On a blind date, Neilan introduced Moore to the man who would become her first husband: John McCormick, a publicist and later a production executive. He was a charmer, a carouser, a drinker, and a spendthrift, and, like most who knew him, Moore adored him. By the age of 26, Neilan was one of the highest-paid directors in Hollywood, and a favorite of Mary Pickford’s. Griffith hired Neilan to be his chauffeur, and through him Neilan met Allan Dwan, who gave him acting work and his first break at directing. Some years later, in Hollywood, he ran into a fellow actor he had known in New York D.W. Neilan, known as “Mickey,” had entered show business as a stage actor, which included a 1905 stint at the Barney Bernard Stock company in San Francisco. The film boosted her career, and she began working with prestigious directors such as King Vidor ( Sky Pilot, 1921), and co-stars like John Barrymore ( The Lotus Eater, 1922). In her 1968 memoir Silent Star, she described her roles as wide-eyed innocents who asked, “Papa, what is beer?” Her luck soon changed when director Marshall Neilan, who had his own production company, signed her to a contract and gave her the title role in Dinty (1920). Moore had a typical career for an ingénue of the era, playing sweet young maidens in a number of ordinary programmers. After only three films, however, Moore’s contract was dropped, along with those of all but Griffith’s core group of players. Howey was also responsible for changing her name to Colleen Moore, telling her that her real name was too long to fit onto a marquee. Howey knew Kathleen wanted to be a movie actress, and he persuaded Griffith to give her a contract, sight unseen. Griffith owed her uncle, legendary Chicago newspaper editor Walter Howey (the inspiration for the editor in The Front Page). Today, few of her films survive, and she is nearly forgotten.īorn Kathleen Morrison in 1899, Moore entered movies in 1916 due to a favor that D.W. Moore was a dynamic comedienne and a vibrant dramatic actress who successfully made the transition to talkies, yet she walked away from it all in 1934. Moore, tired of her unruly locks, chopped them off short and straight two years before Brooks’s screen debut. Louise Brooks wasn’t the first star to wear a distinctive helmet of dark bobbed hair. Clara Bow is the most famous movie flapper, but Moore was the first to popularize the flapper image in 1923’s Flaming Youth. She was a true original, yet other stars, better known today, are credited with her innovations. “I was the spark that lit up Flaming Youth, and Colleen Moore was the torch.”Ĭharming, vivacious and talented, Colleen Moore was one of the most popular stars of the 1920s.
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