Renée Adorée (September 30, 1898 - October 5, 1933) portrait by Ruth Harriet Louise
Renée Adorée was born into a family of circus performers in Lille, France in 1898. She eventually became involved in theater, ending up in New York City where she began work in motion pictures. With her role as Melisande opposite John Gilbert in The Big Parade (1925), she shot to stardom, and had roles throughout the silent era with stars like Lon Chaney, Lillian Gish, Marion Davies and Ramon Novarro. It was while filming the talkie Call of the Flesh with Novarro in 1930 that she became so ill with tuberculosis she was forced to retire to a sanitarium for two years. After a brief attempt at resuming her career, she grew more ill and finally died from tuberculosis in 1933.
I’m especially partial to Renée - her presence always uplifts the films in which she appears. Happy birthday, Renée Adorée.
Poster and publicity photo of Gloria Swanson in Madame Sans-Gêne, 1924
This film is now considered lost, and Swanson wanted very much to see it again before she died. Toward the end of her autobiography, published in 1980, she said in regard to her lost films:
“I would love to see them again and know they’re not lost forever. That, after all, was supposed to be the great virtue of pictures - that they would last forever. Alas, thousands upon thousands of early films, in the years when they were not being shown because they were not considered fashionable, or old enough to be museum pieces, crumbled in their cans. The celluloid disintegrated with age.”
One of Swanson’s lost films, Beyond the Rocks, was located in 2003. Sadly, she did not live to see it again, as she died in 1983.
