Louise Lovely

Australian actress (1895–1980)

Louise Lovely (born Nellie Louise Carbasse; 28 February 1895 – 18 March 1980) was an Australian film actress of Swiss Italian descent. She is credited by film historians as being the first Australian actress to have a successful career in Hollywood, signing a contract with Universal Pictures in the United States in 1914. Lovely appeared in 50 American films and ten Australian films before retiring from acting in 1925.

Louise Lovely was born Nellie Louise Carbasse in Paddington, Sydney to an Italian musician and composer father, Ferruccio Carlo Alberti, and a Swiss mother, Elise Louise Jeanne de Grüningen Lehmann, who had come to Australia in 1891, in the company of Sarah Bernhardt, and had decided to remain in Sydney once Bernhardt had left Australia. Louise Lovely made her professional debut at age nine as Eva in a stage production of the classic Uncle Tom's Cabin, using the name Louise Carbasse. theatre company in Western Australia when she received a telegram from Gaston Mervale to appear in a series of movies for Australian Life Biograph Company.

In 1914, Lovely moved to the United States with her husband, hoping to replicate her Australian success, settling in Los Angeles, California. In California, Lovely caught the attention of Universal Studios head Carl Laemmle who both gave her a contract with his studio and re christened her Louise Lovely. She made her American debut alongside the legendary Lon Chaney in Father and the Boys in 1915, receiving strong reviews. She starred with Chaney again in several other films including her next release US film Stronger Than Death (1915) and The Gilded Spider and Tangled Hearts (both 1916). Lovely became one of Universal's major early stars and a challenger to Mary Pickford's status as the golden girl of early silent cinema, but was dropped by the studio in 1918 following a contract dispute. Though she was subsequently picked up by 20th Century Fox, where she starred in a series of Westerns with William Farnum, her career never reached its earlier heights. Over a course of four years, she had appeared in fifty American films.

In 1924, Lovely and her husband returned to Australia in pursuit of a new interest film production. Lovely had maintained a long time interest in the behind the scenes aspects of film, and had collaborated with Welch on a successful short documentary feature, A Day at the Studio, but her plans for her return to Australia were far more ambitious. Lovely and Welch undertook a nationwide talent search to encourage budding new movie actresses. Over 23,000 actors and actresses attended Lovely's auditions, which included demonstrations of movie equipment and acting technique, and which took place at prestigious locations such as Melbourne's Princess Theatre. Twenty were selected to appear in Lovely's next film venture Jewelled Nights (1925), which was written and directed by herself and her husband. Based on the novel by Marie Bjelke Petersen, Jewelled Nights told the story of a young woman who escaped from an unhappy marriage, instead posing as a young man and finding refuge in a tough mining community, where she finds love with a fellow miner (played by Gordon Collingridge). when she was sixteen years old, and relocated to the United States with him. and from their return to Australia in 1924 they no longer lived together. Lovely and Welch were divorced in November 1928. and the Victorian marriage record (registration no.11739 of 1928) has "Nellie Louise Alberti" and "Andrew Bertie Cowen". known as "Bert Cowan", at the Melbourne Registry Office on Monday, 26 November 1928; the same day as her divorce was granted in Sydney. Her marriage to Cowan lasted for the rest of her life. The couple moved to Hobart, Tasmania in 1946, where Cowan became the manager of the Prince of Wales Theatre. Lovely managed the theatre's sweet shop, where she worked until her death in 1980.