Claire Windsor: Of Weber and WAMPAS

Some attention paid today to Hollywood screen actress Claire Windsor (Clara Viola Cronk, 1892-1972).

Windsor was a major star of the 1920s and early ’30s, encompassing the late silent and early talkie periods, though unfortunately most of her many dozens of screen vehicles are lost. Windsor grew up in Kansas, and moved to Seattle with her parents as a teenager. There she studied voice and piano at Cohn’s Conservatory of Music and fine arts at Washburn College. She participated in local theatre for several years before marriage and childbirth in 1914 sidelined her for a few years.

By 1919 Windsor was in Hollywood taking bit roles in films. It was Lois Weber who put her on the map, starring her in such melodramas as To Please One Woman (1920), Too Wise Wives (1921), The Blot (1921) and What Do Men Want? (1921). Beautiful and fashionable, often cast as socialites, Windsor rose rapidly in Hollywood. She was one of the last to see William Desmond Taylor alive before his murder, having dined with him the previous evening. That same year of 1922 she was voted a WAMPAS Baby Star, helping build the momentum of her career. She also dated Charlie Chaplin around this time and she “tells all” in this Movie Weekly article:

“I shall always be glad to have had Charlie’s love and friendship” said Claire Windsor

Windsor’s star rose rapidly at Goldwyn and then MGM, and she appeared in dozens of films opposite the likes of Hobart Bosworth, Colleen Moore, Eleanor Boardman, Adolphe Menjou,Bert Roach, Conrad Nagel, Ricardo Cortez, and Bert Lytell, to whom she was married from 1925 to 1927.

Following the semi-talkie Midstream (1929) with Cortez, things seems to have stalled. She did a road tour of The Wonder Bar with Al Jolson, but was not cast in the film version. Instead she appeared in several forgotten pre-code dramas as Sister to Judas (1932), The Constant Woman (1933), Kiss of Araby (1933), and Cross Streets (1934). In 1937 she had a bit role in the screwball classic Topper and returned to live theatre again briefly with roles at Harold Lloyd’s Beverly Hills Little Theatre for Professionals. Her last decently sized screen role was in Barefoot Boy (1938), based on a John Greenleaf Whittier poem, in which she was fourth billed to Jackie Moran, Marcia Mae Jones, and Ralph Morgan.

After this she retired to focus on painting and ceramics, which she had studied in her youth back in Seattle. She returned to the screen in the 1945 comedy How DOooo You Do? starring Bert Gordon the Mad Russian and Harry Von Zell.

There is a terrifically thorough website dedicated to Claire Windsor here.

For more on early cinema please check out: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook.