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Wanda Hawley (a.k.a. Wanda Petit), (July 30, 1895 – March 18, 1963) was a veteran of the silent screen films era. She entered the theatrical profession with an amateur group in Seattle, and later toured the U.S. and Canada as a singer. She co-starred with Rudolph Valentino in the 1922's The Young Rajah, and rose to stardom in a number of Cecil B. DeMille and director Sam Wood's films.
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Helen Jerome Eddy (February 25, 1897 – January 27, 1990) was a motion picture actress from New York, New York. She was noted as a character actress who played genteel heroines in films such as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917).
Eddy was born on February 25, 1897, and was raised in Los Angeles, California. As a youth, she acted in productions put on by the Pasadena Playhouse. She became interested in films through the studios of Siegmund Lubin, which was based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In her youth they opened a backlot in her Los Angeles neighborhood. Eddy died of heart failure on January 27, 1990, in Alhambra, California, at the age of 92.
Eddy's first movie was The Discontented Man (1915). Soon after, she left Lubin and joined Paramount Pictures. At this time she began to play the roles for which she is best remembered. Other films in which the actress participated include The March Hare (1921), The Dark Angel, Camille, Quality Street, The Divine Lady (1929) and the first Our Gang talkie Small Talk (1929).
She made Girls Demand Excitement in 1931 and her final film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, in 1947. Even as a seasoned performer in the late 1920s it was remarked that Eddy looked "astonishingly young in appearance to have been in pictures for so many years".
Julia Faye was born on September 24, 1893 in Richmond, Virginia, USA. She was an actress, known for The Ten Commandments (1956), Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). She died on April 6, 1966 in Hollywood, California, USA.
She appeared in more Cecil B. DeMille movies than any other actress. She appeared in many of his silents, and in every one of his movies from Union Pacific (1939) on. She was Cecil B. DeMille's mistress off-screen for quite some time. The devoted DeMille kept her employed in bit parts long after her career (and their relationship) was over. Off-screen, she was known to be a highly skilled horsewoman.
Like many of her contemporaries, her home in Hollywood contained a Chinese room, filled with oriental art objects.
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William Lawrence Boyd (June 5, 1895 – September 12, 1972) was an American film actor who is best known for portraying the cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy. Boyd was born in Hendrysburg, Ohio, and reared in Cambridge, Ohio and Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was the son of a day laborer, Charles William Boyd, and his wife, the former Lida Wilkens (aka Lyda). Following his father's death, he moved to California and worked as an orange picker, surveyor, tool dresser and auto salesman.
In Hollywood, he found work as an extra in Why Change Your Wife? and other films. During World War I, he enlisted in the army but was exempt from military service because of a "weak heart". More prominent film roles followed, including his breakout role as Jack Moreland in Cecil B. DeMille's The Road to Yesterday (1925) which starred also Joseph Schildkraut, Jetta Goudal, and Vera Reynolds. Boyd's performance in the film was praised by critics, while movie-goers were equally impressed by his easy charm, charisma, and intense good-looks. Due to Boyd's growing popularity, DeMille soon cast him as the leading man in the highly acclaimed silent drama film, The Volga Boatman. Boyd's role as Feodor blew critics away, and with Boyd now firmly established as a matinee idol and romantic leading man, he began earning an annual salary of $100,000. He acted in DeMille's extravaganza The King of Kings (in which he played Simon of Cyrene, helping Jesus carry the cross) and DeMille's Skyscraper (1928). He then appeared in D.W. Griffith's Lady of the Pavements (1929).
Radio Pictures ended Boyd's contract in 1931 when his picture was mistakenly run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor, William "Stage" Boyd, on gambling and liquor charges. Although the newspaper apologized, explaining the mistake in the following day's newspaper, Boyd said, "The damage was already done." William "Stage" Boyd died in 1935, the same year William L. Boyd became Hopalong Cassidy, the role that led to his enduring fame. But at the time in 1931, Boyd was virtually broke and without a job, and for a few years he was credited in films as "Bill Boyd" to prevent being mistaken for the other William Boyd.
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Edythe Chapman (October 8, 1863 - October 15, 1948), was an American stage and silent film actress from Rochester, New York. As early as 1898 she appeared in New York, New York in the Charity Ball. Edythe performed at the Shubert Theater in Brooklyn, New York in a production of The Light Eternal in 1907.
Mrs. Chapman played maternal roles in numerous silent motion pictures and became known in the 1920s as Hollywood's Mother. She played Ma Jones in the film version of Lightnin' (1925), a screen production which featured Will Rogers. Edythe was Grandmother Janeway in Man Crazy (1927).
Miss Chapman came to Hollywood around 1909 with her husband, screen and stage actor, James Neill. The couple met in Cincinnati, Ohio when Miss Chapman was working in Mr. Neill's stock company. They were married in 1897. The two began making movies with Cecil B. Demille and other noteworthy directors and producers. They had leading roles in The Ten Commandments (1923), Manslaughter (1922), The Little American (1917), and other silent motion pictures. Mr. Neill died in 1931.
The final movie in which Edythe appeared was Double Crossroads in 1930. Prior to this, she had a large role in Navy Blues (1929).
Edythe Chapman Neill died in Glendale, California in 1948 after a brief illness.
The son of a physician, Raymond Hatton entered films in 1909, eventually appearing in almost 500 other pictures. In early silents he formed a comedy team with big, burly Wallace Beery. He was best known as the tobacco-chewing, rip-snorting Rusty Joslin in the Three Mesquiteers series. He was also in the Rough Riders series and appeared as Johnny Mack Brown's sidekick as well. His last Western was, fittingly, Requiem for a Gunfighter (1965). Passed away only five days after the death of his wife, on October 21, 1971. They had been married for 62 years.
Spouse Frances Hatton (17 April 1909 - 16 October 1971) (her death)
Lawrence Wells Steers (February 14, 1888 – February 15, 1951) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 550 films between 1917 and 1951. He was born in Indiana, and died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Madame Sul-Te-Wan (born Nellie Crawford; March 7, 1873 – February 1, 1959) was the first African-American actress to sign a film contract and be a featured performer. She was an American stage, film and television actress for over 50 years. The daughter of former slaves, she began her career in entertainment touring the East Coast with various theatrical companies and moved to California to become a member of the fledgling film community. She became known as a character actress, appeared in high-profile films such as The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), and easily navigated the transition to the sound films.
In 1986, she was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.