Violet Bonita Radcliffe | |
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Born |
Niagara Falls, New York, United States | August 20, 1904
Died | May 4, 1965 New York, United States | (aged 60)
Occupation | Child actress |
Years active | 1913–1918 |
Violet Radcliffe (20 August 1904, Niagara Falls - 4 May 1965, Los Angeles) 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.
According to several US censuses, Violet Bonita Radcliffe was born August 20, 1904, in Niagara Falls, New York, to Harry Belmont Radcliffe and Ida F. Davenport. [3] [4] However, during her career she was said to be four years younger, resulting in an assumption she was born in 1908. [5] 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. [6]
She played boys role in at least eighteen films between 1915 and 1917. [5] She specialized in comedies and fairy tales in which all the actors were supposedly under the age of ten. [5] She played a series of lovable villains for Majestic, including the character Dan in The Straw Man, Bilie's Goat, The Little Cupids and The Little Life Guard (1915). [5] She then went to Fox role of Al-Talib in Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (1917) and Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1918). [5]
She played Prince Rudolpho in Jack and the Beanstalk along Francis Carpenter, Virginia Lee Corbin and Carmen De Rue. [7] She became regular with Carmen De Rue in the Fox Kiddie Features. [8]
She left the movies in 1918, aged supposedly ten. [5] Little was known of what became of her after her career in Hollywood ended, and she was assumed to have died in 1926, aged supposedly 18. [4] In 1922, she married Samuel Maddox, in 1927 Archie Lee Sims, both in Los Angeles, and Eugene Woodford in 1935, in Vancouver, Washington. [4] [3] She died May 4, 1965, in Los Angeles, named Violet Bonita Beiringer. [4] [9]