Georgia Hale was an actress of the silent movie

Silent Movie

Silent Movie is a 1976 satirical comedy film co-written, directed by, and starring Mel Brooks, and released by 20th Century Fox on June 17, 1976...

 era.

Career

Georgia Theodora Hale was Miss Chicago 1922 and competed in the Miss America Pageant. She began acting in the early 1920s, and achieved one of her most notable successes with her role in Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush

The Gold Rush

The Gold Rush is a 1925 silent film comedy written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin in his Little Tramp role. The film also stars Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman, Malcolm Waite....

(1925).

Chaplin cast Hale in his film based on her performance in The Salvation Hunters

The Salvation Hunters

-Production background:The film stars George K. Arthur and Georgia Hale and was released by United Artists. This was the first film directed by Josef von Sternberg, and it is sometimes described as the first American independent film, shot on a small budget by a completely unknown director...

, which also came out in 1925. The Gold Rush temporarily made her a star, but she did not survive the transition from silent film to sound, and she did not act in films after 1928. The documentary Unknown Chaplin

Unknown Chaplin

Unknown Chaplin is an acclaimed three-part 1983 British television documentary about the career and the methods of the film luminary Charles Chaplin using previously unseen film for illustration....

revealed that Hale was hired by Chaplin to replace actress Virginia Cherrill

Virginia Cherrill

Virginia Cherrill was an American actress best known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights...

 as the female lead in the film City Lights

City Lights

City Lights is a 1931 American silent film and romantic comedy-drama written by, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. It also has the leads Virginia Cherrill and Harry Myers. Although "talking" pictures were on the rise since 1928, City Lights was immediately popular. Today, it is thought of...

(1931) during a brief period after he had fired Cherrill (and before he re-hired her). Approximately seven minutes of test footage of Hale in the role survives and is included in the DVD

DVD

A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....

 release of the film and excerpts appear in Unknown Chaplin. The editor's introduction to Hale's memoir also reveals that she was Chaplin's original choice for the female lead in his film The Circus, a role eventually played by Merna Kennedy

Merna Kennedy

Merna Kennedy was an American actress of the late silent era.-Short career:Kennedy was best-known during her brief career for her role opposite Charlie Chaplin in the silent film The Circus .Kennedy was brought to the attention of Chaplin by her friend Lita Grey, who became Chaplin's second wife...

.

Personal life

Hale was a close companion to Chaplin in the late 1920s and early 1930s. She went on to teach dance, and later became wealthy through real estate

Real estate

In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

 investments in Southern California

Southern California

Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...

.

According to her memoir, she became a follower of Christian Science

Christian Science

Christian Science is a system of thought and practice derived from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and the Bible. It is practiced by members of The First Church of Christ, Scientist as well as some others who are nonmembers. Its central texts are the Bible and the Christian Science textbook,...

. Hale met with Chaplin during his brief return to the United States in 1972.

Writings

She spoke warmly of her time with Chaplin in Unknown Chaplin. She also wrote a book about her experiences with him, Charlie Chaplin: Intimate Close-Ups

Charlie Chaplin: Intimate Close-Ups

Charlie Chaplin: Intimate Close-Ups is a memoir by the American actress Georgia Hale which was written in the 1960s. Ten years after Hale's 1985 death, Heather Kiernan edited the manuscript and it was published in 1995 by The Scarecrow Press with a second edition published in 1999.Georgia Hale was...

. Written in the 1960s, it was not published until 1995, a decade after her death, when Heather Kiernan edited the manuscript and it was published by The Scarecrow Press.