Dorothy Dalton

Dorothy Dalton was a silent film star who worked her way up from a stock company to a movie career. She made her film debut in 1914 in Pierre of the Plains (1914), co-starring Edgar Selwyn, and appeared in Charles E. Blaney's Across the Pacific (1914) that same year. Producer-director Thomas H. Ince convinced her to leave the stage for the movies, and she made The Disciple (1915) and The Three Musketeers (1916) for him, working for Kay-Bee Pictures and the New York Motion Picture Co. (distributed by Triangle Distributing Corp.). In 1916 and '17 she starred in 15 more movies at Kay-Bee/New York Picture/Triangle, nine of them for Ince. Her co-stars at the studio included William S. Hart, Jean Hersholt, William Conklin and the young John Gilbert. After appearing in Ten of Diamonds (1917) for Triangle Films, she left the studio to join Ince's Thomas H. Ince Corp., which released through Paramount. Her debut for the Ince company was The Price Mark (1917), followed by Love Letters (1917), both of which co-starred William Conklin. She stayed with Ince's company through L'apache (1919), which was co-produced by Ince's company and Famous-Players Lasky, and _Black is White (1920)_ (qav), a sole production of Thomas H. Ince Corp., released through Famous-Players and Paramount. She also made _The Dark Mirror (1920)_ for Famous-Players, a production supervised by Ince. Altogether they collaborated on 31 pictures between 1915-20. Dalton was always a top-billed star. working with the best talent and hot properties such as Guilty of Love (1920), based on Avery Hopwood's 1909 Broadway play "This Woman and This Man"; Cecil B. DeMille's Fool's Paradise (1921) and Moran of the Lady Letty (1922), in which she co-starred with Rudolph Valentino; and Victor Fleming's Law of the Lawless (1923). She made all of her remaining films for Famous-Players-Lasky and Paramount, except for her penultimate film, The Lone Wolf (1924), in which she co-starred with Tyrone Power Sr. (the film was produced by John McKeown and distributed by Associated Exhibitors.) Once married to actor Lew Cody, the divorced Dalton married theatrical impresario Arthur Hammerstein--the uncle of Oscar Hammerstein II--and retired from the screen. Her last film was The Moral Sinner (1924), directed by Thomas M. Ince's younger brother Ralph Ince. She was married to Hammerstein for over 30 years, through his death in 1955. Dorothy Dalton Hammerstein died at the age of 78.