Lois Wilson
Lois Wilson was born June 28, 1894, in Pittsburgh,
PA. At a young age, her family movied to Alabama, and she attended
Alabama Normal College (the University of West Alabama today)
and starting out as a school teacher. She won a beauty contest
sponsored by Universal Studios and the Birmingham News and went
to California to become an actress. (The pageant is considered
to be the predecessor to the Miss Alabama pageant, so, Wilson
is credited with being the first Miss Alabama in the Miss American
Pageant system.) She started out working for Victor Film Company
and later went to Chicago where she encountered film director
Lois Weber. When Weber later went to California, she took Wilson
with her. By 1919, Wilson was under contract to Paramount Pictures,
her home for the next eight years. She was a WAMPAS Baby Star
in 1922. Unlike many silent stars, she did make a successful move
to sound movies. She retired from movies in 1941 but did do some
Broadway and television work. She had roles in two television
soap operas -- "The Guiding Light" and "The Edge
of Night." Wilson never married and died of pneumonia in
Reno, NV, in 1988 at the age of 93. Wilson appeared in over 80
silent films, as well as several shorts.
Selected films of this star available for viewing:
Miss Lulu
Bett (1921)
Manslaughter (1922)
The
Covered Wagon (1923)
Monsieur Beaucaire (1924)
The Vanishing
American (1926)
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