1908-1986
Child actress Carmen De Rue, who was credited as "Baby de Rue" (or sometimes by her full birth name of Carmen Fay De Rue) when she started acting in films in 1914 at the age of six years old, was born on this day in Pueblo, Colorado. She was the daughter of Eugene De Rue who would go on to be a director, but in 1914 he was part of the cast of the historically important feature The Squaw Man (February 1914); and it was on that film that his young daughter Carmen was brought in for one of the child parts. Her years active in the film industry span between 1914 and 1918--with the vast majority of her film roles coming in the first two years (!); so, just four short years. She had some fourteen appearances in films in 1914 and seventeen in 1915. In addition, most of her film appearances up until 1916 were in shorts. In at least one role, in The Master Mind, an Oscar Apfel film penned by Clara Beranger from 1914, she played a boy. During her short career she appeared in multiple films with Norma Talmadge, Bessie Love and Dorothy Gish. Her last five film appearances came in pictures directed by one or both of the Franklin Brothers (Chester and Sidney), whom had directed her in several shorts in 1915. Most of her later films were fantasy pictures based on children's stories; and most starred actor Francis Carpenter, a fellow Coloradan. Her last role came in the comedy Fan Fan, a Chester brothers film in the role of Lady Shoo opposite Virginia Lee Corbin's lead as Fan Fan; the film was released in November 0f 1918. De Rue married and had a son and seems to have stayed in the Los Angeles area. She died in North Hollywood on the 28th of September at the age of 78. She was cremated and her ashes were ceremonially scattered after a memorial service.
Still from The Doll-House Mystery (1915)
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