Mary Fuller
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Mary Fuller (Mary Claire Fuller) (October 5, 1888 – December 9, 1973) was an American stage and silent motion picture actress.
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[edit] Early life
Born in Washington, D. C., by Nora Swing, and attorney Miles Fuller, she spent her childhood on a farm. Fuller showed artistic tendencies as a child, and was interested in music, writing and art. Her father died in 1902, and by 1906, she was working in the theater under the name Claire Fuller, and for a period of time, she was with the Lyceum Stock Company in Toledo, Ohio.
[edit] Career
Fuller began her acting career as a stage actress. At age 18 she was working in live theatre and in 1907 she signed with Vitagraph Studios in New York City, then joined the Edison Film Company in 1910. Fuller became a major early movie star who, by 1914, rivaled Mary Pickford in popularity. She appeared in a wide variety of roles, and starred in such melodramas as The Witch Girl, A Daughter of the Nile, and Under Southern Skies, her first feature-length production. Also, Fuller authored a number of screenplays, eight of which were made into films between 1913 and 1915. After the 1917's The Long Trail, The leading lady of the pioneering Edison Company, seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. For decades her whereabouts remained a mystery.
[edit] Later life
Sadly, Mary Fuller's later life in obscurity was fraught with sadness and seemed right out of one of her films. She had apparently suffered a nervous breakdown following a star-crossed love affair with a married opera singer. Retired from the film business, Fuller lived in her native Washington, D.C. in her mother's home. In her early years, Fuller had talked about a constant feeling of loneliness that film stardom never filled; however, In 1926, she returned to Hollywood and attempted to resume her screen career but there were no takers. The death of her mother in 1946 brought a second nervous breakdown, and on July 1, 1947, Fuller was admitted to Washington's St. Elizabeths Hospital, where she remained for twenty-five years, and when she died, the hospital was unable to locate any relatives.
