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'Blanche Sweet' (June 18, 1896 ^[1] – September 6, 1986) was a silent film actress who began her career in the earliest days of the Hollywood motion picture film industry.

Contents

Early life

Rise to stardom

'Talkies'

References

External links

Early life

Born 'Sarah Blanche Sweet' in Chicago, Illinois into a family of stock theater and vaudeville performers, Blanche Sweet entered the entertainment industry at an early age. In 1909, at the age of fourteen she entered the nascent American motion picture industry when she started work at Biograph Studios under contract to director D. W. Griffith. By 1910 she had become a rival to Mary Pickford, also having started for Griffith the year before, which would result in Pickford leaving the studio intermittently (and finally in 1913).

Rise to stardom

Sweet is renowned for her energetic, independent roles, at variance with the 'ideal' Griffith type of vulnerable, often fragile, femininity personified on screen by Mae Marsh and Lillian Gish. After many starring roles, her first real landmark film was the 1911 Griffith thriller ''The Lonedale Operator'', noted for its advanced technique in building suspense. In 1913 she starred in Griffith's first feature-length movie, ''Judith of Bethulia''. In 1914 Sweet was initially cast by Griffith in the part of Elsie Stoneman in his epic ''The Birth of a Nation'' but the role was eventually given to rival actress Lillian Gish, who was Sweet's senior by two years. That same year Sweet parted ways with Griffith and joined Paramount (then Famous Players-Lasky) for the much higher pay that studio was able to afford.
Throughout the 1910s Blanche Sweet continued her career appearing in a number of highly prominent roles in films and remained a publicly popular leading lady. Sweet often starred in vehicles by famous directors Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan and she was recognised by leading film critics of the time to be one of the foremost actresses of the entire silent era, extending her starring career considerably through her versatility. It was during her time working with Neilan that the two began a publicized affair and they married in 1922. The union ended in 1933 with Sweet charging that Neilan was a persistent adulterer.
During the early 1920s Sweet's career continued to prosper and she starred in the first film version of ''Anna Christie'' in 1923. The film is also notable as being the first Eugene O'Neill play to be made into a motion picture. In successive years ''Tess of the D'Urbervilles'' and ''The Sporting Venus'', both directed by Neilan, were also big hits — leading her into a new career phase as one of the newly formed MGM studio's biggest stars.

'Talkies'

As the "Roaring Twenties" wound down, Sweet's career finally faltered with the advent of talkies. She found herself in a similar position of many of her silent film contemporaries; her popularity as a film actress waned in favor of a new crop of performers heavily promoted by the film industry for the new era of sound films. Sweet made just three talking pictures, including her critically lauded performance in the 1930 ''Show Girl in Hollywood'' before retiring from the screen that same year and marrying stage actor Raymond Hackett in 1936. The marriage lasted until Hackett's death in 1958.
Blanche Sweet spent the remainder of her performing career in radio and in secondary Broadway stage roles. Eventually, when her career in both of these fields petered out she began working in a Los Angeles department store. In the late 1960s, her acting legacy was resurrected when film scholars invited her to Europe to receive long overdue recognition as a pioneering film actress of American cinema. She died in New York City of a stroke, aged 90.

References

1. Social Security Death Index (Death Master File), Blanche Hackett, born 18 June 1896, died September 1986. U.S. Census, April 15, 1910, State of California, County of Alameda, City of Berkeley, enumeration district 47, page 8A, family 157, Sarah B. Sweet, age 13 years. U.S. Census, January 1, 1920, State of California, County of Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles, enumeration district 63, page 6A, family 159, Blanche Sweet, age 23 years.

External links

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★ Blanche Sweet at Golden Silents

★ Some contemporary interviews with Blanche Sweet