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Viola Dana

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Viola Dana
BornVirginia Flugrath
(1897-06-26)June 26, 1897
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
DiedJuly 3, 1987(1987-07-03) (aged 90)
Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting placeHollywood Forever Cemetery
NationalityAmerican
Years active1900–1933
Spouse(s) John Hancock Collins ​ ​(m. 1915⁠–⁠1918)​
Maurice "Lefty" Flynn ​ ​(m. 1925⁠–⁠1929)​
Jimmy Thomson ​(m. 1930⁠–⁠1945)​

Viola Dana (June 26, 1897 – July 3, 1987) was an American film actress who was successful during the era of silent movies.

Career

Born Virginia Flugrath, Dana was a child actress, appearing on the stage at the age of three. She read Shakespeare and particularly identified with the teenage Juliet. She enjoyed a long run at the Hudson Theater in New York City. A particular favorite of audiences was her performance in David Belasco's Poor Little Rich Girl, when she was 16. She went into vaudeville with Dustin Farnum in The Little Rebel and played a bit part in The Model by Augustus Thomas.

Dana entered films in 1910. Her first motion picture was made at a former Manhattan (New York) riding academy on West 61st Street. The stalls had been transformed to dressing rooms. Dana became a star with the Edison Company, working at their studio in the Bronx. She fell in love with Edison director John Hancock Collins and they married in 1915. Dana's success in Collins's Edison features such as Children of Eve (1915) and The Cossack Whip (1916) encouraged producer B. A. Rolfe to offer the couple lucrative contracts with his company, Rolfe Photoplays, which released through Metro Pictures Corporation. Dana and Collins accepted Rolfe's offer in 1916 and made several important films for Rolfe/Metro, notably The Girl Without a Soul and Blue Jeans (both 1917). Rolfe closed his New York-area studio down in the face of the 1918 flu pandemic and sent most of his personnel to California. Dana left before Collins, who was finishing work at the studio; however, Collins contracted influenza which rapidly turned into pneumonia and died in a New York hotel room on October 23, 1918.

Viola Dana

Dana remained in California acting for Metro. In 1920, she became engaged to Ormer Locklear, a daring aviator and military veteran. Locklear died when his plane crashed on August 2, 1920 during a nighttime film shoot for a serial, The Skywayman, for Fox Studios. Dana witnessed the 1920 crash and would not fly again for 25 years.

Dana continued to act throughout the 1920s, but her popularity gradually waned. One of her last important roles was in Frank Capra's first film for Columbia Pictures, That Certain Thing (1928). She retired from the screen in 1929. Her final screen credits are roles in Two Sisters (1929), One Splendid Hour (1929), and with her sister Leonie Flugrath, better known as Shirley Mason (years earlier she had appeared with her older sister, Edna Flugrath, in the 1923 film The Social Code), The Show of Shows (1929). By the time she made her final film appearance in 1933, she had appeared in over 100 films. She briefly came out of retirement to appear in her first and only television role in a small part on Lux Video Theatre, in 1956.

More than 50 years after her retirement from the screen, she appeared in the documentary Hollywood in 1980, discussing her career as a silent film star during the 1920s. Footage from the interview sessions was used in the 1987 documentary Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow.

Personal life

Dana's first husband was Edison director John Collins who died in the Influenza epidemic of 1918. In 1920, she was engaged to aviator Ormer Locklear who died that year in a movie stunt plane crash in August 1920. Locklear was the prototype for the Robert Redford movie, The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), and Dana was an honored guest at its premiere.

Dana was married to Yale football star and actor Maurice "Lefty" Flynn in June 1925. They divorced in February 1929. Her third and final marriage was to golfer Jimmy Thomson from 1930 to March 1945.

Death

Dana died on July 3, 1987 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles at the age of 90. She is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery under her birth name, Virginia Flugrath.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Viola Dana has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It is located at 6541 Hollywood Boulevard.

Selected filmography

Footnotes

  1. "Viola Dana Marries Maurice "Lefty" Flynn". The Norwalk Hour. June 22, 1925. p. 5. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  2. "Viola Dana To Wed Professional Golfer". The Portsmouth Sunday Times. October 11, 1930. p. 2. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  3. "Divorce Granted Viola Dana". St. Petersburg Times. March 31, 1945. p. 8. Retrieved May 1, 2013.
  4. "Silent Movie Star Viola Dana Dies". The Bryan Times. July 11, 1987. p. 3. Retrieved May 1, 2013.

References

  • Greeley Daily Tribune, "Viola Dana Loved the Real Waldo Pepper", April 28, 1975, p. 23.
  • Indianapolis Star, "Little Viola Dana Ambitious to Become Grown-Up Actress", January 15, 1914, p. 13.
  • Lima News, "Viola Dana In Person at Faurot", March 23, 1930, p. 24.
  • Ogden Standard, "From the Movies to Stardom", January 10, 1914, p. 27.
  • {{Rothwell-Smith, Paul. Silent Films! the Performers (2011) ISBN: 9781907540325

External links

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