Vola Vale
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[edit] Silent Era Beauty and Biograph Star
Vola Vale (February 12, 1897 - October 17, 1970) was a silent motion picture actress from Buffalo, New York. She was born Vola Smith.
A demure type, she was regarded as one of the screen's most beautiful women. Miss Vale was educated in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She began her career in amateur theatricals in Rochester, New York. Then she played in stock companies for a while.
Her first movie experience was with Biograph, under the tutelage of the great film director, D.W. Griffith. After a month of playing atmosphere parts, Vola was offered a genuine role. She wore a velvet gown with a train and a feathered hat. Soon she was appearing in short reel films for Biograph. Among the actors she was cast with were William Hart, Sessue Hayakawa, Tsuru Aoki, William Haines, Harry Carey, Tully Marshall and William Russell.
Miss Vale was typically cast in mountain maid roles. She was also adept in playing Spanish, Italian, French, and gypsy roles. Aside from Biograph Vola worked for Fox Film, Famous Players-Lasky, Universal Pictures, and Paramount Pictures.
[edit] Serious Actress
Her ambition was to play Madame Butterfly with an actual Japanese company. Also to act as Lorna Doone. She was most inspired by Hayakawa and hoped to learn to act inside, as he did. With Sessue Hayakawa she made Each To His Kind (1917). Before the film began it was decided that the name Smith was too common to be used by a film star and she changed her professional name to Vola Vale.
Vale reflected in the early 1920s regarding the importance of the power of observation in realizing one's acting ability. It is the ability of the actress to see and note of the little things in life and then store them in her subconscious mind where they await her call to use at the psychological moment before the camera that enables her to either register success in her chosen work, or be merely mediocre. She began this process as a youth acting with D.W. Griffith. She observed how the director took notice of everything the actors did.
[edit] Member of Baby Hollywood Cinema Players
Vola Vale modeled clothes for the Broadway Department Store in Los Angeles, California. A 1916 photo from the Los Angeles Times shows her in an exclusive Betty Wales frock from Broadway, which was a very popular dress among college women of the era. Vola was married, for a time, to film director and producer Al Russell. They had a son.
The actress was a member of Our Club, a group of seventeen of Hollywood's baby cinema stars. Mary Pickford served as honorary president. Fellow members were Mildred Davis, Helen Ferguson, Patsy Ruth Miller, Clara Horton, Gertrude Olmsted, Laura La Plante, Virginia Fox, Colleen Moore, ZaSu Pitts, Lois Wilson, May McAvoy, Gloria Hope, Virginia Valli, Carmel Myers, Edna Murphy, and Carmelita Geraghty
Vola Vale died in Hawthorne, California in 1970, aged 73, of heart disease and interred at the Roosevelt Memorial Park in Los Angeles County, California, USA.
[edit] References
- Los Angeles Times, New Types, Delicate Hues at Dahlia Show, Page II3.
- Los Angeles Times, Star Says Keep Eyes Working, September 9, 1923, Page III27.
- Los Angeles Times, Our Club Initiates Trio, October 23, 1923, Page II1.
- Newark, Ohio Daily Advocate, Tonight and Tomorrow, Friday, March 2, 1917, Page 9.
- Olean, New York Evening Herald, News Notes from Movieland, Friday Evening, May 9, 1919, Page 4.
- Sandusky, Ohio Star-Journal, News Notes from Movieland, Friday, November, 2, 1917, Page 11.
