Edna Purviance

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Edna Purviance
Edna Purviance (Fred Hartsook, 1910s)

Olga Edna Purviance (born October 21, 1895 in Paradise Valley , Nevada , † January 11, 1958 in Hollywood , Los Angeles , California ) was an American film actress of the silent film era . She was best known as the female lead in over 30 early Charlie Chaplin films .

Life

Edna Purviance was born to Louis and Madison Gates Purviance in Paradise Valley, Nevada. When she was three years old, she moved to Lovelock with her parents , who ran a hotel there. In 1902 the parents divorced, Edna's mother married the German plumber Robert Nurnberger. Edna Purviance showed artistic talent as a child: she was a talented piano player. She left Lovelock in 1913 and attended a business school in San Francisco to become a stenographer . Before being discovered as an actress, she worked as a secretary.

In 1915 the comedian Charles Chaplin worked on his second film for Essanay , for which he still needed a leading actress. An actor friend of mine had noticed a pretty girl in a café in San Francisco (perhaps because Edna occasionally walked her duck on a leash). Chaplin met Purviance, then 20, and although he initially considered her serious charisma unsuitable for comedy, she got the role: “She was more than pretty, she was beautiful. During the conversation, she looked sad and serious. Only afterwards did she tell me that she was lovesick. I doubted she could act, or even have a sense of humor, she looked so serious. We hired them anyway. She would definitely adorn my films. ”In private life, Chaplin and Purviance were a couple for two years until 1917. The relationship broke up at Chaplin's affair with Mildred Harris , but the professional collaboration between Chaplin and Purviance did not end.

Purviance appeared in 35 silent films by Chaplin within eight years, mostly as an attractive and friendly leading lady at his side. Among other things, she played the beautiful Tingeltangelsängerin in Ein Hundeleben and the suffering mother in The Kid . In 1923, Chaplin cast Purviance in his film drama The Nights of a Beautiful Woman in the leading role. In it she plays a young French country woman who wants to flee to Paris with her lover after she has been rejected by her family. Chaplin wanted to make her a star in gratitude for her loyalty with this film, but The Nights of a Beautiful Woman turned into a commercial failure. Edna Purviance only appeared in two other films: In A Woman of the Sea (1926), directed by Josef von Sternberg and produced by Chaplin - the film never came into distribution; and in the French film Education de Prince (1926). After that, Edna Purviance retired as an actress.

In 1938 Purviance married the pilot John P. Squire, with whom she was married until his death in 1945. She stayed in contact with Charlie Chaplin until her death and he supported her financially until her death. She may have had minor roles in Chaplin's most recent American films, Monsieur Verdoux - The Woman Murderer of Paris, and Spotlight . At Monsieur Verdoux , Chaplin originally wanted to cast Purviance in a larger role, according to his biography. Edna Purviance died of head and neck cancer in January 1958 at the age of 62 . Her grave is in the Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale , California.

In Richard Attenborough's Chaplin , Edna is played by Penelope Ann Miller .

Filmography

Charlie Chaplin with Edna Purviance (1915)

literature

  • Linda Wada: The sea gull "A woman of the sea": the Chaplin Studio's lost film starring Edna Purviance , Bend, Oregon: Leading Ladies, February 2010, ISBN 978-0-9826332-0-5
  • Evelyn Dörr : The Man in the Moon - A Radioballett with Charlie Chaplin. Edna Purviance plays the "Leading lady" in this play that was broadcasted in 2002 at West-German-Broadcasting Network, WDR 3 in 2002, and was published as a book in 2008 in German "Der Mann im Mond". Radio ballet with Charlie Chaplin. Piece for acoustic stage, ISBN 978-3837055450

Web links

Commons : Edna Purviance  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Edna Purviance at the New York Times
  2. ↑ Edna Purviance at Nevadaweb
  3. ↑ Edna Purviance at Goldensilents
  4. ↑ Edna Purviance at Charlie Chaplin Reviews ( memento of the original from April 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / charlie-chaplin-reviews.info
personal data
SURNAME Purviance, Edna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Purviance, Olga Edna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-american actress
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Paradise Valley , Nevada, United States
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1958
Place of death Hollywood , Los Angeles, California, United States