BESSIE LOVE

Bessie Love was an actress from the 1910s to the 1980s. She was born Juanita Horton, and she was a beautiful Texas girl with luxurious hair, and her mother sent her to Hollywood in 1915 (when she was 17) and she was hired by D.W. Griffith, who gave her her new name and put her in his movies, including a small role in Intolerance in 1916. She became a major silent star, and is likely best remembered today for her starring role in The Lost World, the 1925 movie made by the producer/director team of Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper, with great special effects by Willis H. O'Brien (those three would reunite 8 years later for an even bigger hit, King Kong!). Miss Love was one of the few major silent stars who successfully made the transition to sound, starring in The Broadway Melody, and being nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for that movie. She starred in many other early talkies. In 1929 she married a brother of director Howard Hawks, and in 1932 they had a child. Soon after she moved to England and mostly retired, getting divorced in 1935. But she continued making movies all the way to 1983, and she passed away in 1986, at the age of 87. Some of her movies include: The Broadway Melody, Barefoot Contessa, and Rubber Tires