Dorothy Cumming

Dorothy G. Cumming
Publicity photo of Cumming from Who's Who on the Screen (1920)
Born	1894[1] Boorowa, New South Wales, Australia
Died	10 December 1983(1983-12-10) New York, New York, USA
Occupation	Stage and silent film actress
Years active	1915-1929

Dorothy G. Cumming (1894 – 1983) was an actress of the silent film era. She appeared in 39 American, English, and Australian films between 1915 and 1929, notably appearing as the Virgin Mary in Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 film The King of Kings and the jealous wife in Lillian Gish's 1928 The Wind. She also appeared in stage productions in those same countries. After her film career ended, she became a designer of wallpapers in association with her sister Rose Cumming.

Birth

She was born in Boorowa, New South Wales. Her 1932 wedding announcement in the New York Times states that her family was from Morrengullen Estates in New South Wales. Though her Hollywood biography gives her birth year as 1899, a ship's manifest gives Cumming's age as 26 years and 7 months, which would mean she was born four years earlier, in 1895. The 7 months also puts her birth month at odds, since it indicates that she was born in July, rather than April.

Family

The youngest daughter of Victor Cumming, a sheep rancher, and his wife, the former Sarah T. Fennell, she had two full siblings: Rose Cumming, who became a prominent American interior decorator, and Eileen Cumming, an advertising executive who married rheumatologist Dr. Russell LaFayette Cecil. She also had several half-siblings from her mother's first marriage.

Marriages

Cumming was married twice. Her husbands were:

• Frank Elliott Dakin (married 4 April 1922, separated 1925, divorced 9 December 1927), a stage director known professionally as Frank Elliott. They had two sons, each of whom took his mother's maiden name after their parents' divorce: Anthony Cumming and Lt. Greville C. E. Cumming (1921–1942).

• Allan McNab (born 1901), married 2 August 1932. He was a British artist and designer who became the art director of Life, worked as design director for Norman Bel Geddes, and became the director of administration of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Death

She died in New York City in 1983.

Selected filmography

• Snow White (1916)
• The Woman and the Puppet (1920)
• Don't Tell Everything (1921)
• The Man From Home (1922)
• Manslaughter (1922)
• The Female (1924)
• The Manicure Girl (1925)
• A Kiss for Cinderella (1925)
• Mademoiselle Modiste (1926)
• The King of Kings (1927)
• In Old Kentucky (1927)
• Our Dancing Daughters (1928)
• The Wind (1928)
• Kitty (1929)

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dorothy Cumming.

• Dorothy Cumming at the Internet Movie Database