Sunday, February 21, 2021

Born Today February 21: Ormi Hawley


 1890-1942

 

Silent film actress Ormi Hawley was born Omretta Grace Hawley on this day in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Apparently always interested in a career in performance of some sort, she initially attended the very prestigious New England Conservatory of Music, which is still located in Boston.  She also made her professional stage debut in Boston; it was not long after that she caught the eye of film producers.  In her case it was Lubin studio, then based in Philadelphia. She made her film debut in the short melodrama Her Inspiration in 1911 (the film contains a couple of elements that a bit "spooky" in the since that the young wife is a painter and the daughter of a farmer in the northeastern frontier; Hawley herself would become the wife of an upstate New York farmer and was an avid painter later in life).  She appears in the film with John Halliday, an actor that was also making his film debut. Of the eleven films that she acted in during her debut year, nine of them featured Halliday.  The two would continue to act together for at least the next year or so, and he appears to be her most frequent co-star. Her years active were relatively short (1911-1919) but in that period of time she appeared in at least 130 films (some sources but the number closer to 300, but due to missing information in some production catalogs from the time--for now--it's impossible to know the number with any accuracy); almost all of her acting roles came in short films.  By the end of 1915, she was also still at Lubin.  It was a bit unusual for a young actress to stay with a studio for that long during the 1910's, but she stayed with them for nearly five years. In 1916, she finally had a role in a feature outside of Lubin:  The Social Highwayman (April 1916) [she had previously appeared in Lubin features, the first which appears to be Through Fire to Fortune].  Highwayman was a Shubert Film production with Noah Beery [Sr.] in a supporting role and Edwin August playing both a son and his own father (and directs the film); based on a play of the time, the plot  has a significantly racist tone against American of Italian descent. Her time in short films was over and the remainder of her roles came in feature length films.  There is no doubt that the last three years of her career are the most "prestigious" of her time in pictures.  In pretty rapid succession, she accepted the lead  in a Fox film, Where Love Leads; had the lead in a Kimecolor production distributed by Mutual, Her American Prince, and landed work at Famous Players/Paramount, appearing in The Anitcs of Ann--shot on location at a school on Long Island. She also had a role in the debut film of Marion Davies: Runaway Romany (released in December 1917).  In 1918, she appeared in a very late (one of their last) Edison film: The Unwritten Code, released in early April. She rounded out the year with a couple of supporting roles in Alice Brady films for Select. In 1919, her last year of acting, she appeared in three films; with her career swan song coming in The Greater Sinner in the female lead opposite James K. Hackett. As mentioned above, she married and quit the business. Her career was never a Hollywood one and from her upstate farm, she not only became a painter, but also wrote children's books. She died in Rome, New York on the 3rd of June in 1942 at just the age of 52. She is buried at Forest Park Cemetery in Camden, New York.  She at first had a simple marker, which has since been replaced with a larger marker reading (in part) "Silent Screen." [Note: most sources list her birth year as 1889, I am going by the year on her grave marker, absent any other official records online.]





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