Marguerite Clark
Encyclopedia
Marguerite Clark was an American
stage
and silent film
actress.
, Clark was educated at a Roman Catholic
boarding school
in Cincinnati
. She finished school at age 16, and, having decided to pursue a career in the theatre
, she quickly showed herself to be a gifted actress.
After performing for only a short time, she made her Broadway
debut in 1900. The 17-year-old went on to star at various venues. In 1903 she was seen on Broadway opposite that hulking comedian DeWolf Hopper
in Mr. Pickwick. The 6 in 6 in (1.98 m) Hopper dwarfed the nearly 5 feet (1.5 m) Clark in their scenes together. Several adventure-fantasy roles followed. In 1909 Clark starred in the whimsical costume play The Beauty Spot keeping in line with the kind of fantasy stories she would soon do in films and which would become her hallmark. In 1910 Clark appeared in The Wishing Ring, a play directed by Cecil DeMille and later made into a motion picture by Maurice Tourneur
. That same 1910 season had Clark appearing in Baby Mine, a popular play produced by William A. Brady
. In 1912 Clark performed in a starring role with John Barrymore
, Doris Keane
and Gail Kane
in the play The Affairs of Anatol later made into a motion picture by Clark's future movie studio Famous Players-Lasky(Paramount) and directed by Cecil DeMille. Also in 1912 Clark starred in a memorable production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This role was a definition of Clark's persona, and she would make an influential film version of the story in 1916. Clark's popularity led to her signing a contract in 1914 to make motion pictures with Famous Players-Lasky Corporation.
, that belied her years. Also, film was not developed or mature enough to showcase Clark at her youthful best at the turn of the century. These were one of the reasons established Broadway stars refused early film offers. Feature films were unheard of when Clark was in her early 20s. She made her first appearance on screen in the short film Wildflower, directed by Allan Dwan
.
In 1915 she starred as "Gretchen" in a feature-length production of The Goose Girl
based on a 1909 best-selling novel by Harold MacGrath
. She performed in the feature-length production The Seven Sisters
(1915), directed by Sidney Olcott
, and she reprised a Broadway role, starring in the first feature-length film version of Snow White
(1916).
Clark was directed in this by J. Searle Dawley
, as well as in a number of films, notably when she played the characters of both "Little Eva St. Clair" and "Topsy" in the feature Uncle Tom's Cabin
(1918). That year Marguerite Clark married New Orleans, Louisiana
plantation owner Harry Palmerston Williams (1880–1936) with whom she would remain until his death.
She starred in Come Out of the Kitchen (1919), which was filmed in Pass Christian, Mississippi
, at Ossian Hall. The same year, she enrolled as a yeowoman
in the naval reserves.
Marguerite Clark made all but one of her 40 films with Famous Players-Lasky, her last with them in 1920 titled Easy to Get, in which she starred opposite Harrison Ford
.
Her next film, in 1921, was made by her own production company for First National Pictures distribution. As one of the most popular actresses going into the 1920s, and one of the industry's best paid, her name alone was enough to ensure reasonable box office
success. As such, Scrambled Wives was made under her direction, following which she retired at age 38 to be with her husband at their country estate in New Orleans.
After the death of her husband in 1936, Marguerite Clark spent time in New York City
, where she died from pneumonia
in 1940 at the age of 57. She was buried with her husband in Metairie Cemetery
in New Orleans.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Marguerite Clark has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
at 6304 Hollywood Boulevard.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
stage
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
and silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
actress.
Early life and theater
Born to a farming family in Avondale, Cincinnati, OhioOhio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, Clark was educated at a Roman Catholic
Catholic school
Catholic schools are maintained parochial schools or education ministries of the Catholic Church. the Church operates the world's largest non-governmental school system...
boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
in Cincinnati
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
. She finished school at age 16, and, having decided to pursue a career in the theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, she quickly showed herself to be a gifted actress.
After performing for only a short time, she made her Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut in 1900. The 17-year-old went on to star at various venues. In 1903 she was seen on Broadway opposite that hulking comedian DeWolf Hopper
DeWolf Hopper
William DeWolf Hopper was an American actor, singer, comedian, and theatrical producer. Although a star of the musical stage, he was best-known for performing the popular baseball poem Casey at the Bat. -Biography:...
in Mr. Pickwick. The 6 in 6 in (1.98 m) Hopper dwarfed the nearly 5 feet (1.5 m) Clark in their scenes together. Several adventure-fantasy roles followed. In 1909 Clark starred in the whimsical costume play The Beauty Spot keeping in line with the kind of fantasy stories she would soon do in films and which would become her hallmark. In 1910 Clark appeared in The Wishing Ring, a play directed by Cecil DeMille and later made into a motion picture by Maurice Tourneur
Maurice Tourneur
Maurice Tourneur was an important international film director and screenwriter.-Life:Born Maurice Thomas in the Belleville district of Paris, France, his father was a jeweler. As a young man, Maurice Thomas first trained as a graphic designer and a magazine illustrator but was soon drawn to the...
. That same 1910 season had Clark appearing in Baby Mine, a popular play produced by William A. Brady
William A. Brady
William Aloysius Brady, Sr. was an American theatre actor, producer, and sports promoter.-Biography:Brady was born to a newspaperman in 1863. His father kidnapped him from San Francisco and brought him to New York City, where his father worked as a writer while William was forced to sell...
. In 1912 Clark performed in a starring role with John Barrymore
John Barrymore
John Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...
, Doris Keane
Doris Keane
Doris Keane was an American actress.She was born in the USA but educated largely in Europe.Her first professional role was in Whitewashing Julia in 1903. This was a small role but she went on to play leading roles in The Happy Marriage in 1909 and The Lights o' London in 1911.In 1913, she played...
and Gail Kane
Gail Kane
Gail Kane was a stage and silent movie actress born as Abigail Kane in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.She stood 5'7" tall, weighed 142 pounds, and had dark brown hair and eyes. She attended a private school in Newburgh, New York, but eschewed additional education to become an actress...
in the play The Affairs of Anatol later made into a motion picture by Clark's future movie studio Famous Players-Lasky(Paramount) and directed by Cecil DeMille. Also in 1912 Clark starred in a memorable production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This role was a definition of Clark's persona, and she would make an influential film version of the story in 1916. Clark's popularity led to her signing a contract in 1914 to make motion pictures with Famous Players-Lasky Corporation.
Late starting film career
At age 31 it was relatively late in life for a film actress to begin a career with starring roles, but the diminutive Clark, who stood 4 ft 10 in (1.47 m) tall, had a little-girl look, like Mary PickfordMary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
, that belied her years. Also, film was not developed or mature enough to showcase Clark at her youthful best at the turn of the century. These were one of the reasons established Broadway stars refused early film offers. Feature films were unheard of when Clark was in her early 20s. She made her first appearance on screen in the short film Wildflower, directed by Allan Dwan
Allan Dwan
Allan Dwan was a pioneering Canadian-born American motion picture director, producer and screenwriter.-Early life:...
.
In 1915 she starred as "Gretchen" in a feature-length production of The Goose Girl
The Goose Girl
The Goose Girl is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. Since the second edition published in 1819, The Goose Girl has been recorded as Tale no. 89....
based on a 1909 best-selling novel by Harold MacGrath
Harold MacGrath
Harold MacGrath was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter.Also known occasionally as Harold McGrath, he was born in Syracuse, New York...
. She performed in the feature-length production The Seven Sisters
The Seven Sisters (1915 film)
The Seven Sisters was a silent romantic comedy produced by Adolph Zukor and Daniel Frohman, and was directed by Sidney Olcott. The film is based on the ensemble play Seven Sisters by Edith Ellis Furness and Ferenc Herczeg....
(1915), directed by Sidney Olcott
Sidney Olcott
Sidney Olcott was a Canadian-born film producer, director, actor and screenwriter.-Biography:Born John Sidney Alcott in Toronto, he became one of the first great directors of the motion picture business...
, and she reprised a Broadway role, starring in the first feature-length film version of Snow White
Snow White (1916 film)
Snow White is a 1916 American silent film made by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and produced by Adolph Zukor and Daniel Frohman. It was directed by J...
(1916).
Clark was directed in this by J. Searle Dawley
J. Searle Dawley
J. Searle Dawley was an American director and screenwriter. He directed 149 films between 1907 and 1926. He was born in Del Norte, Colorado and died in Hollywood, California.-Selected filmography:...
, as well as in a number of films, notably when she played the characters of both "Little Eva St. Clair" and "Topsy" in the feature Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....
(1918). That year Marguerite Clark married New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...
plantation owner Harry Palmerston Williams (1880–1936) with whom she would remain until his death.
She starred in Come Out of the Kitchen (1919), which was filmed in Pass Christian, Mississippi
Pass Christian, Mississippi
Pass Christian , nicknamed The Pass, is a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, United States, along the Gulf of Mexico. It is part of the Gulfport–Biloxi, Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, at Ossian Hall. The same year, she enrolled as a yeowoman
Yeoman
Yeoman refers chiefly to a free man owning his own farm, especially from the Elizabethan era to the 17th century. Work requiring a great deal of effort or labor, such as would be done by a yeoman farmer, came to be described as "yeoman's work"...
in the naval reserves.
Marguerite Clark made all but one of her 40 films with Famous Players-Lasky, her last with them in 1920 titled Easy to Get, in which she starred opposite Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford (silent film actor)
Harrison Ford was an American stage and film actor. He was a leading Broadway theatre performer and a star of the silent film era.-Career:...
.
Her next film, in 1921, was made by her own production company for First National Pictures distribution. As one of the most popular actresses going into the 1920s, and one of the industry's best paid, her name alone was enough to ensure reasonable box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
success. As such, Scrambled Wives was made under her direction, following which she retired at age 38 to be with her husband at their country estate in New Orleans.
After the death of her husband in 1936, Marguerite Clark spent time in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where she died from pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
in 1940 at the age of 57. She was buried with her husband in Metairie Cemetery
Metairie Cemetery
Metairie Cemetery is a cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The name has caused some people to mistakenly presume that the cemetery is located in Metairie, Louisiana, but it is located within the New Orleans city limits, on Metairie Road .-History:This site was previously a horse...
in New Orleans.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Marguerite Clark has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
at 6304 Hollywood Boulevard.
Filmography
- WildflowerWildflower (1914 film)Wildflower was a 1914 American silent romantic drama film produced by Adolph Zukor and directed by Allan Dwan. It starred stage actress Marguerite Clark in her first motion picture. Clark would be one of the few stage stars to go on to superstardom in silent pictures...
(1914) - The Crucible (1914)
- The Goose Girl (1915)
- Gretna Green (1915)
- The Pretty Sister of JoseThe Pretty Sister of Jose (1915 film)The Pretty Sister of Jose is a silent film from 1915 produced by Daniel Frohman and distributed by Adolph Zukor's Famous Players film company. It was directed by Allan Dwan and starred Marguerite Clark and Jack Pickford, the brother of Clark's industry rival...
(1915) - The Seven SistersThe Seven Sisters (1915 film)The Seven Sisters was a silent romantic comedy produced by Adolph Zukor and Daniel Frohman, and was directed by Sidney Olcott. The film is based on the ensemble play Seven Sisters by Edith Ellis Furness and Ferenc Herczeg....
(1915) - Helene of the North (1915)
- Still Waters (1915)
- The Prince & the Pauper (1915)
- Mice and Men (1916)
- Out of the Drifts (1916)
- Molly Make-Believe (1916)
- Silks and Satins (1916)
- Little Lady Eileen (1916)
- Miss George Washington (1916)
- Snow WhiteSnow White (1916 film)Snow White is a 1916 American silent film made by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and produced by Adolph Zukor and Daniel Frohman. It was directed by J...
(1916) - The Fortunes of Fifi (1917)
- The Valentine Girl (1917)
- The Amazons (1917)
- Bab's Diary (1917)
- Bab's Burglar (1917)
- Bab's Matinee Idol (1917)
- The Seven Swans (1917)
- Rich Man, Poor Man (1918)
- Prunella (1918)
- Uncle Tom's Cabin (1918)
- Out of a Clear Sky (1918)
- The Biggest and the Littlest Lady in the World (1918)
- Little Miss HooverLittle Miss HooverLittle Miss Hoover is a 1918 silent film comedy/drama produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The picture was directed by John S. Robertson and starred Marguerite Clark. It is one of the few surviving performances on film of Miss Clark with a 35mm print being held by...
(1918) - Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1919)
- Three Men and a Girl (1919)
- Let's Elope (1919)
- Come Out of the Kitchen (1919)
- Girls (1919)
- Widow by Proxy (1919)
- Luck in Pawn (1919)
- A Girl Named Mary (1919)
- All of a Sudden Peggy (1920)
- Easy to Get (1920)
- Scrambled Wives (1921)
External links
- Marguerite Clark in an excerpt from Snow White (1916).
- Some contemporary interviews with Marguerite Clark
- Marguerite Clark page at Corbis
- Marguerite Clark gallery NY Public Library
- Marguerite Clark bio & pics
- portrait of Marguerite Clark and DeWolf Hopper on Broadway in Happyland (1905) Univ. of Washington/Sayre Collection