Blanche Sweet
From Wikipedia
Sarah Blanche Sweet (June 18, 1896 – September 6, 1986) was an American silent film actress who began her career in the earliest days of the Hollywood motion picture film industry.
Sweet is renowned for her energetic, independent roles, at variance with the 'ideal' Griffith type of vulnerable, often fragile, femininity. After many starring roles, her first real landmark film was the 1911 Griffith thriller The Lonedale Operator. In 1913 she starred in Griffith's first feature-length movie, Judith of Bethulia. In 1914 Sweet was initially cast by Griffith in the part of Elsie Stoneman in his epic The Birth of a Nation but the role was eventually given to rival actress Lillian Gish, who was Sweet's senior by three years. That same year Sweet parted ways with Griffith and joined Paramount (then Famous Players-Lasky) for the much higher pay that studio was able to afford.
Throughout the 1910s, Sweet continued her career appearing in a number of highly prominent roles in films and remained a publicly popular leading lady. She often starred in vehicles by Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan, and she was recognised by leading film critics of the time to be one of the foremost actresses of the entire silent era. It was during her time working with Neilan that the two began a publicized affair, which brought on his divorce from former actress Gertrude Bambrick. Sweet and Neilan married in 1922. The union ended in 1929 with Sweet charging that Neilan was a persistent adulterer.
During the early 1920s Sweet's career continued to prosper, and she starred in the first film version of Anna Christie in 1923. The film is also notable as being the first Eugene O'Neill play to be made into a motion picture. In successive years, she starred in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Sporting Venus, both directed by Neilan. Sweet soon began a new career phase as one of the newly formed MGM studio's biggest stars.
Sweet made just three talking pictures, including her critically lauded performance in 1930's Show Girl in Hollywood, before retiring from the screen that same year and marrying stage actor Raymond Hackett in 1935. The marriage lasted until Hackett's death in 1958.
Sweet spent the remainder of her performing career in radio and in secondary Broadway stage roles. Eventually, her career in both of these fields petered out, and she began working in a Los Angeles department store. In the late 1960s, her acting legacy was resurrected when film scholars invited her to Europe to receive recognition for her work.
On September 24, 1984, a tribute to Blanche Sweet was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Miss Sweet introduced her 1925 film, The Sporting Venus.
Sweet died in New York City of a stroke, on September 6, 1986, just weeks after her 90th birthday.
Acted in
Disclosure
2020
as Judith (archive footage)
Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter
1982
as Narrator (voice)
Hollywood
1980
as Self
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
1959
The Thin Man
1957
Make Mine Memories
1945
Twenty Years After
1944
as (archive footage)
The Silver Horde
1930
as Queenie
Show Girl in Hollywood
1930
as Donny Harris
The Woman Racket
1930
as Julia
Always Faithful
1929
as Mrs. George W. Mason
The Woman in White
1929
as Laura Fairlie / Anne Catherick
Fashion News
1928
as Self (1930)
Singed
1927
as Dolly Wall
Diplomacy
1926
as Dora Weymouth
The Far Cry
1926
Bluebeard's Seven Wives
1926
as Juliet
The New Commandment
1925
as Renee Darcourt
Why Women Love
1925
as Molla Hansen
The Sporting Venus
1925
as Lady Gwendolyn
His Supreme Moment
1925
as Carla King
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
1924
as Teresa "Tess" Durbeyfield
Those Who Dance
1924
as Rose Carney
Anna Christie
1923
as Anna Christie
Souls for Sale
1923
as Self - Celebrity Actress (uncredited)
Quincy Adams Sawyer
1922
as Alice Pettengill
That Girl Montana
1921
as Montana Rivers
Her Unwilling Husband
1920
as Mavis
Girl in the Web
1920
as Esther Maitland
The Deadlier Sex
1920
as Mary Willard
A Woman of Pleasure
1919
as Alice Dane
The Hushed Hour
1919
as Virginia Appleton Blodgett
The Unpardonable Sin
1919
as Alice Parcot / Dinny Parcot
Those Without Sin
1917
as Melanie Landry
The Evil Eye
1917
as Dr. Katherine Torrance
The Thousand-Dollar Husband
1916
as Olga Nelson
The Ragamuffin
1916
as Jenny
The Secret Sin
1915
as Edith Martin / Grace Martin
The Case of Becky
1915
as Dorothy/Becky
The Clue
1915
as Christine Lesley
Stolen Goods
1915
as Margery Huntley
The Captive
1915
as Sonya Matinovich
The Warrens of Virginia
1915
as Agatha Warren
The Little Country Mouse
1914
as Dorothy
The Odalisque
1914
as May, a Stock Girl
The Tear That Burned
1914
as Meg - the Wild Girl
For Her Father's Sins
1914
as Mary Ashton
Her Awakening
1914
as Mary
The Second Mrs. Roebuck
1914
as Mabel Mack
The Avenging Conscience
1914
as The Sweetheart
Men and Women
1914
as Agnes Rodman - Stephen's Daughter
The Painted Lady
1914
as Jane - the Elder Sister
Home, Sweet Home
1914
as The Wife
Judith of Bethulia
1914
as Judith
Strongheart
1914
as Dorothy Nelson, Frank's Sister
Classmates
1914
as Sylvia Randolph
The House of Discord
1913
as The Wife
A Cure for Suffragettes
1913
Two Men of the Desert
1913
as The Authoress
Death's Marathon
1913
as The Wife
If We Only Knew
1913
as The Mother
The Stolen Bride
1913
as The Grower's Daughter
The Hero of Little Italy
1913
as Maria
Near To Earth
1913
Broken Ways
1913
as The Road Agent's Wife
Love in an Apartment Hotel
1913
as The Young Woman
A Chance Deception
1913
as The Wife
Oil and Water
1913
as Mlle. Genova
Pirate Gold
1913
as The Daughter
Three Friends
1913
as The Wife
The Coming of Angelo
1913
as Theresa
The God Within
1912
as The Woman of the Camp
The Massacre
1912
as Stephen's Ward
A Sailor’s Heart
1912
as The Sailor's Second Sweetheart
The Painted Lady
1912
as The Older Sister
The Chief's Blanket
1912
as The Young Woman
Blind Love
1912
as The Young Woman
With the Enemy's Help
1912
as The Prospector's Wife
A Temporary Truce
1912
as Alice Hardy - the Prospector's Wife
The Lesser Evil
1912
as The Young Woman
One Is Business, the Other Crime
1912
as Rich Wife
The Goddess of Sagebrush Gulch
1912
as The Goddess
Under Burning Skies
1912
as Emily
The Transformation of Mike
1912
as The Tenement Girl
For His Son
1912
as The Son's Fiancée
The Eternal Mother
1912
as Martha, the Wife
A Woman Scorned
1911
The Miser's Heart
1911
as Neighbor
Through Darkening Vales
1911
as Grace
The Battle
1911
as The Boy's Sweetheart
Love in the Hills
1911
as The Mountain Girl
The Long Road
1911
as Edith
The Making of a Man
1911
as Young Woman
The Villain Foiled
1911
as Miss Page
The Last Drop of Water
1911
as Mary
A Country Cupid
1911
as Edith
Fighting Blood
1911
The Primal Call
1911
Enoch Arden
1911
as Woman on the Beach
Enoch Arden: Part I
1911
The Lonedale Operator
1911
as Daughter of the Lonedale Operator
His Daughter
1911
A Flash of Light
1910
All on Account of the Milk
1910
as The Maid
The Rocky Road
1910
The Day After
1909
as The New Year
To Save Her Soul
1909
as Stage Dancer
A Corner in Wheat
1909