HOLLYWOOD SILENT FILM ACTRESS CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG BORN 1890 SEPTEMBER 6

HOLLYWOOD SILENT FILM ACTRESS 

CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG 

BORN 1890 SEPTEMBER 6

Clara Kimball Young (September 6, 1890 – October 15, 1960)[1] was an American film actress, who was highly regarded and publicly popular in the early silent film era.











Early life[edit]

Clarisa Kimball was born in Chicago to Edward M. and Pauline (née Maddern) Kimball, travelling stock actors. She made her stage debut at the age of three, and throughout her early childhood travelled with her parents and acted with their theater company. She attended St. Francis Xavier Academy, Chicago. Afterwards she was hired into a stock company and resumed her stage career, travelling extensively through the United States and playing various small town theaters.[2]

Early in her career she met and married a fellow stock company and known Broadway actor named James Young. Young's previous wife had been the songwriter/lyricist Rida Johnson Young. After sending a photograph to Vitagraph Studios, Clara Kimball Young, as she was then known, and her husband were both offered yearly contracts in 1912.[1]








Career[edit]

In the new medium of motion pictures, and without much screen competition, Clara Kimball Young's star at Vitagraph rose quickly. Young was predominantly cast in one and two reel roles as the virtuous heroine. By 1913 she had become one of the most popular leading ladies at Vitagraph and placed at number seventeen in a public popularity poll. Unfortunately, many of Young's films from her early period with Vitagraph are now lost.[3]

In 1914 Vitagraph released the drama My Official Wife which starred Young as a Russian revolutionary and was directed by her husband James Young and co-starred the popular leading man Earle Williams. 

The film, which is now lost, was an enormous success and launched Clara Kimball Young and Earle Williams into first place in the popularity polls and Young was immediately signed to a contract with legendary pioneering Hollywood mogul Lewis J. Selznick.[1]







After a string of successful roles, Young was firmly established as one of the chief attractions of World Film Corporation and her husband James was now a much sought-after director. 

By 1915 Young's popularity was rivalling that of other early luminary actresses of the era: Mary Pickford, Dorothy and Lillian Gish, Pearl White, Edna Purviance, and Mabel Normand.[4]











She became involved in a much publicized affair with Selznick, culminating in a 1916 divorce suit brought about by Young, charging his wife with alienation of affection. 

James Young finally obtained a final decree on April 8, 1919 on grounds of desertion.[5]



















Advertisement (1916)

Selznick quickly formed the Clara Kimball Young Film Corporation, installing himself as president, and formed Selznick Productions to distribute her films and those of some other independent producers. 

After only four films with Selznick however, the personal and business relationship began to sour and Kimball Young struggled to extricate herself from all business arrangements with Selznick, accusing him of defrauding her of her profits through a series of dummy corporations and by electing himself president of her company while not permitting her any input in her business affairs.[1]







In 1917 Kimball Young became involved in an affair with Harry Garson, with whom she then teamed up with in a business venture. Garson had little experience in the motion picture business, and as a result Kimball Young's career began to sputter. 

Although she remained a popular actress into the early 1920s, Kimball Young suffered at the inexperience and alleged mismanagement and apathy of Garson.[1]















She began suffering a series of press attacks for her business dealings and personal relationship with Garson. By 1925, her stardom began to fade and she made her last silent film Lying Wives. Kimball Young spent the remainder of the 1920s performing in vaudeville, and in 1928 quietly married Dr. Arthur Fauman. 

The advent of sound briefly revived her career, and she appeared in several featured talkie roles for RKO Radio Pictures and Tiffany Studios with only modest success, appearing only in bit parts including a Three Stooges short, and extra roles in mostly lower budget pictures and having a stint on radio. One of her bigger roles is in the murder mystery The Rogues Tavern (1936) where she plays a sweet but fussy motherly woman who is hiding a very big secret.







She quietly retired from her acting career in 1941. Clara Kimball Young died of a stroke at the Motion Picture House on October 15, 1960, aged 70, in Woodland Hills, California and was interred at the Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Clara Kimball Young was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6513 Hollywood Blvd., in Hollywood, California, USA.[6]











Selected filmography[edit]

Washington Under the British Flag (1909)
Washington Under the American Flag (1909)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1909)
Richelieu; or: The Conspiracy (1910)
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1910)
The Sepoy's Wife (1910)
Ransomed; or, A Prisoner of War (1910)
The Last of the Saxons (1910)
Lady Godiva (1911)
Cardinal Wolsey (1912)
The Haunted Rocker (1912)
The Jocular Winds of Fate (1912)
The Pipe (1912)
The Old Kent Road (1912)
Dr. LaFleur's Theory (1912)
Professor Optimo (1912)
The Picture Idol (1912)
Mockery (1912)
Half a Hero (1912)
Lulu's Doctor (1912)
When Roses Wither (1912)
Lincoln's Gettysburys Address (1912)
The Troublesome Step-Daughters (1912)
The Money Kings (1912)
A Lively Affair (1912)
Rock of Ages (1912)
Wanted, a Sister (1912)
Popular Betty (1912)
A Vitagraph Romance (1912)
The Irony of Fate (1912)
Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgers (1912)
A Mistake in Spelling (1912)
Poet and Peasant (1912)
Lord Browning and Cinderella (1912)
In the Flat Above (1912)
The Eavesdropper (1912)
Love Hath Wrought a Miracle (1913)
The Little Minister (1913)
The Interrupted Honeymoon (1913)
What a Change of Clothes Did (1913)
The Volunteer Strike Breakers (1913)
When Mary Grew Up (1913)
Beau Brummel (1913)
The Old Guard (1913)
Put Yourself in Their Place (1913)
The Way Out (1913)
Getting Up a Practice (1913)
The Mystery of the Stolen Child (1913)
Mr. Mintern's Misadventures (1913)
The Mystery of the Stolen Jewels (1913)
The Wrath of Osaka (1913)
The White Slave; or, The Octoroon (1913)
Delayed Proposals (1913)
Jack's Chrysanthemum (1913)
The Spirit of the Orient (1913)
The Taming of Betty (1913)
A Faithful Servant (1913)
A Maid of Mandalay (1913)
The Lonely Princess (1913)
When Women Go on the Warpath; or, Why Jonesville Went Dry (1913)
Cupid Versus Women's Rights (1913)
The Hindoo Charm (1913)
John Tobin's Sweetheart (1913)
Extremities (1913)
The Test (1913)
The Pirates (1913)
On Their Wedding Eve (1913)
Jerry's Mother-in-Law (1913)
Fellow Voyagers (1913)
Betty in the Lions' Den (1913)
A Lesson in Jealousy (1913)
Beauty Unadorned (1913)
Love's Sunset (1913)
Up in a Balloon (1913)
The Perplexed Bridegroom (1914)
Goodness Gracious (1914)
Some Steamer Scooping (1914)
Her Husband (1914)
The Silver Snuff Box (1914)
The Awakening of Barbara Dare (1914)
The Violin of M'sieur (1914)
Happy-Go-Lucky (1914)
My Official Wife (1914)
David Garrick (1914)
Taken by Storm (1914)
The Fates and Flora Fourflush (1914)
Lola (1914)
The Deep Purple (1915)
Hearts in Exile (1915)
Marrying Money (1915)
Trilby (1915)
The Heart of the Blue Ridge (1915)
Camille (1915)
The Yellow Passport (1916)
The Feast of Life (1916)
The Dark Silence (1916)
The Foolish Virgin (1916)
The Common Law (1916)
The Rise of Susan (1916)
A Race for Life (1916)
The Price She Paid (1917)
The Easiest Way (1917)
Magda (1917)
Shirley Kaye (1917)
The Marionettes (1918)
The House of Glass (1918)
The Reason Why (1918)
The Claw (1918)
The Savage Woman (1918)
The Road Through the Dark (1918)
Cheating Cheaters (1919)
The Better Wife (1919)
Eyes of Youth (1919)
Soldiers of Fortune (1919)
The Forbidden Woman (1920)
Mid-Channel (1920)
For the Soul of Rafael (1920)
Hush (1921)
Straight from Paris (1921)
Charge It (1921)
What No Man Knows (1921)
The Worldly Madonna (1922)
The Hands of Nara (1922)
Enter Madame (1922)
The Woman of Bronze (1923)
Cordelia the Magnificent (1923)
A Wife's Romance (1923)
Lying Wives (1925)
Kept Husbands (1931)
Mother and Son (1931)
Women Go on Forever (1931)
Love Bound (1932)
Probation (1932)
File 113 (1933)
I Can't Escape (1934)
Romance in the Rain (1934)
The Return of Chandu (1934)
The Drunkard (1935)
Hollywood Extra Girl (1935)
She Married Her Boss (1935)
His Night Out (1935)
Fighting Youth (1935)
The Fighting Coward (1935)
Ants in the Pantry - 3 Stooges (1936)
Dangerous Waters (1936)
Love in September (1936)
Three on the Trail (1936)
The Rogues Tavern (1936)
Oh, Susanna (1936)
The Black Coin (1936)
They Wanted to Marry (1937)
New News (1937)
Hills of Old Wyoming (1937)
Dangerously Yours (1937)
The Mysterious Pilot (1937)
The Secret of Treasure Island (1938)
The Wages of Sin (1938)
The Frontiersmen (1938)
The Round Up (1941)
Mr. Celebrity (1941)