1883-1940
Silent film actress Marguerite Clark was born Helen Marguerite Clark on this day in the Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. She finished her education rather early, at age 16, after coming under the guardianship of her older sister upon the deaths of their parents--her sister removed her to Catholic prep school. She had determined while there that she wished to pursue a career in acting and the theater; quickly making her Broadway debut in 1900. It would be almost 15 years before she entered motion pictures, while in her time on the stage in-between she appeared with a number actors who would become famous in films themselves, including: John Barrymore, Gail Kane and DeWolf Hopper. She made her film debut in the Allan Dwan directed Wildflower in 1914 in the lead role; she was 31 years of age at the time--relatively late for a leading lady premiere in pictures. She would stay in films for less than a decade and she spent almost her entire film career at Famous Players/Paramount, appearing in a few film versions of roles she had played on stage. She also almost always commanded top billing. One of her first outings as a co-star came several films into her appearing as a top bill when she had a co-star/supporting role in the Sidney Olcott directed The Seven Sisters in 1915, also starring Madge Evans. She was soon back in the leading role in her next film appearance in Helene of the North (August 1915), starring with Conway Tearle and directed by former Edison man J. Searle Dawley. Dawley, in fact, directed a large number of her films at Famous Players--enough that they could considered a production team (Clark was also directed at FP/Paramount by the other ex-Edison pioneering director Edwin S. Porter). It was Dawley that directed her in Snow White in 1916, one of the films that allowed her to reprise a stage role. He also directed her in the studio's 1918 Uncle Tom's Cabin, a version that did not contain any colored actors, with the part of Uncle Tom played by Frank Losee. Her last film at the studio was Easy to Get, released in March of 1920, she starred opposite Harrison Ford (the 1st one); the film was directed by Walter Edwards. She was by this time a huge star and a solid box office draw; she even had a production company set up bearing her name, but her next film would turn out to be her last, and the only film ever made for her company. Scrambled Wives was released in March, 1921. It was directed by Edward H. Griffith (early in his career), was distributed by First National and was adapted by Gardner Hunting. Though Clark was a big star with a bankable acting and producing future ahead of her; she had married a wealthy aviation engineer and corporation owner in 1918, so the decision was taken for her to retire from the business and move on to society life with him as his "country estate." She was 38 at the time. In fact, her husband Harry Palmerston Williams lived on a defunct plantation in Louisiana; there Clark was quite the socialite until her husband was killed in a plane crash on take off from Baton Rouge in 1936. She sold off her inherited interest in the company and moved to New York City. She then moved in with her older sister Cora (who had been her guardian), living with her for four years. Clark was admitted for medical care on the 20th of September in 1940 and died five days later from acute pneumonia. Her remains were transported back to Louisiana and buried in the Williams family crypt at New Orleans famed Metairie Cemetery. She was 57 years of age.
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| [source: Rob Leverett (Find a Grave)] |
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| [source: Rob Leverett (Find a Grave)] |
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