1893-1972
Silent movie actress Dorothy Dalton was born on this day in Chicago, Il. She got her start on the stage, especially on the vaudeville circuits; and she was in fact married (twice, no less) to Broadway star, turned film star, Lew Cody for a time during her stage days. She appeared in her first film in 1914, an All Star Feature Film Corp.'s production Pierre Of The Plains, an Edgar Selwyn film (she appeared in only one other film that same year: Across the Pacific, under the direction of Edwin Carewe). At this time, though, she was still primarily appearing on the stage. She made one film appearance in 1915, apparently at the urging of Thomas Ince, who wrote the film. The Disciple was a western with an odd "God angle." Her role in the film led to casting as a vamp, due to the fact that her on-camera suitor was not meant to be her husband. This again, was largely down to Ince. Before getting into these types of roles, however, she was able to play a couple of roles of so-called "positive" female types, from wife to royalty (both old world and new world [she is a priestess in The Captive God, a film set in Mexico during the rule of the "Aztecs"]). She even had a rare role as a defense attorney, starring in Kay-Bee's The Weaker Sex in 1917. Ince, however, recognized in her a natural "vamp quality"--a so-called personality trait that she spoke of herself. With her appearance in The Dark Road in 1917, her first "full on" vamp role, the type began to stick. She had some odd "vamp like" roles though. For example, it's clear from the poster of The Flame of The Yukon that her appearance is meant to invoke a vampish "lady of the night" type--however the film has the character as a dance hall performer/partner in crime kind of type. She had by this time been signed full time to Triangle Film, the home of the Aitken brothers. She was still on Thomas Ince's mind however. Her next film appearance in one of Ince's production came in The Price Mark, released in October of 1917, in which she plays an a kind of "degraded" vamp--a hard up mistress, turned "blackmailable" respectable wife. By the turn of the decade, she had begun a specialty of sorts in playing roles with double identites--the best example of which the Charles Giblyn directed melodrama Black is White (1920). She quickly followed this with another double role in Giblyn's next film The Dark Mirror, a horror type film featuring "twins" and ESP (a production of the Famous Players-Lasky company before full integration into distribution company Paramount). Her performance in the similarly produced Moran of the Lady Letty is probably her most famous, owned to it's featuring Rudolph Valentino; though at the time, it was Dalton who took the top billing in the film. She would not stay in films for much longer however. She appeared in one George Melford film in 1923: The Woman Who Walked Alone (Melford would remake The Flame of the Yukon in 1926). She then appeared in several Irvin Willat films before once being directed by Victor Fleming (Law of the Lawless 1923) and once by youngest Ince brother Ralph (The Moral Sinner 1924) before ending her film career in The Lone Wolf a Stanner E. V. Taylor directed mystery, released in April of 1924. Her biggest event in 1924 was her marriage to into "theatrical royalty" when she wed Arthur Hammerstein, son of the famed impresario Oscar Hammerstein I and uncle of famed song writer/lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II (Note: Arthur Hmmerstein was the father of actress/performer Elaine Hammerstein from his first marriage). After her marriage into the Hammerstein family, Dalton went back to infrequent stage performances, never to grace a silver screen again. Eventually, she became a patron of the theater and quit acting altogether. She died on the 13th of April at the age of 78 in Scarsdale, New York. She was buried next to her husband, who had preceded her in death by nearly 20 years, in a family plot in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx
[source: Neil Funhouser (Find a Grave)]
[Source: Neil Funkhouser (Find a Grave)]
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