Marriage and Hollywood
Louise was married to fellow actor Wilton Welch in February 1912, when she was only sixteen years old. After Australian Life Biograph wound up the two of them acted together in vaudeville.
In 1914, she moved to America with her husband, hoping to replicate her Australian success. As legend has it, it was Universal Studios head Carl Laemmle who both gave her a contract with his studio and re-christened her Louise Lovely, much to her horror. She made her American debut alongside the legendary Lon Chaney and another successful expatriate Australian actor, Arthur Shirley, in Stronger Than Death in 1915, receiving strong reviews. She starred with Chaney again in several other films including The Gilded Spider and Tangled Hearts (both 1916). It is likely that Lovely played a part in bringing her co-star in the latter film, Agnes `Brownie' Vernon, to Australia, where she became a major star of the local silent film industry.
Lovely became one of Universal's major early stars and a challenger to Mary Pickford's status as the golden girl of early silent cinema, but was dropped by the studio in 1918 following a contract dispute. Though she was subsequently picked up by Fox, where she starred in a series of Westerns with William Farnum, her career never reached its earlier heights.
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