Actress. She is best known for her role as ‘Lydia Brown', the mulatto housekeeper-mistress of a devious Northern reconstructionist senator in D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" (1915); her character is one of many racist elements of that still controversial epic. She is also memorable in the modern sequences of Griffith's "Intolerance" (1916), as a priggish society lady who uses her influence to take away the baby of the impoverished heroine. Her other films include "Macbeth" (1916), "The Unpardonable Sin" (1919), "The Plastic Age" (1925), "The Cossacks" (1928), and "Rasputin and the Empress" (1932). She was born in New York City, New York, and made her film debut in 1914 after some stage experience. Eventually typecast, her career was mostly unsympathetic and even villainous roles. Her career faded with talking motion pictures and she made no films after 1936. She died at the Motion Picture Country Home in Los Angeles, California.
Actress. She is best known for her role as ‘Lydia Brown', the mulatto housekeeper-mistress of a devious Northern reconstructionist senator in D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" (1915); her character is one of many racist elements of that still controversial epic. She is also memorable in the modern sequences of Griffith's "Intolerance" (1916), as a priggish society lady who uses her influence to take away the baby of the impoverished heroine. Her other films include "Macbeth" (1916), "The Unpardonable Sin" (1919), "The Plastic Age" (1925), "The Cossacks" (1928), and "Rasputin and the Empress" (1932). She was born in New York City, New York, and made her film debut in 1914 after some stage experience. Eventually typecast, her career was mostly unsympathetic and even villainous roles. Her career faded with talking motion pictures and she made no films after 1936. She died at the Motion Picture Country Home in Los Angeles, California.
Bio by: Bobb Edwards
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