Fannie Ward
Encyclopedia
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
.
Ward's curiously ageless appearance, however, is what drove her celebrity. An obituary described her as "an actress who never quite reached the top in her professional ... [and who] tirelessly devoted herself to appearing perpetually youthful, an act that made her famous".
Background
Ward was born as Fannie Buchanan in St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, the only daughter of John Buchanan, a dry goods merchant, and his wife, Eliza. She had one sibling, a brother, Benton.
Career
In 1890, Ward made her stage debut as Cupid in Pippino with Eddie Foy. She went on to become a successful stage star in New York City. In 1894 she sailed for LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and appeared in The Shop Girl, which led critics to compare Ward favorably to actress Maude Adams
Maude Adams
Maude Ewing Kiskadden , known professionally as Maude Adams, was an American stage actress who achieved her greatest success as Peter Pan. Adams's personality appealed to a large audience and helped her become the most successful and highest-paid performer of her day, with a yearly income of more...
. In 1898, however, she married a wealthy diamond merchant and retired from the stage. Ward returned to her career in 1905, after her husband suffered business reversals that left him, a news account reported, "practically penniless".
In 1915, around the time Ward's stage career was on the wane, American movie producer and director Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
convinced her to appear in The Cheat, a silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
melodrama which co-starred Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa
Sessue Hayakawa
was a Japanese and American Issei actor who starred in American, Japanese, French, German, and British films. Hayakawa was the first and one of the few Asian actors to find stardom in the United States as well as Europe. Between the mid-1910s and the late 1920s, he was as well known as actors...
. The film was a sensation, thanks to its mingling of racial and sexual themes. Ward portrayed a society woman who embezzles money and turns to an Asian ivory dealer (Hayakawa) for help, with brutal consequences. The movie launched the careers of both DeMille and Hayakawa, who became Hollywood's first Asian star.
In addition to starring in The Hardest Way (1921), Ward appeared in a Phonofilm
Phonofilm
In 1919, Lee De Forest, inventor of the audion tube, filed his first patent on a sound-on-film process, DeForest Phonofilm, which recorded sound directly onto film as parallel lines. These parallel lines photographically recorded electrical waveforms from a microphone, which were translated back...
short film singing Father Time (1924), a second Phonofilm as The Perennial Flapper (1924), and in a Vitaphone
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
short Fannie Ward in "The Miracle Woman" (1929).
In 1926, trading on her ever-youthful public image, Ward opened a Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
beauty shop, "The Fountain of Youth".
Marriages
Fannie Ward was married twice:- Joseph Lewis (died 1928), a British money lender; they married in 1898 and divorced 14 January 1913.
- John Wooster Dean (né John H. Donovan, 1874–1950), an actor who frequently co-starred with Ward on stage and in films. They married in 1914.
Ward's only child, Dorothé Mabel Lewis (1900–1938), was the result of a liaison between Ward and Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry
Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry
Charles Stewart Henry Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry, KG, MVO, PC, PC , styled Lord Stewart until 1884 and Viscount Castlereagh between 1884 and 1915, was an Anglo-Irish peer and had careers in both Irish and British politics...
. Her first husband was Capt. Jack Barnato (1894–1918), a pilot and nephew of mining magnate Barney Barnato
Barney Barnato
Barney Barnato , born Barnet Isaacs, was a British Randlord, one of the entrepreneurs who gained control of diamond mining, and later gold mining, in South Africa from the 1870s.-Background:...
; he died of pneumonia in 1918, shortly after their marriage. Her second husband, married in 1922, was Terence Conyngham Plunket, 6th Baron Plunket (1899–1938), and they were the parents of Patrick Plunket, 7th Baron Plunket, Robin Rathmore Plunket, 8th Baron Plunket, and present heir presumptive
Heir Presumptive
An heir presumptive or heiress presumptive is the person provisionally scheduled to inherit a throne, peerage, or other hereditary honour, but whose position can be displaced by the birth of an heir or heiress apparent or of a new heir presumptive with a better claim to the position in question...
, Hon. Shaun Plunket. After Lord and Lady Plunket were killed in an airplane crash in California on February 24, 1938, Ward's grandsons were raised by their father's sister Helen Rhodes.
Death
On January 25, 1952, Ward was found unconscious in her Park AvenuePark Avenue (Manhattan)
Park Avenue is a wide boulevard that carries north and southbound traffic in New York City borough of Manhattan. Through most of its length, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenue to the east....
apartment following a stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
. She never regained consciousness and died two days later. She was 79 years old.
Filmography
- Fannie Ward in "The Miracle Woman" (1929) Ward stars in a VitaphoneVitaphoneVitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
short film - Fannie Ward as "The Perennial Flapper" (1924) Ward performs comedy sketch as the "perennial flapper" in a DeForest PhonofilmPhonofilmIn 1919, Lee De Forest, inventor of the audion tube, filed his first patent on a sound-on-film process, DeForest Phonofilm, which recorded sound directly onto film as parallel lines. These parallel lines photographically recorded electrical waveforms from a microphone, which were translated back...
short film - Fannie Ward Sings "Father Time" (1924) in a Phonofilm short film
- La Rafale (1920)
- Le Secret du Lone Star (1920)
- Our Better Selves (1919) .... Loyette Merval
- The Profiteers (1919) .... Beverly Randall
- The Cry of the Weak (1919) .... Mary Dexter
- Common Clay (1919) .... Ellen Neal
- The Only Way (1919)
- The Narrow Path (1918) .... Marion Clark
- A Japanese Nightingale (1918) .... Yuki
- The Yellow Ticket (1918) .... Anna Mirrel
- Innocent (1918) .... Innocent
- On the Level (1917) .... Merlin Warner, aka Mexicali May
- The Crystal Gazer (1917) .... Rose Jorgensen/Rose Keith/Norma Dugan
- Her Strange Wedding (1917) .... Coralie Grayson
- Unconquered (1917) .... Mrs. Jackson
- A School for Husbands (1917) .... Lady Betty Manners
- The Winning of Sally Temple (1917) .... Sally Temple
- Betty to the Rescue (1917)
- The Years of the Locust (1916) .... Lorraine Roth
- Witchcraft (1916) .... Suzette
- Each Pearl a Tear (1916) .... Diane Winston, aka Each Hour a Pearl (USA: alternative title), Every Pearl a Tear
- A Gutter Magdalene (1916) .... Maida Carrington
- For the Defense (1916) .... Fidele Roget
- Tennessee's Pardner (1916) .... Tennessee
- The Cheat (1915) .... Edith Hardy
- The Marriage of Kitty (1915) .... Katherine "Kitty" Silverton
External links
- Fannie Ward at Silents Are Golden
- Fannie Ward at Internet Movie Database
- Fannie Ward at Silent Ladies & Gents
- Fannie Ward her stage years portrait gallery at NY Public Library Billy Rose collection
- rare portrait of Fannie Ward
