A Glance at Gladys Hulette

July 21 was the natal day of stage and screen actress Gladys Hulette (1896-1991) — the same birthday as my beautiful wife. not to mention Chauncey Olcott; Don Knotts; Joe Laurie Jr; Little Tich; C. Aubrey Smith; Ken Maynard; Robin Williams; Arthur Marx; Kay Starr; and Jon Lovitz.

Hulette was from the Western New York village of Arcade. She started out as a child actress on stage with Percy MacKaye’s company around 1906. She appeared on Broadway in The Kreutzer Sonata (1906), Sappho and Phaon (1907), A Doll’s House (1907), The Faith Healer (1910), The Blue Bird (1911, in which she played the co-lead of Tyltyl), and Little Women (1912, in which she played Beth to Alice Brady’s Meg). By those last few productions, Hulette had already begun appearing in films with the Thanhouser Corporation. She had close to 150 screen credits, most of them in the silent era including Romeo and Juliet (1908), Prince Nicotine (1909), AMidsummer Night’s Dream (1909), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1910), The Active Life of Dolly of the Dailies (1914, a serial), Prudence the Pirate (1916), The Cigarette Girl (1917), The Streets of Illusion (1917), Tol’able David (1921), The Iron Horse (1924), The Mystic (1925), Be Your Age (1926), and A Bowery Cinderella (1927).

Hulette’s career did not survive the arrival of talkies, though she worked briefly as an extra in some early talkies. By the 1940s she was working in the box office at Radio City Music Hall.

For more on silent movies read  Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.