Renée Adorée

Born in Lille, Adorée was the daughter of circus artists and performed regularly with her parents as a child.[2] In her teens, she began acting in minor stage productions and toured Europe with her troupe. She was performing in Russia when World War I broke out, causing her to flee to London.

Having made a reputation in France, England and Australia for her dancing skills, she went to New York City very early in 1919,[3] where she was cast in a vaudeville-style musical called Oh, Uncle,[2] which opened at the Garrick Theatre in Washington, D.C. in March 1919; by mid March, it was being staged in Trenton, New Jersey, and subsequently toured through the summer. In July, it was renamed Oh, What a Girl![2] and opened at the Shubert Theatre in New York City. Over the next several months, she toured in The Dancer,[2] another Shubert production.

By January 1920, the opportunity arose for her to work in the motion picture business when she was cast for the lead role in The Strongest, directed by Raoul Walsh.[3] The Strongest was a dramatic photoplay written by Georges Clemenceau, France's celebrated prime minister. She went on to star in several other silent films in the early 1920s,[3] including Reginald Barker's The Eternal Struggle, the film which established her as a Hollywood star.[2]

Before coming to America, she already had adopted the romantic stage name "Renée Adorée" (French for "reborn" and "adored," both in the feminine form), and was billed as such in an Australian film produced in 1918. While in New York City on New Year's Eve 1921, she met Tom Moore (1883–1955), who was 15 years her senior. Moore and his brothers were Irish immigrants who had become popular Hollywood actors. Six weeks after their meeting, on 12 February 1921, Adorée married Moore at his home in Beverly Hills, California. The marriage ended in divorce in 1926, and in June 1927, Adorée married again, this time to William Sherman Gill.[4]

Suzette (Renée Adorée) makes the tedious hours of the wounded Sir Nicholas Thormonde (Lew Cody) seem less monotonous. A scene from Elinor Glyn's production Man and Maid for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1925

She is most famous for her role as Melisande in the melodramatic romance and war epic The Big Parade (1925) opposite John Gilbert. It became one of MGM's all-time biggest hits,[5] and a film that historians rank as one of the best of the silent film era.[6] In The Mating Call, a 1928 film produced by Howard Hughes, Adorée had a very brief swimming scene in the nude that caused a significant commotion at the time.

With the advent of sound in film, Adorée was one of the fortunate stars whose voices met the film industry's new needs, appearing in two all-talking films before her death.[3] She starred with Lon Chaney and her former brother-in-law Owen Moore, made three more films with John Gilbert, and appeared in four films with leading Hollywood actor Ramón Novarro.

By the end of 1930, Adorée had appeared in 45 films, the last four of which were sound pictures. That year, she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and lived only a few years longer. Adorée went against her physician's advice by finishing her final film Call of the Flesh with Ramón Novarro. At its completion, she was rushed to a sanitarium in Prescott, Arizona, where she lay flat on her back for two years in an effort to regain her physical health. In April 1933, she left the sanitarium. At this point, it was thought she had recovered sufficiently to resume her screen career, but she swiftly weakened and her health declined day by day. She was moved from her modest home in the Tujunga Hills to the Sunland health resort in September 1933.[7]

Adorée died there on 5 October 1933 in Tujunga, California. She is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Adorée left an estate valued at $2,429. The only heir was her mother, who lived in England. No will was found.[8]

For her contributions to the film industry, Adorée has a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1601 Vine Street.[9]

Notes

Bibliography

• Bermingham, Cedric Osmond (1931). Stars of the Screen 1931, A volume of biographies of contemporary actors and actresses engaged in photoplay throughout the world. London: Herbert Joseph.
• Stuart, Ray (1965). Immortals of the Screen. New York: Bonanza Books.
• "RENEE ADOREE". Stars of the Photoplay. Chicago: Photoplay Magazine. 1924.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Renée Adorée.

• Renée Adorée on IMDb
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• Renée Adorée at Golden Silents
• Renée Adorée at Find a Grave
• Renée Adorée at the TCM Movie Database
• Photographs and literature