Belle Bennett | WatchedThis
Belle Bennett
Acting
Biography
From Wikipedia Belle Bennett (April 22, 1891 – November 4, 1932) was a stage and screen actress who started her professional career in vaudeville. She was born in Milaca, Minnesota. Bennett was working as a film actress by 1913, and was cast in numerous one-reel shorts by small East Coast film companies. She appeared in minor motion pictures like the western film A Ticket to Red Horse Gulch (Mutual, 1914). She starred in several full-length films by the Triangle Film Corporation, including The Lonely Woman (1918). She also appeared in the Moving Picture Corporation's film Flesh and Spirit (1922). She made the move to Hollywood before Samuel Goldwyn selected her from among seventy-three actresses for the leading role in Stella Dallas (1925). While filming the movie, her son, sixteen-year-old William Howard Macy, died. Macy had posed as Bennett's brother for some time because of her fear that her employers might find out her true age. She was actually thirty-four rather than twenty-four, which she had claimed to be. After playing the mother role in Stella Dallas, Bennett was typecast for the remainder of her film career. She later appeared in Mother Machree (1928), The Battle of the Sexes (1928), The Iron Mask (1929), Courage (1930), Recaptured Love (1930), and The Big Shot (1931). Bennett was married three times. Jack Oaker, a sailor at the San Pedro, California submarine base, was married to her when she worked with the Triangle Film Corporation, in 1918. Her second husband was William Macy of La Crosse, Wisconsin. She later married film director Fred Windermere. In September 1932 she experienced a relapse of cancer, which she had been suffering from for two and a half years. She died that November at the age of 41. Late in her life Bennett came to believe in the power of prayer. A practitioner of Christian Science influenced her. She is interred in the Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood. Bennett has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Filmography Movies
Acting
East Lynne
This most famous of Victorian melodramas was more than half a century old, and had already been filmed several times when it came to the screen once again in 1925. Director Emmett J. Flynn had an all-star cast and kept close to the original story.
Your Best Friend
A Jewish mother in New York finds herself at odds with her son's new wife, a pretty Gentile girl.
Playing with Souls
Amy and Matthew Dale separate and they place their young son, Matthew Jr., in a London boarding school. The boy grows up without knowing his parents, and is taunted by his schoolmates, who doubt the legitimacy of his childhood. By the time he is 20, Matt wants to find out about his parentage, so he travels to Paris, leaving behind his sweetheart, Margo.
Sweedie, the Janitor
A janitor finds a piece of jewelry dropped by a young woman, which he in turn gives to his wife. Feeling sorry for the young woman, the janitor tries to straighten things out, with many funny complications.
A Capable Lady Cook
Hubby can't stand his wife's cooking and he goes to the employment agency and gets Sweedy as a new cook. They arrive home and dinner is about to be served. Sweedy never reaches the table, however, for her foot slips and the expected dinner flies away. Sweedy then starts to clean house, but she gets in wrong by raising clouds of dust. Sweedy now starts to do more cooking, but gets a note from the iceman saying he will meet her on the comer and go for a lark. Sweedy takes the wife's new gown and goes to keep the appointment. Hubby discovers the note, thinks his wife is false, follows and brings Sweedy home, where, in the parlor, he protests against such treatment and declares his love in hot terms, which is overheard by the wife. She steps in and the astonished husband discovers his terrible mistake.
The Way of All Flesh
The story takes place in Milwaukee during the early 1900s with a bank clerk named August Schiller who is happy with both his job and his family. He is tasked with transporting $1,000 in securities to Chicago. On the train he meets a blond seductress who convinces him to buy her a bottle of champagne, and takes him to a saloon. The next morning he awakes alone in a dilapidated bedroom and without the securities.
The Iron Mask
King Louis XIII of France is thrilled to have born to him a son - an heir to the throne. But when the queen delivers a twin, Cardinal Richelieu sees the second son as a potential for revolution, and has him sent off to Spain to be raised in secret to ensure a peaceful future for France. Alas, keeping the secret means sending Constance, lover of D'Artagnan, off to a convent. D'Artagnan hears of this and rallies the Musketeers in a bid to rescue her. Unfortunately, Richelieu out-smarts the Musketeers and banishes them forever.
Their Own Desire
Lally is a rich girl whose father writes books and plays polo. After 23 years of marriage her father decides to divorce Lally's mother and remarry to soon-to-be-divorced Beth Cheever. This sours Lally on all men. While on vacation with her mother she meets Jack, who succeeds in stealing her heart. Then Lally discovers that Jack is the son of Beth Cheever, the woman who is to marry her father.
Stella Dallas
An eccentric lower class woman struggles to gain respect in high society after marrying a wealthy man, and the problem gets worse when their daughter starts growing up.
The Battle of the Sexes
Gum-chewing frizzy-haired golddigger Marie Skinner cooks up a scheme with her lover Babe Winsor, a jazz hound, to fleece a portly middle-aged real estate tycoon, William Judson. Marie moves into Judson's apartment building and contrives to meet and seduce him, plying him with compliments, music, swoons, décolletage, and batted eyes. When his loyal wife (and their two children) see him out catting with Marie at a night club, mom's devastated and confronts him. He moves out. Babe wants Marie to sell Judson worthless bonds. Will mom commit suicide? Will sis shoot the floozy? Will pops figure out he's being a fool?
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