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Mabel Poulton | |
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| Born | Mabel Lilian Poulton 29 July 1901 |
| Died | 21 December 1994 (aged 93) Merton, Greater London, England |
| Years active | 1920–1938 |
| Spouse(s) | Richard Phillips(m. 1939) |
Mabel Lilian Poulton (29 July 1901 – 21 December 1994) was an English film actress, popular in Britain during the era of silent films. [1] [2]
Born in Bethnal Green, London, England, Poulton worked as a stenographer and entered films by chance. [3] Her first role in George Pearson's Nothing Else Matters (1920) was opposite Betty Balfour, who was also making her debut, and the film was a success. [4] Over the next several years, Poulton was cast in a succession of roles, and usually played feisty or mischievous characters. A petite blonde, she also became well regarded for her fashion style, and was a highly recognisable celebrity. In 1928, she starred in The Constant Nymph by Adrian Brunel and received excellent reviews for her performance. [5] [6] By the end of the decade, she was considered to be one of Britain's leading screen actresses along with Balfour, and was described by critics as Balfour's only serious rival.[ citation needed ]
The advent of sound film brought a premature end to Poulton's film career. The addition of the microphone revealed Poulton's broad Cockney accent, which was at odds with the characters she had become identified with. Like Clara Bow who faced the same problem as a result of her Brooklyn accent, Poulton struggled to maintain her status. Also, like Bow, she attempted to mount a comeback in the mid-1930s, which was well publicised but unsuccessful. She made her final film appearance in 1938.
She spent her last years writing and re-writing a typescript about a young British starlet who is raped by a film director and who then descends into alcoholism. In biro, at some point of the writing process, she wrote in real names. Thomas Bentley is the director she accuses. [7] They had worked together on two films: The Old Curiosity Shop (1921) and Not Quite a Lady (1928). She died in 1994 in Merton, Surrey, aged 93.
Clara Gordon Bow was an American actress who rose to stardom in silent film during the 1920s and successfully made the transition to "talkies" in 1929. Her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl". Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.
The Constant Nymph is a 1924 novel by Margaret Kennedy. It tells how a teenage girl falls in love with a family friend, who eventually marries her cousin, and explores the two girls' mutual jealousy.
Margaret Livingston, sometimes credited as Marguerite Livingstone or Margaret Livingstone, was an American film actress and businesswoman, most notable for her work during the silent film era. She is best known today as "the Woman from the City" in F.W. Murnau's 1927 film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.
Claire Windsor was an American film actress of the silent screen era.
Phyllis Maude Haver was an American actress of the silent film era.
Louise Fazenda was an American film actress, appearing chiefly in silent comedy films.
Lowell J. Sherman was an American actor and film director. In an unusual practice for the time, he served as both actor and director on several films in the early 1930s. He later turned exclusively to directing. Having scored huge successes directing the films She Done Him Wrong and Morning Glory, he was at the height of his career when he died after a brief illness.
Betty Balfour was an English screen actress, popular during the silent era, and known as the "British Mary Pickford" and "Britain's Queen of Happiness". She was best known to audiences for her Squibs series of films.
Nothing Else Matters is a 1920 British film, written by Hugh E. Wright, and directed by George Pearson. This was the screen debut of Mabel Poulton and Betty Balfour who went on to become leading British stars of the 1920s.
María Corda was a Hungarian actress and a star of the silent film era in Germany and Austria.
Margaret Moore Kennedy was an English novelist and playwright. Her most successful work, as a novel and as a play, was The Constant Nymph. She was a productive writer and several of her works were made into films. Three of her novels were reprinted in 2011.
Benita Hume was an English theatre and film actress. She appeared in 44 films between 1925 and 1955, from the silent film era to sound film.
Frances Dade, also known early in her career as Lorelei Lee, was an American film and stage actress of the late 1920s and 1930s.
Thomas Bentley was a British film director. He directed 68 films between 1912 and 1941. He directed three films in the early DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, The Man in the Street (1926), The Antidote (1927), and Acci-Dental Treatment (1928).
The Constant Nymph is a 1928 British silent film drama, directed by Adrian Brunel and starring Ivor Novello and Mabel Poulton. This was the first film adaptation of the 1924 best-selling and controversial novel The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy and the 1926 stage play version written by Kennedy and Basil Dean. The theme of adolescent sexuality reportedly discomfited the British film censors, until they were reassured that lead actress Poulton was in fact in her 20s.
Frieda Ulricke "Henny" Porten was a German actress and film producer of the silent era, and Germany's first major film star. She appeared in more than 170 films between 1906 and 1955.
Not Quite a Lady is a 1928 British silent comedy film directed by Thomas Bentley and starring Mabel Poulton, Janet Alexander and Barbara Gott. The screenplay concerns a wealthy woman who, unhappy with her son's choice of fiancée, holds a boring house party to try to put her off marrying into the family.
The Constant Nymph may refer to:
Taxi for Two is a 1929 part talkie British romantic comedy film drama directed by Denison Clift and Alexander Esway and starring Mabel Poulton and John Stuart. Produced by Gainsborough Pictures, it was the first sound film made by Gainsborough to be released.
Mary Find the Gold is a 1921 British silent drama film directed by George Pearson and starring Betty Balfour, Tom Coventry and Hugh E. Wright.
