Belle Bennett
Birth : 1891-04-22, Milaca, Minnesota, USA
Death : 1932-11-04
History
From Wikipedia
Belle Bennett (April 22, 1891 – November 4, 1932) was a stage and screen actress who started her professional career in vaudeville. She was born in Milaca, Minnesota.
Bennett was working as a film actress by 1913, and was cast in numerous one-reel shorts by small East Coast film companies. She appeared in minor motion pictures like the western film A Ticket to Red Horse Gulch (Mutual, 1914). She starred in several full-length films by the Triangle Film Corporation, including The Lonely Woman (1918). She also appeared in the Moving Picture Corporation's film Flesh and Spirit (1922).
She made the move to Hollywood before Samuel Goldwyn selected her from among seventy-three actresses for the leading role in Stella Dallas (1925). While filming the movie, her son, sixteen-year-old William Howard Macy, died. Macy had posed as Bennett's brother for some time because of her fear that her employers might find out her true age. She was actually thirty-four rather than twenty-four, which she had claimed to be.
After playing the mother role in Stella Dallas, Bennett was typecast for the remainder of her film career. She later appeared in Mother Machree (1928), The Battle of the Sexes (1928), The Iron Mask (1929), Courage (1930), Recaptured Love (1930), and The Big Shot (1931).
Bennett was married three times. Jack Oaker, a sailor at the San Pedro, California submarine base, was married to her when she worked with the Triangle Film Corporation, in 1918. Her second husband was William Macy of La Crosse, Wisconsin. She later married film director Fred Windermere.
In September 1932 she experienced a relapse of cancer, which she had been suffering from for two and a half years. She died that November at the age of 41. Late in her life Bennett came to believe in the power of prayer. A practitioner of Christian Science influenced her. She is interred in the Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood.
Bennett has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Mrs. Isabel Thompson
A young man runs into trouble when he buys an auto court, only to find out that its located next to a swamp that drives away all potential customers.
Helen Parr
In this drama, a 50-year-old married man (played by John Halliday) goes with his wife (Belle Bennett) and son (Junior Durkin) to a nightclub in a fancy hotel in Detroit. He meets a gold-digger (Dorothy Burgess) there, singing the theme song of the picture, and eventually ends up going out with her on a subsequent occasion and falls in love with her. His wife finally finds out and this leads to her leaving him and getting a divorce in Paris. He is married to the gold-digger but finds life with her and her "jazz friends" to be too much for him. He begins to long for his old wife when he finds her in a nightclub with another man and becomes jealous.
Mary Colbrook
Belle Bennett plays as the widowed mother of seven children living in Sioux City, Iowa. She moves with them to Cambridge, Massachusetts in order to educate her children with culture and give them every advantage. Bennett, who is unversed in financial matters, soon faces poverty for herself and her children. She takes out a loan from an unscrupulous lender (played by Richard Tucker), who is so impressed by the charm and valiant spirit of Bennett than he neglects to ask her for collateral. Bennett, however, is only able to partially pay her creditors. Marion Nixon, Bennett's eldest daughter, is shocked by her mother's actions and attempts to sacrifice herself to Tucker in order to clear her mother's obligations, even though she is engaged to marry a well to do Harvard undergraduate, played by Rex Bell. This film is believed lost.
Harriet Marlett
Lally is a rich girl whose father writes books and plays polo. After 23 years of marriage her father decides to divorce Lally's mother and remarry to soon-to-be-divorced Beth Cheever. This sours Lally on all men. While on vacation with her mother she meets Jack, who succeeds in stealing her heart. Then Lally discovers that Jack is the son of Beth Cheever, the woman who is to marry her father.
The BFI holds a complete copy.
The Queen Mother, Anne of Austria
King Louis XIII of France is thrilled to have born to him a son - an heir to the throne. But when the queen delivers a twin, Cardinal Richelieu sees the second son as a potential for revolution, and has him sent off to Spain to be raised in secret to ensure a peaceful future for France. Alas, keeping the secret means sending Constance, lover of D'Artagnan, off to a convent. D'Artagnan hears of this and rallies the Musketeers in a bid to rescue her. Unfortunately, Richelieu out-smarts the Musketeers and banishes them forever.
Mamie Stone
Would An Innocent Woman Keep Silent? Would the fear of a murderer's death shake her from the Sphinx-like silence that shielded- who?
Mrs. Judson
Gum-chewing frizzy-haired golddigger Marie Skinner cooks up a scheme with her lover Babe Winsor, a jazz hound, to fleece a portly middle-aged real estate tycoon, William Judson. Marie moves into Judson's apartment building and contrives to meet and seduce him, plying him with compliments, music, swoons, décolletage, and batted eyes. When his loyal wife (and their two children) see him out catting with Marie at a night club, mom's devastated and confronts him. He moves out. Babe wants Marie to sell Judson worthless bonds. Will mom commit suicide? Will sis shoot the floozy? Will pops figure out he's being a fool?
Miriam Driscoll
Blinded in a train accident James Driscoll (Holmes Herbert), whose wife, Miriam Driscoll (Belle Bennett), has been having an affair with his young male secretary Phillip Kingston )Carroll Nye), regains his eyesight. He keeps this from his wife, who continues her affair. Finally, he invites his young niece Nancy Driscoll (Josephine Borio) in the hopes she will fall for Philip and vice-versa. His ploy works, James reveals he can see again, and husband and wife are reconciled.
The Devil Skipper
The Devil's Skipper was based on Demetrios Contos, a seafaring yarn by Jack London. Effectively cast against type, Belle Bennett plays a wronged woman who becomes the most brutal and feared slave-ship captain on the Seven Seas.
Mother Machree
Ellen McHugh, a poor Irish immigrant to America, finds work in a carnival and is thus able to send her son Brian to a fine school. But when her position is found out, the school expels Brian. Mrs. McHugh feels compelled to allow the school principal and his wife to adopt Brian. The widow McHugh becomes a housekeeper and raises her employer's daughter Edith, who grows up to fall in love with Brian McHugh.
Amelia Gare
Silent romantic melodrama about a wife and mother who is desperate to keep a secret from the past IN the past, despite her husband's intentions to reveal it.
Mrs. Schilling
The story takes place in Milwaukee during the early 1900s with a bank clerk named August Schiller who is happy with both his job and his family. He is tasked with transporting $1,000 in securities to Chicago. On the train he meets a blond seductress who convinces him to buy her a bottle of champagne, and takes him to a saloon. The next morning he awakes alone in a dilapidated bedroom and without the securities.
Mrs. Ellis
Following a reversal in the Graham family fortune, a childhood love affair between Gordon Graham and Marjorie Miller is frustrated by the socially ambitious Mrs. Miller.
Odette
Mrs. Fleming
Afy Hallijohn
This most famous of Victorian melodramas was more than half a century old, and had already been filmed several times when it came to the screen once again in 1925. Director Emmett J. Flynn had an all-star cast and kept close to the original story.
Stella Dallas
An eccentric lower class woman struggles to gain respect in high society after marrying a wealthy man, and the problem gets worse when their daughter starts growing up.
Amy Dale
Amy and Matthew Dale separate and they place their young son, Matthew Jr., in a London boarding school. The boy grows up without knowing his parents, and is taunted by his schoolmates, who doubt the legitimacy of his childhood. By the time he is 20, Matt wants to find out about his parentage, so he travels to Paris, leaving behind his sweetheart, Margo.
Carla Light
John Douglas, a down-on-his-luck engineer, takes his sweetheart, Sara Deeping, to a play starring Carla King, and he falls in love with the actress.
Belle Bennett
A comedy short directed by character Slim Summerville.
Mrs. Perlmutter
A sequel of sorts, the Jewish ethnic comedy characters of Potash and Perlmutter return from their 1923 debut film, also produced by Goldwyn, but with a different actor for Potash.
Belle Bennett stars in this pioneering paranormal silent film.
A Jewish mother in New York finds herself at odds with her son's new wife, a pretty Gentile girl.
Jane Whiting
During World War I, Jane Whiting, a bright young lawyer who is engaged to Senator Wheeler, is assigned by the district attorney to expose a gang of spies who are collecting money for the German government through the operation of a fraudulent charity organization. Wheeler's son Frank has fallen in love with Lola Schram, whose pro-German mother is forcing the girl to work for Frederick Kube, the head of the spy ring, but when Kube learns of the romance, he orders Mrs. Schram to break it off. When Lola finally confesses her activities to Frank, Kube kills her and then frames Frank for the murder. Meanwhile, Jane, through the help of Jimmy and Tilly Ware, has discovered Kube's headquarters and modus operandi
Gonda
Set in the Great White North, the film stars Bennett as the object of affections for several rugged northerners, including a couple of disreputable gamblers.
Bowie
A gambler runs a frontier town with an iron fist.
Mary Jackson
When stern Judge McClure gets into an argument with his younger brother John, a physical fight ensues in which the judge apparently kills John. In fear of the consequences, he runs off to the West and hires guide Cal Nelson to take him far into the desert. Along the way they meet Mary Jackson, and the judge, overcome by heat prostration, babbles out his secret.
Charlotte Whitney
Genuinely sweet natured, Ambrosia Lee loves to help everyone, soothing their sorrows with her cheerful spirit. Her charms are put to the test, when she tries to save her own Aunt Charlotte's marriage. Happily, all ends well, when her Aunt and Uncle are happily reunited.
Helen Mallory
Madge Garvey (Dorothy Phillips) works in a shoe factory. Her father Joe (Richard de la Reno) is a drunk who beats his wife (Alice May Youss), and her sister Helen (Belle Bennett) has repeated the pattern by marrying Dan Mallory (Edward Brady). The new foreman, John Blake (William Stowell), fires Mallory. Mallory attacks him, but because of his alcohol abuse, his heart gives out and he dies. Blake asks Joe for Madge's hand, and he accepts for her. Madge longs for something better, when Cora, a former stenographer from the company (Golda Madden), writes her from the big city.
Sweedie's Wife
A janitor finds a piece of jewelry dropped by a young woman, which he in turn gives to his wife. Feeling sorry for the young woman, the janitor tries to straighten things out, with many funny complications.
Parker, an Army lieutenant at a Western outpost, falls in love with Barbara Taylor, daughter of his commanding officer. But when Barbara rejects him, Parker fights with another soldier and deserts. An Indian attack gives him a chance to redeem himself.
Dorothy Madison
Dorothy Madison, a secret service operative, is sent into the West Virginia mountains to locate a still, after male operatives failed. She carries a sketching outfit and a carrier pigeon into the moonshine country, and hides the pigeon in the woods near a mountain cabin, where she hopes to make headquarters. She walks along the road until she sees Dave Parks coming, falls, feigns a sprained ankle, and is taken home by Dave, who is a young, good-looking moonshiner. Dave's mother is a sour-faced, pipe-smoking, suspicious old mountain woman, and only tolerates Dorothy. Nell Oatsey, typical mountain girl of bold beauty, hears of Dorothy's plight and goes to see her. She carries her rifle.
