Constance Talmadge

Constance Talmadge
Constance Talmadge in 1917
Born	Constance Alice Talmadge (1898-04-19)April 19, 1898 Brooklyn, New York
Died	November 23, 1973(1973-11-23) (aged 75) Los Angeles, California
Cause of death	Pneumonia
Years active	1914–29
Spouse(s)	John Pialoglou (1920–22; divorced) Alastair MacIntosh (1926–27; divorced) Townsend Netcher (1929–31; divorced) Walter Michael Giblin (1939–64; his death)

Constance Alice Talmadge (April 19, 1898 – November 23, 1973) was an American silent movie star born in Brooklyn, New York. She was the sister of actresses Natalie and Norma Talmadge.

Constance was born on April 19, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York to poor parents, Fred and Peg Talmadge. Her father was an alcoholic, and left them when she was still very young. Her mother made a living by doing laundry. When a friend recommended that Constance's mother use older sister Norma as a model for title slides in flickers, which were shown in early nickelodeons, Peg decided to do so. This led all three sisters into an acting career.

She began making films in 1914, in a Vitagraph comedy short, In Bridal Attire (1914). Her first major role was as The Mountain Girl and Marguerite de Valois in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916).

Griffith re-edited Intolerance repeatedly after its initial release, and even shot new scenes long after it was in distribution. Grace Kingsley found Talmadge in her dressing room at the Fine Arts Studio, in Los Angeles, in the midst of making up for some new shots.

"Did you really drive those galloping brutes of horses?" asked Kingsley.

"Indeed I did," said Talmadge. "Two women sat behind me at the Auditorium the other night. They said, 'Of course she never really drove those horses herself. Somebody doubled for her.' Know what I did? I turned around and told them, 'I wish I could show you my knees, all black and blue even yet from being cracked up against the dashboard of that chariot!'"

So popular was Talmadge's portrayal of the tomboyish Mountain Girl, Griffith released in 1919 the Babylonian sequence from Intolerance as a new, separate film called The Fall of Babylon. He refilmed her death scene to allow for a happy ending.

Her friend Anita Loos, who wrote many screenplays for her, appreciated her "humour and her irresponsible way of life". Over the course of her career, Talmadge appeared in more than 80 films, often in comedies like A Pair of Silk Stockings (1918), Happiness à la Mode (1919), Romance and Arabella (1919), Wedding Bells (1921) and The Primitive Lover (1922).