Louise Glaum - Motion Picture Career

Motion Picture Career

Glaum made her movie debut playing the ingenue role as Mary Gordon, the ranchman's daughter, in the Al Christie directed short western/comedy When the Heart Calls (1912) at Nestor Studios, the first studio actually located in Hollywood. She acted in straight comedy, never doing slapstick, from the start, and played leads exclusively. She starred in the title role of the Broncho Motion Picture Company's two-reel drama The Quakeress (1913) opposite Charles Ray and the ill-fated William Desmond Taylor. The year Glaum arrived, Nestor was merged with the Universal Film Company. A large number of episodes in the Universal Ike series of one-reel comedies are among her body of work in 1914.

Signing with Thomas Ince, her first role as a "vamp," and first starring role in the new five-reel features, was as Mademoiselle Poppea in The Toast of Death (1915) opposite Harry Keenan and Herschel Mayall. It was directed by Thomas Ince at his Inceville Studio in Topanga Canyon.

Glaum played Milady de Winter in The Three Musketeers (1916). She appeared in six westerns opposite William S. Hart, including her roles as Dolly in Hell's Hinges (1916), Trixie in The Aryan (1916) and Poppy in The Return of Draw Egan (1916). She played Leila Aradella in The Wolf Woman (1916); and Marie Chaumontel in the war drama Somewhere in France (1916) opposite Howard C. Hickman.

On February 20, 1916, she and director Harry J. Edwards (October 11, 1887–May 26, 1952) were married. They were divorced on March 17, 1919.

Glaum played the role as Lola Montrose in the drama A Strange Transgressor (1917). Then, totally opposite to dramatic type, she starred in the title role as a gun slinging heroine, the female equivalent to Bill Hart, in the Triangle Company's western Golden Rule Kate (1917).

She played Mary Thorne in the drama The Goddess of Lost Lake (1918), which she also co-produced through her own production company, the Louise Glaum Organization. It is the story of a young woman who is a quarter Native American and decides to pretend she is a full-blooded Indian princess when she visits her father's rustic cabin after completing college in the East.

Glaum then began working with J. Parker Read Jr. Productions, which she later described as J. Parker Read, Jr.'s unit as a subsidiary producing company for Thomas Ince. She signed a four year contract, with a salary starting at $2000 a week and increasing to $4000, and some of the features she starred in for that company were as Mignon in Sahara (1919), a big financial success that was written especially for the star by C. Gardner Sullivan, with the production supervised by Allan Dwan; and the dual roles as Princess Sonia and as her daughter, Sonia, in the crime/thriller The Lone Wolf's Daughter (1919).

She played the roles as Adrienne Renault in the provocatively titled Sex (1920), the story of a New York cabaret star who uses her sex appeal to end a marriage then leaves her lover for a wealthier prospect only to have her selfish way of life come back to haunt her; and the title role in The Leopard Woman (1920), a secret agent adventure set in Africa. She then played the role as Natalie Storm in a romance/drama titled Love (1920).

Glaum was maintaining her own household in Los Angeles, when the 1920 census was enumerated, with a married couple, housekeeper and caretaker, and a gardener. After starring in the role as Grace Merrill in the drama Greater Than Love (1921), directed by Fred Niblo, she retired from the screen and moved to New York.

On March 16, 1925, she filed suit in the Supreme Court of New York against producer J. Parker Read, Jr., for $103,000 and asked for an attachment against money owed him by various film distributors in New York City. The complaint stated she was starred in several pictures under Read's direction, and on December 23, 1921, he made a promissory note to her for the money, payable in four instalments. Nothing was paid, however, and in the Fall of 1923, according to Glaum, he went to Paris without paying her. According to her attorney, Read's departure took the form of a flight and he had disguised himself as a stoker on a ship.

She then sued the estate of Thomas H. Ince, Read's partner, stating that Read was insolvent and asking for the $103,000 plus $290,000 for breach of contract. The Appellate Division, however, decided that she could not prosecute a suit in the state against the executors under the will of Ince on the grounds that the New York courts had no jurisdiction over the executors, who were appointed in California, in which state Ince was a resident at the time he died in November 1924. She then filed suit in California, but a copy of the contract was not attached. By the time that arrived, the time had elapsed in which she was legally entitled to make a claim against the Ince estate and the court dismissed the suit on technicalities.

She made one screen comeback. Signing a contract with Associated Exhibitors, she played the role as Nina Olmstead, the conniving other woman, in the Henri Diamant-Berger directed drama Fifty-Fifty (1925) opposite Hope Hampton and Lionel Barrymore.