Clara Kimball Young Pics

Clara

Young

Kimball

66

Slim

Chicago, Illinois

Virgo

15 October 1960

Woodland Hills, California

Stroke

White

Eyes of Youth

American

Female

Clara Kimball Young was born as Clarisa Kimball on September 6, 1890 to Edward M. Kimball and the former Pauline Maddern Garret, traveling stock company actors with the Holden Co. Though she claimed Chicago as her birthplace, there are no records of her being born in Cook County, and she may have been born on one of her parent`s tours. Her parents lived in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where her name Clarisa changed from the 1890 census to Clairee in that of 1900, though she once claimed her birth name was Edith. Young Clarisa Kimball made her professional debut as an actress at the advanced age of three, touring with the Holden Co. with her parents and playing child parts in the company`s repertoire. After attending Chicago`s St. Francis Xavier`s Academy, she joined another traveling stock company that took her out West. She married actor James Young, and sometime between 1909 and 1912, both were hired by the Vitagraph Co. Though she was making $75 a week in the stock company, Clara Kimball Young acted Vitragraph`s offer of an annual contract paying her $25 a week, as it was steady employment. In addition to her hubbie James Young, who was hired as an actor but who became one of the company`s best directors, Vitagraph hired her parents. Vitagraph, which had been started at the end of the 19th century as the International Novelty Company by three English vaudevillians, Albert E. Smith, J. Stuart Blackton and Ronald A. Reader, was a family-friendly company. In addition to the Kimball Youngs, it also employed the Talmadge Sisters, the Sidney Drew family, and Maurice Costello and his daughters. Though Clara made dozens of movies at Vitagraph, few survive. In her early movies, she was quite charming, and these first films showcased her natural personality better than did her later dramas. A tall, dark-haired, full-figured gal that was a popular type of the early 20th century, Clara played both conventional leading ladies and light comedy, the latter of which she excelled at. She quickly became a top star at Vitagraph, ranking seventeenth in a 1913 popularity poll of stars that was topped by Kalem`s Alice Joyce. Clara Kimball Young would soon knock Joyce off her perch atop the popularity charts. When Vitagraph supplemented its normal output of one- and two-reelers in 1914 and `15 with several longer feature films, they starred Young and the equally popular Earle Williams as her leading man. One of their first collaborations, "My Official Wife," a potboiling melodrama in the then-popular Russian aristocracy genre, propelled Young and Williams to the top rank of stardom in the polls. The movie, helmed by her hubby, made him a major director. Into this Eden, the snake arrived in the guise of producer Lewis J. Selznick, the vice president of the new World Film Corp., who signed Young to a personal contract in 1914 and proceeded to change her image into that of an unbridled sexpot. In that year`s "Lola" (a.k.a. "Without a Soul), which was directed by her husband, she played a decent woman who dies and is resurrected, unfortunately lacking a soul, like many of the producers then and since. Transformed into a `vamp,` the heartless Lola sets out to destroy men while Clara conquered the box office with another huge hit that cemented her reputation as a silent screen superstar. Simultaneously, Selznick was destroying the equanimity of his leading lady`s home life, leading her husband James Young to despair to Mabel Norman, "[W]here I made my mistake was in ever inviting that fellow to the house." In 1916, James Young filed a lawsuit against Selznick for alienation of affection, to which Selznick riposted that the marriage was troubled before he had arrived on the scene. Clara filed charges against her husband, charging cruelty, though finally it was James Young who obtained a divorce on grounds of desertion on April 8, 1919. (By then, the Selznick-Kimball Young relationship was on the rocks and in the courts, and there was another correspondent to the divorce.) After playing two man-eating vamps, Clara Kimball Young settled into a series of roles as the traditional silent screen hapless heroine whose travails are resolved with a conventional happy ending. She did, however, get to assay the title roles in" Camille" and "Trilby" (both 1915) with more tragic results, and she got to play some more decadent Russian hussies in "Hearts in Exile" (1915) and "The Yellow Passport" (1916). The screenwriter Frances Marion reported that Kimball Young was bored with her roles at World Film and resentful over Selznick`s control over her private life. Like many a movie mogul to come after him, Selznick was determined to create a public image for his star that matched the roles she played, that of a gloomy tragedienne. Lewis J. Selznick was an ambitious man who had a habit of alienating his business partners (a trait that would trigger the failure of his las

www.imdb.com/name/nm0949403/bio

Clarisa Kimball

Edward Kimball

Mrs. E.M. Kimball

Frances Marion

1890-09-06

Clara Kimball Young (September 6, 1890 – October 15, 1960) was an American film actress, who was highly regarded and publicly popular in the early silent film era.

70