This is part of a series showing what the silent stars featured in the 1917 Kromo Gravure Trading Card set were up to at the precise moment in time covered in a 1932 Motion Picture Magazine article, Stars Who Have Vanished by Jack Grant.
I’ve been using the IMDb, Wikipedia, my physical bookshelf, and especially the NewspaperArchive.com database to search out the rest of the story for each of these old time stars in attempts to see what became of them from 1932 until their deaths.
Virginia Pearson
Stars Who Have Vanished, 1932: Once a high favorite in filmdom and noted for her beautiful back, she and husband, Sheldon Lewis, are reported to have lost a great deal of money. Virginia is now making a comeback in minor roles. Lewis is now said to be stone-deaf, but works in independents occasionally.
What I Dug Up: Despite what this article and the IMDb say, Pearson and Lewis actually divorced in 1928 after 17 years of marriage. Articles referred to their divorce as amicable.
A round of press in 1937 touted that Pearson, the one time screen vamp, would soon be hosting a radio show, the topic: religion.
At the time Walter Winchell referred to Pearson as “a second Aimee Semple McPherson.” Pearson’s specific interests were in psychic and spiritual experiences which she wrongly called upon when sharing her hunch of, “a feeling of assurance that there is a future for me in pictures.”
She never appeared in any other films after publication of our 1932 article.
Was listed among many former film stars living in the Hollywood Hotel when it was torn down in 1956. After that she moved to the Motion Picture Country Home where she died in 1958, just shy of a month after Lewis, at age 72.
Continue Reading the Where Are They Now, 1932 Series:
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Virginia’s husband, Sheldon Lewis, was a cousin, and very close to my grandmother. Even after their divorce, they continued to live together. Family lore contents that they still considered themselves married, but I have never heard a convincing explanation for the divorce.
This is the first I have heard of Sheldon’s deafness, but I am the only only of my dozens of siblings and cousins who has escaped deafness. In fact, I have a signed photo of Sheldon to my grandmother, while she was attending a school for the deaf.
Thanks for the contribution @075beac64d2d26556cf41de76ad24f15:disqus Hmm, I suppose living together would be quite amicable indeed! Interesting about the deafness in the family, seems to add credibility to the old movie magazine claim, though I also suppose they could have been mixing up their facts. Thanks again!