Viola Barry (1889 or 1890[1] – April 2, 1964) was an American silent film actress who starred in a number of films during the 1910s.
Early years
Gladys Viola Wilson was born in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of Rev. J. Stitt Wilson, a Methodist minister.[2] She moved with her family to Berkeley, California, where her father was a socialist lecturer and was mayor of Berkeley in 1911.[citation needed] She attended Berkeley High School.[3]
She studied under Herbert Beerbohm Tree while she spent more than two years in England, returning to California in December 1909.[1]
Acting career
Before December 1909, Barry was leading woman at Ye Liberty Theater in Oakland, California.[1] In 1910, under her stage name Viola Barry,[4] Wilson signed with the Belasco Theater Company in Los Angeles to be its new ingénue. Previously, she had four years of stage experience, two of these with F. H. Benson's Shakespearean Company in England. Among the heroines she played were Desdemona, Juliet, Ophelia, and Portia.[5] Her first appearance with the Belasco company was in The Test by Jules Eckert Goodman.[6]
She was in movies from 1911 through 1920. Her early screen credits include The Totem Mask, The Voyager: A Tale of Old Canada, McKee Rankin's '49, John Oakhurst, Gambler, An Indian Vestal, Coals of Fire, A Painter's Idyl, The Chief's Daughter, George Warrington's Escape, and Evangeline. All these were completed in her first year in movies.
Personal life
In February 1911, Barry married actor and film director Jack Conway of the Bison Moving Picture Company[7] in Santa Ana, California. They had one daughter, Rosemary. The couple divorced in 1918. Barry later married screenwriter Frank McGrew Willis, with whom she had four children: Virginia, Gloria, McGrew, and James.
Barry was a suffragette and, like her father, a Socialist.[5]
