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Vera McCord
Vera McCord
	McCord in 1911
Born	1872; Marshalltown, Iowa, U.S.
Died	March 3, 1949 (aged 76–77); Bellevue Hospital, New York City, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Actress, screenwriter, film director
Years active	1902–1940

Vera McCord (born c.1872 — March 3, 1949) was an American stage actress. She also wrote, directed and produced a silent film, The Good-Bad Wife (1921).

Early life

Vera McCord was born in Marshalltown, Iowa (the date varies in sources), the daughter of George Brown McCord and Clara Sophrona Smalley McCord.^[1]^[2] Her father was a veteran of the American Civil War, and her mother was said to be a niece of American president Andrew Jackson.^[3] She moved to Oakland, California^[4] with her family as a girl, and attended Snell's Women's Seminary in Berkeley, California.^[5]

Career

Stage

McCord began acting during an extended visit in London.^[6] She performed in The President (1902)^[7] and When We Were Twenty-One (1903), and gave dramatic recitations there.^[8] She appeared in three plays on Broadway: Via Wireless (1908-1909) with Edwin Arden,^[9] The Flag Lieutenant (1909),^[10] and The Zebra (1911).^[11] Of her 1908 Broadway debut, the New York Star critic wrote that "Miss Vera McCord is a new leading woman with such naturalness and utter absence of the theatric in her method that she scarcely seems to act at all, so realistically does she seem to live the part."^[12]

Film

In 1913 she appeared in a silent film, Broncho Billy’s Mistake (1913). In 1914, she was in a play in Salt Lake City, Just Like a Woman.^[13] In 1916 she made films with dancer and artist Lolita Perine, Mona, the Spirit of the Heights and The Lure of Venus, which included scenes of female nudity, "Venus, clothed only in the crystal atmosphere of Marin County," as one San Francisco newspaper explained. The scenes were cut and the films went unfinished in the legal entanglements that followed.^[14]^[15]

She formed her own production company in 1917,^[16] and directed and produced one silent film, The Good-Bad Wife (1921), based on "The Wild Fawn", a story by Mary Imlay Taylor.^[17] The film was considered controversial for its focus on a woman who wears dresses, smokes, and attempts suicide, but still finds a happy resolution in a respectable second marriage. The film's cast also includes two African-American comedians (Pauline Dempsey and J. Wesley Jenkins) and a Chinese actress (Moe Lee).^[5]^[18]

Later activities

She was founder and president of the National Club for Better Movies.^[19] Later in life, she taught speech and acting.^[5] She bought the rights to the dramatic adaptation of Booth Tarkington's The Man on Horseback in 1940,^[20]^[21] a show she had performed in San Francisco in 1912.^[22]

Personal life

In 1929 McCord sued a wealthy Chicago banker, Maurice Rothschild, for breach of promise, contending that he promised to marry her and then did not.^[23]^[24] She lost the suit in 1931, after her brother testified for the defense that "his sister was inclined to drink to excess".^[25] She denied his claim that she drank too much, saying "I have my brother to blame for everything. I have never been drunk in my life."^[26] McCord died at New York's Bellevue Hospital in 1949, "after a long illness", according to her New York Times obituary.^[1]

References

^ ^a ^b "Miss Vera McCord" New York Times (March 4, 1949): 21. via ProQuest
^ "Former Local Girl Now Heads Large Film Corporation" Evening Times-Republican (October 22, 1920): 8. via Newspapers.com
^ "Oakland Girl to be Local Star" San Francisco Examiner (October 9, 1913): 6. via Newspapers.com
^ "Local Actress is Home from East to Visit Parents" San Francisco Chronicle (June 30, 1912): 28. via Newspapers.com
^ ^a ^b ^c Christina Lane, "Vera McCord" in Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project, Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, Columbia University Libraries, 2013.
^ "Oakland Girl Wins Laurels in England" San Francisco Examiner (July 19, 1903): 25. via Newspapers.com
^ Brief news item, Town Talk (May 24, 1902): 26.
^ "Miss Vera McCord" Baily's Magazine of Sports & Pastimes (January 1903): 72.
^ "Edwin Arden and Vera McCord in 'Via Wireless'" Everybody's Magazine (January 1909): 97.
^ "Criterion: The Flag Lieutenant" Theatre Magazine (October 1909): 103.
^ "Garrick: The Zebra" Theatre Magazine (March 1911): x.
^ "The Editor Sits in Front" New York Star (November 7, 1908): 168.
^ "Orpheum" Goodwin's Weekly (February 28, 1914): 10-11.
^ "Venus Scene Cut from Film" San Francisco Chronicle (September 19, 1916): 11. via Newspapers.com
^ "Film Actresses Clad in Smiles" Los Angeles Daily Times (September 16, 1916): 4. via Newspapers.com
^ "Combination Experiment" Los Angeles Times (February 18, 1917): 45. via Newspapers.com
^ "Vera McCord Will Manage Her Own Film Company" Akron Beacon Journal (November 24, 1919): 12. via Newspapers.com
^ American Film Institute, The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Part 1 (University of California Press 1997): 307. ISBN 9780520209695
^ "Club Outlines Better-Movie Aims" New York Times (February 28, 1928): 23. via ProQuest
^ Catalog of Copyright Entries (Library of Congress Copyright Office 1946): 191.
^ "News and Gossip of the Times Square Area" New York Times (September 29, 1940): 119. via ProQuest
^ "California Girl Hackett Star; Vera McCord in New Play Here" San Francisco Examiner (August 4, 1912): 8. via Newspapers.com
^ "Actress Sues Rothschild" New York Times (June 15, 1929): 10. via ProQuest
^ "Vera McCord on Stand" New York Times (October 20, 1931): 2. via ProQuest
^ "Vera McCord Loses Suit" New York Times (October 24, 1931): 20. via ProQuest
^ "Brother Opposes Vera McCord to Aid Defense in Balm Suit" Daily News (October 22, 1931): 505. via Newspapers.com