Grace Cunard

American actress

Grace Cunard (born Harriet Mildred Jeffries; April 8, 1893 – January 19, 1967) was an American actress, screenwriter and film director. During the silent era, she starred in over 100 films, wrote or co wrote at least 44 of those productions, and directed no fewer than eight of them. In addition, she edited many of her films, including some of the shorts, serials, and features she developed in collaboration with Francis Ford. Her younger sister, Mina Cunard, was also a film actress.

Born in 1893, Harriet Jeffries was the elder of two daughters of Ohio natives Washington and Lola (née Longshore) Jeffries. The federal census of 1900 documents that seven year old Harriet, her younger sister Armina (Mina), and their parents were still residing that year in Columbus, where Washington supported the family by working as a grocery clerk. Much later, in 1916, the circumstances of Grace Cunard's (Harriet Jeffries') entry into acting are briefly discussed in "Before the Stars Shone", an article in the New York based trade monthly Picture Play Magazine. That article by staff writer Al Ray informs his readers, "Grace Cunard when very young, begged for a stage life until her mother took her to a manager who gave her the title part in 'Dora Thorne.'" Her other early stage performances included traveling with stock companies to theatres in Cleveland and St. Louis and appearing in vaudeville in various cities.

It is likely that Harriet was already using her stage name Grace Cunard before she started acting in films in 1908. According to Cunard, after one of her "stock engagements" a friend one evening at dinner dared her to try acting in "'canned drama'", a slang term used in the theatre community to describe motion pictures. She accepted the dare and "in the spirit of fun" went to the Biograph Company on East 14th Street in Manhattan and "worked for a day's pay to see what it was like." She enjoyed the experience, so she pursued more film roles, which at first consisted of small uncredited parts. Over the next three years she was cast in better roles at Biograph and at other studios located in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Some of those other companies included Kalem Studios, Edison, the American subsidiary of Pathé, Republic, and Lubin. After her high profile role in that release, Ince fired her when she refused to leave Ford's company to work elsewhere at Bison. Ford, infuriated by her treatment, left Bison with his crew and players, including Cunard, to work for Universal Pictures. The two were increasingly being referred to in trade publications and newspapers as the production team of "Ford Cunard", with Francis being credited consistently for directing and both of them being praised as "unusually promising screen artists". By 1914, Grace was being recognized too in the press for her writing, including references to her "novels" and many screenplays. The financial success of Lucille Love inspired the Ford Cunard partnership to release between their ongoing shorts three more serials for Universal over the next two years: the 22 episode The Broken Coin (1915), the 15 episode The Adventures of Peg o' the Ring (1916), and the 16 episode The Purple Mask (1916 1917). Cunard's collaboration with Ford continued into 1917, the same year she married for the second time, not to Ford but to the Irish born actor Joe Moore. Although the media had referred to her as "Miss" since she began working with Ford in 1912, Cunard had married earlier that same year in New York before moving to California. That first marriage appears to have been short lived and ended, if not legally, for all practical purposes by the time she arrived on the West Coast. Nevertheless, Cunard's collaboration with Ford finally ended after June 1917 with the release of In Treason's Grasp, a five reeler he directed for Renowned Pictures and in which she co starred with him.

Cunard throughout the 1930s continued to act but the complexity of her roles steadily declined until she performed predominantly in minor or uncredited bit parts. In the 1940s she still secured work at RKO, Republic, and in few productions at her old "home studio", Universal. Her last screen appearance, one uncredited, is in the role of a woman with a baby in the 1946 drama Magnificent Doll. Cunard was 53 years old by that time, so after working nearly four decades in motion pictures, she decided to retire permanently from the industry.