Career
In 1890, Ward made her stage debut as Cupid in Pippino with Eddie Foy. She went on to become a successful stage star in New York City. In 1894 she sailed for London and appeared in The Shop Girl, which led critics to compare Ward favorably to actress Maude Adams. In 1898, however, she married a wealthy diamond merchant and retired from the stage. Ward returned to her career in 1905, after her husband suffered business reversals that left him, a news account reported, "practically penniless".
In 1915, around the time Ward's stage career was on the wane, American movie producer and director Cecil B. DeMille convinced her to appear in The Cheat, a silent film melodrama which co-starred Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa. The film was a sensation, thanks to its mingling of racial and sexual themes. Ward portrayed a society woman who embezzles money and turns to an Asian ivory dealer (Hayakawa) for help, with brutal consequences. The movie launched the careers of both DeMille and Hayakawa, who became Hollywood's first Asian star.
In addition to starring in The Hardest Way (1921), Ward appeared in a Phonofilm short film singing Father Time (1924), a second Phonofilm as The Perennial Flapper (1924), and in a Vitaphone short Fannie Ward in "The Miracle Woman" (1929).
In 1926, trading on her ever-youthful public image, Ward opened a Paris beauty shop, "The Fountain of Youth".
Read more about this topic: Fannie Ward
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)