Violet Bonita Radcliffe
Born(1904-08-20)August 20, 1904
Niagara Falls, New York, United States
DiedMay 4, 1965(1965-05-04) (aged 60)
New York, United States
OccupationChild actress
Years active1913–1918

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.

Biography

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]

Selected filmography

References

  1. ↑ "Violet Radcliffe". The Chicago Tribune. 29 Dec 1917. Retrieved 2019-08-17.
  2. ↑ "Child Parts". Motion Picture Studios Directory. 1919.
  3. 1 2 "Violet Bonita Radcliffe". www.familysearch.org. Retrieved 2022-12-02.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Silent Child Actress Violet Radcliffe Real Death Date Found". NitrateVille. 8 April 2010. Retrieved 2020-09-28.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 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.
  6. ↑ "Company of Children". The Ogden Standard. 22 May 1915. Retrieved 2019-08-17.
  7. ↑ Lussier 2018, p. 38.
  8. ↑ Lussier 2018, p. 37.
  9. ↑ "Violet Ratcliffe". IMDb. Retrieved 2020-09-28.

Bibliography

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