Norma Talmadge

A popular dramatic star of the late 1910s and 1920s, actress Norma Talmadge specialized in weepy society melodramas, and became one of the most popular and financially successful performers of the silent era. After receiving her start on the East Coast in "A Tale of Two Cities" (1911) and "The Peacemaker" (1914), Talmadge landed her first starring role in the wartime propaganda picture "The Battle Cry of Peace" (1915). Moving out to California with her mother and two sisters, Constance and Natalie, both of whom went on to their own success as actresses, she made the disastrous "Captivating Mary Costairs" (1915), before joining D.W. Griffith at the Triangle Film Corporation to make a series of movies, including "The Social Secretary" (1917). Back in New York, she met and married producer Joseph Schenck, who acted more as her manager than her husband. With Schenck, Talmadge achieved incalculable success, becoming a major star and independently wealthy in the process, thanks to making films under her own banner, the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation. Sticking mostly to dramas - the few comedies she made were dismissed by fans - Talmadge became one of Hollywood's biggest stars with "The Sign on the Door" (1921), "Smilin' Through" (1922), "Secrets" (1924), and "Camille" (1927). But like many silent performers, she was unable to transition to sound and retired, living the rest of her live in obscurity. Regardless of her quiet exit, Talmadge remained one-half of cinema's most famous sister acts and one of silent Hollywood's most important and successful stars.