
Blanche Sweet
Personal Info
Known for
Acting
Gender
Female
Birthday
1896-06-16
Day of Death
1986-09-06 (90 years old)
Place of Birth
Chicago, Illinois, USA
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
Acting
(1982)
Before the Nickelodeon: The Cinema of Edwin S. Porter
as Narrator (voice)
(1945)
(1944)
Twenty Years After
as (archive footage)
(1930)
Show Girl in Hollywood
as Donny Harris
(1930)
The Silver Horde
as Queenie
(1930)
The Woman Racket
as Julia Barnes Hayes
(1929)
Always Faithful
as Mrs. George W. Mason
(1929)
The Woman in White
as Laura Fairlie / Anne Catherick
(1927)
Singed
as Dolly Wall
(1926)
Diplomacy
as Dora Weymouth
(1926)
Bluebeard's Seven Wives
as Juliet
(1926)
(1925)
His Supreme Moment
as Carla King
(1925)
The Sporting Venus
as Lady Gwendolyn
(1925)
Why Women Love
as Molla Hansen
(1925)
The New Commandment
as Renee Darcourt
(1924)
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
as Teresa "Tess" Durbeyfield
(1924)
Those Who Dance
as Rose Carney
(1923)
Anna Christie
as Anna Christie
(1923)
Souls for Sale
as Self - Celebrity Actress (uncredited)
(1922)
Quincy Adams Sawyer
as Alice Pettengill
(1921)
That Girl Montana
as Montana Rivers
(1920)
The Deadlier Sex
as Mary Willard
(1920)
Girl in the Web
as Esther Maitland
(1920)
Her Unwilling Husband
as Mavis
(1919)
The Unpardonable Sin
as Alice Parcot / Dinny Parcot
(1919)
The Hushed Hour
as Virginia Appleton Blodgett
(1919)
A Woman of Pleasure
as Alice Dane
(1917)
The Evil Eye
as Dr. Katherine Torrance
(1917)
Those Without Sin
as Melanie Landry
(1916)
The Thousand-Dollar Husband
as Olga Nelson
(1916)
The Ragamuffin
as Jenny
(1915)
The Captive
as Sonya Matinovich
(1915)
The Clue
as Christine Lesley
(1915)
The Case of Becky
as Dorothy/Becky
(1915)
Stolen Goods
as Margery Huntley
(1915)
The Warrens of Virginia
as Agatha Warren
(1915)
The Secret Sin
as Edith Martin / Grace Martin
(1914)
The Avenging Conscience
as The Sweetheart
(1914)
Men and Women
as Agnes Rodman - Stephen's Daughter
(1914)
Home, Sweet Home
as The Wife
(1914)
Judith of Bethulia
as Judith
(1914)
Her Awakening
as Mary
(1914)
Strongheart
as Dorothy Nelson, Frank's Sister
(1914)
Classmates
as Sylvia Randolph
(1914)
The Tear That Burned
as Meg - the Wild Girl
(1914)
For Her Father's Sins
as Mary Ashton
(1914)
The Little Country Mouse
as Dorothy
(1914)
The Odalisque
as May, a Stock Girl
(1914)
The Second Mrs. Roebuck
as Mabel Mack
(1914)
The Painted Lady
as Jane - the Elder Sister
(1913)
Broken Ways
as The Road Agent's Wife
(1913)
Love in an Apartment Hotel
as The Young Woman
(1913)
(1913)
Oil and Water
as Mlle. Genova
(1913)
Three Friends
as The Wife
(1913)
Two Men of the Desert
as The Authoress
(1913)
The Coming of Angelo
as Theresa
(1913)
The House of Discord
as The Wife
(1913)
If We Only Knew
as The Mother
(1913)
Death's Marathon
as The Wife
(1913)
Pirate Gold
as The Daughter
(1913)
(1913)
A Chance Deception
as The Wife
(1913)
The Hero of Little Italy
as Maria
(1913)
The Stolen Bride
as The Grower's Daughter
(1912)
The Massacre
as Stephen's Ward
(1912)
The Painted Lady
as The Older Sister
(1912)
One Is Business, the Other Crime
as Rich Wife
(1912)
The Lesser Evil
as The Young Woman
(1912)
A String of Pearls
as The Brother's Sweetheart
(1912)
A Sailor’s Heart
as The Sailor's Second Sweetheart
(1912)
The Goddess of Sagebrush Gulch
as The Goddess
(1912)
A Temporary Truce
as Alice Hardy - the Prospector's Wife
(1912)
For His Son
as The Son's Fiancée
(1912)
Blind Love
as The Young Woman
(1912)
With the Enemy's Help
as The Prospector's Wife
(1912)
The Eternal Mother
as Martha, the Wife
(1912)
The God Within
as The Woman of the Camp
(1912)
The Transformation of Mike
as The Tenement Girl
(1912)
The Chief's Blanket
as The Young Woman
(1912)
Under Burning Skies
as Emily
(1911)
The Making of a Man
as Young Woman
(1911)
A Country Cupid
as Edith
(1911)
The Battle
as The Boy's Sweetheart
(1911)
(1911)
(1911)
Enoch Arden
as Woman on the Beach
(1911)
(1911)
The Voice of the Child
as The Wife
(1911)
Through Darkening Vales
as Grace
(1911)
(1911)
The Miser's Heart
as Neighbor
(1911)
The Last Drop of Water
as Mary
(1911)
The Long Road
as Edith
(1911)
The Lonedale Operator
as Daughter of the Lonedale Operator
(1911)
(1911)
Love in the Hills
as The Mountain Girl
(1911)
The Villain Foiled
as Miss Page
(1910)
(1910)
(1910)
All on Account of the Milk
as The Maid
(1909)
(1909)
To Save Her Soul
as Stage Dancer
(1909)
The Day After
as The New Year