Clara Kimball Young
Clara Kimball Young was born Sept. 6, 1890, in Chicago,
IL. She spent the very early years of her life on stage. After
attending St. Francis Xavier Academy for most of her teen years,
she went back to the theater. She met her husband, actor-director
James Young, while on tour in Salt Lake City. In 1912, they both
signed with Vitagraph. After two years and twenty films with
Vitagraph, she moved to Selznick in 1914. In at least one fan
poll, she was voted the most popular actress in 1914. Her popularity
continued to grow so much that Selznick formed the Clara Kimball
Young Film Company in 1916. The fact that her popularity continued
to grow and her husband's didn't is attributed, at least in part,
to their divorce in 1919. She married producer-director Harry
Garson who took control of her career. They left Selznick, and
Young did have some successes with films such as "Eyes of
Youth" (1919) which co-starred Milton Sills and an unknown
Rudolph Valentino, "Mid-Channel" (1920) and "Straight
From Paris" (1922). However, he style was not fitting well
into the 1920's vogue, and, feeling that her husband was mismanaging
her career, they separated. She continued to make films, only
with mild success, and also toured vaudeville, both here and in
England. She married Dr. Arthur Fauman in 1928 to whom she remained
married until his death in 1937. In 1932, she was in a serious
automobile accident, and in 1933 declared bankruptcy. Young's
comeback film was considered to be Joel McCrea's "Kept Husbands"
(1932) in which she played a society matron. She continued in
these types of extra roles in another 16 films, many of them low-budget
westerns, until her final film, "The Round-Up" (1941).
In 1956, she signed as a correspondent with Johnny Carson's comedy
variety show, which preceded his Tonight Show run, She moved into
the Motion Picture Country Home in January, 1960, and died in
October of that year.
Selected films of this star available for viewing:
Trilby (1917)
The Eyes of Youth (1919)
Mid-Channel (1920)
The Worldly Madonna (1922)
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