Grace Cunard
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Grace Cunard (April 8, 1893 - January 19, 1967) was an American actress, screenwriter and film director..
[edit] Career
Born Harriet Mildred Jeffries in Columbus, Ohio, by her late teens she was already acting on live theatre and in silent films using the stage name, Grace Cunard. Although not clearly documented, it appears Cunard made her motion picture debut in 1910 in an uncredited role in a D.W. Griffith production for Biograph Studios.
In 1911, she had a significant secondary role in the Thomas H. Ince western, "Custer's Last Stand." After making a number of westerns, she went on to work with actor/director Francis Ford at Universal Studios in a variety of dramas and came to considerable fame starring in several serial adventure films. Her better known serials include Universal Studio's first, made in 1914, and titled "Lucille Love, Girl of Mystery." The following year Cunard did a twenty-episode adventure/mystery called "The Broken Coin," and in 1916, "The Adventures of Peg o' The Ring."
In an era when the fledgling film industry saw actors and other film studio personnel frequently pitch in to do multiple tasks, Grace Cunard was no exception, and wrote close to one hundred screenplays. As well, between 1914 and 1921, she directed eleven films and produced two others. With age, her career shifted to leads in B-movies and secondary roles or bit parts in others. Nonetheless, she worked regularly until the mid 1940s, and after appearing in more than one hundred and seventy films, she retired at the age of fifty-three.
[edit] Personal life
Cunard was married twice. The first time to actor Joe Moore, then following their divorce in 1925, she married film stuntman Jack Tyler Shannon with whom she remained for the rest of her life.
Grace Cunard Shannon died of cancer in 1967 in Woodland Hills, California. Her husband died in December of the following year and they are interred together in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.
