Special Shout Out: To Bessie with Love

This blog is sort of an eleventh-hour act on my part. I have been entrusted, by another silent film enthusiast, with the education of a mutual friend. What education, you ask? Well, those of us in the silent film geek ghost army (we have meetings and everything) love nothing more than to quiz each other on the vaguest and least relevant silent film-related topics we can think of. Then we silently judge that person when they get dates of birth wrong, when they forget that Colleen Moore’s real name was Kathleen Morrison, or when they can’t name the ugly Talmadge sister (it was Natalie, loosers!).

In this case, however, the topic is might be vague, but she is certainly not irrelevant. Even now, she has a following, though she is one of many who, it’s safe to say, are woefully neglected. I am speaking, of course, about the actress Miss Bessie Love. I’ll try to do justice to this talented beauty, because I’m a true friend. And friends don’t let friends go through life without teaching them, in blog post form, about Bessie Love. This one is for you, Kev.


To start of, Bessie was not her real name; she was born Juanita Horton in 1896, the daughter of a rancher in Midland, Texas. A daughter of the west, she started working as an actress in 1916 out of necessity. She appeared in several movies at the Fine Arts studio in Los Angeles, including the 1916 epic Intolerance: Love's Struggle Through the Ages (the movie with the elephant pillars). D.W. Griffith, the director of Intolerance, is usually thought of as the person who came up with Bessie's stage name.

Breakthrough roles came very quickly; she was cast opposite William S. Hart and Douglas Fairbanks in 1916 films. One year later, she was playing lead roles in feature films for Vitagraph and Pathé. In 1922, the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers selected Bessie and twelve other young actresses as the WAMPAS Baby Stars. She was still a major player all through the twenties, playing a bootlegger’s girlfriend in Those Who Dance (1924) and Broadway diva in The Matinee Idol (1928, an early Frank Capra endeavor).

The coming of sound derailed a lot of careers, but it earned Bessie Love an Oscar nomination in 1929. The movie was The Broadway Melody, which is still widely thought of as the first true movie musical. She worked steadily in sound films from 1929 to 1932-ish. (at left: Bessie and Anita Page in The Broadway Melody)

Perhaps because of marriage, her career dropped off after the early 1930’s, but for the next several decades of her life, Bessie continued to take the occasional role in film or on television, mostly in England, where she lived for most of her 'post-Hollywood' life. Her notable roles at the end of her career were in Warren Beatty’s epic Reds (1981), as well as Ragtime (also 1981) and the sexy vampire movie The Hunger (1983). She died in London in April of 1986.

Bessie was a Virgo. She was once married to Howard Hawkes’ brother William, which also made her a cousin in law of Carole Lombard. had terrific face, with big expressive eyes and a long nose. Standing approximately five feet, she was petit and doll-like even into her later years.

One more fun fact about Bessie: She wrote a play in 1958 called The Homecoming.

Below is a clip from Hollywood Revue of 1929. To say she's the best part of the movie is an understatement, as you can probably tell. I like this clip because I feel like it shows off her personality and her abundant talent. Thank you dudfilmscorporation for the clip.