 1899 - 1973 (74 years) Submit Photo / Document
Has 2 ancestors but no descendants in this family tree.
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| Name |
Constance Alice Talmadge |
| Birth |
19 Apr 1899 |
Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States  |
| Gender |
Female |
| FamilySearch ID |
MBZZ-HWH |
| Burial |
Nov 1973 |
Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Death |
23 Nov 1973 |
Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States |
| Person ID |
I96803 |
mytree |
| Last Modified |
25 Feb 2024 |
| Father |
Frederick H Talmadge, b. 4 May 1869, Plainville, Hartford, Connecticut, United States d. 14 Nov 1925, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States (Age 56 years) |
| Mother |
Margaret L Jose, b. 3 Nov 1864, Governors Island, New York, New York, United States d. 29 Sep 1933, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States (Age 68 years) |
| Marriage |
1892 |
New York City, New York, New York, United States |
| Family ID |
F30989 |
Group Sheet | Family Chart |
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| Event Map |
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 | Birth - 19 Apr 1899 - Brooklyn, Kings, New York, United States |
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 | Burial - Nov 1973 - Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States |
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 | Death - 23 Nov 1973 - Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States |
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| Notes |
- Constance Alice Talmadge (April 19, 1898 – November 23, 1973) was an Ame r ican silent movie star born in Brooklyn, New York. She was the siste r o f actresses Norma and Natalie Talmadge.
Constance was born on April 19, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York to poor paren t s, Fred and Peg Talmadge. Her father was an alcoholic, and left them wh e n she was still very young. Her mother made a living by doing laundry . Wh en a friend recommended that Constance's mother use older sister Nor ma a s a model for title slides in flickers, which were shown in early ni ckelo deons, Peg decided to do so. This led all three sisters into an act ing ca reer.
She began making films in 1914, in a Vitagraph comedy short, In Bridal A t tire (1914). Her first major role was as the Mountain Girl and Margueri t e de Valois in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916).
Griffith re-edited Intolerance repeatedly after its initial release, a n d even shot new scenes long after it was in distribution. Grace Kingsl e y found Talmadge in her dressing room at the Fine Arts Studio, in Los A ng eles, in the midst of making up for some new shots.
"Did you really drive those galloping brutes of horses?" asked Kingsley.
"Indeed I did," said Talmadge. "Two women sat behind me at the Auditori u m the other night. They said, 'Of course she never really drove those h or ses herself. Somebody doubled for her.' Know what I did? I turned arou n d and told them, 'I wish I could show you my knees, all black and blu e ev en yet from being cracked up against the dashboard of that chariot!' "
So popular was Talmadge's portrayal of the tomboyish Mountain Girl, Grif f ith released in 1919 the Babylonian sequence from Intolerance as a new , s eparate film called The Fall of Babylon. He refilmed her death scen e to a llow for a happy ending.
Her friend Anita Loos, who wrote many screenplays for her, appreciated h e r "humour and her irresponsible way of life". Over the course of her ca re er, Talmadge appeared in more than 80 films, often in comedies suc h a s A Pair of Silk Stockings (1918), Happiness à la Mode (1919), Romanc e an d Arabella (1919), Wedding Bells (1921), and The Primitive Lover (19 22).
Talmadge, along with her sisters, was heavily billed during her early ca r eer. According to her 1923 Blue Book of the Screen biography, she was " 5' 5" tall, 120 lbs, with blonde hair and brown eyes,... an outdoor gir l wh o loved activities."
When Talmadge was asked by a writer for Green Book magazine what sor t o f stories she wanted to do in 1920, she said: "Although no less tha n sixt y manuscripts are submitted to me every week, it is exceedingly di fficul t to get exactly the kind of comedy I especially want. I want come dies o f manners, comedies that are funny because they delight one’s sens e of wh at is ridiculously human in the way of little everyday commonplac e foible s and frailties – subtle comedies, not comedies of the slap stic k variety ."
"I enjoy making people laugh. Secondly, because this type of work come s e asiest and most naturally to me, I am not a highly emotional type. M y sis ter could cry real tears over two sofa cushions stuffed into a lon g dres s and white lace cap, to look like a dead baby, and she would do i t so co nvincingly that 900 persons out front would weep with her. That i s real a rt, but my kind of talent would lead me to bounce that padded ba by up an d down on my knee with absurd grimaces that would make the sam e 900 roa r with laughter.
"You see, in my way, I take my work quite as seriously as my sister do e s hers – I would be just as in earnest about making the baby seem ridic ul ous as she would about making it seem real. I am not fitted to be a va m p type. There is nothing alluring, or exotic, or erotic, or neurotic ab ou t me. I could not pull the vamp stuff to save my life, but if I am ass ign ed a vamp role in a comedy, and I had such a part in my fourth Firs t Nati onal picture, In Search of a Sinner. I play it with all the seriou sness a nd earnestness and sincerity with which a real vamp would play it , excep t that I, of course, over-emphasize all the characteristics of th e vampir e. I try to handle a comedy role much the same way that a cartoo nist hand les his pencils. If he is drawing the picture of the late Theod ore Roosev elt, with a few strokes he emphasizes Teddy’s eye-glasses an d teeth, leav ing his ears and nostrils and the lines of his face barel y suggestive. On e must leave a great deal to the imagination on the scre en, because in th e span of one short hour we sometimes have to develo p a character from gi rlhood to womanhood through three marriages and tw o divorces, and perhap s travel half way round the world besides; so, lik e the cartoonist, I tr y to emphasize the salient characteristics, which , of course, in my parti cular work, bring out the humorous side of the p erson I am portraying."
With the advent of talkies in 1929, Talmadge left Hollywood. Her siste r N orma did make a handful of appearances in talking films, but for th e mos t part the three sisters retired all together, investing in real es tate a nd other business ventures. Only a few of her films survive today.
Like her sisters Norma and Natalie, Talmadge succumbed to substance abu s e and alcoholism later in life. She also had many failed affairs and re la tionships.
She was married four times; all the unions were childless:
•Her first marriage, to John Pialoglou (1893-1959), a Greek tobacco impo r ter, occurred in 1920 at a double wedding with Dorothy Gish and James R en nie; she divorced Pialoglou two years later.
•She married Alastair McIntosh in February 1926, divorcing in 1927.
•She married Townsend Netcher in May 1929, divorcing in 1931.
•She married Walter Michael Giblin in 1939. This marriage lasted until h i s death on May 1, 1964.
Talmadge's mother fostered the belief she might one day return to film s . “Success and fame cast a spell that can never been quite shaken off, ” h er mother pointed out in her autobiography. “A woman, because of he r love , may say, and in the fervor of the moment believe, that she is re ady t o give up her chosen work. But there is sure to come a time when ke en lon ging and strong regret for her lost career dominate over the mor e placi d contentments of love and marriage. Then unhappiness and frictio n ensue. ”
Along with her sister Norma, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, Talma d ge inaugurated the tradition of placing her footprints in concrete outs id e Grauman's Chinese Theater. She left a trail of five footprints in he r s lab.
Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 6300 Hollywood Blvd.
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