Virginia Ware — Actress Leads Dual Life (1921) 🇺🇸

Six days in the week Virginia Ware plays all sorts of parts in the studios where motion pictures are made; but on Sunday she is the soloist in one of the fashionable churches of Hollywood, California. It is to be regretted that the screen does not register the voices of the players, for Miss Ware possesses one of the finest contralto voices outside of grand opera.

In The Mad Marriage, the latest Universal feature starring Carmel Myers, Miss Ware has the role of Mrs. Brendon, the fashionable dowager of New York, whose hobby is to patronize promising young artists of Greenwich Village. Although Miss Ware usually plays character roles, the part of the grande dame permits her to wear some stunning gowns and to add a touch of humor to an otherwise “straight” role.

Virginia Ware has been on the stage over twenty years. Her father owned a small circuit of theatres in the middle west, and at the age of sixteen she was playing parts in a repertoire company which made a tour of these playhouses every two weeks. By the time she was twenty years old she had played nearly 300 parts. About six years ago she was singing in vaudeville in San Francisco and met a director who had worked for her father a dozen years before. He suggested pictures to her, and finding the California climate to her liking, she decided to stay there.

In the past few years she has played with Edith Roberts, Tsuru Aoki and many other stars.

The cast of The Mad Marriage is a capable one indeed and in addition to the star, Carmel Myers, her leading man, Truman Van Dyke (1897–1984), and Arthur Carewe in the role of “the heavy”, there are some excellent bits most competently played by Margaret Cullington, Jane Starr (Silent Movie Actress), Wm. Brunton, Nola Luxford, and the role of Mrs. Brendon, portrayed by Virginia Ware.

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Collection: Moving Picture Weekly, January 1921

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see also Paton Puts Them Over (1921)