Dorothy Davenport

At 82 years old, Dorothy Davenport has this physical status:

Fannie Dorothy Davenport (March 13, 1895 – October 12, 1977) was an American actress, screenwriter, film director and producer. Born into a family of film performers, Davenport had her own independent career before her marriage to the film actor and director Wallace Reid in 1913.

Reid's star rose steadily, making feature films at a pace of one every seven weeks, until 1919 when a dose of morphine administered for an injury on location grew into an addiction.

Reid died in January 1923 at the age of 31.

Davenport took her own story as source material and co-produced Human Wreckage (1923), in which she was billed as "Mrs.

Wallace Reid" and played the role of a drug addict's wife.

She advertised the film in terms of a moral crusade. Davenport followed its success with other social-conscience films on other topics, Broken Laws (1924) and The Red Kimono (1925), with expensive litigation connected with the latter.

While Davenport's own production company dissolved in the late 1920s, she continued to take on smaller writing and directing roles.

In 1929 Davenport directed Linda a film about a woman who gives up her happiness for the sake of men and social expectations.

Davenport directed her last film in 1934; however, she continued in the film industry in other roles until her last known credit in 1956 as dialogue supervisor of The First Traveling Saleslady. Davenport died in October 1977 at the age of 82.

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Early career

Dorothy Davenport was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 13, 1895. Harry Davenport, Davenport's father, was a Broadway actor and comedian, and Alice Davenport, a film actress who appeared in at least 140 films. Dorothy's grandparents, Edward Loomis Davenport, a well-known tragedy actor, and Fanny Vining Davenport, who began acting at the age of three, were among Edward Loomis Davenport, a successful tragedian stage actor. Fanny Davenport, Dorothy's aunt, and their daughter and granddaughter were among the time's best stage actresses.

At the age of six, Davenport's first professional work was with a stock company. Davenport, who was a teenager, returned to work in the entertainment industry, doing a sort of burlesque.

Davenport attended school in Brooklyn and Roanoke, Virginia. She moved from Boston to Southern California to pursue acting at the age of 16. She had been performing vaindeville for a year and a half. She began her film career with Nestor Film Company, which was later acquired by Universal Pictures. In a supporting role in Life Cycle, she made her first known film appearance. She was a natural horsewoman and appeared in many of her own films.

Davenport met Wallace Reid, a young actor on the set of a film while working with Nestor. "She was apprehension over his apparent lack of acting skills on the first day but smitten with him on the third day of their collaboration." Both of Nestor's early years were well-known. Despite the fact that Wallace Reid went to make another film, he quickly returned to Nestor, and the pair married in October 1913.

Over a hundred films were shot in a row together last year. After this year, the pair moved to other films but they returned in 1916. In Los Angeles, Davenport gave birth to her first son, Wallace Reid Jr., on June 18, 1917. Davenport was forced to take a break from her career to become a full-time mother due to her son's birth. Betty Anna Reid, the second child of Davenport and Reid in 1920, was adopted by the family's second child.

Later career

Wallace Reid was injured in a train crash in Oregon (1919). As a result of this injury's pain, the studio doctors gave Reid swollen morphine, which he became addicted to. Reid's health gradually deteriorated over the next few years, and he died of heroin use in 1923.

Davenport and Thomas Ince co-produced Human Wreckage (1923), a film that addressed opioid use in Reid's life, as well as the risks of heroin use. It was created and sold with expert assistance from members of the Los Angeles Anti-Narcotics League. Davenport brought Human Wreckage to a roadshow participation with personal appearances, followed by another "social conscience" snapshot of excessive mother-love in 1924, which was billed as "Mrs. Wallace Reid."

The Red Kimono (1925) about white slavery was then produced by Davenport. Both Human Wreckage and The Red Kimono were outlawed in the United Kingdom by the British Board of Film Censors in 1926. Kimono is based on a true story of sex in New Orleans in 1917. Davenport used the real name of the woman portrayed by Priscilla Bonner, who as a result sued Davenport and obtained a historic privacy lawsuit, instead treating it as a true tale.

Linda (1929), Sucker Money (1933), Road to Ruin (1934), and The Woman Condemned (1934), a filmmaker, script writer, and stage producer, she later worked as a writer and dialogue producer. Footsteps in the Fog (1955), co-author of the screenplay and as acting director of The First Traveling Saleslady (1956) with Ginger Rogers, are among her credits. Dorothy had a print of her husband's 1921 feature Forever in the 1970s, near the end of her life. She donated the print to a museum that was planning on a display. Dorothy's last remaining print of Wally's favourite film was lost, and the museum's plans fell apart.

Davenport died at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, on October 12, 1977, at the age of 82. She is interred with her husband at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.

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