Norma Talmadge

Norma Talmadge was born in 1894 and raised in Brooklyn by an ambitious mother who steered all three of her daughters toward the stage and screen. Norma began at the Vitagraph studio in the earliest days of the movies, learning her craft in dozens of short films, and she emerged in the late 1910s as one of the most beloved dramatic actresses in America.

Her specialty was the romantic melodrama, the emotional "woman's picture" in which a heroine loves, sacrifices, and suffers with luminous dignity. Audiences, especially women, adored her for it, and through the 1920s she was consistently among the highest-paid and most bankable stars in the country. Films such as Smilin' Through (1922), Secrets, The Lady, and Kiki showcased a performer of real emotional range and enormous popular appeal. Her marriage to the powerful producer Joseph Schenck gave her something few actresses had: her own production company and control over her pictures.

Her sisters made the family a genuine dynasty. Constance Talmadge became a delightful comedy star, and the youngest, Natalie, married Buster Keaton. Norma herself was such an emblem of stardom that, according to Hollywood legend, it was she who first pressed her hands and feet into wet cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre, launching the forecourt tradition that endures to this day.

When sound arrived, Talmadge's heavy Brooklyn accent proved a poor match for the refined heroines she played, and her few talking pictures were not well received. Rather than fight a losing battle, she made a clear-eyed decision that reflected her whole shrewd career: she retired gracefully and comfortably wealthy, reportedly quipping to autograph seekers that she no longer needed them. She lived out her years in comfort and died in 1957. Once one of the most famous women in America, she is now among the most forgotten of the silent era's true titans, a star whose immense contemporary fame has faded almost entirely from popular memory.