1896-1981
Actress Ella Hall had a career that was almost completely en encapsuled in the silent era; she was born Ella Augusta Hall on this day in Hoboken, New Jersey (her middle name sometimes occasioned her being credited as "Ella A. Hall"). She was on the live stage at a very early age and was the daughter of actress May Hall (who appears to only have two film credits to her name). Her mother had notions of becoming a film actress herself and took Ella and her family to Hollywood early in young Ella's life; as a result her daughter became a film ingenue herself in her teens. While some sources claim that she entered film with D.W. Griffith in 1910, no film earlier than 1912 can be credibly found in her list of credits (and even those currently remain unconfirmed). She is listed as appearing in two films in 1912: The School Teacher and the Waif directed by Griffith, and Hot Stuff a Mack Sennett film. In her first full year of credited film roles, she has some ten roles to her name, including 4 full color shorts by Kinemacolor and six early shorts co-directed by Lois Weber. Her appearances in the Lois Weber/Phillips Smalley co-directions continued into the next year, when she next appeared in at least half a dozen films fully directed by Weber, the first of which was Woman's Burden (1914). Half way through the year, she landed a top supporting role in the Otis Turner directed period war drama The Spy, based on a James Fenimore Cooper novel; a Universal production, it was her first major role and she was just 18 years of age. 1914 proved to be her banner year, when she appeared in over 30 films, all but one were shorts and most were made by actor/director Robert Z. Leonard (who would go on to twice be nominated for the Best Director Oscar) at Rex Motion Pictures, with distribution by Universal. In mid 1915 she again appeared in a Weber/Smalley directed film, this time a feature. Jewel was a religious themed drama in which Hall took the title role of the same name at the top of the bill. She then appeared later in the year in the Leonard penned, produced and directed feature length Christmas film entitled Christmas Memories in which he cast Hall in the female lead; the film was given a wide release by production company Universal on the 21st of December. He subsequently cast her in his mining drama Secret Love (1916), released in January of 1916; though she was in a smallish supporting role with Jack Curtis and Helen Ware in the leads (the film also had a young Jack Hoxie in a bit part). Though she was back in the lead in his next two features: The Love Girl (July 1916) and Little Eve Edgarton (August 1916), both comedies. These would mark the end of her acting partnership with Leonard. She would go on to star in a whole portfolio of Jack Conway features at Universal after starring in one of actor Rupert Julian's direction efforts The Bugler of Algiers (November 1916). The promotional materials for The Charmer (August 1917) were probably the very first on which her name and likeness were used to sell a film to ticket buyers--this meant that she had become a truly important actress for Universal and a highly bankable one at that. She next appeared at the top of the bill (on the film's posters) in The Spotted Lily (October 1917) a war melodrama that had her acting opposite Jack Nelson. While her next film, My Little Boy (December 1917), was directed by the Elsie Jane Wilson, an actress turned woman director...very rare for the day (hell, it's still rare 😠). And...Wilson would direct her twice more in 1918 with New Love for Old (a copy of which was uncovered at the Library of Congress) and Beauty in Chains. In 1918 she was also directed by Tod Browning in Which Woman? and John Ford in Three Mounted Men. For most of her career, Hall was solidly in the employ of Universal; that ended in lat 1918. Her first film outside the studio was The Heart of Rachael and was produced by two relatively small production companies, one of which belonged to it's star Bessie Barriscale, and distributed by General Film Company; it was directed by Howard Hickman, Barriscale's husband. She made only one film in 1919, but it was a rather major production; Under the Top was a comedy directed by Donald Crisp and made for Famous Players-Lasky, Hall was in the female lead opposite Fred Stone. She made no film appearances in 1920, having had a son in 1919. When she returned to film work in 1921 it was in the Francis Ford (elder brother of John Ford) serial The Great Reward in 15 episodes. She only appeared in five more silents films in 1922 and 1923, several of them directed and interdependently produced by Emory Johnson, who was her husband. Her last film, however, was directed by one Lloyd B. Carlton. The Flying Dutchman, released in July of 1923, was an independently produced romance film, despite it's ominous sounding title. In 1919, Hall had married Johnson, they already had a child in 1919, actor Richard Emory; they would eventually have three more children, including actress Ellen Hall who was born in 1923 (there was a son in between the two and the baby of the family born in 1929), Hall retired from film acting to raise her family. She did "return" for three films in the early 1930's in uncredited parts, the first of which was Cecil B. DeMille's Madam Satan, her first film with sound. She also had a tiny non-speaking role in the James Cagney film Taxi, and her last film role was in the 1932 Frank Capra film The Bitter Tea of General Yen. She retired for good after this; her husband followed her in the late 1940's. The couple remained in Los Angeles, and while Johnson passed away in 1960, Hall lived in the Los Angeles area until her death more than twenty years later. She passed away on the 3rd of September in 1981 at the age of 84. She was cremated and her remains were interred in the Columbarium on Sunlight, located in the Garden of Memory at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. Her two daughters would join her there in 1984 and 1999 respectively.
[Source: AJM (Find a Grave)] 
[Source: AJM (Find a Grave)]
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