Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 565-2. Photo: First-National-Film. Publicity still for The Desert Flower (Irving Cummings, 1925).
American actress Colleen Moore (1899-1988) was a star of the silent screen who appeared in about 100 films beginning in 1917. During the 1920s, she put her stamp on American social history, creating in dozens of films the image of the wide-eyed, insouciant flapper with her bobbed hair and short skirts.
Colleen Moore was born Kathleen Morrison in Port Huron, Michigan in 1899 (the date which she insisted was correct in her autobiography Silent Star, was 1902). Her father was an irrigation engineer and his job was good enough to provide the family a middle-class environment. She was educated in parochial schools and studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory. As a child she was fascinated with films and stars such as Marguerite Clark and Mary Pickford and kept a scrapbook of those actresses. By 1917 she was on her way to becoming a star herself. Her uncle, Walter C. Howey, was the editor of the Chicago Tribune and had helped D.W. Griffith make his films The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916) more presentable to the censors. Knowing of his niece's acting aspirations, Hovey asked Griffith to help her get a start in the film industry. No sooner had she arrived in Hollywood than she found herself playing in five films that year, The Savage (Rupert Julkian, 1917) being her first. Her first starring role was as Annie in Little Orphant Annie (Colin Campbell, 1918). Colleen was on her way. She also starred in a number of B-films and in Westerns opposite Tom Mix, like The Wilderness Trail (Edward LeSaint, 1919) and The Cyclone (Clifford Smith, 1920).
The film that defined Colleen Moore as which defined her as the inventor of the 'flapper' look was Flaming Youth (John Francis Dillon, 1923), in which she played Patricia Fentriss. Her Dutch bob in the film was soon copied by hairdressers across America and her air of an emancipated young woman inspired countless imitations. The year she married the first of her four husbands, Frank McCormick, production head of First National Pictures, later part of Warner Brothers. There followed such films as The Perfect Flapper (John Francis Dillon, 1924), The Desert Flower (Irving Cummings, 1925), Ella Cinders (Alfred E. Green, 1926) and Her Wild Oat (Marshall Neilan, 1927). By 1927 she was the top box-office draw in the US, making $12,500 a week. Her second husband was a New York broker, Albert F. Scott. Moore put her money into the stock market, making very shrewd investments. She took a hiatus from acting between 1929 and 1933, just as sound film was introduced. Her four sound pictures released in 1933 and 1934 were not financial successes. Moore then retired permanently from screen acting. Her final film role was as Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (Robert G. Vignola, 1934). In 1937 she married her third husband, Homer Hargrave, again a stockbroker, and ended her film career. After she retired she wrote two books on investing and she traveled widely, frequently to China. At 83, she married her fourth husband, builder Paul Maginot. In 1988, Colleen Moore died of an undisclosed ailment in Paso Robles, California. She was 88. At the time of her death she was writing a novel, a Hollywood murder mystery centered around a Mae West type. Tragically, approximately half of Moore's films are now considered lost. Of her most celebrated film, Flaming Youth (1923), only one reel survives.
Sources: Glenn Fowler (The New York Times), Denny Jackson (IMDb), Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
