Dorothy Davenport

Dorothy Davenport March 13 1895 October 12 1977 was an American actress screenwriter film director and producer who appeared in silent film for Biograph Studios under the direction of DW Griffith While filming on location in Oregon for The Valley of the Giants 1919 Wallace Reid was injured in a train wreck As a remedy for the pain from this injury studio doctors administered large doses of morphine to Reid to which he became addicted Reids health slowly grew worse over the next few years and he died of the addiction in 1923 After Reids death Davenport and Thomas Ince coproduced the film Human Wreckage 1923 with James Kirkwood Sr Bessie Love and Lucille Ricksen a film that dealt with the dangers of narcotics addiction Davenport took Human Wreckage on a roadshow engagement followed up with another social conscience picture about excessive motherlove called Broken Laws in 1924 again billed as Mrs Wallace Reid to capitalize on her husbands notorious death She then produced The Red Kimona 1925 about white slavery On screen she opens the film in silent narration or prologue The details of the latter film were so realistic that Davenport was successfully sued She would later direct Linda 1929 Sucker Money 1933 Road to Ruin 1934 and The Woman Condemned 1934 and worked as a producer writer and dialogue director Among her last credits are coauthor of the screenplay for Footsteps in the Fog 1955 and as dialogue director for The First Traveling Saleslady 1956 with Ginger Rogers She and husband Wallace Reid had two children She was married to him until his death on January 18 1923 She never remarried Dorothy Davenport died at the Motion Picture Television Country House and Hospital in 1977 in Woodland Hills California She is interred with her husband in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Glendale Description above from the Wikipedia article Dorothy Davenport licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia