Lenore Ulric
| Lenore Ulric | |
|---|---|
in South Sea Rose (1929)
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| Born |
Lenore Ulrich July 21, 1892 New Ulm, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Died | December 30, 1970 (aged 78) Orangeburg, New York, U.S. |
| Years active | 1911-1947 |
| Spouse(s) |
Sidney Blackmer (m.1928-1939; divorced) |
Lenore Ulric (July 21, 1892 – December 30, 1970) was a star of the Broadway stage and Hollywood films of the silent-film and early sound era.
Discovered in 1913 by theater director David Belasco, who would go on to manage her stage career, she was noted for portraying fiery, hot-blooded women of the typical "femme fatale."
Her father, Franz Xavier Ulrich, was a United States Army hospital steward. He reportedly named his daughter Lenore due to his fondness for the Edgar Allan Poe poem, "The Raven". She later dropped the "h" from her surname.
As a schoolgirl, Lenore obtained a job with a stock company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She played with stock companies in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Chicago, Illinois. She worked briefly as a film actress for Essanay Studios and joined another stock company in Schenectady, New York. She found work in The First Man (1911), A Polished Burglar (1911), Kilmeny (1915), and The Better Woman (1915).
She specialized in playing sultry, impassioned women. In 1915 she went to work for Pallas Pictures starring in several silent pictures, such as Frozen Justice and The Intrigue, that survive today at the Library of Congress.
Ulric was discovered by theatrical producer David Belasco who first saw her in The Bird of Paradise in 1913, after Ulric wrote to him requesting that he see her on stage. Belasco, who would go on "fishing trips" to find new stage talents, recalled that it was often a long time between "bites," but he enjoyed the sport as he sometimes would "hook a big one."
After watching her on stage, he asked her to audition at his playhouse. He watched her perform while he sat incognito in one of the theater's seats. "After twenty minutes," he said, "I knew I was watching a very talented and unusual young woman." He then offered her the leading role in The Heart of Wetona. He recalled: "Among the biggest I have ever landed is, I believe, little Miss Ulric: I think she will grow bigger every season she is before the public."
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