Virginia Valli | WatchedThis
Virginia Valli
Acting
Biography
From Wikipedia Virginia Valli (June 10, 1898 – September 24, 1968) was an American stage and film actress whose motion picture career started in the silent film era and lasted until the beginning of the sound film era of the 1930s. Born Virginia McSweeney in Chicago, Illinois, she got her acting start in Milwaukee with a stock company. She also did some film work with Essanay Studios in her hometown of Chicago, starting in 1916. Valli continued to appear in films throughout the 1920s. She was an established star at the Universal studio by the mid-1920s. In 1924 she was the female lead in King Vidor's Southern Gothic Wild Oranges, a film now being seen after several decades of film vault obscurity. She also appeared in the romantic comedy, Every Woman's Life, about "the man she could have married, the man she should have married and the man she DID marry." She made the bulk of her films between 1924 and 1927 including Alfred Hitchcock's debut feature, The Pleasure Garden, Paid To Love (1927), with William Powell, and Evening Clothes (1927), which featured Adolphe Menjou. In 1925 Valli performed in The Man Who Found Himself with Thomas Meighan. The production was made at a Long Island, New York studio. Her first sound picture was The Isle of Lost Ships in 1929, but her film career would not last much longer due to declining fame. Unable to find a suitable studio, she quit films after making the quickie Night Life in Reno, in 1931. Valli was first married to George Lamson and the two shared a small bungalow in Hollywood, in close proximity to the Hollywood Hotel. In 1931, she married her second husband, actor Charles Farrell, to whom she remained married until her death. They moved to Palm Springs, where she was a social fixture for many years. She suffered a stroke in 1966, and died two years later, aged 70, in Palm Springs, California. She was buried in the Welwood Murray Cemetery of that city.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Flames
Railroad builder James Travers (George Nichols) wants his pretty daughter, Anne (Virginia Valli), to marry Herbert Landis, a young engineer (Eugene O'Brien). Unfortunately, Anne loves Landis...like a brother, and his rival, Hilary Fenton (Bryant Washburn), stands ready to snatch her up.
The Dead Line
Although a feud between the Harlan and Boone families has been raging for years, Mollie Powell, the Harlan's stepdaughter, is secretly in love with Clay Boone. When a young member of the Boone clan is killed during one of the battles, Clay vows that he will never touch a gun again. Branded a coward by the other mountaineers, Clay keeps his oath until Buck Gomery, one of the moonshiners, attacks Julia Weston, the daughter of another moonshiner.
The Pleasure Garden
Two chorus girls at the Pleasure Garden Theatre follow different paths in love and fortune.
The Common Sin
Wall Street financier Frederick Searles goes bankrupt, prompting his mercenary wife to marry their eldest daughter Needa to the wealthy, disreputable John Davis Warren, despite Needa's love for Hugh Stanton.
Paid to Love
An American banker goes to a small Balkan country looking to invest his bank's money and shore up the country's weak economy in order to maximize the return on their investment. Towards that end he befriends the country's king and they come up with a scheme to get the Crown Prince married, a prospect not particularly appealing to the Crown Prince--until he sees the beautiful cabaret dancer the pair has picked for him to marry.
The Shock
A gang of blackmailers sends a cripple to San Francisco to expose a banker they have been blackmailing. However, the cripple meets and falls in love with the banker's daughter.
Ruggles of Red Gap
Harry Leon Wilson has written nothing more diverting than this story of the irreproachable English valet who is lost in a poker game to a rough-and-ready westerner and taken to Red Gap ultimately to become its social mentor and chief caterer, and there is sheer delight in the story of how the Earl, brought over to save his younger brother from the vampirish clutches of Klondike Kate, makes the lady his Countess and once more stands Red Gap upon its somewhat dizzy head.
East Side, West Side
Director Allan Dwan’s excellent use of New York locations enlivens a rags-to-riches tale that fully exploits star George O’Brien’s championship boxing prowess.
The Village Blacksmith
(survived only 10 minutes) As young men, the squire (Marshall) and the village blacksmith (Walling) are in love with the same woman (Boardman), whom the blacksmith marries. This angers the squire. Years later, the squire's son Anson (Yearsley) dares the blacksmith's son Johnnie (Hackathorne) to climb a tree, from which he falls and is crippled. As adults, Anson and the blacksmith's daughter Alice (Valli) fall in love, which angers the blacksmith, who chastises his daughter. The blacksmith's other son Bill (Butler) returns from college and is injured in a train accident. Anson steals $480 from a church fund which is currently in Alice's possession. Alice is struck by lightning. The blacksmith take Anson and the squire to church where they both repent.
The Lost Zeppelin
Explorers to the South Pole in an airship Zeppelin crash in the frozen Antarctic and must struggle for survival in the land of eternal snow and ice.
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