Alice Joyce
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1442/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Paramount -Film.
Alice Joyce (1890-1955) was an American screen actress, who, at the peak of her career, was nicknamed the Madonna of the Screen.
Alice Joyce, born in Kansas City, began her career as a telephone operator, to later get the first roles in the film through various model activities. She quickly rose to become one of the biggest stars of Kalem Studios since 1910 and played mostly well-behaved ladies of the better society in melodramas, comedies and occasionally crime stories. With the merger of Kalem and Vitaphone in 1916, the popularity of Joyce, who until the 1920s mostly played naive women, increased. Until 1921 she played at Vitagraph. Slowly, she also took on some mature roles. In 1924 she acted opposite Clive Brook in the British production The Passionate Adventure by Graham Cutts. She played in 1925, one of her most productive years, opposite Percy Marmont in Frank Borzage's Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, as Stella's rival Helen Morrison in Henry King's Stella Dallas and five months later as Clara Bow's mother in Herbert Brenon's Dancing Mothers, one of Joyce greatest successes. In the latter she is a woman who is denied any pleasure in life by her heartless husband and thoughtless daughter. In 1926 she played a princess opposite W.C. Fields in the comedy So's Your Old Man by Gregory La Cava. In 1927 Joyce signed a well-endowed contract with First National, where she received a few substantial film roles, as in The Squall (Alexander Korda, 1929), starring Myrna Loy.
Joyce made a smooth transition from silent film to sound film and in 1930 co-acted with George Arliss in The Green Goddess, the remake of a film in which both stars had had a success in 1923. But a lengthy heart disease (Louise Brooks claims that it was alcohol problems) forced her into private life. Joyce was first married to actor Tom Moore (1914-1920) with whom she had a daughter, then to James Regan (1920-1932), and finally to director Clarence Brown (1933-1945). Next to Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, Alice Joyce was one of the few stars who was a star right up to the sound film days from the beginnings of commercial cinema, when it was still called Nickelodeon.
Sources: Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Alice Joyce
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1442/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Paramount -Film.
Alice Joyce (1890-1955) was an American screen actress, who, at the peak of her career, was nicknamed the Madonna of the Screen.
Alice Joyce, born in Kansas City, began her career as a telephone operator, to later get the first roles in the film through various model activities. She quickly rose to become one of the biggest stars of Kalem Studios since 1910 and played mostly well-behaved ladies of the better society in melodramas, comedies and occasionally crime stories. With the merger of Kalem and Vitaphone in 1916, the popularity of Joyce, who until the 1920s mostly played naive women, increased. Until 1921 she played at Vitagraph. Slowly, she also took on some mature roles. In 1924 she acted opposite Clive Brook in the British production The Passionate Adventure by Graham Cutts. She played in 1925, one of her most productive years, opposite Percy Marmont in Frank Borzage's Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, as Stella's rival Helen Morrison in Henry King's Stella Dallas and five months later as Clara Bow's mother in Herbert Brenon's Dancing Mothers, one of Joyce greatest successes. In the latter she is a woman who is denied any pleasure in life by her heartless husband and thoughtless daughter. In 1926 she played a princess opposite W.C. Fields in the comedy So's Your Old Man by Gregory La Cava. In 1927 Joyce signed a well-endowed contract with First National, where she received a few substantial film roles, as in The Squall (Alexander Korda, 1929), starring Myrna Loy.
Joyce made a smooth transition from silent film to sound film and in 1930 co-acted with George Arliss in The Green Goddess, the remake of a film in which both stars had had a success in 1923. But a lengthy heart disease (Louise Brooks claims that it was alcohol problems) forced her into private life. Joyce was first married to actor Tom Moore (1914-1920) with whom she had a daughter, then to James Regan (1920-1932), and finally to director Clarence Brown (1933-1945). Next to Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, Alice Joyce was one of the few stars who was a star right up to the sound film days from the beginnings of commercial cinema, when it was still called Nickelodeon.
Sources: Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.