Gladys Hulette (July 21, 1896 – August 8, 1991) was a silent film actress from Arcade, New York. Her career began in the early years of silent movies and continued until the mid-1930s. She first performed on stage at the age of three and on screen when she was seven years old. Hulette was also a talented artist. Her mother was an opera star.
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Hulette was among the principal players in Sappho and Phaon which had its first performance in Providence, Rhode Island on October 4, 1907. She helped support Bertha Kalich in the Percy MacKaye production. As a child she also appeared in Romeo and Juliet (1908) and The Smoke Fairy (1909). On stage, in Blue Bird, she played the wonder child. She was the sweet youth, Beth, in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
In her earliest motion picture features she was under contract to Vitagraph Studios. There was a stigma for Broadway theater actors to be seen in motion pictures when silent films first began to be made. Hulette later discussed this, saying the picture heroes were mostly Coney Island life savers. One company prevailed upon a leading stage actor to play the role of Hamlet on screen. This began the influx of more Broadway actors into the new medium.
By 1917 Hulette's films were being produced by leading director William Parke. In that year she made her most popular film to date, Streets of Illusion. Playing the part of Beam, Hulette's co-stars included Richard Barthelmess and J.H. Gilmour. Parke owned theatrical companies and assisted Hulette in making one hit after another.
She married William Parke Jr., the director's son in 1917. They divorced in 1924.[1]
By 1921 she was a veteran of the motion picture industry. She again played opposite Barthelmess, this time in Tol'able David. She played the ingenue part of Esther Hatburn. In an interview she said she wished for no different type of roles than the one she played in this film. Later she sought comedy-drama parts which she portrayed in Jack O' Hearts (1926) and A Bowery Cinderella (1927).
She researched her own roles like the dance hall girl she played in The U.P. Trail (1924). Hulette consulted Social Life of the Pioneers for the Fox Film production, filmed over a period of two months in Nevada. The book was published in the 1880s in San Francisco, California. She discovered that saloons in America's old west provided a softening influence, and the nucleus of community consciousness. This was due to the young women entertainers found there.
Hulette made her debut in sound films in Torch Singer (1933). Her final film appearances came in Her Resale Value (1933) and with uncredited roles in The Girl From Missouri and One Hour Late, both from 1934.
Gladys Hulette died in Montebello, California in 1991, aged 95.
In the 1920s Hulette's fan mail address was care of Renaud Hoffman Productions, Hollywood Studio.
