Blanche Sweet
Biography
From Wikipedia Sarah Blanche Sweet (June 18, 1896 – September 6, 1986) was an American silent film actress who began her career in the earliest days of the Hollywood motion picture film industry. Sweet is renowned for her energetic, independent roles, at variance with the 'ideal' Griffith type of vulnerable, often fragile, femininity. After many starring roles, her first real landmark film was the 1911 Griffith thriller The Lonedale Operator. In 1913 she starred in Griffith's first feature-length movie, Judith of Bethulia. In 1914 Sweet was initially cast by Griffith in the part of Elsie Stoneman in his epic The Birth of a Nation but the role was eventually given to rival actress Lillian Gish, who was Sweet's senior by three years. That same year Sweet parted ways with Griffith and joined Paramount (then Famous Players-Lasky) for the much higher pay that studio was able to afford. Throughout the 1910s, Sweet continued her career appearing in a number of highly prominent roles in films and remained a publicly popular leading lady. She often starred in vehicles by Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan, and she was recognised by leading film critics of the time to be one of the foremost actresses of the entire silent era. It was during her time working with Neilan that the two began a publicized affair, which brought on his divorce from former actress Gertrude Bambrick. Sweet and Neilan married in 1922. The union ended in 1929 with Sweet charging that Neilan was a persistent adulterer. During the early 1920s Sweet's career continued to prosper, and she starred in the first film version of Anna Christie in 1923. The film is also notable as being the first Eugene O'Neill play to be made into a motion picture. In successive years, she starred in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Sporting Venus, both directed by Neilan. Sweet soon began a new career phase as one of the newly formed MGM studio's biggest stars. Sweet made just three talking pictures, including her critically lauded performance in 1930's Show Girl in Hollywood, before retiring from the screen that same year and marrying stage actor Raymond Hackett in 1935. The marriage lasted until Hackett's death in 1958. Sweet spent the remainder of her performing career in radio and in secondary Broadway stage roles. Eventually, her career in both of these fields petered out, and she began working in a Los Angeles department store. In the late 1960s, her acting legacy was resurrected when film scholars invited her to Europe to receive recognition for her work. On September 24, 1984, a tribute to Blanche Sweet was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Miss Sweet introduced her 1925 film, The Sporting Venus. Sweet died in New York City of a stroke, on September 6, 1986, just weeks after her 90th birthday.
Known For
A Cure for Suffragettes
Virginia Appleton Blodgett
The Hushed Hour
Renee Darcourt
The New Commandment
The Sweetheart
The Avenging Conscience
Alice Pettengill
Quincy Adams Sawyer
Mavis
Her Unwilling Husband
The Daughter
Pirate Gold
The Young Woman
Love in an Apartment Hotel
The Wife
A Chance Deception
Maria
The Hero of Little Italy
The Mother
If We Only Knew
Meg - the Wild Girl
The Tear That Burned
Near To Earth
Theresa
The Coming of Angelo
Fighting Blood
Mabel Mack
The Second Mrs. Roebuck
Mary
Her Awakening
Mary Ashton
For Her Father's Sins
May, a Stock Girl
The Odalisque
Melanie Landry
Those Without Sin
Judith
Judith of Bethulia
Margery Huntley
Stolen Goods
Make Mine Memories
Dorothy/Becky
The Case of Becky
Daughter of the Lonedale Operator
The Lonedale Operator
The Wife
Death's Marathon
The Wife
The House of Discord
Agnes Rodman - Stephen's Daughter
Men and Women
Enoch Arden: Part I
Neighbor
The Miser's Heart
The Older Sister
The Painted Lady
The Boy's Sweetheart
The Battle
The Young Woman
The Chief's Blanket
The Tenement Girl
The Transformation of Mike
The Young Woman
Blind Love
Miss Page
The Villain Foiled
Stephen's Ward
The Massacre
Grace
Through Darkening Vales
Mary
The Last Drop of Water
Anna Christie
Anna Christie
The Young Woman
The Lesser Evil
Emily
Under Burning Skies
Rich Wife
One Is Business, the Other Crime
The Son's Fiancée
For His Son
Martha, the Wife
The Eternal Mother
Edith
A Country Cupid
Dorothy Nelson, Frank's Sister
Strongheart
Donny Harris
Show Girl in Hollywood
Teresa "Tess" Durbeyfield
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Julia Barnes Hayes
The Woman Racket
Dora Weymouth
Diplomacy
Christine Lesley
The Clue
Jane - the Elder Sister
The Painted Lady
Jenny
The Ragamuffin
Laura Fairlie / Anne Catherick
The Woman in White
Sylvia Randolph
Classmates
Narrator (voice)
Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter
Agatha Warren
The Warrens of Virginia
A Woman Scorned
Olga Nelson
The Thousand-Dollar Husband
The Far Cry
Self - Celebrity Actress (uncredited)
Souls for Sale
A Flash of Light
The Primal Call
The Wife
Three Friends
Mary Willard
The Deadlier Sex
The Sailor's Second Sweetheart
A Sailor’s Heart
Montana Rivers
That Girl Montana
Lady Gwendolyn
The Sporting Venus
Sonya Matinovich
The Captive
Alice Dane
A Woman of Pleasure
His Daughter
Queenie
The Silver Horde
Mrs. George W. Mason
Always Faithful
The Wife
Home, Sweet Home
The Road Agent's Wife
Broken Ways
Young Woman
The Making of a Man
The New Year
The Day After
Carla King
His Supreme Moment
The Rocky Road
Woman on the Beach
Enoch Arden
The Maid
All on Account of the Milk
The Prospector's Wife
With the Enemy's Help
Edith
The Long Road
Alice Hardy - the Prospector's Wife
A Temporary Truce
(archive footage)
Twenty Years After
Molla Hansen
Why Women Love
The Authoress
Two Men of the Desert
Juliet
Bluebeard's Seven Wives
Mlle. Genova
Oil and Water
Alice Parcot / Dinny Parcot
The Unpardonable Sin
Dolly Wall
Singed
The Mountain Girl
Love in the Hills
The Woman of the Camp
The God Within
Edith Martin / Grace Martin
The Secret Sin
Dorothy
The Little Country Mouse
Dr. Katherine Torrance
The Evil Eye
The Grower's Daughter
The Stolen Bride
The Goddess
The Goddess of Sagebrush Gulch
Stage Dancer
To Save Her Soul
Rose Carney
Those Who Dance
A Corner in Wheat
Esther Maitland
The Girl in the Web
The Brother's Sweetheart
A String of Pearls
The Wife
The Voice of the Child
Personal Info
Known For
Acting
Known Credits
105
Gender
Female
Birthday
1896-06-16
Place of Birth
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Also Known As
Sarah Blanche Sweet