Dorothy Davenport (March 13, 1895 – October 12, 1977) was an American actress, screenwriter, film director, and producer who appeared in silent film for Biograph Studios under the direction of D.W. Griffith.
While filming on location in Oregon for The Valley of the Giants (1919), Wallace Reid was injured in a train wreck. As a remedy for the pain from this injury, studio doctors administered large doses of morphine to Reid to which he became addicted. Reid's health slowly grew worse over the next few years, and he died of the addiction in 1923. After Reid's death, Davenport and Thomas Ince co-produced the film Human Wreckage (1923) with James Kirkwood, Sr., Bessie Love and Lucille Ricksen, a film that dealt with the dangers of narcotics addiction. Davenport took Human Wreckage on a roadshow engagement, followed up with another "social conscience" picture about excessive mother-love called Broken Laws in 1924, again billed as "Mrs. Wallace Reid" to capitalize on her husband's notorious death. She then produced The Red Kimona (1925) about white slavery. On screen she opens the film in silent narration or prologue. The details of the latter film were so realistic that Davenport was successfully sued.
She would later direct Linda (1929), Sucker Money (1933), Road to Ruin (1934), and The Woman Condemned (1934) and worked as a producer, writer, and dialogue director. Among her last credits are co-author of the screenplay for Footsteps in the Fog (1955), and as dialogue director for The First Traveling Saleslady (1956) with Ginger Rogers.
She and husband Wallace Reid had two children. She was married to him until his death on January 18, 1923. She never remarried. Dorothy Davenport died at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in 1977 in Woodland Hills, California. She is interred with her husband in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.
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1933
as Mrs. Scott
1928
as Mrs. Bronson
1927
as Mrs. Jean Taylor (as Mrs. Wallace Reid)
1925
as Woman Telling the Story (uncredited)
1924
as Joan Allen
1923
as Ethel MacFarland
1920
as Leila Mortimer
1918
as The Wife
1917
as Edith, Lady Effington
1917
as Luella Brysk
1917
as Ellen Wilmot
1917
as Marie Delys
1917
as Clara Madison
1916
1916
as Beverly Hope
1916
as Martha Gorham
1916
as Elionor Rossitor
1916
as Bessie Gale
1916
as Carner
1916
as Beatrice Farley
1916
as Hazel Rogers
1915
as Nancy Preston
1915
as Grand Duchess Feodora
1915
as Grace Hunt
1914
as Ethel Crandall
1914
as Dorothy
1914
as Dorothy West
1914
1914
as Dorothy
1914
as The Mountie's Wife
1914
1914
as Renee
1914
as Mary Rohan
1914
as Wallace's Mistress
1914
1914
as Jack's Wife
1914
as The Poor Man's Wife
1914
as Queen of the Gypsies
1914
as Angela Graham
1914
1914
as Dorothy
1914
as Dorothy - Jim's Sweetheart
1914
as The Government Detective
1914
as Dorothy
1914
as Sue Jarvis
1914
as Mrs. Randall
1914
1914
as Ethel
1914
as The Prospector's Wife
1914
as Countess Betty Ardmore
1914
as The Woodsman's Sweetheart
1913
1913
as Dot
1913
as Dot
1913
as Dorothy
1913
as Dot - Wally's Sweetheart
1913
as Dorothy
1913
as Mrs. Burns
1913
1913
as Mary McKenzie - the Factor's Daughter
1912
as Jessie Carter
1912
as Veda Mead
1912
as Clara Lyttell
1910
as Flower Girl
1910
as A Friend