1897-1990
Though Helen Jerome Eddy is often referred to as a "silent film actress" she had a steady career well into the talking age, with 55 of her more 130 film acting credits coming in the 1930's. Eddy was born in New York City on this day, but raised in Los Angeles. She began acting on the stage in her youth, and when Lubin films opened a backlot near her neighborhood, she said later in life that she was really fascinated by the activity there. And, she did, in fact, make her film debut on that lot in 1915 in The Discontented Man at the age of 18. She appeared in ten Lubin films that year, one being a feature and another--A Night in Old Spain--seeing at the top of the bill for the first time. Several of these films featured actor Lee Shumway, who had a very long career as a character actor. By the spring of 1916, she was in the female lead of a feature opposite George Beban in Pasquale (and working in productions made by the Oliver Morosco Photoplay Corp, distributed by Paramount; while shorts she made for Lubin were still being released). It was at Morosco that she first worked with director Donald Crisp, with whom she would work with multiple times; two of their earliest films were His Sweetheart (1917) and The Marcellini Millions (1917), where she again appeared opposite Beban. They would go on play a lead couple in many films in the late 1910's and the 1920's. It was also in 1917 that she appeared in the film that many feel was her break out role, that of Hannah Randall in the Mary Pickford comedy Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. The following year she appeared with the Pickford brother Jack in The Spirit of '17, albeit in a much smaller role. Also in 1918, she acted in two films directed by de Mille's: One More American (directed by William) and Old Wives for New (directed by Cecil). In 1919 she appeared in King Vidor melodrama The Turn in the Road and took half of a leading actress role in The Man Beneath (July 1919) along side Pauline Curley, opposite Japanese born movie star Sessue Hayakawa (she also acted opposite Hayakawa later that year in The Tong Man and again in The First Born in 1921.). Another well known and highly regarded director who helmed a film in which she occupies the top of the bill is Maurice Tourneur. She is the star of The Country Fair (1920), a "sports melodrama," opposite David Butler, with actress Edythe Chapman in the titular role of Aunt Abigail. Though she had periodic starring and lead roles throughout the 1920's, she became a much relied upon character actor in supporting roles as a leading lady. She notably had supporting roles in a couple Ronald Colman/Vilma Bánky films in later 1920's for example. If her filmography from the decade is complete, then it appears that The Diving Lady, a First National/Warner Bros. historical romance set during Napoleonic times, was her first turn in a film with sound. The film was a partial silent with a musical score and sound effects and released in December of 1928; she occupies one of the supporting roles, with Corinne Griffith and Victor Varconi taking the leads. Her first full talkie was in the very first all sound Our Gang short, Small Talk, (she also appeared in the Rascal's Railroadin' that same year). Her last film of the decade was the now lost independent partial silent Midstream directed by James Flood. She was much in demand during the entire decade of the 1930's, though by the end of the decade she was increasingly relegated to tiny roles, often without a credit. She eventually left the film business and went into real estate in the Pasadena area. Her last regular named role came in 1940 as Mrs. Brewster in the Mickey Rooney film Strike Up The Band (she is also listed in an uncredited tiny part in the 1947 comedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty). She lived the remainder of her life where she grew up, dying in the small Los Angeles county town of Alhambra at the age of 92 on the 27 of January in 1992, a month before turning 93. At her request, her body was donated to medical science.
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