Grace Cunard

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Birth Name: Harriet Mildred Jeffries

Born: 8 April 1893 Died: 19 January 1967

Country of origin: United States

Height: 5' 4"

Relationship Status: Married

Partner: Jack Tyler Shannon

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Silent Actresses (507 items)
list by The Silent Era

Published 12 years, 5 months ago

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Description: Grace Cunard (April 8, 1893 – January 19, 1967) was an American actress, screenwriter and film director, who was also sister of actress Mina Cunard. Born Harriet Mildred Jeffries in Columbus, Ohio, by her late teens she was already acting on live theatre and in silent films using the stage name, Grace Cunard. Although not clearly documented, it appears Cunard made her motion picture debut in 1910 in an uncredited role in a D.W. Griffith production for Biograph Studios. In 1911, she had a significant secondary role in the Thomas H. Ince western, Custer's Last Fight. After making a number of westerns, she continued to work Grace Cunard (April 8, 1893 – January 19, 1967) was an American actress, screenwriter and film director, who was also sister of actress Mina Cunard.

Born Harriet Mildred Jeffries in Columbus, Ohio, by her late teens she was already acting on live theatre and in silent films using the stage name, Grace Cunard. Although not clearly documented, it appears Cunard made her motion picture debut in 1910 in an uncredited role in a D.W. Griffith production for Biograph Studios.

In 1911, she had a significant secondary role in the Thomas H. Ince western, Custer's Last Fight. After making a number of westerns, she continued to work with actor-director Francis Ford at Universal Studios in a variety of dramas, and came to considerable fame starring in serials. She starred in Universal Pictures' first serial, Lucille Love, Girl of Mystery (1914), and quickly became Universal's serial queen. The following year Cunard did a 20-episode adventure/mystery called The Broken Coin, and in 1916, the very successful The Adventures of Peg o' the Ring.

In an era when the fledgling film industry saw actors and other film studio personnel frequently pitch in to do multiple tasks, Cunard was no exception, and wrote close to one hundred screenplays. As well, between 1914 and 1921, she directed 11 films and produced two others. With age, her career shifted to leads in B-movies and secondary roles or bit parts in others. Nonetheless, she worked regularly until the mid-1940s, mostly at her home studio, Universal. Two of her more visible roles are in the 1942 serial Gang Busters (a small role, but important enough to serial audiences for her name to appear prominently in the ads and posters) and the 1945 Gloria Jean-Kirby Grant musical Easy to Look At (in which she plays a Broadway seamstress). When Universal changed hands in 1946 and discontinued its program of serials and low-budget features, Cunard retired, at the age of 53.

Cunard was married twice. The first time was to actor Joe Moore; following their divorce in 1925, she married film stuntman Jack Tyler Shannon, with whom she remained for the rest of her life.

Grace Cunard Shannon died of cancer in 1967 in Woodland Hills, California. Her husband died in December of the following year and they are interred together in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.

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Tags: American (1), Actress (1), Deceased (1)

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