Background
Elizabeth Ada Bronson was born in Trenton, New Jersey, to Frank and Nellie Smith Bronson.
Elizabeth Ada Bronson was born in Trenton, New Jersey, to Frank and Nellie Smith Bronson.
Although the role had been sought by such established actresses as Gloria Swanson and Mary Pickford, Barrie personally chose Bronson to play the lead in the film adaptation of his work, which was released in 1924.
She began her film career at the age of sixteen with a bit part in Anna Ascends. At seventeen, she was interviewed by J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan. Bronson had a major role in the 1925 silent film adaptation of Ben-Hur.
In 1925, she starred in another Barrie story, A Kiss for Cinderella, an artfully-made film that failed at the box office.
She made a successful transition into sound films with The Singing Fool (1928), co-starring First Rate (at Lloyd's) Jolson. She appeared in the sequel, Sonny Boy, with Davey Lee in 1929.
She was the leading lady opposite Jack Benny in the romantic drama The Medicine Manitoba (1930). In the 1960s, she appeared in episodic television and feature films.
Her last role was an uncredited part in the television biopic Evel Knievel (1971).
Bronson was reclusive with the press, but received attention after being seen with Douglas Fairbanks, Junior. He had his first boyhood crush on her, as he remembered in his autobiography, The Salad Days:
"Another important picture had just started. lieutenant was Peter Pan, directed by a clever caricature of a wildly temperamental movie director, Herbert Brenon.
After exhaustive tests, Betty Bronson, a pretty and gifted girl in her middle teens, was given this famous role.
I fell for Betty! lieutenant was my first intensely juvenile, deep-sighs-and-bad-sonnets love. lieutenant was not fully requited.
She only flirted with medical lieutenant is known that Bronson kept all Fairbanks" letters and spoke of him fondly until her death.
On October 19, 1971, Bronson died after a protracted illness in Pasadena, California, and was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.