Colleen Moore

Profiled in "Speaking of Silents: First Ladies of the Screen" by William Drew, 1997.

Godmother of Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald Reagan and his second wife Nancy Reagan. Later, Moore was a special guest at Patti Davis's 1984 wedding to Paul Grilley. In earlier years, Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan had vacationed with the politically astute Moore and her husband in Arizona.

She did make one final appearance in the TV mini-series Hollywood (1980), but it was her silver screen appearances that mattered most. After she retired she wrote two books on investing and went so far as to marry two stockbrokers.

In the 1960s she formed a film production company, Vid-More Productions, with director King Vidor, after she met him for the first time in 40 years. Though they had kept in touch in the intervening years, they had resolved never to see each other again after they had a secret affair during the 1920s.

Her final film role was as Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter (1934).

Moore was a staunch Republican. In October 1932, alongside Buster Keaton and Bebe Daniels, she appeared at a Republican Party fundraiser in support of incumbent President Herbert Hoover against Democratic Party candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Governor of New York.

By 1927 she was the top box-office draw in the US, pulling in the phenomenal sum of $12,500 a week (unlike many other young, highly-paid actresses, however, Colleen did not spend her money frivolously. Instead, she put it into the stock market, making very shrewd investments). She successfully made the transition into the "talkie" era of sound films.

She starred in three silent film versions of hit Broadway musicals: Sally (1925), Irene (1926) and Oh Kay! (1928).

She also starred in a number of westerns opposite Tom Mix, but the movie that defined her as a "flapper" was the classic Flaming Youth (1923), in which she played Patricia Fentriss.

WAMPAS Baby Star of 1922. This was a promotional campaign sponsored by the United States Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers (WAMPAS) which honored young actresses each year whom they believed to be on the threshold of stardom.

Her first starring role was as Annie in Little Orphant Annie (1918). Colleen was on her way.

Colleen Moore was born Kathleen Morrison in Port Huron, Michigan. Her father was an irrigation engineer and his job was good enough to provide the family a middle-class environment. She was educated in parochial schools and studied at the famed Detroit Conservatory. Colleen's family moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and later to Tampa, Florida, where she spent some of her happiest years. She described her childhood as a happy one where her parents were very much in love. In fact, she claims she never heard her parents argue with each other, although she admitted they had their differences. As a child she was fascinated with films and the queens of the day such as Marguerite Clark and Mary Pickford and kept a scrapbook of those actresses; she even kept a blank space for the day when she would be a famous star and could put her picture there. When a neighbor down the street from her had a piano delivered, Colleen talked the deliverymen into taking the wooden packing crate to her house, and she set it up as a stage. It was the beginning of her career, as she and her friend performed plays for the other neighborhood children. By 1917 she would be on her way to becoming a star. Colleen's uncle, Walter C. Howey, was the editor of the "Chicago Tribune" and had helped D. W.

No sooner had she arrived in Hollywood than she found herself playing in five films that year, The Savage (1917) being her first.

Griffith make his films The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) more presentable to the censors. Knowing of his niece's acting aspirations, Hovey asked Griffith to help her get a start in the motion picture industry.