Violet Radcliffe
Violet Radcliffe was a child actress active during Hollywood's silent era. She appeared in several dozen films for Fine Arts, Fox, and Pathe, and was frequently cast as a villain or as a little boy.[1][2] One of her best-known roles was as Dirty Face Dan in a number of serials.
Violet Radcliffe | |
---|---|
Born | 1904 Niagara Falls, New York, United States |
Died | 1965 (aged 60–61) New York, United States |
Occupation | Child actress |
Years active | 1913–1918 |
Biography
Violet was born August 20, 1904 in Niagara Falls, New York. She began performing when she was only two months old, and she was quite young when she appeared in her first film, 1913's Quo Vadis.[3]
She played boys role in at least eighteen films between 1915 and 1917.[4] She specialized in comedies and fairy tales in which all the actors were under the age of ten.[4] She played a series of loveable villains for Majestic, including the character Dan in The Straw Man, Bilie's Goat, The Little Cupids and The Little Life Guard (1915).[4] She then went to Fox role of Al-Talib in Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (1917) and Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1918).[4]
She played Prince Rudolpho in Jack and the Beanstalk along Francis Carpenter, Virginia Lee Corbin and Carmen De Rue.[5] She became regular with Carmen De Rue in the Fox Kiddie Features.[6]
She left the movies in 1918 at age ten.[4] Little is known of what became of her after her career in Hollywood ended. She died May 4, 1965 in Los Angeles.[7] [8]
Selected filmography
- Treasure Island (1918)
- The Babes in the Woods (1917)
- Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (1917)
- Jack and the Beanstalk (1917)
- Cheerful Givers (1917)
- Everybody's Doing It (1916)
- A Sister of Six (1916)
- Gretchen the Greenhorn (1916)
- The Little School Ma'am (1916)
- Going Straight (1916)
- Let Katie Do It (1916)
- Quo Vadis? (1913)
References
- "Violet Radcliffe". The Chicago Tribune. 29 Dec 1917. Retrieved 2019-08-17.
- "Child Parts". Motion Picture Studios Directory. 1919.
- "Company of Children". The Ogden Standard. 22 May 1915. Retrieved 2019-08-17.
- Horak, Laura (26 February 2016). Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934. Rutgers University Press. p. 35. ISBN 9780813574844.
- Lussier 2018, p. 38.
- Lussier 2018, p. 37.
- "Violet Ratcliffe". IMDb. Retrieved 2020-09-28.
- "Silent Child Actress Violet Radcliffe Real Death Date Found". NitrateVille. 8 April 2010. Retrieved 2020-09-28.
Bibliography
- Lussier, Tim (11 October 2018). "Bare Knees" Flapper: The Life and Films of Virginia Lee Corbin. McFarland Publishing. p. 218. ISBN 9781476675688.