Bessie Barriscale

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Bessie Barriscale (1917)

Bessie Barriscale (* the 30th September 1884 in Hoboken , New Jersey as Elizabeth Barry Scale ; † the 30th June 1965 in Kentfield , California ) was an American actress.

life and career

Bessie Barriscale was born to Irish immigrants; the actresses Edith and Mabel Taliaferro were her cousins. Since the 1900s Berriscale has appeared regularly on the theater stage, and the actress made her first film in 1913. She achieved widespread fame with film audiences in 1914 for her leading role in the western Rose of the Rancho , directed by Cecil B. DeMille , which was a big box-office hit at the time was. She had previously played the role of Rose in a play. In the following years she was able to cement her status as a Hollywood star with leading roles in some melodramas by Thomas Harper Ince . Most of the time Barriscale played the role of the lovable and long-suffering girl who had to fight her way through bad circumstances. She was marketed as the "girl with the biggest eyes" in Hollywood. However, many of her most important films are now lost.

In 1918, Barriscale signed a contract for 16 films with BB Features that grossed her at least $ 1 million and made her one of the highest paid actresses of the time. At the beginning of the 1920s, her career slowly passed its zenith and she subsequently made fewer films, instead she was again increasingly seen in the theater and on vaudeville stages. With the beginning of the sound film era , Barriscale only played character roles due to age, mostly as a mother or servant in supporting roles. Barriscale's probably most important appearance of the sound film era was her portrayal of the unfriendly daughter of Mary Pickford in the epic Western Secrets (1933) by Frank Borzage . She had her last film role in 1934 as a maid in The Man Who Reclaimed His Head at the side of Claude Rains and Joan Bennett .

Bessie Barriscale was married to fellow actor Howard C. Hickman for many years until his death in 1949 . The couple also worked on many films together. Barriscale and Hickman were buried in Mount Tamalpais Cemetery in San Rafael . In 1960, five years before her death, Barriscale received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her filmmaking .

Web links

Commons : Bessie Barriscale  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Bessie Barriscale at Allmovie
  2. ↑ Bessie Barriscale at the Los Angeles Times
personal data
SURNAME Barriscale, Bessie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Scale, Elizabeth Barry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH September 30, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Hoboken , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1965
Place of death Kentfield , California