Dorothy Mackaill
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| Dorothy Mackaill | |
|---|---|
 Dorothy Mackaill (c.1920-22) |
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| Born | March 4, 1903 Hull, England |
| Died | August 12, 1990 (aged 87) Honolulu, Hawaii |
| Occupation | actress |
| Spouse(s) | Lothar Mendes (1926-28) Neil Miller (1931-34) Patterson (1934-38) |
Dorothy Mackaill (March 4, 1903 - August 12, 1990) was a British-born American actress, most notably of the silent film era and into the early 1930s.
Born in Hull, England, Dorothy Mackaill lived with her father after her parents separated when she was eleven. As a teenager, Mackaill ran away to London to pursue a stage career as an actress. After temporarily relocating to Paris, France she met a Broadway stage choreographer who persuaded her to move to New York City where she became involved in the Ziegfeld Follies and befriended future motion picture actresses Marion Davies and Nita Naldi.
By 1920, Mackaill had begun making the transition from "Follies girl" to motion picture actress and that year appeared in her first film, the Wilfred Noy directed mystery The Face at the Window. Mackaill also appeared in several comedies of 1920 opposite actor Johnny Hines. In 1921 she appeared opposite Anna May Wong, Noah Beery, and Lon Chaney in the Marshall Neilan directed drama Bits of Life. In the following years, Mackaill would appear opposite such popular actors as Richard Barthelmess, Rod La Rocque, Colleen Moore, John Barrymore, George O'Brien, Bebe Daniels, Milton Sills and Anna Q. Nilsson.
In 1924, Mackaill rose to leading lady status in the drama The Man Who Came Back, opposite rugged matinee idol George O'Brien. Her role of the nightclub chanteuse Marcelle catapulted Mackaill into a genuine Hollywood star and her career continued to flourish throughout the remainder of the 1920s. That same year she was awarded the WAMPAS Baby Stars award by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers in the United States, which honored thirteen young women each year who they believed to be on the threshold of movie stardom. Other notable recipients of the award that year were Clara Bow, Julanne Johnston and Lucille Ricksen.
In 1926 Mackaill married the successful film director Lothar Mendes, but the union only lasted for two years before ending in divorce. She would marry two more times: from 1931 to 1934 to Neil Miller, and from 1934 to 1938 to Harold Patterson, both of which marriages also ended in divorce.
The motion industry upheaval during the new talkie era of the late 1920s and early 1930s left Mackaill in a similar situation of many of her silent film contemporaries; Mackaill was quickly passed over by studio executives in favor of newer talent in hopes of luring the American public back to the theaters as the United States sank into the Great Depression. Mackaill's film contract at First National Pictures was not renewed upon its expiration in 1931 and Mackaill became a free agent actress. Her most memorable role of this era was the 1932 Columbia Pictures release Love Affair with a young Humphrey Bogart as her leading man. She made several films for MGM, Paramount and Columbia before retiring in 1937 for many years from the industry to care for her aging mother.
Dorothy Mackaill occasionally came out of retirement to appear in roles for television, notably in several episodes of the 1960s and 1970s series Hawaii Five-0, which was filmed on location where Mackaill had lived for several decades.
Dorothy Mackaill died of kidney failure in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1990 at the age of 87. She was cremated and her ashes were scattered at sea off of Waikiki Beach.
