Georgia Hale

Georgia Hale (June 25, 1900 – June 7, 1985) was an actress of the silent movie era.

Career

Georgia Theodora Hale was Miss Chicago 1922 and competed in the Miss America Pageant. She began acting in the early 1920s, and achieved one of her most notable successes with her role in Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925). She played Myrtle Wilson in the first filmed version (1926) of "The Great Gatsby".

Chaplin cast Hale in his film based on 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, and she did not act in films after 1928. The documentary Unknown Chaplin revealed that Hale was hired by Chaplin to replace actress Virginia Cherrill as the female lead in the film City Lights (1931) during a brief period after he had fired Cherrill (and before he re-hired her). 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 also reveals that she was Chaplin's original choice for the female lead in his film The Circus, a role eventually played by Merna Kennedy.

Personal life

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 became a follower of Christian Science. Hale met with Chaplin during his brief return to the United States in 1972.

Writings

She spoke warmly of her time with Chaplin in 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.

Selected filmography

• The Gold Rush (1925)
• The Salvation Hunters (1925)
• The Great Gatsby (1926)
• Hills of Peril (1927)
• The Rawhide Kid (1928)