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Wallace Reid was an American actor in silent film referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover".
Another Chance
1914
Wallace Reid was an American actor in silent film referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover".
Wallace Reid appeared in several films with his father, and as his career in film flourished, he was soon acting and directing with and for early film mogul Allan Dwan. In 1913, while at Universal Pictures, Reid met and married actress Dorothy Davenport. He was featured as Jeff, the blacksmith, in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and had an uncredited role in Intolerance (1916), both directed by D. W. Griffith; he worked with leading ladies such as Florence Turner, Gloria Swanson, Lillian Gish, Elsie Ferguson, and Geraldine Farrar en route to becoming one of Hollywood's major heartthrobs. Already involved with the creation of more than 100 motion picture shorts, Reid was signed by producer Jesse L. Lasky and starred in over 60 films for Lasky's Famous Players film company, which later became Paramount Pictures. Frequently paired with actress Ann Little, his action-hero role as the dashing race-car driver drew young girls and older women alike to theaters to see his daredevil auto thrillers such as The Roaring Road (1919), Double Speed (1920), Excuse My Dust (1920), and Too Much Speed (1921). While en route to a location in Oregon during filming of The Valley of the Giants (1919), Reid was injured in a train wreck near Arcata, California and needed six stitches to close a 3-inch (8 cm) scalp wound. To keep on filming, he was prescribed morphine for relief of his pain and Reid soon became addicted, but kept on working at a frantic pace in films that were growing more physically demanding, and changing from 15–20 minutes in duration to as much as an hour. Reid's morphine addiction worsened at a time when drug rehabilitation programs were non-existent. He died in a sanatorium while attempting to recover.
Gender
Male
Birthday
April 14, 1891
Died
January 18, 1923
Birthplace
Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
Also Known As
The Dictator
1922
Screen Snapshots (Series 22, No. 10)
1942
Another Chance
1914
Too Much Speed
1921
Big Timber
1917
The Illumination
1912
At Cripple Creek
1912
Near To Earth
1913
Arms and the Gringo
1914
Don't Tell Everything
1921
The Woman God Forgot
1917
The Hostage
1917
The Spider and Her Web
1914
Their Masterpiece
1913
At Scrogginses' Corner
1912
The Odalisque
1914
Diamond Cut Diamond
1912
At Dawn
1914
The Picket Guard
1913
Double Speed
1920
+ 195 more movies