Blanche Sweet
Blanche Sweet, c. 1915
Birth name	Sarah Blanche Sweet
Born	June 18, 1896(1896-06-18) Chicago, Illinois, USA
Died	September 6, 1986 (aged 90) (stroke) New York, New York, USA
Occupation	Actress
Spouse(s)	Raymond Hackett (1935-1958) (his death) Marshall Neilan (1922-1929)

Blanche Sweet (June 18, 1896 ^[1] – September 6, 1986) was a silent film actress who began her career in the earliest days of the Hollywood motion picture film industry. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 461 × 599 pixelsFull resolution‎ (1,155 × 1,501 pixels, file size: 159 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Date c1915 July 6 Author Unknown Permission (Reusing this image) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at... is the 169th day of the year (170th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1896 (MDCCCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display calendar). ... Flag Seal Nickname: The Windy City Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location Location in Chicagoland and northern Illinois Coordinates , Government Country State Counties United States Illinois Cook, DuPage Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 606. ... Image File history File links Flag_of_Illinois. ... Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... is the 249th day of the year (250th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the state of New York and the entire United States. ... Marshall Neilan, 1920 Marshall Ambrose Neilan (April 11, 1891 - October 27, 1958) was an important pioneer motion picture actor, screenwriter, film director, and producer. ... is the 169th day of the year (170th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1896 (MDCCCXCVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display calendar). ... is the 249th day of the year (250th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1986 (MCMLXXXVI) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 1986 Gregorian calendar). ... A silent film is a film which has no accompanying soundtrack. ... Actors in period costume sharing a joke whilst waiting between takes during location filming. ... Greetings from Hollywood Hollywood is a district of the city of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., that extends from Vermont Avenue on the east to just beyond Laurel Canyon Boulevard above Sunset and Crescent Heights Boulevards on the west; the north to south boundary east of La Brea Avenue...

Early life

Born Sarah Blanche Sweet in Chicago, Illinois into a family of stock theater and vaudeville performers, Blanche Sweet entered the entertainment industry at an early age. In 1909, at the age of fourteen she entered the nascent American motion picture industry when she started work at Biograph Studios under contract to director D. W. Griffith. By 1910 she had become a rival to Mary Pickford, also having started for Griffith the year before, which would result in Pickford leaving the studio intermittently (and finally in 1913). Flag Seal Nickname: The Windy City Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location Location in Chicagoland and northern Illinois Coordinates , Government Country State Counties United States Illinois Cook, DuPage Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 606. ... This article is about the musical variety theatre. ... The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1928. ... David Llewelyn Wark D.W. Griffith (January 22, 1875 – July 23, 1948) was an American film director. ... Mary Pickford (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979) was an Oscar-winning Canadian motion picture star and co-founder of United Artists in 1919. ...

Rise to stardom

Sweet is renowned for her energetic, independent roles, at variance with the 'ideal' Griffith type of vulnerable, often fragile, femininity personified on screen by Mae Marsh and Lillian Gish. After many starring roles, her first real landmark film was the 1911 Griffith thriller The Lonedale Operator, noted for its advanced technique in building suspense. 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 two 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. Studio promotional photo Mae Marsh (born Mary Wayne Marsh, November 9, 1895 in Madrid, New Mexico, died February 13, 1968 in Hermosa Beach, California) was an American film actress with a career spanning over 50 years. ... A reel of film, which predates digital cinematography. ... Judith of Bethulia starred Blanche Sweet and Henry B. Walthall. ... For the 1982 film of the same name, see Birth of a Nation (1982 film). ... Lillian Diana de Guiche (October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993), was an Oscar-nominated American actress, better known as Lillian Gish. ... Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American motion picture production and distribution company, based in Hollywood, California. ...

Throughout the 1910s Blanche Sweet continued her career appearing in a number of highly prominent roles in films and remained a publicly popular leading lady. Sweet often starred in vehicles by famous directors 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, extending her starring career considerably through her versatility. 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 1933 with Sweet charging that Neilan was a persistent adulterer. Cecil Blount DeMille (August 12, 1881 – January 21, 1959) was one of the most successful filmmakers during the first half of the 20th century. ... Marshall Neilan, 1920 Marshall Ambrose Neilan (April 11, 1891 - October 27, 1958) was an important pioneer motion picture actor, screenwriter, film director, and producer. ... Gertrude Bambrick (24 August 1897 – 10 January 1974), was an American actress of the silent era. ...

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 Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Sporting Venus, both directed by Neilan, were also big hits — leading her into a new career phase as one of the newly formed MGM studio's biggest stars. Anna Christie is a play in four acts by Eugene ONeill. ... Eugene Gladstone ONeill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was a Nobel- and four-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright. ...

'Talkies'

As the "Roaring Twenties" wound down, Sweet's career finally faltered with the advent of talkies. She found herself in a similar position of many of her silent film contemporaries; her popularity as a film actress waned in favor of a new crop of performers heavily promoted by the film industry for the new era of sound films. Sweet made just three talking pictures, including her critically lauded performance in the 1930 Show Girl in Hollywood before retiring from the screen that same year and marrying stage actor Raymond Hackett in 1936. The marriage lasted until Hackett's death in 1958. A scene typical of the Follies of Florenz Ziegfeld, the most popular Broadway impresario of the decade. ...

Blanche Sweet spent the remainder of her performing career in radio and in secondary Broadway stage roles. Eventually, when her career in both of these fields petered out 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 long overdue recognition as a pioneering film actress of American cinema. She died in New York City of a stroke, aged 90. For other uses of Broadway, see Broadway. ... Flag Seal Nickname: City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates , Government State County California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,290. ... For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ...

References

The Death Master File is a computer database file maintained by the United States Social Security Administration since 1962. ...

External links

• Blanche Sweet at the Internet Broadway Database
• Blanche Sweet at the Internet Movie Database
• Blanche Sweet at Golden Silents
• Some contemporary interviews with Blanche Sweet