Blanche Sweet

Acting • Born 1896-06-16 – Died 1986-09-06

Acting1Chicago, Illinois, USA

Biography

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.

Filmography

123 credits

A Cure for Suffragettes

Movie • 1913

The Hushed Hour

Movie • 1919

Virginia Appleton Blodgett

The New Commandment

Movie • 1925

Renee Darcourt

The Avenging Conscience

Movie • 1914

The Sweetheart

Her Unwilling Husband

Movie • 1920

Mavis

Quincy Adams Sawyer

Movie • 1922

Alice Pettengill

Pirate Gold

Movie • 1913

The Daughter

A Chance Deception

Movie • 1913

The Wife

Love in an Apartment Hotel

Movie • 1913

The Young Woman

The Hero of Little Italy

Movie • 1913

Maria

If We Only Knew

Movie • 1913

The Mother

The Tear That Burned

Movie • 1914

Meg - the Wild Girl

Near To Earth

Movie • 1913

The Coming of Angelo

Movie • 1913

Theresa

Fighting Blood

Movie • 1911

The Second Mrs. Roebuck

Movie • 1914

Mabel Mack

Her Awakening

Movie • 1914

Mary

For Her Father's Sins

Movie • 1914

Mary Ashton

The Odalisque

Movie • 1914

May, a Stock Girl

Those Without Sin

Movie • 1917

Melanie Landry

Judith of Bethulia

Movie • 1914

Judith

Stolen Goods

Movie • 1915

Margery Huntley

Make Mine Memories

Movie • 1945

The Case of Becky

Movie • 1915

Dorothy/Becky

The Lonedale Operator

Movie • 1911

Daughter of the Lonedale Operator

Death's Marathon

Movie • 1913

The Wife

The House of Discord

Movie • 1913

The Wife

Men and Women

Movie • 1914

Agnes Rodman - Stephen's Daughter

Enoch Arden: Part I

The Tenement Girl

The Massacre

Dora Weymouth

The Clue

Movie • 1915

Christine Lesley

The Painted Lady

Movie • 1914

Jane - the Elder Sister

The Ragamuffin

Movie • 1916

Jenny

The Woman in White

Movie • 1929

Laura Fairlie / Anne Catherick

Classmates

Movie • 1914

Sylvia Randolph

Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter

Movie • 1982

Narrator (voice)

The Warrens of Virginia

Movie • 1915

Agatha Warren

A Woman Scorned

Movie • 1911

The Thousand-Dollar Husband

Movie • 1916

Olga Nelson

The Far Cry

Movie • 1926

Claire Marsh

Souls for Sale

Movie • 1923

Self - Celebrity Actress (uncredited)

A Flash of Light

Movie • 1910

The Primal Call

Movie • 1911

Three Friends

Movie • 1913

The Wife

The Deadlier Sex

Movie • 1920

Mary Willard

A Sailor’s Heart

Movie • 1912

The Sailor's Second Sweetheart

That Girl Montana

Movie • 1921

Montana Rivers

The Sporting Venus

Movie • 1925

Lady Gwendolyn

The Captive

Movie • 1915

Sonya Matinovich

A Woman of Pleasure

Movie • 1919

Alice Dane

His Daughter

Movie • 1911

The Silver Horde

Movie • 1930

Queenie

Always Faithful

Movie • 1929

Mrs. George W. Mason

Home, Sweet Home

Movie • 1914

The Wife

The Making of a Man

Movie • 1911

Young Woman

Broken Ways

Movie • 1913

The Road Agent's Wife

The Day After

Movie • 1909

The New Year

His Supreme Moment

Movie • 1925

Carla King

The Rocky Road

Movie • 1910

Enoch Arden

Movie • 1911

Woman on the Beach

All on Account of the Milk

Movie • 1910

The Maid

With the Enemy's Help

Movie • 1912

The Prospector's Wife

The Long Road

Movie • 1911

Edith

A Temporary Truce

Movie • 1912

Alice Hardy - the Prospector's Wife

Twenty Years After

Movie • 1944

(archive footage)

Why Women Love

Movie • 1925

Molla Hansen

Two Men of the Desert

Movie • 1913

The Authoress

Bluebeard's Seven Wives

Movie • 1926

Juliet

Oil and Water

Movie • 1913

Mlle. Genova

The Unpardonable Sin

Movie • 1919

Alice Parcot / Dinny Parcot

Singed

Movie • 1927

Dolly Wall

The God Within

Movie • 1912

The Woman of the Camp

Love in the Hills

Movie • 1911

The Mountain Girl

The Secret Sin

Movie • 1915

Edith Martin / Grace Martin

The Little Country Mouse

Movie • 1914

Dorothy

The Evil Eye

Movie • 1917

Dr. Katherine Torrance

The Stolen Bride

Movie • 1913

The Grower's Daughter

The Goddess of Sagebrush Gulch

Movie • 1912

The Goddess

To Save Her Soul

Movie • 1909

Stage Dancer

Those Who Dance

Movie • 1924

Rose Carney

A Corner in Wheat

Movie • 1909

Girl in the Web

Movie • 1920

Esther Maitland

A String of Pearls

Movie • 1912

The Brother's Sweetheart

The Voice of the Child

Movie • 1911

The Wife

In the Palace of the King

Movie • 1923

Dolores Mendoza

The Storm

Movie • 1916

Natalie Raydon

The Sowers

Movie • 1916

Karin Dolokhof

The Meanest Man in the World

Movie • 1923

Jane Hudson

Fighting Cressy

Movie • 1919

Cressy

Simple Souls

Movie • 1920

Molly Shine

The Secret Orchard

Movie • 1915

Diane

Help Wanted - Male

Movie • 1920

Leona Stafford

The Indian Brothers

Movie • 1911

Indian

The Two Paths

Movie • 1911

The Spanish Gypsy

Movie • 1911

The Broken Cross

Movie • 1911

How She Triumphed

Movie • 1911

Mary

The New Dress

Movie • 1911

At Wedding/At Market

The Blind Princess and the Poet

Movie • 1911

The Princess

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

TV • 1959

The Thin Man

TV • 1957

Hollywood

TV • 1980

Self