Grace Darmond

Grace Darmond
Publicity photo of Darmond from Stars of the Photoplay (1916)
Born	Grace Glionna (1893-11-20)November 20, 1893 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died	October 8, 1963(1963-10-08) (aged 69) Los Angeles, California
Years active	1914-1927
Spouse(s)	Henry J. Matson (1926) Randolph Jennings (1928-?)
Partner(s)	Jean Acker (1918-?)

Grace Darmond (November 20, 1893 – October 8, 1963) was a Canadian-born American actress from the early 20th century.

Grace Darmond was born Grace Glionna in Toronto on November 20, 1893. Her parents were James Glionna, a U.S.-born musician who had lived in Canada since 1877, and Alice Glionna, an Ontario native.

Darmond was active onscreen between 1914 and 1927. She starred in the first Technicolor film, The Gulf Between (1917), with actor Niles Welch. The film premiered on September 13 in Boston and on September 21 at the Aeolian Hall in New York City. However, when the film went into limited release in early 1918 on a tour of Eastern U. S. cities, it was a critical and commercial failure. The early Technicolor process ("System 1") was an additive color process which required a special projector, and which suffered from "fringing" and "haloing" of colors.

Darmond was pretty, slender, and starred in many notable films of the period, but never was able to break through as a leading actress in big budget films. Most of her roles were in support of bigger names of the time, and most of her starring roles were smaller, lesser known films. She appeared in Below the Surface (1920), in which she starred with Hobart Bosworth and Lloyd Hughes, and that same year she played in A Dangerous Adventure, produced and directed by Warner Brothers. This led to her being cast alongside Boris Karloff in the mystery thriller The Hope Diamond Mystery (1921). In the July edition of Motion Picture Magazine, she was featured in an article by Joan Tully entitled "Mantled With Shyness (A Word Portrait of Grace Darmond)".

Darmond was reportedly a lesbian. Although performing in a substantial number of films over roughly 13 years, she was known in Hollywood's inner circle as the lesbian lover to actress Jean Acker, the first wife of actor Rudolph Valentino. She was also associated, as many struggling actresses of the day were, with the actress Alla Nazimova, who was the former lover to Acker, although it has never been verified that Nazimova and Darmond were ever linked romantically. She and Acker attended parties at Nazimova's Garden of Allah, an imposing house named punningly after a Robert Smythe Hichens play Nazimova had appeared in.