Trivia: Like his brother Lionel and his sister Ethel, American actor John Barrymore had early intentions to break away from the family theatrical tradition and become an artist, in the "demonic" style of Gustav Doré. But acting won out; thanks to his natural flair and good looks, Barrymore was a matinee idol within a few seasons after his 1903 stage debut. His best-known Broadway role for many years was as an inebriated wireless operator in the Dick Davis farce The Dictator. On stage and in silent films (including a 1915 version of The Dictator), John was most at home in comedies. His one chance for greatness occurred in 1922, when he played Hamlet; even British audiences hailed Barrymore's performance as one of the best, if not the best, interpretation of the melancholy Dane. Eventually, Barrymore abandoned the theatre altogether for the movies, where he was often cast more for his looks than his talent. Perhaps in revenge against Hollywood "flesh peddlers," Barrymore loved to play roles that required physical distortion, grotesque makeup, or all-out "mad" scenes; to him, his Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) was infinitely more satisfying than Don Juan (1926). When talkies came in, Barrymore's days as a romantic lead had passed, but his exquisite voice and superb bearing guaranteed him stronger film roles than he'd had in silents; still, for every Grand Hotel (1932), there were the gloriously hammy excesses of Moby Dick (1930) and Svengali (1931). Unfortunately, throughout his life, Barrymore was plagued by his taste for alcohol, and his personal problems began catching up with him in the mid-1930s. From Romeo and Juliet(1936) onward, the actor's memory had become so befuddled that he had to recite his lines from cue cards, and from The Great Profile (1940) onward, virtually the only parts he'd get were those in which he lampooned his screen image and his offstage shenanigans. In 1939, at the behest of his latest wife Elaine Barrie, Barrymore returned to the stage in My Dear Children, a second-rate play that evolved into a freak show as Barrymore's performance deteriorated and he began profanely ad-libbing, and behaving outrageously during the play's run. Sadly, the more Barrymore debased himself in public, the more the public ate it up, and My Dear Children was a hit, as were his humiliatingly hilarious appearances on Rudy Vallee's radio show. To paraphrase his old friend and drinking companion Gene Fowler, Barrymore had gone over Niagara Falls in a barrel; we are lucky indeed that he left a gallery of brilliant film portrayals before the fall.

Trivia: Pressured into an acting career by her ambitious parents, Mary Astor was a silent film star before she was 17 -- a tribute more to her dazzling good looks than anything else. Debuting in The Beggar Maid (1921), Astor appeared opposite John Barrymore in 1923's Beau Brummell with whom she had a romantic relationship and later starred with in Don Juan (1926), Anxious not to be a victim of the talking-picture revolution, the actress perfected her vocal technique in several stage productions for Edward Everett Horton's Los Angeles-based Majestic Theatre, and the result was a most successful talkie career. Things nearly fell to pieces in 1936 when, in the midst of a divorce suit, Astor's ex-husband tried to gain custody of the couple's daughter by making public a diary she had kept. In this volume, Astor detailed her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman; portions of the diary made it to the newspapers, causing despair for Astor and no end of embarrassment for Kaufman. But Astor's then-current employer, producer Sam Goldwyn, stood by his star and permitted her to complete her role in his production of Dodsworth (1936). Goldwyn was touched by Astor's fight for the custody of her child, and was willing to overlook her past mistakes. Some of Astor's best films were made after the scandal subsided, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), in which she played the gloriously untrustworthy Brigid O'Shaughnessy opposite Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, and The Great Lie (1941), in which she played a supremely truculent concert pianist (and won an Academy Award in the bargain). Seemingly getting better as she got older, Astor spent the final phase of her career playing spiteful or snobbish mothers, with one atypical role as murderer Robert Wagner's slow-on-the-uptake mom in A Kiss Before Dying (1956). A lifelong aspiring writer, Astor wrote two entertaining and insightful books on her career, My Story and A Life on Film. Retiring after the film Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1966), Astor fell victim to health complications and financial tangles, compelling her to spend her last years in a small but comfortable bungalow on the grounds of the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Trivia: After a long barnstorming stage career, corpulent American actor Willare Louis entered films as Mr. Striver in the 1917 adaptation of Tale of Two Cities. It was the first of many "literary" properties that would star or feature Louis over the next nine years. His subsequent credits included Madame X (1920), Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922, as Friar Tuck), the 1924 version of Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence and Beau Brummel (1924). In 1924, he played the title role in a cinemadaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt. Not long after finishing his work as Pedrillo in John Barrymore's Don Juan (1926), 52-year-old Willard Louis was dead, a victim of typhoid fever and pneumonia.

Trivia: From typist to movie star: that was the dream of many a female office worker of the early 20th century, and that dream came true for breathtaking brunette Estelle Taylor. It helped, of course, that she was possessed with boundless ambition and a keen business sense. Marrying into wealth at age 14, she divorced her husband at 18 when her modelling career began to flourish. She enjoyed the attentions of many a Stage Door Johnny while working as a Broadway chorus dancer, and caught the eye of not a few well-heeled producers when she decided upon a film career in 1920. Exotically beautiful, Taylor essayed such film roles as Miriam in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923), Mary Queen of Scots in the Mary Pickford vehicle Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1925), and Lucrezia Borgia (a delightfully wry performance) in John Barrymore's Don Juan. In 1925, Taylor married world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, but the marriage ended in a well-publicized divorce in 1931. Making the switchover to sound with ease, Taylor continued to play good roles in such talkies as Cimarron (1931) and Call Her Savage (1932, as Clara Bow's mother) until she retired in the early 1930s. Taylor made a few short subjects in the late 1930s; her last appearance was in Jean Renoir's 1945 feature The Southerner. In the 1988 TV-movie biopic Dempsey, Estelle Taylor was portrayed by Victoria Tennant.

Trivia: During the late 1930s, when Clark Gable was named the King of Hollywood, Myrna Loy was elected the Queen. The legendary actress, who started her career as a dancer, moved into silent films and was typecast for a few years as exotic women. Her film titles from those early years include Arrowsmith (1931), Love Me Tonight (1932), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), and Manhattan Melodrama (1934), the film that gangster John Dillinger just had to see the night he was killed. Starting in 1934, with The Thin Man, opposite William Powell, she became Hollywood's ideal wife: bright, witty, humorous. She and Powell were often teamed throughout the '30s and '40s, and many of the characters she played were strong, independent, adventurous women. In addition to The Thin Man series, Loy's best appearances included The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Libeled Lady (1936), Wife vs. Secretary (1936), Test Pilot (1938), and Too Hot to Handle (1938). She took a break from filmmaking during WWII to work with the Red Cross, and in her later years she devoted as much time to politics as to acting (among her accomplishments, Loy became the first film star to work with the United Nations). She stands out in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), and its sequel Belles on Their Toes (1952). She received an honorary Oscar in 1991, two years before her death.

Trivia: The daughter of early movie matinee idol Maurice Costello and the younger sister of silent star Dolores Costello, Helene Costello made her first movie appearances as a child in her father's films. Helene's adult career followed many of the same paths previously trodden by her sister Dolores: modelling work in New York, dancing in George White's Scandals, and leading-lady assignments in several popular films of the 1920s. Helene co-starred in the first all-talking feature film, Lights of New York (1928); ironically, she proved to be an inadequate talkie actress, and her star quickly waned. For a brief period in the early 1930s, Helene was the wife of actor/director Lowell Sherman, and the sister-in-law of John Barrymore. Twenty-two years after appearing in her last film, Helene Costello died at age 53, suffering from the combined effects of pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Trivia: A rather reserved beauty who at one time was publicized as "the Green-Eyed Goddess of Hollywood," Jane Winton turned up in films in the mid-'20s, usually playing patrician girls but once in a while showing up among the working stiffs as well. She was beautiful and regal as Donna Beatrice in Don Juan (1926), vying for the favors of John Barrymore with the likes of Mary Astor and June Marlowe, and an extremely seductive model, long blonde wig and all, opposite Clive Brook's artist in Why Girl Leaves Home (1926). Also fondly remembered are Winton's rather unsuccessful attempts to offer George O'Brien a manicure in the classic Sunrise (1927), a brief scene but well executed by both. Despite a small but showy part in Hell's Angels (1930), the advent of sound did her no favors, and Winton was later one of the many fading Hollywood stars vainly attempting to start afresh in England. She was at one time married to screenwriter Charles Kenyon.

Trivia: Very busy in films of the 1920s, handsome, mustachioed John Roche specialized in playing the "other man," the slick sweet talker who never gets the girl. Onscreen from 1922, the tall, Rochester-educated actor had spent ten years touring with various stock companies. He returned to the legitimate stage in the early '30s but was back in Hollywood playing bit roles by 1942.

Trivia: Born in St. Cloud, MN, actress June Marlowe played leads in many silent films, most notably in the Rin Tin Tin adventure series. She also appeared in many comedies, notably the debut effort of Laurel and Hardy.

Trivia: Swedish actor Warner Oland was educated in Boston, but proudly retained his Scandinavian roots throughout his life, even devoting time to translating the works of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen into English for the benefit of theatrical scholars. Trained at Dr. Curry's Acting School, Oland took on a theatrical career, ultimately tackling the movie industry in 1915 with an appearance in Sin opposite Theda Bara. Oland's curious facial features enabled the occidental actor to specialize in oriental roles, most often as a villain. While his silent film appearances ranged from Cesar Borgia in Don Juan (1926) to Al Jolson's Jewish cantor father in The Jazz Singer (1927), Oland's oriental roles gained him the widest popularity, especially his portrayal as the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu in three early talking pictures. In 1931, Oland was cast as the wily, aphorism-spouting Chinese detective Charlie Chan in Charlie Chan Carries On for the Fox studios (later 20th Century-Fox). He would make annual appearances as Chan until 1934, when Fox decided to use the Earl Derr Biggers character as the focal point of a regular B-movie series; Oland would now be seen as Charlie Chan three times per year, and ultimately the actor would make a total of sixteen Chan pictures. From 1934 onward, Warner Oland was Charlie Chan - and vice versa. He remained in character on the set even when giving an interview or flubbing a line, and during a 1935 visit to China, Oland was mobbed by his enthusiastic Chinese movie fans, some of whom were so enchanted by his performance that (it is said) they actually believed Oland was genuinely Asian. During production of Charlie Chan at the Arena in 1938, Warner Oland died, and the movie was rearranged as a Peter Lorre vehicle, Mr. Moto's Gamble. The movie role of Charlie Chan was inherited by Sidney Toler, and later by Roland Winters.

Trivia: Burly, military-mustached British actor Montague Love may well have been the finest villain of the silent screen. Love's first important job was as a London newspaper cartoonist; assigned to cover the Boer War, Love gained popularity by virtue of his vivid battle sketches. After launching his stage career in Britain, Love came to the U.S. in a 1913 road-company production of Cyril Maude's Grumpy. His film career commenced at New Jersey's World Studios in 1915. Concentrating on villainy in the 1920s, Love menaced Valentino in Son of the Sheik (1926), John Barrymore in Don Juan (1926), and Lillian Gish in The Wind (1928). Despite the sinister nature of his roles, the offscreen Love was highly respected for his courteous nature and his courage under pressure. During the talkie era, Love's bad-guy activities diminished to the point that he was avuncular and likeable in such films as A Damsel in Distress (1937) and Gunga Din (1939). He was often called upon to portray historic leaders, notably Henry VIII in The Prince and the Pauper (1937), King Philip II in The Sea Hawk (1940), and two American presidents: Jefferson in Alexander Hamilton (1931) and Washington in The Remarkable Andrew (1942). Montague Love's final film, The Constant Nymph, was released three years after his death in 1943.

Trivia: Arguably the silent era's most beautiful child and a forerunner in many ways of the following decade's Freddie Bartholomew, French-born Philippe DeLacy's personal story reads like a penny-dreadful melodrama in which he would later act: Born during World War I, the already fatherless Philippe lost his mother and five siblings when a German shell devastated the family home. Only two days old at the time of tragedy, the boy was kept alive, but barely, in the basement of his grandmother's house. There, with the old woman near death, they were found by Edith DeLacy, an American Red Cross nurse who adopted little Philippe and brought him to the United States.A visit to the set of Geraldine Farrar's The Riddle: Woman (1921) led to an astonishingly potent screen career that would last until 1930. With his wavy brown hair and aristocratic bearing, DeLacy seems to have gotten all the breaks. Outside of the Our Gang kids, he remains perhaps the best-remembered silent era child star, Jackie Coogan and his ilk included. Coogan, of course, has his The Kid, but DeLacy played Mary Pickford's brother in Rosita (1923), Michael Darling in Peter Pan (1924), the young John Barrymore in Don Juan (1926), the young Neil Hamilton in Beau Geste (1926), the young Ramond Novarro in The Student Prince (1927), Greta Garbo's son in Love (1927), and Garbo seems much more concerned with DeLacy's welfare than she would be with Freddie Bartholomew's in the 1935 remake Anna Karenina. At that certain age and perhaps a bit too ethereal for the hard-hitting early sound era, DeLacy retired from acting in 1930 and later became an executive with the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. In 1955 he directed Cinerama Holiday, and later still, was the manager of a local Hollywood television station. "The ten years I spent in movies were a wonderful experience," he would tell show business chronicler David Ragan in the 1970s.

Trivia: A distinguished stage actor who had toured with stock companies in Europe, South Africa, and South America, Josef Swickard lent a presence of old world charm to scores of silent films, dramas, and comedies alike, his iron-gray hair and noble bearing awarding him such roles as Rudolf Valentino's father in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), the Duke Della Varnese in Don Juan (1926), and the Spanish land owner in In Old San Francisco (1927), all extant.The brother of actor/director Charles Swickard and the husband of Broadway actress Margaret Campbell, Josef Swickard entered films with D.W. Griffith in 1912 and by 1914 was playing supporting roles for Mack Sennett. Swickard can be seen in Charles Chaplin's Laughing Gas (1914; as one of the patients) and Caught in a Cabaret (1914; as the father). He remained with Sennett until 1917, when the versatile actor settled into his long career of playing mostly aristocratic characters. Swickard weathered the transition to sound but his films were mostly in the low-budget category and included several action serials. In 1939, the veteran actor suffered a terrible tragedy when his former wife, Margaret Campbell, was brutally slain by their son; Swickard, however, did not commit suicide by jumping from the Hollywood sign as reported by several unscrupulous scribes but died from natural causes the following year.

Trivia: Fresh out of Los Angeles Polytechnic High, Phyllis Haver paid a visit to the Mack Sennett studios, hoping to get a job as an actress. According to Haver, her "audition" consisted of having the attractiveness of her knees assessed by a bored Mack Sennett. Slightly more talented than most of the Sennett bathing beauties, Haver quickly worked her way up to leading roles, then left 2-reelers for a substantial career in silent features. Among her best roles were accused murderess Roxy Hart in the first film version of Chicago (1927) and the no-better-than-she-ought-to-be Shanghai Mabel in What Price Glory? (1927). Sensing that her career would end when talkies began, Haver retired in 1929 to marry a New York millionaire (According to one story, she invoked the "act of God" clause in her contract, cracking "if marrying a millionaire ain't an act of God, I don't know what is"). Divorced in 1945, Haver continued to live in wealthy retirement, appearing before the cameras one last time during a 1954 TV testimonial to her old boss Mack Sennett. In 1960, Phyllis Haver died of an overdose of barbiturates.

Trivia: American actress and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper was born Elda Furry, but used the last name of her then-husband, Broadway star DeWolf Hopper, when she launched her movie career in 1915. Never a major star in silent films, Hedda was a competent character actress specializing in "best friend" and "other woman" roles. When she divorced DeWolf Hopper, Hedda found that she had to take any roles that came her way in order to support herself and her son DeWolf Jr. (who later became a film and TV actor under the name William Hopper). Her career running smoothly if not remarkably by 1932, Ms. Hopper decided to branch out into politics, running for the Los Angeles city council; she lost and returned to movies, where good roles were becoming scarce. Practically unemployed in 1936, Hedda took a job on a Hollywood radio station, dispensing news and gossip about the film capital. Impressed by Hedda's chatty manner and seemingly bottomless reserve of "dirt" on her fellow actors (sometimes gleaned from her own on-set experiences, sometimes mere wild-card speculations), the Esquire news syndicate offered Ms. Hopper her own column, one that would potentially rival the Hearst syndicate columnist Louella Parsons. Carried at first by only 17 papers, Hedda did much better for herself by switching to the Des Moines Register and Tribune syndicate; her true entree into the big time occured in 1942, when she linked up with the behemoth Chicago Tribune-Daily News syndicate. Between them, Hedda and archrival Louella Parsons wielded more power and influence than any other Hollywood columnists - and they exploited it to the utmost, horning in uninivited at every major social event and premiere, and throwing parties that few dared not to attend. While Louella had the stronger newspaper affiliations, Hedda was more popular with the public, due to her breezy, matter-of-fact speaking style and her wry sense of humor; she also more flamboyant than Louella, given to wearing elaborate hats which cost anywhere from $50 to $60 each. On the credit side, Hedda touted several new young stars without expecting favors in return from their studios; she'd admit her errors (and there were many) in public, giving herself "the bird" - a bronx cheer - during her broadcasts; and wrote flattering and affectionate pieces about old-time stars who had long fallen out of favor with filmakers. On the debit side, Hedda carried long and vicious grudges; demanded that stars appear for free as guests on her radio program, or else suffer the consequences; and set herself up as an arbiter of public taste, demanding in the '50s and '60s that Hollywood censor its "racy" films. Hedda's greatest influence was felt when the studio system controlled Hollywood and a mere handful of moguls wielded the power of professional life and death on the stars; the studios needed a sympathetic reporter of their activities, and thus catered to Hedda's every whim. But as stars became their own producers and film production moved further outside Hollywood, Hedda's control waned; moreover, the relaxing of movie censorship made her rantings about her notions of good taste seem like something out of the Dark Ages. Also, Hedda was a strident anti-communist, which worked to her benefit in the days of the witchhunts and blacklists, but which made her sound like a reactionary harpy in the more liberal '60s. Evidence of Hedda's downfall occured in 1960 when she assembled an NBC-TV special and decreed that Hollywood's biggest stars appear gratis; but this was a year fraught with industry strikes over wages and residuals, and Hedda was only able to secure the services of the few celebrities who agreed with her politics or were wealthy enough to appear for free. By the early '60s, Hedda Hopper was an institution without foundation, "starring" as herself in occasional movies like Jerry Lewis' The Patsy (1964) which perpetuated the myth of her influence, and writing (or commissioning, since she'd stopped doing her own writing years earlier) long, antiseptic celebrity profiles for Sunday-supplement magazines.

Trivia: Bearlike, bushy-eyebrowed British actor Gibson Gowland began his stage career in England, where he was billed as T.E. Gowland. He came to America in the teens, almost immediately securing film work as a minor character actor. Director Erich Von Stroheim admired Gowland's naturalistic acting style, and cast the actor as the lead of two of his films. The better of the two was Greed (1924), in which Gowland etched an unforgettable portrait of an essentially decent man driven to madness and murder by his grasping, money-hungry wife. Gowland continued to play roughneck character parts throughout the silent era, returning to England in the 1930s. By 1940 Gibson Gowland was back in the U.S., where he spent his declining years playing bit roles in such films as The Wolf Man (1940) and Mrs. Miniver (1942).

Trivia: Stage actor Sheldon Lewis made his movie debut in the 1914 serial The Exploits of Elaine. Lewis' delightfully unsubtle brand of villainy served him well in the title role(s) of Louis B. Mayer's modern-dress version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920). One of his best and least restrained performances of the 1920s was as the strenuously dishonest Frochard in D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm (1922). A bit too overpowering for the talkie era, Lewis was best suited to such bravura fare as the 1930 serial Terry of the Times. Sheldon Lewis was married to the famous screen "vamp" Virginia Pearson.

Trivia: A tough-looking, craggy-faced supporting comic, Dick Sutherland (born Archibald Thomas Johnson) came to films in the very early '20s with a background as a minstrel performer. Best known today for his appearances opposite Harold Lloyd (as the Maharajah in A Sailor-Made Man [1921] and the villainous hobo in Grandma's Boy [1922]), Ben Turpin (in The Shriek of Araby [1923]), and Lloyd Hamilton, Sutherland was equally prominent in melodramas. He used his blackface minstrel roots to play Sambo in the 1927 version of Uncle Tom's Cabin and was the cook in Laurel and Hardy's The Hoose-Gow, one of his very few talkie appearances.

Trivia: Satanic-featured Austrian actor/director Gustav von Seyffertitz not only looked like a villain, but with that three-barrelled name he sounded like one -- even in silent pictures. After a lengthy stage career in both Germany and New York, Seyffertitz began appearing in World War One films as the very embodiment of the "Hideous Hun" -- America's notion of the merciless, atrocity-happy German military officer. Allegedly to avoid persecution from the anti-German organizations of the era, Seyffertitz changed his professional name to G. Butler Cloneblough -- a monicker so satiric in its timbre that one can't help that the "rechristening" was the concoction of a clever press agent. Returning to his own name after the war, Seyffertitz remained busy as a "villain of all nations:" He was British criminal mastermind Moriarty in John Barrymore's Sherlock Holmes (1922), a torturer for the Borgias in Barrymore's Don Juan (1926), and the evil American backwoods farmer Grimes in Mary Pickford's Sparrows (1926). Nearly always a supporting actor, Seyffertitz was given his full head with a mad-scientist leading role in the 1927 horror flick The Wizard. Offscreen, Seyffertitz was a kindly, temperate man, patient enough to direct Vitagraph star Alice Calhoun in three back-to-back vehicles in 1921: Princess Jones, Closed Doors and Peggy Puts It Over. In talking pictures, Seyffertitz' deep, warm voice somewhat mitigated his horrific demeanor. Though few of his talkie roles were billed, Gustav von Seyffertitz made the most of such parts as the High Priest in the 1935 version of She and the pontificating court psychiatrist in Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936).

Trivia: Cadaverous British actor Nigel De Brulier is most closely associated with classical roles. His first film (after decades of stage work) was a 1915 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts; six years later he was in another Ibsen adaptation, A Doll's House. In Douglas Fairbanks' 1921 version of The Three Musketeers De Brulier played the cunning Cardinal Richelieu, a role he repeated briefly in the 1929 sequel The Iron Mask. He was also prominently featured in the Lon Chaney Hunchback of Notre Dame as Dom Claude, the head priest. Possessed of a rich theatrical voice, Nigel de Brulier made the transition to sound with ease, but most of his '30s roles were mere character bits; an exception was the 1935 Three Musketeers, in which he played Richelieu again. Towards the end of his career, and without complaint or regret, the venerable actor accepted one-day parts in "B" pictures, short subjects, westerns and serials. The best of Nigel De Brulier's latter-day assignments was as the robed, white-bearded Shazam, the ancient mystic who gives young Billy Batson (Frank Coghlan Jr.) superhuman powers in the Republic serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941).

Trivia: British stage actress Emily Fitzroy had two decades' experience behind her when she first appeared on screen in the 1916 version of East Lynne. Specializing in fussy, spinsterish roles, Fitzroy was prominently featured in several American productions of the 1920s, notably as Maria Poole in Griffith's Way Down East and reclusive mystery writer Cornelia Van Gorder in The Bat (1926). Her first talkie appearance was as Parthy Hawkes, the highly judgmental mother of heroine Magnolia Hawkes (Laura La Plante), in the 1929 version of Show Boat. She occasionally returned to England in the 1930s, playing such roles as Mrs. Sancho Panza in the multilingual production Don Quixote (1933). Emily Fitzroy made her last screen appearance in Forever and a Day (1943), a wartime morale-booster that called upon the talents of virtually every English-born actor in Hollywood.

Trivia: A former Ziegfeld girl from Kentucky, Helen Lee Worthing (born Worthington) came to the screen in 1920, but unlike such former colleagues as Marion Davies and Olive Thomas, her career proved a distinct disappointment. She played the would-be countess in a low-budget version of Lehar's The Count of Luxembourg (1926) with George Walsh as the count, but was mainly seen in supporting roles. Retiring prior to sound, Worthing later made headlines by marrying a prominent doctor only to have the union annulled soon after.