Wallace Reid
Birthday: 1891-04-15 | Place of Birth: St. Louis, Missouri, USAWallace Reid was an American actor in silent film referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover". Wallace Reid appeared in several films with his father, and as his career in film flourished, he was soon acting and directing with and for early film mogul Allan Dwan. In 1913, while at Universal Pictures, Reid met and married actress Dorothy Davenport. He was featured as Jeff, the blacksmith, in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and had an uncredited role in Intolerance (1916), both directed by D. W. Griffith; he worked with leading ladies such as Florence Turner, Gloria Swanson, Lillian Gish, Elsie Ferguson, and Geraldine Farrar en route to becoming one of Hollywood's major heartthrobs. Already involved with the creation of more than 100 motion picture shorts, Reid was signed by producer Jesse L. Lasky and starred in over 60 films for Lasky's Famous Players film company, which later became Paramount Pictures. Frequently paired with actress Ann Little, his action-hero role as the dashing race-car driver drew young girls and older women alike to theaters to see his daredevil auto thrillers such as The Roaring Road (1919), Double Speed (1920), Excuse My Dust (1920), and Too Much Speed (1921). While en route to a location in Oregon during filming of The Valley of the Giants (1919), Reid was injured in a train wreck near Arcata, California and needed six stitches to close a 3-inch (8 cm) scalp wound. To keep on filming, he was prescribed morphine for relief of his pain and Reid soon became addicted, but kept on working at a frantic pace in films that were growing more physically demanding, and changing from 15–20 minutes in duration to as much as an hour. Reid's morphine addiction worsened at a time when drug rehabilitation programs were non-existent. He died in a sanatorium while attempting to recover.
Known For
Acting
Role
as Buell Arnister Jr
as Captain Billy Wade
as Clarence Smith
as Jimmy Dent
as 'Dusty' Rhoades
as Anatol Spencer
as Cullen Dale
as Peter Ibbetson
as Teddy Darman
as 'Speed' Carr
as 'Toodles' Walden
as Dusty Rhoades
as Perry Dayton / 'Slim' Attucks
as Sylvester Tibble
as Anthony Hamilton Hawthorne
as Billy Deering
as Marcel Levington
as Van Twiller Yard
as Alvarado
as Guy Sterling
as Jack Fife
as Lord Effington, aka Hal
as Eric Trent 1431 / Eric Trent 1917
as James Weldon
as Don Jose
as Ford
as Jean Gaudet / Will
as Jeff, the Blacksmith
as Prince Karl Heinrich
as Walter Fenn
