Violet Radcliffe (20 August 1904, Niagara Falls - 4 May 1965, Los Angeles) was a child actress active during Hollywood's silent era. She appeared in several dozen films for Fine Arts, Fox, and Pathe, and was frequently cast as a villain or as a little boy.[1][2] One of her best-known roles was as Dirty Face Dan in a number of serials.
Violet Bonita Radcliffe | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | August 20, 1904 Niagara Falls, New York, United States |
| Died | May 4, 1965 (aged 60) New York, United States |
| Occupation | Child actress |
| Years active | 1913–1918 |
Biography
editAccording to several US censuses, Violet Bonita Radcliffe was born August 20, 1904, in Niagara Falls, New York, to Harry Belmont Radcliffe and Ida F. Davenport.[3][4] However, during her career she was said to be four years younger, resulting in an assumption she was born in 1908.[5] She began performing when she was only two months old, and she was quite young when she appeared in her first film, 1913's Quo Vadis.[6]
She played boys role in at least eighteen films between 1915 and 1917.[5] She specialized in comedies and fairy tales in which all the actors were supposedly under the age of ten.[5] She played a series of lovable villains for Majestic, including the character Dan in The Straw Man, Bilie's Goat, The Little Cupids and The Little Life Guard (1915).[5] She then went to Fox role of Al-Talib in Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (1917) and Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1918).[5]
She played Prince Rudolpho in Jack and the Beanstalk along Francis Carpenter, Virginia Lee Corbin and Carmen De Rue.[7] She became regular with Carmen De Rue in the Fox Kiddie Features.[8]
She left the movies in 1918, aged supposedly ten.[5] Little was known of what became of her after her career in Hollywood ended, and she was assumed to have died in 1926, aged supposedly 18.[4] In 1922, she married Samuel Maddox, in 1927 Archie Lee Sims, both in Los Angeles, and Eugene Woodford in 1935, in Vancouver, Washington.[4][3] She died May 4, 1965, in Los Angeles, named Violet Bonita Beiringer.[4][9]
Selected filmography
edit- Treasure Island (1918)
- The Babes in the Woods (1917)
- Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (1917)
- Jack and the Beanstalk (1917)
- Cheerful Givers (1917)
- Everybody's Doing It (1916)
- A Sister of Six (1916)
- Gretchen the Greenhorn (1916)
- The Little School Ma'am (1916)
- Going Straight (1916)
- Let Katie Do It (1916)
- Quo Vadis? (1913)
References
edit- ^ "Violet Radcliffe". The Chicago Tribune. 29 Dec 1917. Retrieved 2019-08-17.
- ^ "Child Parts". Motion Picture Studios Directory. 1919.
- ^ a b "Violet Bonita Radcliffe". www.familysearch.org. Retrieved 2022-12-02.
- ^ a b c d "Silent Child Actress Violet Radcliffe Real Death Date Found". NitrateVille. 8 April 2010. Retrieved 2020-09-28.
- ^ a b c d e f Horak, Laura (26 February 2016). Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934. Rutgers University Press. p. 35. ISBN 9780813574844.
- ^ "Company of Children". The Ogden Standard. 22 May 1915. Retrieved 2019-08-17.
- ^ Lussier 2018, p. 38.
- ^ Lussier 2018, p. 37.
- ^ "Violet Ratcliffe". IMDb. Retrieved 2020-09-28.
Bibliography
edit- Lussier, Tim (11 October 2018). "Bare Knees" Flapper: The Life and Films of Virginia Lee Corbin. McFarland Publishing. p. 218. ISBN 9781476675688.