Bessie Love — Blue Book of the Screen (1923) 🇺🇸
About twenty-five years ago there resided in Midland, Texas, a family called the Hortons. One day a baby girl was born. They named her Juanita.
The young lady weighed two and one-half pounds. She even then, however, boasted blonde hair and her eyes were of the darkest brown. Now, in 1923, Bessie Love, with her lustrous brown eyes and her golden hair, is known to millions of theater goers. Her sunny smile and winning personality has won her a niche in the cinema hall of fame. Her life story has been a most interesting one.
She attended school in Midland until she reached the eighth grade. Her friends were many, though she was much more popular with the boys of her age than the girls.
Bessie, after graduating from the eighth grade at Midland, moved with her family to Los Angeles, where she continued her schooling. She graduated from the Los Angeles High School and received as a graduation present, a trip around the United States.
Bessie visited all the cities of importance, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, Salt Lake and Detroit, finally coming back after six months of travel, to her beloved Los Angeles.
Then the young lady decided she would become a farmerette. She was just about to buy a farm and start raising hay, when she was introduced to D. W. Griffith. He urged her to accept a part in “The Flying Torpedo,” which was being directed by Jack O’Brien [John B. O’Brien] under his general supervision. And it was Griffith that decided that the name of Bessie Love would be more easily remembered than Juanita Horton.
Her most notable successes are in “Forget Me Not,” “The Eternal Three” and “The Living Dead.” Now, Bessie is busy studying Honoré de Balzac’s story, The Wild Ass’ Skin, which is to be made at the Goldwyn studios under the title of “The Magic Skin.”
Miss Love is five feet high and weighs exactly 100 pounds. She lives in Laurel Canyon, with her mother and father.
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Portrait by Freulich • Los Angeles
Collection: The Blue Book of the Screen (1923)