Georgia Hale

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Georgia Hale (born on June 24, 1905 in St. Joseph, Missouri, USA – died on June 7, 1985 in Hollywood, California, USA) was an actress of the silent movie era.

[edit] Brief Film Career

Hale began acting in the early-1920s, and is most famous for her role in Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925).

Chaplin cast the Chicago-born Hale in his film on the evidence of her performance in The Salvation Hunters which also came out in 1925. The Gold Rush temporarily made her a star, but she did not survive the transition from silent film to sound in 1929, and she did not act in films after 1928. The documentary Unknown Chaplin revealed that she was hired by Chaplin for the female lead in the film City Lights (released in 1931) during a brief period when he had fired actress Virginia Cherrill. Approximately seven minutes of test footage of Hale in the role survives and is included in the DVD release of the film and excerpts appear in Unknown Chaplin. The editor's introduction to Hale's memoir (see below) also reveals that Hale was Chaplin's original choice for the female lead in his film The Circus but he later chose the younger Merna Kennedy for the role.

Hale was a close companion to Chaplin in the late-1920s and early-1930s. She went on to teach dance, and later became wealthy through real estate investments in Southern California. According to her memoir, she also became involved in Christian Science. She had a final meeting with the elderly Chaplin during his brief 1972 visit to America.

Hale spoke warmly of her time with Chaplin in the Unknown Chaplin. She also wrote a book about her experiences with him, Charlie Chaplin: Intimate Close-Ups. Written in the 1960s, it was not published until 1995, a decade after her death, when Heather Kiernan edited the manuscript and it was published by The Scarecrow Press. Hale was Miss Chicago 1922 and competed in the Miss America Pageant