Biography
A major stage star who played Lady Macbeth, Hedda Gabler, and Camille, the tall (nearly six feet) Nance O'Neil was reportedly the lover of murderess Lizzie Borden. A notorious spendthrift always in financial trouble, O'Neil was one of the first of her generation of actresses to embrace motion pictures. Signing with producer
William Fox, she starred in a 1915 screen version of Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. Although receiving favorable reviews, the veteran star was somewhat upstaged by the colorful
Theda Bara, and it was Bara who would become Fox's major dramatic star, not the aging O'Neil. The latter continued to appear in films through 1917 -- including playing the Czarina in The Fall of the Romanoffs -- but moviegoers never truly warmed up to her and she returned to the stage. O'Neil was back in the new, audible Hollywood by 1929, supporting
John Gilbert and
Catherine Dale Owen in the ill-fated
His Glorious Night. Neither Gilbert nor Owen had much future in sound films, but O'Neil lent her considerable presence to scores of early talkies, including appearing as the mother superior in
Call of the Flesh, the Grand Mere in
Their Mad Moment (1931), and unbilled as Mrs. Von Stael in
Westward Passage. Nance O'Neil was briefly the wife of actor
Alfred Hickman (1872-1931). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide