Colleen Moore - Early Life

Early Life

Born Kathleen Morrison on August 19, 1899 (according to the bulk of the official records; the date which she insisted was correct in her autobiography Silent Star, was 1902) in Port Huron, Michigan, Miss Moore was the eldest child of Charles R. and Agnes Morrison. The family remained in Port Huron during the early years of Moore's life, at first living with her grandmother Mary Kelly (often spelled Kelley) and then with at least one of Moore's aunts.

By 1905 the family had moved to Hillsdale, Michigan where they remained for over two years. They had relocated to Atlanta, Georgia by 1908. They are listed at three different addresses during their stay in Atlanta (From the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library city directories): 301 Capitol Avenue −1908; 41 Linden Avenue – 1909; 240 N. Jackson Street – 1910. They then lived briefly—probably less than a year—in Warren, Pennsylvania, and by 1911 they had settled down in Tampa, Florida.

At age 15 she was setting her first step in Hollywood. Her uncle arranged a screen test with director D.W. Griffith. She wanted to be a second Lillian Gish but instead she found herself playing heroines in Westerns with stars such as Tom Mix.

Two great passions of young Moore's were dolls and movies; each would play a great role in her later life. She and her brother began their own stock company, reputedly performing on a stage created from a piano packing crate. She admired the faces she saw on the silver screen and on magazine covers. She had resolved at a young age that she would be not only an actress, but a star. Her aunts, who doted on her, indulged her other great passion and often bought her miniature furniture on their many trips, with which she furnished the first of a succession of doll houses. Another one of her passions was to get married. She didn’t have the best luck; Moore was married four times. Her first marriage was to John McCormick of First National Studios. Moore’s second marriage was to Albert P. Scott; this marriage was short. She married Homer Hargrave in 1936; he provided funding for her dollhouse. After Hargrave died in 1964, Moore took many years to get over her grief. In 1982 Moore married her final husband, Paul Maginot.

The family summered in Chicago, where Moore enjoyed baseball and the company of her Aunt Lib (Elizabeth, who changed her name to "Liberty", Lib for short) and Lib's husband Walter Howey. Howey was the managing editor of the Chicago Examiner and an important newspaper editor in the publishing empire of William Randolph Hearst, and was the inspiration for Walter Burns, the fictional Chicago newspaper editor in the play and the film The Front Page.