Anne Cornwall — One Brunette Against the Blondes (1924) 🇺🇸
“I am always going” into casting offices when they want a small blonde, instead of a little brunette, and they never think of asking.
Thus Anne Cornwall lamented to me recently, when I inquired how she had been progressing since she played in “The Gold Diggers.” You will remember her as the bright little ingénue who made a diminutive hit in the role of the shrinking, sympathetic Violet. She is the youngster whom Jerry and Mabel and Patsy are always trying to keep from going out into the nasty night, and save from wild and imagined dangers symbolized by fat, money-spending bachelors.
Of course — and as is generally to be expected — Miss Cornwall personally isn’t that type at all. When you meet her without costume and make-up she is the sort of girl whom you would expect to be quite capable of taking care of herself without any sisterly chaperonage. What is more, she is married, and has been for several years, to Charles Maigne, the director, who, being also an ex-cavalry officer, should be quite capable of protecting her himself.
The Maignes are delightful people, and they have a home right in the midst of Hollywood’s studios, just about a block, in fact, from where Miss Cornwall played in “The Gold Diggers.” “I used to be able to put on my ballet costume each morning and run right over,” she said.
Miss Cornwall began her picture work rather ambitiously several seasons ago, the culmination being the ingénue lead with Lionel Barrymore in “The Copperhead.” You doubtless remember the feature. It told a story of the Civil War days, and gave Mr. Barrymore a chance to be fairly young, and middle aged, and finally gray headed. Miss Cornwall didn’t try to keep up a similar pace, needless to say, but she offered a very sweet and sincere performance that many will recall.
She was also in several features like “Prunella,” the “World We Live In,” and “The Firing Line,” from the Robert W. Chambers novel. Later she came west to Universal, and played in a series of films, and that was where she met Mr. Maigne.
When they married she left the screen, to go back only when the temptations of the boom and the still cherished hopes for a career became too insistent to be opposed. Furthermore, her husband has encouraged her, and thoroughly and seriously believes in her ability — as husbands in the films often do — although he himself has never directed her since their marriage, preferring doubtless, that she should make good on her own.
On her return last spring she played a small part in “Ashes of Vengeance,” and then in one or two lesser features. Finally she was engaged for “The Gold Diggers,” and despite the lively competition for honors, in which Louise Fazenda, Hope Hampton, Alec Francis [Alec B. Francis] and the others took part, she came out close to the top.
She is small of stature, and though there may be a livelier demand for miniature towheads than the shadier type, just at the moment, she is so bright and clever, and has so much of the zip and go of Norma Talmadge, say, whom she diminutively resembles, that I think she may have a future of more than ordinary promise in the smarter kind of picture now coming into vogue.
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Photo by: James N. Doolittle
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, April 1924