Gladys Egan

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Gladys Egan in All for Her , 1912

Gladys Egan , married Gladys Egan Jacoby (born May 24, 1900 in Somerville , Massachusetts ; died March 8, 1985 in Lemon Grove , California ) was an American actress of the silent film era . She starred in more than 100 films by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company between 1908 and 1914 .

Career

Gladys Egan was born to Thomas F. Egan and his wife Margarette Sullivan. 1905 is proven to be the residence of the Manhattan family . The father worked as a postman and Gladys had twelve siblings, most of whom died early. Her older sister Pearl Margaret Wagner (1897–1971) also starred in films around 1912 and 1913.

Gladys Egan starred in more than 100 films for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company between 1908 and 1914 . Her first appearance was in 1908 as Dollie in David Wark Griffith 's first directorial work The Adventures of Dollie . This was followed by the role of the daughter of Florence Lawrence in Behind the Scenes . One of her most impressive roles in her first year was the daughter of a Boer in The Zulu's Heart , one of the many examples of blackfacing in silent films . After the murder of her father, Gladys wins the sympathy of a Zulu warrior who spares her and saves her from being murdered by other warriors. The civil war dramas His Trust and His Trust Fulfilled from 1911 offer a similar constellation. Here, the black servant of a murdered southern family acts similarly, protecting Gladys and her mother after the death of their father and Gladys, despite her own hardship, finances her education and her return to the upscale society enables. In Romance of a Jewess in 1908, Gladys was the daughter of the dying Florence Lawrence, who was on the streets of the Lower East Side looking for a pawnbroker to sell her mother's necklace. The following year she played in The Wheat King (original title: A Corner in Wheat ) the role of a starving child.

After 1912 Gladys only appeared in a few films, mostly under the director James Kirkwood . Egan's last film was James Kirkwood's Men and Women in 1914 , starring Blanche Sweet and Lionel Barrymore .

Little is known about Gladys Egan's life after the film. From 1917 she attended a secretary school, later she worked in New York as a stenographer. From census reports, social security records, and obituaries, it can be reconstructed that she was married to John "Jack" Edson Jacoby (1886–1948), a sales engineer in the automotive industry, since 1927 or 1928. Their daughter Joyce was born in 1937 and the family soon moved to Detroit , Michigan . After the death of John E. Jacoby in 1948, Gladys Jacoby moved to California with her daughter .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Gladys Egan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gene Zonarich: The Pickford Biographs: "As It Is in Life" (with a nod to Gladys Egan) , site 11 East 14th Street , June 18, 2013, accessed on January 14 of 2019.
  2. ↑ a b Gladys Egan in the Internet Movie Database (English).
  3. ↑ Nicole Devarenne: "History by Lightning": DW Griffith in South Africa . In: Charlie Keil (ed.): A Companion to DW Griffith . Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, New Jersey and Oxford 2018, ISBN 978-1-118-34125-4 , pp. 486–509, here pp. 488–490.
personal data
SURNAME Egan, Gladys
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jacoby, Gladys Egan (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actress of the silent film era
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Somerville , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1985
Place of death Lemon Grove , California