Dorothy Davenport
Birthday: 1895-03-13 | Place of Birth: Boston, Massachusetts, USADorothy Davenport (March 13, 1895 – October 12, 1977) was an American actress, screenwriter, film director, and producer who appeared in silent film for Biograph Studios under the direction of D.W. Griffith. While filming on location in Oregon for The Valley of the Giants (1919), Wallace Reid was injured in a train wreck. As a remedy for the pain from this injury, studio doctors administered large doses of morphine to Reid to which he became addicted. Reid's health slowly grew worse over the next few years, and he died of the addiction in 1923. After Reid's death, Davenport and Thomas Ince co-produced the film Human Wreckage (1923) with James Kirkwood, Sr., Bessie Love and Lucille Ricksen, a film that dealt with the dangers of narcotics addiction. Davenport took Human Wreckage on a roadshow engagement, followed up with another "social conscience" picture about excessive mother-love called Broken Laws in 1924, again billed as "Mrs. Wallace Reid" to capitalize on her husband's notorious death. She then produced The Red Kimona (1925) about white slavery. On screen she opens the film in silent narration or prologue. The details of the latter film were so realistic that Davenport was successfully sued. She would later direct Linda (1929), Sucker Money (1933), Road to Ruin (1934), and The Woman Condemned (1934) and worked as a producer, writer, and dialogue director. Among her last credits are co-author of the screenplay for Footsteps in the Fog (1955), and as dialogue director for The First Traveling Saleslady (1956) with Ginger Rogers. She and husband Wallace Reid had two children. She was married to him until his death on January 18, 1923. She never remarried. Dorothy Davenport died at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in 1977 in Woodland Hills, California. She is interred with her husband in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale. Description above from the Wikipedia article Dorothy Davenport, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Known For
Acting
Role
as Mrs. Merrill (uncredited)
as Ethel MacFarland
as Leila Mortimer
as Clara Madison
as Edith, Lady Effington
as Luella Brysk
as Bessie Gale
as Elionor Rossitor
as Grace Hunt
as Grand Duchess Feodora
as Angela Graham
as Countess Betty Ardmore
as Dorothy
as Dorothy
as Dorothy - Jim's Sweetheart
as Ethel
as Ethel Crandall
as Mary Rohan
as Mrs. Randall
as Queen of the Gypsies
as Sue Jarvis
as The Government Detective
as The Poor Man's Wife
as The Prospector's Wife
as The Woodsman's Sweetheart
as Wallace's Mistress
