Madge Bellamy
Madge Bellamy (born Margaret Derden Philpott ; born June 30, 1899 in Hillsboro , Texas , † January 24, 1990 in Upland , California ) was an American film and stage actress .
Life
Childhood and youth
Madge Bellamy was born to William Bledsoe Philpott, an English professor at Texas A&M University , and his wife Annie Margaret Derden. She lived in San Antonio until she was 6, and in 1905 the family moved to Brownwood , where her father found a job at a college . Another four years later, in 1909, the company moved to Denver , Colorado .
Career
Her passion for acting became evident early on, culminating in 1916 with her escape to New York City . Here she resigned in February 1918 her first engagement at Broadway when she in the short-lived musical The Love Mill of Earl Carroll got a walk-on role. She got her second and last assignment in December 1918, when she was also seen in an extra role in James M. Barrie's play Dear Brutus . Shortly afterwards she signed the American theater producer Daniel Frohman , who was also responsible for her stage name Madge Bellamy . She went on a US tour with him and was soon earning a considerable weekly salary of 100 dollars.
In 1920, Bellamy also became aware of Hollywood , so she made her debut as a film actress in The Riddle: Woman by director Edward José . Despite the success that she celebrated in the years to come, she was one of those actresses who did not master the transition from silent to sound film without problems. In 1928 she was in front of the camera in Mother Knows Best , 20th Century Fox's first sound film , but the film marked a turning point in her career, as from the 1930s onwards she only received limited offers - often in B-movies . She took her last film role in 1945 on the Western Northwest Trail .
Private life
Madge Bellamy also made headlines outside of her acting career. In 1928 she went to Tijuana ( Mexico ) with the stockbroker Logan Metcalf in front of the altar. But the marriage was divorced after only four days - and is therefore one of the shortest in Hollywood. She was never married again after that, nor did she ever have children. In 1943 she got into the press again when she hurt her then partner Stanford Murphy in the affect with a gun, because he wanted to leave her for another woman.
She always referred to herself as an atheist , a vegetarian and politically oriented towards the left spectrum .
Next life
For the last decades of her life, she lived very secluded in her home in California. Among other things, she wrote her autobiography, A Darling of the Twenties , which she did not live to see published. She died of heart failure at the age of 90 .
Today a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame commemorates her.
Filmography (selection)
- 1924: The iron horse ( The Iron Horse )
- 1932: White Zombie ( White Zombie )
- 1934: Charlie Chan in London
- 1945: Northwest Trail
Web links
- Madge Bellamy in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Madge Bellamy in the Internet Broadway Database (English)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bellamy, Madge |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Philpott, Margaret Derden |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | US-american actress |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 30, 1899 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hillsboro , Texas , United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 24, 1990 |
| Place of death | Upland , California , United States |