time that she achieved major stage actress success. She appeared in W. Somerset Maugham's "Home and Beauty" in London in 1919 and triumphed in her 1922 appearance in Arthur Wing Pinero's "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray". It was ironic that writer Aldous Huxley criticized her performance in "Home and Beauty" as "too impassive, too statuesque, playing all the time as if she were Galatea, newly unpetrified and still unused to the ways of the living world." On the other hand, Maugham himself applauded her for "turning herself from an indifferent actress (at the start of her career) to an extremely competent one". She also debuted the role of Leslie Crosbie (the Bette Davis role in the 1940 film) in Maugham's "The Letter" in 1927.
In 1934 Cooper made her first sound picture in the UK and came to Broadway with "The Shining Hour" which she had been doing in London. She and it were a success, and she followed it with several plays through 1938, including "Macbeth". About this time Hollywood scouts caught wind of her, and she began her 30 odd years in American film. That first film was also Alfred Hitchcock's first Hollywood directorial effort, Rebecca (1940). Hers was a small and light role as Laurence Olivier's gregarious sister, but she stood out all the same. Two years later she bit into the much more substantial role as Bette Davis' domineering and repressive mother in the classic Now, Voyager (1942) for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress - the first of three. Though aristocratic elderly ladies were roles she revisited in various guises, Cooper was busy through 1940s Hollywood.
She returned to London stage work from 1947 and stayed for some early episodic British TV into 1950 before once again returning to the US, but was busy on both sides of the Atlantic until her death. Through the 1950s and into the 1960s Cooper did a few films but was an especially familiar face on American TV in teleplays, a wide range of prime-time episodic shows, and popular weird/sci-fi series: several Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone, and Outer Limits. When Enid Bagnold's "The Chalk Garden" opened in London in 1955, Cooper debuted as Mrs. St. Maugham and brought it to Broadway in October of that year where it ran through March of 1956. Her last major film was My Fair Lady (1964) as Henry Higgins' mother. The year before she had played the part on TV. In the film, the portrait prop of a fine lady over Higgins' fireplace is that of Cooper painted in 1922. She wrote an autobiography (1931) followed by two biographies (1953 and 1979). In 1967 she was honored as a Dame Commander of the Order of British Empire (DBE) for her great accomplishments in furthering acting.- Actress
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The daughter of an opera star turned actress, Gladys Hulette began her career as a three-year old on the stage. On Broadway from 1906, she played juvenile leads in "The Kreutzer Sonata" and "A Doll's House". She was also Tyltyl in "The Blue Bird". A genuine pioneer of the movies, Gladys first starred on screen in Carl Laemmle's one-reel IMP production of Hiawatha (1909). During the 1910's and 20's, she appeared variously in films with Edison, Biograph, Thanhouser, Vitagraph, Astra and First National. In 1917, she was voted most popular actress by students of New York University. In truth, Gladys was a true all-rounder, who took on just about anything from high drama to slapstick farce. She even starred as the titular heroine in the comedy Prudence, the Pirate (1916). In private life, Gladys was fond of flowers, a voracious reader of books, including classic literature and a painter in oils, whose works occasionally found their way into major exhibitions. Long after leaving the Hollywood scene, she found work as a ticket seller at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.- Catherine Calvert was born on 20 April 1890 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She was an actress, known for The Career of Katherine Bush (1919), The Heart of Maryland (1921) and The Green Caravan (1922). She was married to George A. Carrothers and Paul Armstrong. She died on 18 January 1971 in Uniondale, Long Island, New York, USA.
- Edith Johnson's combination of luck and beauty ensured her a Hollywood career. The luck occurred because of her growing up in Rochester, New York, the home of the Eastman Kodak Co. Her beauty resulted in her being appointed by Kodak as "The Kodak Girl," with her face appearing in virtually all of the newspapers and magazines of the day in Kodak advertisements, leading her to be called "the most photographed girl in the world"--and all before she finished college. Her celebrity resulted in her being offered a film contract by the Selig Co., which she accepted as soon as she graduated from Vassar. Her first few films were with actor William Duncan, whom she eventually married, and after several more films for Selig, she jumped ship to Universal in 1916. Her two-year stay there ended when she moved to Vitagraph. She began making serials with her husband, who both starred in and directed them, for Vitagraph and then Universal again. The films were enormously successful, but Duncan and Johnson chafed under the heavy-handed administration at Universal, and they retired after their last film for the studio, 1924's "Wolves of the North." They had a vaudeville act together for a while, then settled down to the task of raising their family. Duncan took on several film roles later in life, most notably as Hopalong Cassidy's sidekick "Buck Peters", but his wife had no desire to return to films, and didn't. She outlived her husband by eight years, and died in 1969.
- According to an article in The Paterson (New Jersey) Morning Call of 15 April 1921, she had just returned "...to the screen after a long absence, during which she was busy making history in Europe as a driver of one of the American hospital corps ambulances." Other accounts say she did this in New York during the Spanish Flu epidemic.
- A soulful, fragile-looking blonde beauty, silent screen star Jane Novak was born in St. Louis, Missouri on January 12, 1896, and supposedly began her film career at age 17 when a director took to a photo of the young girl on the makeup table of her own aunt, the film star Anne Schaefer. From 1913 Jane appeared in a host of short films from the Vitagraph Company, a few of her earliest being Anne of the Trails (1913), At the Sign of the Lost Angel (1913) and Sacrifice (1913) all of which starred her Aunt Anne. Jane almost immediately moved into female leads and second leads with such films as Deception (1913) and Any Port in a Storm (1913).
She continued to make Vitagraph shorts during the years 1914 and 1915, including a couple of comedies vehicles for Harold Lloyd -- Willie's Haircut (1914) and Just Nuts (1915) -- before gradually moving into feature films. At Universal she appeared opposite Harry Carey in the serial Graft (1915) and with actor/director Hobart Bosworth in The Iron Hand (1916). Elsewhere, she, like her equally successful younger sister/actress, Eva Novak, got a handle on the western genre with her delicate looks slightly belying a vitality for the outdoors. Jane appeared opposite William S. Hart, who directed many of his own productions, in The Tiger Man (1918), _Selfish Yates (1918), The Money Corral (1919), Wagon Tracks (1919), and Three Word Brand (1921). At one point she was Hart's fiancée after divorcing actor Frank Newburg, but it ended and their professional relationship ended as well. The actress also appeared alongside her sister's favorite co-star, Tom Mix, in Treat 'Em Rough (1919), .
Throughout the productive 1920s, Jane's high-caliber male co-stars included Charles Ray, Sessue Hayakawa, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery, Tom Moore, House Peters, John Bowers, Buck Jones, Kenneth Harlan, Earle Williams, James Rennie, John Harron, and even Lightning the Dog. Sisters Jane and Eva did appear on screen together in The Man Life Passed By (1923). Two of Jane's finest performances came in melodrama -- Thelma (1922) and The Lullaby (1924).
Like her sister, Jane's leading lady career faltered come the advent of talking pictures. Following her sixth billed role in the Richard Dix western Redskin (1929), she would not return to the screen until seven years later with the Harry Carey western Ghost Town (1936) in which she had a prime supporting role as a gun moll. From then on, small, often uncredited roles came her way sporadically in such notable films as Foreign Correspondent (1940), Gallant Lady (1942), Desert Fury (1947), The File on Thelma Jordon (1949), The Furies (1950), and her last, About Mrs. Leslie (1954).
Jane made a fortune in late 1920s real estate and film production but lost it all following the 1929 stock market crash. In 1974, Harper & Row published her cookbook entitled "Treasury of Chicken Cookery". Sister Eva died at age 90 of pneumonia at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Woodland Hills, California in 1988. Jane followed her two years later (of a stroke), about a month after her 94th birthday also at the Woodland Hills Hospital. - June Caprice was born Helen Elizabeth Lawson in Arlington, Massachusetts on November 19, 1895. Her parents, Anna and Peter Lawson, were both born in Norway. June was educated at the Boston Conservatory of Music and began her acting career on the stage. At age 16 the blue-eyed blonde won a Mary Pickford lookalike contest and was then discovered by producer William Fox, who offered her a contract and promised to make her one of Hollywood's biggest stars. In 1916 she made her film debut in "Caprice Of The Mountains." She had starring roles in more than a dozen films at Fox including "A Small Town Girl", "Child Of The Wild", and "Every Girl's Dream", almost always cast as a innocent ingenue. The petite actress was just five feet two inches tall and weighed 105 pounds. She appeared on numerous magazine covers and by 1918 was getting more fan mail than any other actress at the studio. During World War I she volunteered as a nurses aid.
After leaving Fox in 1919 she starred in the dramas "Rogue and Romance" and "The Love Cheat." She also modeled for Coca Cola calendars. In 1920 June married Harry F. Millarde, who had directed her in several films; soon after she decided to quit acting. Her final role was in the 1921 serial "The Sky Ranger." She gave birth to daughter June Elizabeth on June 29, 1922, and for the next decade she devoted herself to being a wife and mother. Tragically, in 1931 her husband Harry died from a heart attack, and she and her daughter moved in with her parents in Los Angeles. Then in her late thirties she was diagnosed with cancer; her health quickly deteriorated and she died on November 9, 1936 at only 40 years old. She was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Her 14-year-old daughter June Elizabeth Millarde was raised by her grandparents; she later changed her name to Toni Seven and became a model and actress. - Zena Keefe was born in San Francisco, California, on June 26, 1896. The actress who was to make a total of 28 films started her career at the age of 16 when she played a bit part in The Hieroglyphic (1912). After The Gamblers (1912) later that year, four years elapsed before she would appear onscreen again, in The Rail Rider (1916). Her first real meaty role, however, came later that year when she played "Mary Winslow" in Her Maternal Right (1916). For the rest of her career she was not as busy as she would have liked--in the film industry's early years it was not unusual for performers to make 20 films a year, but Zena was turning out only three or four. She stayed with her craft throughout the 1920s, making her final film in 1924, Trouping with Ellen (1924).
On November 16, 1977, Zena Keefe died at the age of 81 in Danvers, Massachusetts. - Dolores Cassinelli was born on 4 July 1888 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for Jamestown (1923), Christopher Columbus (1923) and The Right to Lie (1919). She died on 26 April 1984 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.
- Barbara Castleton was born on 14 September 1894 in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA. She was an actress, known for On Trial (1917), The Net (1923) and Just Sylvia (1918). She was married to George H. Zimmerman. She died on 23 December 1978 in Boca Raton, Florida, USA.
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Grace Davison was born in Oceanside, Long Island, New York, USA. She is known for Wives of Men (1918), Atonement (1919) and The Hidden Code (1920).- Actress
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Mia May was a minor film actress in Germany who was born in 1884 with the birth name of Maria Pfleger. Her film career didn't start until she was 34 years old when she appeared in the production of HILDE WARREN UND DER TOD in 1917.- Silent-screen actress Ethel Clayton was a convent-educated girl from Champaign, IL, who sought work as a stage actress after finishing her education. She secured small parts here and there, but hit the big time when she went to work for the Frawley Organization, which had several touring stock companies. She got small parts at first but then began getting bigger ones until finally she was getting star billing. Howver, the advent of motion pictures soon piqued her curiosity, and a visit to a film studio aroused her interest even more. Producer Siegmund Lubin offered to star her in one of his productions, she consented--"just this one, though"--and made her film debut in "The Great Divide". However, after she saw the completed film, she consented to do another, The Lion and the Mouse (1914), and soon she had given up the stage altogether in favor of pictures. It was the beginning of a career that lasted more than 30 years and comprised more than 180 films. Her last one was The Perils of Pauline (1947), in which she had an uncredited bit part, after which she left the screen. She died in Oxnard, CA, in 1966.
- Marguerite Clayton was born on 12 April 1891 in Ogden, Utah, USA. She was an actress, known for The Night Workers (1917), The Dream Doll (1917) and Wolfblood (1925). She was married to Victor Bertrandias. She died on 20 December 1968 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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American actress, originally of leading roles, whose career lasted from silent days into the television era. A native of Rhode Island, she attended St. Mary's Seminary in Narragansett, Rhode Island, then, following her mother's death in 1911, came to Los Angeles as a teenager to live with her actress aunt. She got work as an extra and began her career at 15 at Universal, in fairly substantial roles. By her mid-twenties, she was playing leads and second leads, including the role of Abraham Lincoln's lost love, Ann Rutledge, in The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln (1924). But sound pictures found her roles diminishing, and throughout the next three decades she played smaller and smaller parts. She was a favorite of John Ford(they played bridge together), who used her in thirteen films, but rarely in substantial roles. She was also, for a time, the voice of Walt Disney's "Minnie Mouse." She lived long enough to find herself in demand for documentary interviews on the subject of early Hollywood. Married for a time to Beverly Hills real-estate developer James Cornelius, she survived that marriage by more than sixty years. She died in 1998, two and one-half months before her 99th birthday.- Little-known today but regarded in her time as one of the screen's great beauties, New Jersey-born Marguerite Courtot was sent in 1909, at age 12, to be educated in a European convent. By the time she returned to the US she had blossomed into such a beauty that she soon had a career as a top photographer's model; it didn't take long for offers from the film industry (much of which, at the time, was based in New Jersey) to come pouring in. Her mother, determined that Marguerite would finish her education, refused all offers until 1912, when she let her daughter take some small bit parts in movies filmed at a local New Jersey studio. Within a year Marguerite went from extra work to starring roles. Although excelling in comedy roles, she preferred to do action/drama pictures, and by 1915 was making serials for Kalem. She was off the screen for a year during World War I, when she decided to help in the war effort and toured the country selling war bonds and savings stamps. She returned to the screen in 1918 playing a World War I Belgian refugee in The Unbeliever. In 1919 she was in a succession of serials, all of which were extremely successful. In 1918 her co-star in The Unbeliever was actor 'Raymond McKee (I)' and she starred with him again in Down to the Sea in Ships in 1922. They were married soon after. She made only a few more films, then retired from the industry to raise a family. She died in Hawaii, her longtime home, in 1984.
- Lucy Cotton was born on 29 August 1895 in Houston, Texas, USA. She was an actress, known for Life Without Soul (1915), The Miracle of Love (1919) and Blind Love (1920). She was married to Prince Vladimir Eristavi-Tchitcherine, W. F. Magraw, Charles Hann Jr., Col. Lytton Gray Ament and Edward Russell Thomas. She died on 12 December 1948 in Miami Beach, Florida, USA.
- Emmy Wehlen was born in 1887 in Mannheim, Germany. She was an actress, known for The Duchess of Doubt (1917), The Pretenders (1916) and Miss Robinson Crusoe (1917). She died in 1977.
- Evelyn Greeley's life before becoming a film star is somewhat mysterious, but she appears to have been born in Austria as Evelyn Huber in 1888. She later attended the University School for Girls in Chicago and the Frances Shimer Academy (now known as Shimer College), which offered high-level training in music and art.
Greeley began her acting career on stage with the Poli Players stock company. She worked as an extra for Essanay Studios in Chicago for a year before getting her first credited role, in the 1915 Quality Pictures production The Second in Command (1915). Soon thereafter, she was signed by the World Film Corporation, appearing in about two dozen movies from 1917 to 1919, frequently starring opposite Carlyle Blackwell.
After losing her World Film contract in 1920, Greeley appeared less frequently. She gave her last on-screen performance in _Bulldog Drummond (1922)_, and decided to take up the married life. Her first marriage, to fellow actor John Smiley, fell apart in a matter of months, but her second, to wealthy businessman James Rand, lasted for some 35 years. After Rand and Greeley divorced in 1960, she married Morgan Laity. She died in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1975. - Considered in her day to be one of the screen's great beauties, Vola Vale was born born Violet Smith in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in Rochester. As a youngster she appeared in amateur stage productions in Rochester, and at age 15 made her film debut under her real name (she didn't use Vola Vale until 1916). Under contract to Biograph, she appeared in a wide variety of films. She left that studio in 1916 and joined Universal Pictures, where she appeared in a long series of comedy and dramatic shorts before making her feature debut in 1917. She worked not only for Universal but for many independent companies, and made several films with veteran western star William S. Hart. Her popularity soared in the 1917-1918 period as she turned out a slew of films for many different studios. In 1918 she married director Albert Russell, who specialized in westerns, and began making westerns herself. After she and Russell divorced, she abandoned westerns and began turning out "society" dramas. Her popularity began to decline in 1923, and she began appearing in more and more undistinguished, low-budget independent fodder for the states-rights market. She met director John Gorman in 1926 while appearing in one of his films and they were married later that year. She retired from the screen in 1927. She and Gorman divorced, and she later married Lawrence McDougal, and that lasted until he died in 1970. Several months later, in October of 1970, she herself died of heart disease and diabetes.
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The Davenport family was well known in theatrical circles. Her aunt, Fanny Davenport was considered one of the greatest stage actresses of her time and her father, Harry Davenport, was a Broadway star before later venturing into movies. Her mother, Alice Davenport, was a respected Broadway and film actress. With a background on the stage, Dorothy was in her early teens when she started playing bit parts in films. By the time she was 17, she was a star at Universal, where she would meet a young actor-assistant director-gopher-scenario writer named Wallace Reid. Called on to act with him in a film, she was frustrated by his apparent lack of acting ability on the first day, but was smitten with him on the third day of their work together. Dorothy was a horsewoman of distinction who had no regard for a man who couldn't stay in the saddle. When Wallace proved to be an excellent horseman, she was hooked.
After six months working on a job with another film company, Wallace returned to Universal and they married on October 13, 1913. The newlyweds continued to work. He directed and starred with Dorothy in two films a week for the next year. When Wallace left Universal Dorothy also left films, returning in 1916 to appear in a handful of them. In 1917 she gave birth to Wallace Reid Jr. and became a full-time mother and wife.
When Wallace Reid died from morphine addiction in 1923, Dorothy and Bessie Love made Human Wreckage (1923), a film that dealt with the dangers of narcotics. Dorothy would not return to the screen again until she directed and acted in The Red Kimono (1926). Dorothy later in life dabbled as a producer and a writer.