Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses

Jean Paige

JEAN PAIGE Some actresses marry their leading men, some their directors. NormaShearer married IrvingThalberg, the head of production at MGM. Jean Paige worked for only one company, Vitagraph, and she married the head of the studio, becoming the only silent screen performer to make such a major transition. It could not have happened to a sweeter, less pretentious actress. The Vitagraph Company was always family-like, and Jean Paige became its young mother. Born Lucille Beatrice OHair in Paris, Illinois, onJuly 3, 1895, Jean Paige's background does not hint at a film career. Her family was deeply religious and had no interest in the theatre. Her mother had wanted to be a missionary but had been denied the opportunity by her father. After her daughter had taken private acting lessons and studied acting at the Kings School of Oratory, Elocution and Dramatic Culture in Pittsburg, a family friend, director Martin Justice , offered the actress a screen test. Her mother determined not to stand in her daughter's way. With her Aunt Emmy, Jean Paige came to New York on July 25, 1917, made a test at the Vitagraph studios, and was immediately cast in a series of two-reel comedies based on O. Henry's short stories. She made her debut in The Discounters ofMoney, released on July 26, 1917, and within a year, Jean Paige was a Vitagraph star. She came out to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve 1919 and never wanted to live anywhere else. There she metVitagraph's co-founderand current owner, Albert E. Smith: "Mr. Smith's wife passed on the in the [1918 Spanish] flu epidemic, and Mr. Smith came out with the children and the nurse. We all went to meet him and he said, 'Well, Miss Paige, how do you like California?' Isaid, 'I simply love it. Iget to ride horseback and do all the things I love to do.' He said, 'I ride every morning and maybe you could ride with me sometime.' Iwent home and told my aunt, and she said, 'I've always understood Mr. Smith was a very fine gentleman, and there's no reason why you shouldn't.' That was the way it started." Albert E. Smith and Jean Paige married at her parent's home in December 1920, but the actress continued with films she had agreed to make. Placid and untemperamental, Jean Paige did whatever was asked of her. She played in the lurid melodrama The Prodigal Son, released in february 1922, "the only picture that I never cared for." She co-starred in the screen adaptation of AnnaSewell's Black Beauty(1921) opposite James Morrison, who was born only thirty miles away from her in Mattoon, Illinois: "She was a very sweet and charming person-we always had a bond in Illinois." When asked to explain the genesis of his interest in film, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman recalled that Black Beautywas the first production he eversaw, and he claimed 294 Jean Paige that he could still remember the fire sequence. The feature is equally important as the first to be shot entirely with panchromatic film (by Reggie Lyons). Jean Paige ended her Vitagraph, and her screen, career with the studio's last major production, the swashbuckling epic Captain Blood (1924), in which J. Warren Kerrigan has the title role and James Morrison is cast in the secondary male lead as Jeremy Pitt. Jean Paige wears the costumes to perfection but has little need to act. "I really wasn't interested in pictures anymore," the actress told me. "As I look back on my life, here I was a young girl in Illinois, whose family was not interested in the theatre. I land in New York and my aunt is pushing me. Then, when Mr. Smith needed me, I was there. And we had such a wonderful and happy life. As you look back on it, it sort of falls into place." Jean Paige died in Los Angeles on December 15, 1990. Note: Jean Paige's still books from Captain Blood and Black Beauty are at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, along with her costume from Black Beauty. Bibliography Fletcher, Adele Whitely. "Sick-a-Bed Lady." Motion Picture, April-May 1920, pp. 4849 ,108. --. "Nee Jean Paige." Motion Picture, June 1921, pp. 22-23. Forthe, Wales. "Of the Sub-Deb Squad." Photoplay, December 1920, p. 42. Howe, Selma. "A Regular...