Background
Moore, Colleen was born on 19 August 1899 in Port Huron, Michigan, United States.
Moore, Colleen was born on 19 August 1899 in Port Huron, Michigan, United States.
Moore said that she got into pictures because her uncle, Walter Howey, a Chicago press lord, was owed a favor by D. W. Griffith on account of having helped to get Birth of a Nation and Intolerance past the censor. So she got her new name, played with Tom Mix in several movies, established herself as a standard heroine, and was there, cuteness itself, ready to have her hair cut for the breakthrough flapper movie, Flaming Youth (23, John Francis Dillon).
Her glory years had her in The Perfect Flapper (24, Dillon); Flirting With Love (24, Dillon); So Big (25, Charles Brabin); Sally (25, Alfred E. Green); We Moderns (25, Dillon); Irene (26, Green); Ella Cinders (26, Green); It Must Be Love (26, Green); Twinkletoes (26, Brabin); Her Wild Oat (28, Marshall Neilan); Lilac Time (28, George Fitzmaurice); Oh Kiny! (28, Mervyn Le Roy); Why Be Good? (29, William A. Seiter); and Smiling Irish Eyes (29, Seiter).
She took a few years off and then returned for The Power and the Glory (33, William K. Howard); Social Register (34, Neilan); and Success at Any Price (34, J. Walter Ruben). She then bowed out after a ludicrous failure as Hester Prvnne in The Scarlet Letter (34, Robert G. Vignola).
Moores later life was as rock-steady as Louise Brooks’s was insecure. Ms. Moore had several businessmen husbands, one of whom, Homer Hargrave, was a vice-president at Merrill Lynch.
She learned so well that she wrote a book, How Women Can Make Money in the Stock Market.
In his invaluable biography of Louise Brooks, Barry Paris goes into contortions of research trying to decide whether Brooks or Colleen Moore created the flapper look. The truth is that, at this moment—say, 1923-28—Moore was a phenomenon, while Brooks was a curiosity. Moore was a major American star, while Brooks was too smart, too difficult, too everything to be that. By 1927, Colleen Moore was the top box-office attraction in the country, and she was making $12,500 a week. Brooks earned $250 a week, and so she went off to Germany to do Pandora’s Box. But Colleen Moore is not known today. Few readers of this book wall have seen her in a film, or know what she looked like. Well, she looked like a less interesting version of Louise Brooks. A lot less interesting. But that took a while to sink in.