Largely unknown to casual film fans today, Blanche Sweet, born on this date in 1896, was a major silent star throughout the 1910’s and 20’s, most often associated with D.W. Griffith and Biograph, though her ties would be severed with both as early as 1914.
A large 8x10 fan photo of Blanche Sweet
Sweet starred opposite Henry B. Walthall in Griffith’s Judith of Bethulia (1914), Biograph’s first feature-length film production (four reels, with a runtime of 61 minutes listed on the IMDb) in 1913, though Judith was Biograph’s second feature released after Classmates (1914) according to the Wikipedia entry for Biograph. Classmates was also a Griffith film featuring Sweet and Walthall.
Blanche Sweet on a 1916 St. Louis Globe - Democrat Water Color Company PremiumThere’s a complete profile of Blanche Sweet up on my other site, things-and-other-stuff.com, written by Tammy Stone as part of her Silent Collection. Of Sweet’s earliest days in pictures Stone writes:
…that by 1909, they (ed. note: Sweet’s family) were facing financial trouble, and a friend of the family notified them that Biograph Studios was accepting applications. Biograph was a huge studio in those days, and perhaps they were receiving more applications than they could handle. Blanche never heard back from them.
Not to be dissuaded, Blanche headed straight for the competition, the Edison company. There she was luckier, and became an extra within a matter of days. That same year, she was already starring in her first film, at the age of 14: A Man With Three Wives, a short comedy. Basking in the glow of this immediate success, Blanche and her grandmother felt it was time to go back to Biograph and see if Blanche could work there; after all, Biograph was a very distinguished studio. Perhaps it was a matter of being at the right place at the right time; this time someone suggested Blanche speak directly to D.W. Griffith … It was a good suggestion; that same day he had Blanche on the set of A Corner in Wheat (1909) as an extra. She ultimately became one of his biggest stars during his years at Biograph.
Be sure to read Tammy’s complete profile of Blanche Sweet on things-and-other-stuff.com.
After departing Biograph with Griffith, Sweet expected to be selected for the part ultimately played by Lillian Gish in The Birth of a Nation (1915). In Anthony Slide’s “Silent Players” Sweet is quoted as saying she was supposed to have the part, “But then the DeMille faction came after me and offered me a lot of money. I went to Griffith and expected him to say, ‘No, I need you.’ He didn’t. He told me to go, go, go. I was disappointed and very hurt” (361).
Blanche Sweet featured on a postcard issued out of New York by Kraus Manufacturing Company. Dates from approximately 1912-1915 era, early.
Sweet appeared in two of Cecil B. DeMille’s earliest features in 1915, The Warrens of Virginia and The Captive, though according to Slide she preferred the three films released by Famous Players-Lasky the following year which were directed by Cecil’s brother, William C. DeMille. After leaving Famous Players-Lasky in 1917, Sweet would resurface in The Unpardonable Sin (1919) directed by Marshall Neilan, with whom Sweet had previously worked with several times as an actor and then under his direction. She’d marry Neilan in 1922.
Notable films throughout the 1920’s for Blanche Sweet included title roles in That Girl Montana (1921), which is featured in a review by Diana Savage over on sister site things-and-other-stuff.com, and the first screen adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie (1923); Quincy Adams Sawyer (1922) whose cast included Lon Chaney and tragic twosome of Barbara LaMarr and John Bowers, who played the title role; the lead of Tess in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1924), and The Sporting Venus (1925), the latter two films directed by husband Neilan.
First husband Marshall Neilan featured on a 1920s T83 Movie Stars - Schinasi Brothers Egyptian Prettiest Tobacco Card.Sweet and Neilan divorced in 1929, and she left the screen in 1930. Sweet played the part of Mrs. Chisholm in The Petrified Forest on Broadway in 1935, but while Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart both carried over from the stage to the classic screen version, Sweet’s part was played by Genevieve Tobin.
Sweet married for the second time in 1935, to former silent actor Raymond Hackett. They would remain married until his death in 1958. Blanche Sweet appeared in a few more plays and made some television appearances, but is probably best remembered in more recent times for her enlightening interviews throughout Kevin Brownlow’s classic 13-part 1980 mini-series Hollywood, which documented all facets of the Silent Film era.
Blanche Sweet on a 1920's 5x7 Fan Photo
Blanche Sweet died at age 90, in New York, on September 6, 1986.
Posted by GriffithMovies since 2007, hopefully the following embed of Judith of Bethulia remains for some time to come. Thanks very much to GriffithMovies for allowing the embed:
Finally, Vachel Lindsay, the famed poet elevated to prominence by Harriet Monroe and her long-lived Poetry Magazine in the early 1910’s, composed the following, “Blanche Sweet, Moving-Picture Actress,” in 1914
Blanche Sweet
Moving-Picture Actress
(After seeing the reel called “Oil and Water.”)Beauty has a throne-room
In our humorous town,
Spoiling its hob-goblins,
Laughing shadows down.
Rank musicians torture
Ragtime ballads vile,
But we walk serenely
Down the odorous aisle.
We forgive the squalor
And the boom and squeal
For the Great Queen flashes
From the moving reel.Just a prim blonde stranger
In her early day,
Hiding brilliant weapons,
Too averse to play,
Then she burst upon us
Dancing through the night.
Oh, her maiden radiance,
Veils and roses white.
With new powers, yet cautious,
Not too smart or skilled,
That first flash of dancing
Wrought the thing she willed:–
Mobs of us made noble
By her strong desire,
By her white, uplifting,
Royal romance-fire.Though the tin piano
Snarls its tango rude,
Though the chairs are shaky
And the dramas crude,
Solemn are her motions,
Stately are her wiles,
Filling oafs with wisdom,
Saving souls with smiles;
‘Mid the restless actors
She is rich and slow.
She will stand like marble,
She will pause and glow,
Though the film is twitching,
Keep a peaceful reign,
Ruler of her passion,
Ruler of our pain!
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