Colleen Moore, a prolific star of the silent era, was born on August 19, 1899, although she claimed her birthdate was 1902. During her early years, she lived in several different locations, including Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Florida, where her family settled in 1911. Her time with her extended family during the summers would prove to set her career in motion. Her family stayed in Chicago during the summers with her aunt Elizabeth Howey, whose husband, Walter Howey, worked as the managing editor of the Chicago Examiner.
In the film We Moderns. Source: (IMDb/colorized).
The Howey residence was near the Northwestern L; Essanay Studios, an early film studio that was best known for a series of Charlie Chaplin films, was within walking distance of the L. It was here that she got her start in film at the age of 15 when her uncle arranged a screen test with the director D.W. Griffith, who was indebted to Howey for helping him to get Birth of a Nation and Intolerance past the censorship board. She signed with Griffith’s Triangle-Fine Arts and went to Hollywood in 1917, after the screen test, which had been arranged to make sure that her heterochromia (her eyes were two different colors) would not be problematic in close-up shots.
Her Beginnings
Her first credited role came in The Bad Boy in 1917, and after that, during the next few years, she appeared in small roles. Her third film, Hands Up! was her first true western, and she learned the basics of horseback riding on the set. On May 3, 1917, the Chicago Daily Tribune praised her, saying that “Colleen Moore contributes some remarkable bits of acting.” Around the time her first six-month contract was up, she was released for five weeks to work on her fourth film, The Savage with Universal’s Bluebird division. Triangle folded after that and Moore managed to secure a contract with Selig Polyscope, and appeared in two successful films, A Hoosier Romance and Little Orphan Annie, both of which were based on poems by James Whitcomb Riley. Despite the popularity of the films, Selig also went out of business, and Moore was once again looking for work.
Her Work Before Becoming A Flapper
Source: (The Hollywood Revue).
She made a few other films before starting to work with the Christie Film Company; she joined them because she wanted comic training. While with them, she acted in Her Bridal Nightmare, A Roman Scandal, and So Long Letty. Marshall Neilan got Moore released from her contract with Christie and she worked with him, although he often loaned her out to other studios.
She Was A Flapper Before Clara Bow
By 1922, she was being labeled a flapper and her flapper persona appeared on film in 1923 in The Flaming Youth, but her momentum in the persona slowed a bit with the appearance of Clara Bow appearance in Black Oxen; Moore considered Bow her “chief rival.” Moore married John McCormick prior to the release of Flaming Youth, and she left with McCormick on a tour of Europe. Once she returned, she signed a generous contract with First National and her first movie once she returned from Europe was We Moderns in 1925. She starred in more flapper films after that, with appearances as a flapper in three films in 1927 alone. She also helped to popularize the flapper bob haircut which, she said, was modeled on Japanese dolls. Moore starred in several more films after We Moderns, including Twinkletoes, a movie about a young dancer in London; impressively, she did her own dancing for the film. She also starred in Lilac Time, a million-dollar film which easily recouped its profits.
She Took A Brief Hiatus
Source: (IMDb/colorized).
With the end of the silent film era and some of the other transformations in society, she took a hiatus from acting in 1929, after appearing in only one talkie. In 1930, she divorced McCormick and then married a stockbroker, although that marriage was short-lived. Her third marriage, to Homer Hargrave, another stockbroker who was one of the founders of Merrill Lynch. Incidentally, she would turn her knowledge into a book she wrote in 1969 called How Women Can Make Money in the Stock Market. Even without her connections in the financial world, Moore was well off; at the height of her acting career, she was earning $12,500 per week.
Many Of Her Films No Longer Exist
As Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter. Source: (IMDb/colorized).
Moore returned to acting in 1934 appearing in three more films. Her final film before retirement was The Scarlet Letter.
Prior to her retirement, she began working on another lifelong passion. Moore had a life-long love of dollhouses and in 1928, her father constructed a huge dollhouse which was 9 square feet; the tallest tower was 12 feet high and was designed to be dismantled for easy packing. The “Colleen Moore Fairy Castle” had running water and electricity and has been featured at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago since October 30, 1949. Moore continued to work on the dollhouse, contributing to it until her death in 1988. Sadly, many of the films she made deteriorated after she sent them to the Museum of Modern Art.
