Personal Info
Birth date
1883-06-18 (142 Years)
Day of death
1946-07-02
Gender
Female
Known for
Acting
Place of birth
New York City, New York, USA
Also known as
Mary Maguire Alden
Mary Alden
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Mary Maguire Alden (June 18, 1883 – July 2, 1946) was an American motion picture and stage actress. She was one of the first Broadway actresses to work in Hollywood. Born in New York City, Alden began her career on the Broadway stage. She spent five years on Broadway before moving to Hollywood where she worked for the Biograph Company and Pathé Exchange in the first portion of her career. Her most popular role in movies came in Birth of a Nation directed by D.W. Griffith in 1915. Alden played the role of a mulatto girl in love with a northern politician. The following year she was in Griffith's Intolerance with Mae Marsh, Miriam Cooper, and Vera Lewis. After making Less Than The Dust with Mary Pickford in 1917, she took a temporary leave from motion pictures, acting for a while on the stage. Critics acclaimed Alden's portrayal of the mother, Mrs. Anthon, in The Old Nest (1921) and her characterization of an old lady in The Man With Two Mothers (1922). The latter feature was produced by Sam Goldwyn. Alden was prolific as a motion picture actress throughout the 1920s and into the early 1930s. A sampling of movies in which she had roles are The Plastic Age (1925), The Joy Girl (1927), Ladies of the Mob (1928), and Port of Dreams (1929). The final films she received screen credit for are Hell's House, Rasputin and the Empress, and Strange Interlude, each from 1932. Alden died at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California in 1946. This had been her residence for the last four years of her life. She was 63 years of age.
Filmography
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
7.074
Overview:
The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.The Birth of a Nation
6.005
Overview:
Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.Hell's House
5.1
Overview:
A teenager lands in a brutal reform school for refusing to squeal on his bootlegger boss.The Bad Sister
5.4
Overview:
Marianne falls in love with con man Valentine who uses their relation to get her father's endorsement on a money-raising scheme. He runs off with the money and Marianne, later dumping her. Her sister Laura loves Dr. Lindley although she knows he loves Marianne. Marianne returns and marries a wealthy young man, and Lindley turns his love toward Laura.The Battle of the Sexes
NYR
Overview:
Frank Andrews is a successful businessman. He has always found pride and joy in the company of his wife, son and daughter. He suddenly finds himself enthralled by the advances of a gay young woman siren, who lives in the same apartment house as he does. So marked an influence does she have over him as time progresses that at last he quite forgets his home ties, neglects his family, and goes the way of many other men who have forgotten the meaning of paternity and blood ties. The story is advanced through many scenes enacted with the accompanying notes of New York's night life, and the denouement comes when the faithful wife discovers her husband's infidelity. At this time the mother's mind nearly loses balance, while Jane, the beautiful daughter, crazed by the grief of her mother, determines to take part in the tragedy. With revolver in hand she steals up to the apartment of the woman, but her frail nature is overcome by the temperamental anger of the woman and her mission fails.The Good Bad-Man
6.3
Overview:
An outlaw calling himself Passin' Through halts his "evil" ways long enough to help out some children in difficulty.Strange Interlude
5.7
Overview:
After Nina Leeds finds out that insanity runs in her husband's family, she has a love child with a handsome doctor and lets her husband believes the child is his.Milestones
NYR
Overview:
1860 ushers in the era of iron ships, Richard Sibley, a builder of wooden ships, stubbornly resists the change, which leads him to forbid the marriage of his daughter Rose to John Rhead, a proponent of the new method. This injustice outrages John's sister Gertrude so much that she breaks off her engagement to Sibley's son Sam. Meanwhile, John and Rose elope.The Plastic Age
5.9
Overview:
Hugh Carver is an athletic star and a freshman at Prescott College. He falls in love with Cynthia Day, a popular girl who loves to party, and finds that it's impossible to please her and still keep up with his studies and athletic training. Soon the two face some difficult decisions.Acquitted
NYR
Overview:
Hard-working insurance company bookkeeper John Carter, comes home Easter eve to his suburban cottage with a potted lily for his loving wife and two daughters. The Carters live happily until cashier Charles Ryder is murdered by the night watchman, a "coke sniffer" in need of money, and Carter is accused because he worked with Ryder that evening.The Unpardonable Sin
NYR
Overview:
Based on the Rupert Hughes novel, this film concerns the German atrocities committed in Belgium at the beginning of the Great War.The Potters
NYR
Overview:
Pa Potter invests four thousand dollars in worthless oil stock. Or is it worthless?I Am Not a Racist
NYR
Overview:
A parody of D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation", "I Am Not a Racist" rearranges the scenes of the classic movie and recreates its dialogues to criticize the racism in it and also in the world today. Freemenville is a little city somewhere in the USA. A city ashamed because of its past of slavery, but proud of being the first in the country to end it. There is an annual ball to celebrate this fact. And this year's ball may be the biggest ever, because of the possible presence of a big celebrity, who is coming to town to see the premiere of a play. However, the play happens to be D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation", a racist work that starts a series of events exposing the racism that still exists in the city, culminating in the recreation of the KKK.Brown of Harvard
5.6
Overview:
Tom Brown shows up at Harvard, confident and a bit arrogant. He becomes a rival of Bob McAndrew, not only in football and rowing crew, but also for the affections of Mary Abbott, a professor's daughter.One More Spring
5.75
Overview:
Three people live together in the maintenance shed at Central Park as an alternative to living on the streets.Parted Curtains
NYR
Overview:
A young man just released from prison can't find work because no employer will hire an ex-convict. Broke and hungry, he steals money off of a painter. The painter, however, takes pity on him and decides to help him get his life back together.The Witching Hour
NYR
Overview:
Clay Whipple is convicted of murdering the governor following an incident involving a cat's eye pin. Whipple is sentenced to death, but a mentalist named Psychic Jack believes he is innocent since Whipple had been hypnotized at the time of the murder. The psychic persuades the judge to grant the condemned man a retrial, and he sets out to uncover the identity of the real killer, during which time he manages to prevent a second murder from occurring.Home, Sweet Home
5.3
Overview:
John Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and his sweetheart, Payne begins to lead a life of dissolute habits, and this soon leads to ruin and misery. In deep despair, he thinks of better days, and writes a song that later provides inspiration to several others in their own times of need.The Cossacks
7.3
Overview:
Stirring romance, hard riding, desperate fighting with the Cossacks playing their game of war and chivalry. A mighty picturization of Count Leo Tolstoi's famous novel of the same name.Ladies of the Mob
NYR
Overview:
A dead criminal's daughter falls in love with a small-time crook and tries to get him to reform before he winds up like her father.Painted People
NYR
Overview:
Ellie Byrne and Don Lane, chums, living in the poor section of a factory town, go away to make their fortunes. Ellie wishes to become a lady so that she can marry Preston Dutton, a society chap, and Don becoming infatuated with Stephanie Parrish, daughter of a wealthy man. Ellie becomes a leading actress and Don the author of her first play. Ellie refuses Dutton’s suit when she learns he is after her money, and Stephanie returns Don’s engagement ring. Ellie and Don go back to the factory town disillusioned. They realize that they love each other and in reality had not bettered themselves for someone else but for each other. A lost film.The Second Mrs. Roebuck
NYR
Overview:
Mabel Mack's mother is deserted by her father and the mother dies. All that Mabel retains of her family history is a group photograph of her father, mother and herself, in a locket which she always wears.The Sawdust Paradise
NYR
Overview:
She dances- The Dance of Death. She Sings- The song of Life. Scintillating, Fascinating, Desirable, Swifty She Weaves the Web of Destruction and then Regeneration. A Drama of Lights and Shadows.Politics
6.3
Overview:
A widow's decision to run for mayor kicks off a battle of the sexes in a small town.Honest Hutch
NYR
Overview:
Ort Hutchins is a confirmed loafer who spends all of his time fishing while his wife toils over the washtub. One day, while digging for worms, Hutch uncovers a box containing $100,000 in bills, the loot of a bank robbed in the next town. Realizing that he cannot spend the money without arousing suspicion, Hutch resigns himself to taking a job for cover. ...April Fool
NYR
Overview:
An out-of-work pants presser starts an umbrella business and makes a fortune. His daughter is set to marry the nephew of a rich neighbor until the nephew is accused of stealing money from his uncle--but the money was really stolen by the rich man's son.The Narrow Path
NYR
Overview:
Bessie Allen, a girl of the slums, dances in the streets of the Lower East Side of New York to the delight of the crowds. She becomes an orphan when her father, in a drunken stupor, kills her mother, and then himself. Bessie is knocked down by the car of Mrs. Latham, a society matron, who takes an interest in the girl and procures her a job as a dress model.An Innocent Magdalene
NYR
Overview:
When Dorothy's Southern, aristocratic father Colonel Raleigh refuses to let her marry Forbes Stewart, a Northern gambler, the couple elopes. When Dorothy soon thereafter becomes pregnant, Forbes vows to reform, but authorities arrest him on a gambling charge, and he serves a year in prison. During that time, and just before the birth of the baby, a woman comes to Dorothy and claims to be Forbes' wife. Stunned, Dorothy returns to her father, but the colonel throws her out, and so, on her own, she has her baby, whom the community believes to be illegitimate. Convinced that she has sinned, Dorothy is about to kill herself when Forbes, just out of jail, finds her and explains that the other woman simply had been an ex-sweetheart trying to win him back.Acting
2019I Am Not a Racist as the housekeeper
1935One More Spring as Unknown
1932Strange Interlude as Mary, Leeds' Maid
1932Hell's House as Lucy Mason
1931The Bad Sister as Minor Role (uncredited)
1931Politics as Mary Evans
1929Girl Overboard as Unknown
1928Someone to Love as Harriet Newton
1928Ladies of the Mob as Soft Annie
1928The Sawdust Paradise as Mother
1928The Cossacks as Lukashka's mother
1928Fools for Luck as Mrs. Hunter
1927Twin Flappers as Unknown
1927The Joy Girl as Mrs. Courage
1927The Potters as Ma Potter
1926April Fool as Amelia Rosen
1926Lovey Mary as Mrs. Wiggs
1926Brown of Harvard as Mrs. Brown
1926The Earth Woman as Martha Tilden (The Earth Woman)
1925The Plastic Age as Mrs. Carver
1925Under the Rouge as Martha Maynard
1925Siege as Unknown
1925The Unwritten Law as Miss Grant
1925The Happy Warrior as Aunt Maggie
1925Faint Perfume as Ma Crumb
1924The Beloved Brute as Augustina
1924Babbitt as Mrs. Myra Babbitt
1924When a Girl Loves as The Czarina
1924Painted People as Mrs. Bryne
1923Pleasure Mad as Marjorie Benton
1923The Bond Boy as Mrs. Newboat
1922A Woman's Woman as Densie Plummer
1922The Hidden Woman as Mrs. Randolph
1921The Old Nest as Mrs. Anthon
1921The Witching Hour as Helen Whipple
1921Snowblind as Bella
1920Honest Hutch as Mrs. Hutchins
1920Milestones as Rose Sibley
1920Miss Nobody as Jason's Wife
1920Parted Curtains as Mrs. Masters
1920Silk Husbands and Calico Wives as Unknown
1919Erstwhile Susan as Erstwhile Susan
1919The Broken Butterfly as Zabie Elliot
1919The Unpardonable Sin as Mrs. Parcot
1918The Narrow Path as Margaret Dunn
1918The Naulahka as Prince's Mother
1917The Land of Promise as Gertie Marsh
1916Less Than the Dust as Mrs. Bradshaw
1916Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages as Uplifter
1916The Narrow Path as Shirley Martin
1916Pillars of Society as Lona Tonnesen
1916Hell-to-Pay Austin as Doris Valentine
1916An Innocent Magdalene as The Woman
1916The Good Bad-Man as Jane Stuart
1916Acquitted as Mrs. Carter
1916Macbeth as Lady Macduff
1915Her Mother's Daughter as Marie's Mother
1915The Lily and the Rose as Mrs. Fairfax
1915Ghosts as Helen Alving
1915Man's Prerogative as Elizabeth Towne
1915The Lucky Transfer as Helen Holland
1915The Birth of a Nation as Stoneman's Housekeeper Lydia
1914Another Chance as Mrs. Mason
1914The Little Country Mouse as Dorothy's Cousin
1914The Second Mrs. Roebuck as Katherine Roebuck
1914Lord Chumley as Jessie - Butterworth's Sweetheart
1914Home, Sweet Home as The Mother
1914The Quicksands as Unknown
1914Cigar Butts as Unknown
1914The Battle of the Sexes as Mrs. Frank Andrews
1911A Brass Button as Mrs. Lowden