Alice Terry - Personal Life

Personal Life

In 1921, she married director Rex Ingram during production of The Prisoner of Zenda (released 1922), which he directed and in which she appeared as Princess Flavia. The couple sneaked away over one weekend, were married in Pasadena, and returned to work promptly the following Monday.

During the making of The Arab (1924) in Tunisia, they met a street child named Kada-Abd-el-Kader, whom they adopted upon learning that he was an orphan. Allegedly, el-Kader misrepresented his age to make himself seem younger to his adoptive parents, and after he "began associating with fast women and fast cars throughout the San Fernando Valley", Terry and Ingram sent him back to Morocco "to finish school."

Terry was known to have several gay male friends in the film industry, including Ramón Novarro (a former leading man of hers) and Barry Norton. During the 1930s, she accompanied Novarro to speakeasies with predominantly gay clientele, allegedly in part to throw off any suspicion about Novarro's homosexuality.

Terry and Ingram retired together in the 1930s. By all accounts, theirs was a happy marriage, though they often had separate bedrooms during their marriage and occupied separate retirement community bungalows at the end of their marriage. Nonetheless, they remained together until his death in 1950. After his death, Terry became romantically involved with actor Gerald Fielding, who bore a strong physical resemblance to her late husband. They were lovers until his death, at the age of forty-six, in 1956.

Terry had a sister, Edna, who died in 1984.