Alice Joyce

Born Oct. 1, 1890, in Kansas City, Mo. After attending a convent in Annandale, Md., Alice went to New York while still a teenager and became a telephone operator. She also was very successful as an artist's and photographer's model before finding a job with Kalem in 1910. In those first years, she made mostly Westerns and outdoor dramas, but also began to make other types of films as time wore on, most noticeably moving into what was to become her forté, society dramas. She married actor Tom Moore in 1914, and when her daughter was born the next year, she took a year off from the movies to stay at home. In 1916, she went to work for Vitagraph who had absorbed Kalem. Joyce was one of the most popular actresses on the screen in the late 'teens and had earned enough to open the Hotel Joyce in New York. She divorced Tom Moore and married hotel magnate James Regan in 1920. They had a daughter who was born in 1921. She left the screen for two years and returned in "The Green Goddess" (1923) for Goldwyn. After two years of freelancing, Alice signed with Paramount. One of her greatest successes was "Dancing Mothers" (1926). Clara Bow played Alice's flapper daughter, but Alice was the star and dominated the film. In the film, Alice finally gives up on a selfish family to seek her own happiness. Alice made a total of 25 silents in the 1920's, and, after four talkies in 1929 and 1930, she retired from the screen at 40 years of age. She divorced Regan in 1932, and married director Clarence Brown, most famous for several Garbo films, in 1933. They divorced in 1945, and Alice remained single for the rest of her life. She lived comfortably until she died of a heart attack Oct. 9, 1955.

Selected films of this star available for viewing:

Stella Dallas (1925)

Dancing Mothers (1926)

Beau Geste (1926)

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