Evelyn Brent

Brent was born in Tampa, Florida, and known as Betty. When she was ten years old, her mother Eleanor (née. Warner) died, leaving her father Arthur to raise her alone.

She moved to New York City as a teenager, and her good looks brought modeling jobs that led to an opportunity to become involved in the still relatively new business of making motion pictures.

She originally studied to be a teacher. While attending a normal school in New York, she visited the World Film Studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Two days later, she was working there as an extra, earning $3 a day.

She began her film career working under her own name at a New Jersey film studio then made her major debut in the 1915 silent film production of the Robert W. Service poem, The Shooting of Dan McGrew.

As Evelyn Brent, she continued to work in film, developing into a young woman whose sultry looks were much sought after. After World War I, she went to London for a vacation.

She met American playwright Oliver Cromwell, who urged her to accept an important role in The Ruined Lady. The production was presented on the London stage. She remained in England for four years, performing on stage and in films produced by British companies before relocating to Hollywood in 1922.

Her career received a major boost the following year when she was chosen as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars. Douglas Fairbanks Sr. signed her but failed to find a story for her; she left his company to join Associated Authors.

Mid-1920s promotional image issued by Film Booking Offices, later acquired by RKO

Brent made more than two dozen silent films, including three for the noted Austrian director Josef von Sternberg. One of these was The Last Command (1928), an epic war drama for which Emil Jannings won the first Academy Award for Best Actor and featured a pivotal supporting performance for William Powell.

Later that same year, she starred opposite William Powell in Paramount Pictures' (and her own) first talkie. Although one film, Interference (1928), did not live up to expectations at the box office, Brent played major roles in several more features, most notably The Silver Horde and the Paramount Pictures all-star revue Paramount on Parade (both 1930).

By the early part of the 1930s, she was busy working in secondary roles in a variety of films as well as touring with vaudeville shows. In 1936 she played William Boyd’s love interest/femme fatale in Hopalong Cassidy Returns. However, by 1941, her screen career was at its least prestigious point. Having become too mature for ingenue roles, and no longer in demand by major studios, she found plenty of work at the smaller, low-budget studios in B movies.

She photographed attractively opposite leading men who were also at advanced ages and later stages in their careers: Neil Hamilton in Producers Releasing Corporation's production Dangerous Lady, Lee Tracy in the same studio's The Payoff, and Jack Holt in the serial Holt of the Secret Service, produced by Larry Darmour for Columbia Pictures. Her performances were still persuasive, and her name was still recognizable to moviegoers that when marketing films theater owners often put her name on their marquees. In the early 1940s she worked in Pine-Thomas B action features for Paramount Pictures releases. Veteran director William Beaudine cast her in many such productions as well, including Emergency Landing (1941), Bowery Champs (1944), The Golden Eye (1948), and Again Pioneers (1950). After performing in more than 120 films, she retired from acting in 1950 and worked for a number of years as an actor's agent.

She returned to acting in television's Wagon Train for one episode in 1960, "The Lita Foladaire Story", starring Ward Bond and Diane Brewster. Brent played a housekeeper.

Evelyn Brent was married three times: to movie executive Bernard P. Fineman, to producer Harry D. Edwards, and finally to the vaudeville actor Harry Fox for whom the foxtrot dance was named. They were still married when he died in 1959.[6]

Brent died of a heart attack in 1975[7] at her Los Angeles home. She was cremated and interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, California.

In 1960, Brent was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star for her contributions to the film industry. Her star is located at 6548 Hollywood Boulevard.[8]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Evelyn Brent.

• Evelyn Brent at IMDb
• Evelyn Brent at AllMovie
• Photographs of Evelyn Brent
• Evelyn Brent at Find a Grave