Bessie Love

Bessie Love (born Juanita Horton; September 10, 1898 – April 26, 1986) was an American motion picture actress who achieved prominence playing innocent young girls and wholesome leading ladies in silent films and early talkies. Her acting career spanned eight decades, and her performance in The Broadway Melody (1929) earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Early life

Bessie Love was born in Midland, Texas. She attended school in Midland until she was in the eighth grade, when her chiropractor father moved his family to Arizona, New Mexico, and then to Hollywood.

Career

The silent era

On actor Tom Mix's recommendation that she "get into pictures", Love's mother sent her to Biograph Studios, where she met pioneering film director D. W. Griffith. Griffith, who introduced Bessie Love to films, also gave the actress her screen name. He gave her a small role in his film Intolerance (1916). Love dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue her film career, although she completed her diploma many years later.

Her "first role of importance" was in The Flying Torpedo. She later appeared opposite William S. Hart in The Aryan and with Douglas Fairbanks in The Good Bad-Man, Reggie Mixes In, and The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (all 1916). In her early career, she was often compared to Mary Pickford, and was even called "Our Mary" by Griffith.

In 1918, Love signed a nine-film contract with Vitagraph. She took an active role in the management of her career, upgrading her representation to Gerald C. Duffy, the former editor of Picture-Play Magazine, and publicizing herself by playing the ukulele and dancing for members of the military. Even glowing reviews of her films criticized the venues in which they were shown, citing this as a reason she was not a more awarded actress.

As her roles got larger, so did her popularity. In 1922, Love was chosen as a WAMPAS Baby Star. In 1923, she starred in Human Wreckage with Dorothy Davenport and produced by Thomas Ince.

Because of her performance in The King on Main Street (1925), Love is credited with being the first person to dance the Charleston on film, popularizing it in the United States. Her technique was documented in instructional guides, including a series of photographs by Edward Steichen. She subsequently performed the dance the following year in The Song and Dance Man.

In 1925, she starred in The Lost World, a science fiction adventure based on the novel of the same name by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Three years later, she starred in The Matinee Idol, a romantic comedy directed by a young Frank Capra. Despite these successes, Love's career was on the decline. She lived frugally so that she could afford lessons in singing and dancing.

The sound era and stage work

Love toured with a musical revue for sixteen weeks. The experience she gained on the vaudeville stage singing and dancing in three performances a day prepared her for the introduction of sound films.[24] She was signed to MGM in 1928.

In 1929, she appeared in her first feature-length "talkie", the musical The Broadway Melody. Her performance earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the success of the film resulted in a 5-year contract with MGM and an increase in her weekly salary from US$500 to $3,000 (equivalent to $44,000 in 2018)—$1,000 more than her male co-star Charles King. She appeared in several other early musicals, including The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929), Chasing Rainbows(1930), Good News (1930), and They Learned About Women (1930).

However, by 1932, her American film career was once again in decline. She moved to England in 1935 and did stage work and occasional films there. Love briefly returned to the United States in 1936 to seek a divorce.

During World War II in Britain, when Love found acting work hard to come by, she was the "continuity girl" on the film drama San Demetrio London (1943), an account of a ship badly damaged in the Atlantic but whose crew managed to bring her to port. She also worked for the American Red Cross.

After the war, she resumed work on the stage and played small roles in films, often as an American tourist. Stage work included such productions as Love in Idleness (1944) and Born Yesterday (1947). She wrote and performed in The Homecoming, a semiautobiographical play, which opened in Perth, Scotland in 1958. Film work included The Barefoot Contessa (1954) with Humphrey Bogart, and she had a substantial supporting part and received fifth billing in Ealing Studios' Nowhere to Go (1958). She also played small roles in The Greengage Summer (1961) starring Kenneth More, the James Bondthriller On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), and in John Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). In addition to playing the mother of Vanessa Redgrave's titular character in Isadora (1968), Love also served as dialect coach to the actress.

In October 1963, Love was the subject of This Is Your Life, when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in central London.

Love appeared in John Osborne's play West of Suez, and as "Aunt Pittypat" in a large-scale musical version of Gone with the Wind (1972). She also played Maud Cunard in the TV miniseries Edward & Mrs. Simpson in 1978. Her film work continued in the 1980s with roles in Ragtime (1981), Reds (1981), Lady Chatterley's Lover (1981), and—her final film—The Hunger (1983).

Personal life and death

Love married agent William Hawks at St. James' Episcopal Church in South Pasadena, California on December 27, 1929. Mary Astor (William's sister-in-law), Carmel Myers, and Norma Shearer were among her bridesmaids, with William's brother Howard Hawks and Irving Thalberg serving as ushers. Following their marriage, Love and Hawks lived at the Havenhurst Apartments in Hollywood; and in 1932 they had their only child, Patricia. Four years later the couple divorced.

Love was a Christian Scientist. She died at the Mount Vernon Hospital in Northwood, London from natural causes on April 26, 1986. Her ashes are interred at Breakspear Crematorium in Ruislip, Hillingdon, England.

Legacy

Love was periodically interviewed by film historians, and, beginning in 1962, wrote a series of articles about her experiences for The Christian Science Monitor. In 1977, she published an autobiography entitled From Hollywood with Love.

She was interviewed in the television documentary series The Hollywood Greats(1978) and Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (1980), both about early filmmaking in Hollywood.

For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Love was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6777 Hollywood Boulevard.