Between 1923 and 1931, during the "silent film" era, Alma Bennett was a motion picture actress in Hollywood, California. One newspaper columnist wrote in 1923 that Alma got her big break when she was hired to play a "bathing girl" in a movie directed by Mack Sennett. Since she was unable to swim, she spent three days prior to her first camera call practicing the breaststroke. Much of Alma's career in Hollywood was spent as a contract actor for Famous Players–Lasky Film Corporation, the forerunner of Paramount Pictures Corporation. Famous Players was the collaborative and highly-lucrative brainchild of legendary film director Adolph Zukor and his business partner, Jesse Louis Lasky Sr.
In all, Alma Bennett appeared in 64 films, mostly as seductive vamps in supporting roles. Among her most notable movies were: "The Face on the Bar-Room Floor" (1923), a drama directed by John Ford, of which no known prints have survived; "The Lost World" (1925), an early science fiction adventure based on Arthur Conan Doyle's famous novel of the same name; and "Long Pants" (1927), a Frank Capra-directed comedy, in which she played a big-city femme fatale. Alma's acting career came to an abrupt end with the advent of "talkies" in the early 1930s.
Alma Bennett remarried twice after Freddie's death: first, in 1929, to Harry J. Spingler (1889-1953), her business manager, agent, and fellow movie actor, and second, in 1954, to John Penman Whiteford (1889-1962), a longtime motion picture actor who was known as 'Blackie.' Alma died at 54 in such obscurity that her early contribution to the Hollywood motion picture industry went unmentioned in the press.
Between 1923 and 1931, during the "silent film" era, Alma Bennett was a motion picture actress in Hollywood, California. One newspaper columnist wrote in 1923 that Alma got her big break when she was hired to play a "bathing girl" in a movie directed by Mack Sennett. Since she was unable to swim, she spent three days prior to her first camera call practicing the breaststroke. Much of Alma's career in Hollywood was spent as a contract actor for Famous Players–Lasky Film Corporation, the forerunner of Paramount Pictures Corporation. Famous Players was the collaborative and highly-lucrative brainchild of legendary film director Adolph Zukor and his business partner, Jesse Louis Lasky Sr.
In all, Alma Bennett appeared in 64 films, mostly as seductive vamps in supporting roles. Among her most notable movies were: "The Face on the Bar-Room Floor" (1923), a drama directed by John Ford, of which no known prints have survived; "The Lost World" (1925), an early science fiction adventure based on Arthur Conan Doyle's famous novel of the same name; and "Long Pants" (1927), a Frank Capra-directed comedy, in which she played a big-city femme fatale. Alma's acting career came to an abrupt end with the advent of "talkies" in the early 1930s.
Alma Bennett remarried twice after Freddie's death: first, in 1929, to Harry J. Spingler (1889-1953), her business manager, agent, and fellow movie actor, and second, in 1954, to John Penman Whiteford (1889-1962), a longtime motion picture actor who was known as 'Blackie.' Alma died at 54 in such obscurity that her early contribution to the Hollywood motion picture industry went unmentioned in the press.
Family Members
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Harriet Alice "Hattie" Bennett
1876–1890
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Charles William Bennett
1878–1942
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Franklin Louis "Frank" Bennett
1880–1973
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Lillian May Bennett Voight
1884–1969
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Golden Earl Bennett
1886–1962
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Ernest Pearl Bennett
1888–1972
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Harry Aloysius Bennett
1890–1953
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Stella M Bennett
1893–1908
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Melvin John Francis O'Shea
1895–1947
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