Dorothy Davenport

Dorothy Davenport
Dorothy Davenport Reid in 1923
Born	(1895-03-13)March 13, 1895 Boston, Massachusetts
Died	October 12, 1977(1977-10-12) (aged 82) Los Angeles
Years active	1910–1956
Spouse(s)	Wallace Reid (married 1913–1923)
Parent(s)	Harry Davenport (1866–1949) Alice Shepard (1864–1936)

Dorothy Davenport (March 13, 1895 – October 12, 1977) was an American actress, screenwriter, film director, and producer who appeared in silent film for Biograph Studios under the direction of D.W. Griffith.

Dorothy Davenport's family was well known in the theater. Her grandparents were Edward Loomis Davenport and Fanny Vining who were 19th-century character actors; their daughter and Dorothy's aunt, Fanny Davenport, was considered one of the great actresses of the time. Her father, Harry Davenport, was a Broadway star. With her background on the stage, she was in her early teens when she started playing bit parts in the fledgling film industry.

By the time she was 17, Davenport was a star at Universal. She was a horsewoman of distinction, and did many of her own stunts in films. While with Universal, she met a young actor named Wallace Reid; they married on October 13, 1913.

Davenport and Reid continued to work together as he directed and starred with her in two films per week for the next year. When Reid left Universal, Davenport also left films, only to return in 1916.

While filming on location in Oregon for The Valley of the Giants (1919), Wallace Reid was injured in a train wreck. As a remedy for the pain from this injury, studio doctors administered large doses of morphine to Reid to which he became addicted. Reid's health slowly grew worse over the next few years, and he died of the addiction in 1923. After Reid's death, Davenport and Thomas Ince co-produced the film Human Wreckage (1923) with James Kirkwood, Sr., Bessie Love and Lucille Ricksen, a film that dealt with the dangers of narcotics addiction.