Career
In the 1920s, Harris transitioned from child actress to leading lady roles opposite leading men such as Conrad Nagel, Milton Sills, Lionel Barrymore, Rod La Rocque and the Moore brothers, Owen and Tom. She appeared in Frank Capra's 1928 silent drama The Power of the Press with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Jobyna Ralston.
She found the transition to the "talkies" difficult and her career slowed dramatically. She performed in vaudeville and burlesque, and, at one point, toured with comedian Phil Silvers. She was critically praised for her performance in the 1930 film adaptation of the Broadway musical No, No Nanette. In the 1936 Three Stooges comedy Movie Maniacs, she portrayed a temperamental and demanding film starlet who, while receiving a pedicure, is startled by stooge Curly Howard striking a match on the sole of her foot.
Harris continued to work in film in the early 1940s, largely through the kindness of her former director, Cecil B. DeMille, who cast her in bit parts in 1942's Reap the Wild Wind (starring Paulette Goddard, who, like Harris, was once married to Charlie Chaplin), and 1944's The Story of Dr. Wassell. Her last film appearance was in the posthumously-released 1945 film Having A Wonderful Crime.
Read more about this topic: Mildred Harris
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“John Browns career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (18541900)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a womans career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)