Viola Dana

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Viola Dana
Born Virginia Flugrath
(1897-06-26)June 26, 1897
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died July 3, 1987(1987-07-03) (aged 90)
Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place
 Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Nationality American
Years active 1900–1933
Spouse(s) John Hancock Collins (m. 1915–18)
Maurice "Lefty" Flynn (m. 1925–29)
Jimmy Thomson (m. 1930–45)

Viola Dana (June 26, 1897 – July 3, 1987) was an American film actress who was successful during the era of silent movies.

Career

Born Virginia Flugrath, Dana was a child actress, appearing on the stage at the age of three. She read Shakespeare and particularly identified with the teenage Juliet. She enjoyed a long run at the Hudson Theater in New York City. A particular favorite of audiences was her performance in David Belasco's Poor Little Rich Girl, when she was 16. She went into vaudeville with Dustin Farnum in The Little Rebel and played a bit part in The Model by Augustus Thomas.

Dana entered films in 1910. Her first motion picture was made at a former Manhattan (New York) riding academy on West 61st Street. The stalls had been transformed to dressing rooms. Dana became a star with the Edison Company, working at their studio in the Bronx. She fell in love with Edison director John Hancock Collins and they married in 1915. Dana's success in Collins's Edison features such as Children of Eve (1915) and The Cossack Whip (1916) encouraged producer B. A. Rolfe to offer the couple lucrative contracts with his company, Rolfe Photoplays, which released through Metro Pictures Corporation. Dana and Collins accepted Rolfe's offer in 1916 and made several important films for Rolfe/Metro, notably The Girl Without a Soul and Blue Jeans (both 1917). Rolfe closed his New York-area studio down in the face of the 1918 flu pandemic and sent most of his personnel to California. Dana left before Collins, who was finishing work at the studio; however, Collins contracted influenza which rapidly turned into pneumonia and died in a New York hotel room on October 23, 1918.

Viola Dana
Robert D. Walker and Viola Dana in a publicity still for the 1917 film "Aladdin's Other Lamp."

Dana remained in California acting for Metro. In 1920, she became engaged to Ormer Locklear, a daring aviator and military veteran. Locklear died when his plane crashed on August 2, 1920 during a nighttime film shoot for a serial, The Skywayman, for Fox Studios. Dana witnessed the 1920 crash and would not fly again for 25 years.

Dana continued to act throughout the 1920s, but her popularity gradually waned. One of her last important roles was in Frank Capra's first film for Columbia Pictures, That Certain Thing (1928). She retired from the screen in 1929. Her final screen credits are roles in Two Sisters (1929), One Splendid Hour (1929), and with her sister Leonie Flugrath, better known as Shirley Mason (years earlier she had appeared with her older sister, Edna Flugrath, in the 1923 film The Social Code), The Show of Shows (1929). By the time she made her final film appearance in 1933, she had appeared in over 100 films. She briefly came out of retirement to appear in her first and only television role in a small part on Lux Video Theatre, in 1956.

More than 50 years after her retirement from the screen, she appeared in the documentary Hollywood in 1980, discussing her career as a silent film star during the 1920s. Footage from the interview sessions was used in the 1987 documentary Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow.

Personal life

Dana's first husband was Edison director John Collins who died in the Influenza epidemic of 1918. In 1920, she was engaged to aviator Ormer Locklear who died that year in a movie stunt plane crash in August 1920. Locklear was the prototype for the Robert Redford movie, The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), and Dana was an honored guest at its premiere.

Dana was married to Yale football star and actor Maurice "Lefty" Flynn in June 1925.[1] They divorced in February 1929.[2] Her third and final marriage was to golfer Jimmy Thomson from 1930 to March 1945.[3]

Death

Dana died on July 3, 1987 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles at the age of 90.[4] She is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery under her birth name, Virginia Flugrath.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Viola Dana has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It is located at 6541 Hollywood Boulevard.

Filmography

  • A Christmas Carol (1910 Edison)
  • Children Who Labor (1912) *short
  • The Butler and the Maid (1912) *short
  • How Father Accomplished His Work (1912) *short
  • The Lord and the Peasant (1912) *short
  • The Third Thanksgiving (1912) *short
  • My Friend from India (1914) *short
  • Molly the Drummer Boy (1914) *short
  • Treasure Trove (1914) *short
  • The Blind Fiddler (1914) *short
  • The Adventure of the Hasty Elopement (1914) *short
  • Seth's Sweetheart (1914) *short
  • Who Goes There? (1914) *short
  • Lena (1915) *short
  • A Thorn Among Roses (1915) *short
  • The Stone Heart (1915) *short
  • The Glory of Clementina (1915) *short
  • A Spiritual Elopement (1915) *short
  • The Portrait in the Attic (1915) *short
  • A Theft in the Dark (1915) *short
  • The Stoning (1915) *short
  • The House of the Lost Court (1915) Lost
  • Cohen's Luck (1915) Lost
  • On Dangerous Paths (1915) Lost
  • The Slavey Student (1915) *short
  • Her Happiness (1915) *short
  • Gladiola (1915 Edison/General Film) Lost
  • Children of Eve (1915 Edison/Kleine-Edison Features) Extant(Geo Eastman, LoC)
  • The Innocence of Ruth (1916 Edison/Klein-Edison Features) Extant(Library of Congress)
  • The Flower of No Man's Land (1916 Metro Pictures) Lost
  • The Light of Happiness (1916 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • The Gates of Eden (1916 Metro Pictures) Lost
  • The Cossack Whip (1916 Edison/KESE Service)Extant(Geo. Eastman, LoC, Natl. Archives of Canada)
  • Threads of Fate (1917 Metro Pictures) Incomplete(Natl. Archives of Canada, LoC)
  • Rosie O'Grady (1917 Apollo Pictures/Art Dramas) Lost
  • The Mortal Sin (1917 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • God's Law and Man's (1917 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Lady Barnacle (1917 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Aladdin's Other Lamp (1917 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • The Girl Without A Soul (1917 Metro Pictures)Extant (Geo. Eastman House)
  • Blue Jeans (1917 Metro Pictures)Extant
  • The Winding Trail (1918 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • A Weaver of Dreams (1918 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Breakers Ahead (1918 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Riders of the Night (1918 Metro Pictures)Extant(Filmmuseum Nederlands)
  • The Only Road (1918 Metro Pictures)Extant(BFI National Film & TV, London)
  • Opportunity (1918 Metro Pictures)Extant(George Eastman House)
  • Flower of the Dusk (1918 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • The Gold Cure (1919 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Satan Junior (1919 Metro Pictures)Extant(BFi National Film & TV)
  • The Parisian Tigress (1919)Lost
  • False Evidence (1919)Extant(Cinematheque Royale de Belgique, Brussels)
  • Some Bride (1919)Lost
  • The Microbe (1919)Lost
  • Please Get Married (1919)Lost
  • The Willow Tree (1920 MetroPictures)Extant
  • Dangerous to Men (1920 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • The Chorus Girl's Romance (1920 Metro Pictures)Extant (Cinemateca Brasileira, São Paulo)
  • Blackmail (1920 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Cinderella's Twin (1920 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • The Off-Shore Pirate (1921 Metro Pictures) Lost
  • Puppets of Fate (1921 Metro Pictures)Extant (Cinemateca Brasileira)
  • Home Stuff (1921 Metro Pictures)
  • Life's Darn Funny (1921 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • The Match-Breaker (1921 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • There Are No Villains (1921 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Fourteenth Lover (1922 Metro Pictures)Extant (preserved by MGM)
  • Glass Houses (1922 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Seeing's Believing (1922 Metro Pictures)Extant(Geo. Eastman House)
  • They Like 'Em Rough (1922 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • The Five Dollar Baby (1922 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • June Madness (1922 Metro Pictures)Incomplete(Library of Congress)
  • Love in the Dark (1922 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Crinoline and Romance (1923 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Her Fatal Millions (1923 Metro Pictures)Extant(MGM preserved Geo. Eastman House)
  • Roughed Lips (1923 Metro Pictures)
  • The Social Code (1923 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • In Search of a Thrill (1923 Metro Pictures)Extant(Gosfilmofond, Moscow)
  • A Noise in Newboro (1923 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • The Heart Bandit (1924 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • Don't Doubt Your Husband (1924 Metro Pictures)Lost
  • The Beauty Prize (1924 Metro-Goldwyn)Lost
  • Revelation (1924 Metro-Goldwyn)Extant(preserved by MGM)
  • Merton of the Movies (1924 Paramount)Lost
  • Open All Night (1924 Paramount)Extant(UCLA, LoC, Geo. Eastman, Cineteca del Friuli)
  • Along Came Ruth (1924 Metro-Goldwyn)Lost
  • As Man Desires (1924 First National)Lost
  • Forty Winks (1925 Paramount Pictures)Lost
  • The Necessary Evil (1925 First National)Lost
  • Winds of Chance (1925 First National)Extant(UCLA, Natl. Archive of Canada,Geo. Eastman)
  • The Great Love (1925 MGM)Lost
  • Wild Oats Lane (1926 Producers Distributing Corp.)Lost
  • Bigger Than Barnum's (1926 FBO)
  • Kosher Kitty Kelly (1926 FBO)
  • The Ice Flood (1926 Universal)
  • The Silent Lover (1926 First National)
  • Bred in Old Kentucky (1926 FBO)
  • Home Struck (1927 FBO)
  • Salvation Jane (1927 FBO)
  • Naughty Nanette (1927 FBO)
  • Lure of the Night Club (1927 FBO)
  • That Certain Thing (1928 Columbia)
  • Two Sisters (1929 Trem Carr/ Rayart Pictures)
  • One Splendid Hour (1929 Excellent Pictures Media)
  • The Show of Shows (1929 Warner Brothers)
  • The Strange Case of Poison Ivy (1933 Columbia Pictures) *short

  • The Flower of No Man's Land (1916)

  • The Flower of No Man's Land (1916)

  • The Light of Happiness (1916)

  • The Gates of Eden (1916)

  • Threads of Fate (1917)

  • The Mortal Sin (1917)

  • God's Law and Man's (1917)

  • Blue Jeans (1917)

  • The Only Road (1918)

  • Riders of the Night (1918)

  • Some Bride (1919)

Footnotes

  1. ↑ "Viola Dana Marries Maurice "Lefty" Flynn". The Norwalk Hour. June 22, 1925. p. 5. Retrieved May 1, 2013. 
  2. ↑ "Viola Dana To Wed Professional Golfer". The Portsmouth Sunday Times. October 11, 1930. p. 2. Retrieved May 1, 2013. 
  3. ↑ "Divorce Granted Viola Dana". St. Petersburg Times. March 31, 1945. p. 8. Retrieved May 1, 2013. 
  4. ↑ "Silent Movie Star Viola Dana Dies". The Bryan Times. July 11, 1987. p. 3. Retrieved May 1, 2013. 

References

  • Greeley Daily Tribune, "Viola Dana Loved the Real Waldo Pepper", April 28, 1975, p. 23.
  • Indianapolis Star, "Little Viola Dana Ambitious to Become Grown-Up Actress", January 15, 1914, p. 13.
  • Lima News, "Viola Dana In Person at Faurot", March 23, 1930, p. 24.
  • Ogden Standard, "From the Movies to Stardom", January 10, 1914, p. 27.
  • Rothwell-Smith, Paul. Silent Films! the Performers (2011) ISBN 9781907540325

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Viola Dana.
Authority control
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.