Clara Kimball Young

Clara Kimball Young (1916)

Clara Kimball Young (born September 6, 1890 in Chicago , Illinois , † October 15, 1960 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American actress . From 1909 to the early 1940s, she appeared in more than 150 film productions.

Life

Kimball Young was already on stage as a toddler at the age of three with her parents, traveling actors Edward M. Kimball and Pauline Kimball . Together with her husband, the actor and later director James Young , she found employment with the Vitagraph film production company in 1909 . Her parents followed in 1912. Kimball Young's first films were mostly directed by J. Stuart Blackton . With light melodramas and romantic comedies, Kimball Young played her way into the first ranks of film actresses until the mid-1910s. In particular, her roles alongside the male Vitagraph star Earle Williams , such as My Official Wife , directed by James Young in 1914 , brought her audience success.

Lewis J. Selznick signed the Young couple in 1914 for his newly founded film company World Film Corporation . Her first role was that of her father, played by Alec B. Francis , resurrected girl Lola in the film of the same name; Directed by James Young. The following year, Kimball Young had an affair with Selznick. After The Heart of Blue Ridge (1915), James Young never directed another film by his wife. After a three-year mud fight, the marriage was divorced in 1919.

Selznick founded the Clara Kimball Young Film Corporation with her in 1916. For the first films The Foolish Virgin (1916), The Common Law (1916) and The Easiest Way (1917), the French director Albert Capellani was hired. Kimball Young turned away from Selznick, who controlled them personally and financially, in 1917 and tied himself to film director and producer Harry Garson in a business and amorous way . Her husband, James Young, attacked Garson with a knife in front of the Astor Theater in New York in early 1917. Garson, Kimball Young and Selznick are meanwhile in court about allegedly misappropriated income and performance rights of Kimball Young. Kimball Young produced her own films with the help of Garson and distributed them through Selznick and Adolph Zukor's Select Picture Corporation in accordance with the agreement with Selznick . In addition to Jack Holt and Tully Marshall , directed by Allan Dwan, she achieved a critically acclaimed success with Cheating Cheaters (1919). After the following film The Better Wife (1919) she unilaterally ended the business relationship with Selznick.

With the film production company Garson Productions and Equity, Kimball Young achieved for the first time actual independence in the production and marketing of her films. The first production Eyes of Youth (1919) with Gareth Hughes was extraordinarily successful, as was the last time My Official Wife and brought in the required start-up capital. Selznick won a lawsuit brought by him against Kimball Young for non-performance of the contract. He was awarded $ 25,000 for each of the next ten Clara Kimball Young films. Garson directed the following nine films with Clara Kimball Young without being particularly talented for the job. The reviews got worse from film to film. Garson and Young gave up their manufacturing company in 1922.

Her new producer, Sam Zierler, stopped directing Garson and instead used more experienced directors such as Wallace Worsley ( Enter Madame , 1922) and King Vidor ( The Woman of Bronze , 1923). He could not save her career with this, she was already considered "too old" for her role type. After 1925, she worked in vaudeville theaters.

With the beginning of the sound film era , she got some film appearances again from the early 1930s. After a comical role in Kept Husbands , she starred in Women Go on Forever and Mother and Son (all three in 1931). But after that she was only used as a small actor . Cecil B. DeMille gave her a prominent role in Hollywood Extra Girl (1935), a short advertising film for his large-scale production Crusader - Richard the Lionheart (1935), in which Kimball Young was only involved as an extra . She had her last role in 1941 in William Beaudine's Mr. Celebrity , in which she and Francis X. Bushman portray two former silent film stars under their real names.

In 1960, Clara Kimball Young was honored with a star on the Walk of Fame . She is buried in the Grand View Memorial Park in Glendale .

Filmography (selection)

• 1910: The Sepoy's Wife
• 1910: The Last of the Saxons
• 1912: Half a Hero
• 1912: A Vitagraph Romance
• 1912: Lord Browning and Cinderella
• 1913: Beau Brummel
• 1913: Delayed Proposals
• 1913: Beauty Unadorned
• 1914: Goodness Gracious
• 1914: My Official Wife
• 1914: Lola
• 1915: The Heart of Blue Ridge
• 1915: Camille
• 1915: trilby
• 1915: Hearts in Exile
• 1916: The Yellow Passport
• 1916: The Common Law
• 1916: The Foolish Virgin
• 1917: The Easiest Way
• 1917: The Price She Paid
• 1917: Magda
• 1919: Cheating Cheaters
• 1919: The Better Wife
• 1919: Eyes of Youth
• 1920: Midchannel
• 1921: Hush
• 1921: What No Man Knows
• 1922: The Worldly Madonna
• 1922: The Hands of Nara
• 1922: Enter Madame
• 1923: The Woman of Bronze
• 1923: A Wife's Romance
• 1925: Lying Wives
• 1931: Kept Husbands
• 1931: Women Go on Forever
• 1931: Mother and Son
• 1935: Hollywood Extra Girl
• 1942: Mr. Celebrity

Web links

Commons : Clara Kimball Young  - Collection of Images

• Clara Kimball Young in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Clara Kimball Young in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• America's First First Lady of the Screen - The Life and Career of Clara Kimball Young
• Clara Kimball Young in the German dubbing file

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Edward M. Kimball. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 . 
2. ^ Pauline Kimball. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .