Star Players Photo Co. (Chicago, IL) Vitreous plate of the important silent film actress Blanche Sweet, who became one of the finest actresses in the company of D.W. Griffith. Manufactured by Edwin M. Knowles China Co. in 1915, this 9-in. diameter plate features a close shot of the beautiful female cinema star gazing at the viewer. A facsimile of her signature is featured at the bottom.
This example is in very fine- unrestored condition as shown.
*"Sarah Blanche Sweet (June 18, 1896 – September 6, 1986) was an American silent film actress who began her career in the early days of the motion picture film industry. The actors Antrim and Gertrude Short were cousins of Blanche. At age 4, she toured in the play The Battle of the Strong with Marie Burroughs and Maurice Barrymore.
A decade later, Sweet acted with Barrymore's son Lionel in a D. W. Griffith-directed film. In 1909, she started work at Biograph Studios under contract to director D. W. Griffith. By 1910, she had become a rival to Mary Pickford, who had started for Griffith the previous year.
Sweet was known for her energetic, independent roles, at variance with the 'ideal' Griffith type of vulnerable, often fragile, femininity. After many starring roles, her landmark film was the 1911 Griffith thriller The Lonedale Operator. In 1913, she starred in Judith of Bethulia, Griffith's first feature film. In 1914, Sweet was cast by Griffith in the part of Elsie Stoneman in his epic The Birth of a Nation, but the role was given to Lillian Gish, who was Sweet's senior by three years. The same year, Sweet parted ways with Griffith and joined Paramount (then Famous Players-Lasky) for the much higher pay that studio was able to afford.
Because the Biograph company refused to reveal the names of its actors, the British distributor M. P. Sales billed Sweet as Daphne Wayne. Throughout the 1910s, Sweet continued her career appearing in a number of highly prominent roles in films and remained a publicly popular leading lady. She often starred in vehicles by Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan, and she was recognised by leading film critics of the time to be one of the foremost actresses of the entire silent era. It was during her time working with Neilan that the two began a publicized affair, which brought on his divorce from former actress Gertrude Bambrick. Sweet and Neilan married in 1922. The union ended in 1929 with Sweet's charging that Neilan was a persistent adulterer.
During the early 1920s, Sweet's career continued to prosper, and she starred in the first film version of Anna Christie in 1923. The film is notable as being the first Eugene O'Neill play to be made into a motion picture. In successive years, she starred in Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The Sporting Venus, both directed by Neilan. Sweet soon began a career phase as one of the newly formed MGM studio's bigger stars."
*(source: Wikipedia)
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