May Alisson "THE UPLIFTERS" 1919 Herbert Blache

2008-11-05T09:52:00.000-08:00

THE UPLIFTERS Director HERBERT BLACHE 1919
MAY ALLISON
PELL TRENTON
ALFRED HOLLINGSWORTH
KATHLEEN KERRIGAN
CAROLINE RANKIN
HOWARD GAYE
LOIS WOOD
UPLIFTERS, THE FREE Director HERBERT BLACHE 1919 with May ALLISON
Hortense Troutt (May Allison) attends a "Bull-Shevik" lecture and is won over to their cause. The next day she quits her job as a stenographer because her boss, Saul Shilpick (Alfred Hollingsworth), is a capitalist. She goes to the woman who gave the lecture and offers her services. The woman promptly puts her new "comrade" to work as a maid -- without pay, of course. The work becomes harder and more grueling, and in whatever spare time she has, Hortense is expected to type up speeches. She is romanced by an old "Bull-Shevik," but has to give him forty-nine dollars to purchase a suit in which he can wed her. At this juncture, a new convert happens along -- Saul, Jr., the son of Hortense's former boss (Pell Trenton). He loves her and has been looking for her ever since she quit her job. It turns out that her old "Bull-Shevik" suitor already had a wife, so Hortense dumps him and the maid work and becomes a convert to the cause for capitalism and an honest man. This satire was adapted from a Saturday Evening Post story by Wallace Irwin. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

May Allison (June 14, 1890 – March 27, 1989) was an American stage and film actress whose greatest success was achieved in the early part of the 20th century in the medium of silent film.

Biography

Allison was born in Rising Fawn, Georgia and was the youngest of five children born to Dr. John Simon (Sam) Allison and Nannie Virginia (Wise) Allison.

Allison made her Broadway stage debut in the 1914 production of Apartment 12-K before settling in Hollywood, California in the early days of motion pictures. Allison's screen debut was as an ingenue in the 1915 star-making Theda Bara vehicle A Fool There Was. When Allison was cast that same year opposite actor Harold Lockwood in the Allan Dwan directed romantic film David Harum, audiences quickly became enamored of the onscreen duo and the two began a hugely successful onscreen film collaboration; possibly the first such publicly celebrated "romantic duo" of the silver-screen; although the two actors were never romantically involved offscreen. The pair would go on to star in approximately twenty-five highly successful features together during the World War I era.

Allison and Lockwood's highly popular film romances would end prematurely however, when in 1918 Lockwood died at the age of 31 after contracting Spanish influenza, a deadly epidemic that swept the world from 1918 through 1919 killing 50 to 100 million people globally. Allison's career then faltered markedly without her popular leading male co-star.

Allison continued to act in films throughout the 1920s, although she never received the same amount of public acclaim as she had achieved when starring opposite Harold Lockwood. Her last film before retiring was 1927's The Telephone Girl opposite Madge Bellamy and Warner Baxter.

In 1920, Allison married writer and actor Robert Ellis, however the couple divorced in 1923. Allison then married Photoplay magazine editor James Quirk, a union that lasted until 1932. Allison's third marriage was to Carl Norton Osborne and that marriage lasted for over forty years until his death in 1982. Her final (fourth) marriage was to Colonel J.L. Stephenson, which ended in divorce shortly afterwards.

In her later years, May Allison spent much of her time at her vacation home in Tucker's Town, Bermuda and was a Patron of the Cleveland Symphony. She died of respiratory failure in Bratenahl, Ohio in 1989 at the age of 98 and laid to rest at the Gates Mills South Cemetery in Gates Mills, Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

1. The Telephone Girl (1927) .... Grace Robinson
2. Her Indiscretion (1927)
3. One Increasing Purpose (1927) .... Linda Travers Paris
4. The City (1926) .... Elinor Voorhees
5. Mismates (1926) .... Belle
6. Men of Steel (1926) .... Clare Pitt
7. The Greater Glory (1926) .... Corinne
8. Wreckage (1925) .... Rene
9. I Want My Man (1925) .... Lael
10. Youth for Sale (1924) .... Molly Malloy
... aka Youth to Sell (USA: alternative title)
11. Flapper Wives (1924) .... Claudia Bigelow
... aka Perilous Love
12. The Broad Road (1923) .... Mary Ellen Haley
13. The Woman Who Fooled Herself (1922) .... Eva Lee
14. Big Game (1921/I) .... Eleanor Winthrop
15. The Last Card (1921) .... Elsie Kirkwood
16. Extravagance (1921) .... Nancy Vane
17. The Marriage of William Ashe (1921) .... Lady Kitty Bristol
18. Are All Men Alike? (1920) .... Teddy Hayden
19. Held in Trust (1920) .... Mary Manchester
20. The Cheater (1920) .... Lilly Meany, aka Vashti Dethic
21. The Walk-Offs (1920) .... Kathleen Rutherford

22. Fair and Warmer (1919) .... Laura Bartlett
23. The Uplifters (1919) .... Hortense Troutt
24. Almost Married (1919) .... Adrienne Le Blanc
25. Castles in the Air (1919) .... Fortuna Donnelly
26. The Island of Intrigue (1919) .... Maida Waring
27. Peggy Does Her Darndest (1919) .... Peggy Ensloe
28. In for Thirty Days (1919) .... Helen Corning
29. Her Inspiration (1918) .... Kate Kendall
30. The Testing of Mildred Vane (1918) .... Mildred Vane
31. The Return of Mary (1918) .... Mary
32. A Successful Adventure (1918) .... Virginia Houston
33. The Winning of Beatrice (1918) .... Beatrice Buckley
34. Social Hypocrites (1918) .... Leonore Fielding
35. The Hidden Children (1917) .... Lois de Contrecoeur
36. The Promise (1917) .... Ethel Manton
37. Pidgin Island (1916) .... Diana Wynne
38. Big Tremaine (1916) .... Isobel Malvern
39. Mister 44 (1916) .... Sadie Hicks
40. The River of Romance (1916) .... Rosalind Chalmers
41. The Masked Rider (1916) .... Jill Jamison
42. The Come-Back (1916) .... Patta Heberton
... aka The Come Back (USA)
43. Life's Blind Alley (1916) .... Helen Keating
44. Lillo of the Sulu Seas (1916)
45. The Broken Cross (1916)
46. The Man in the Sombrero (1916)
47. The Gamble (1916)
48. The Secret Wire (1916)
49. The Other Side of the Door (1916)
50. The Tragic Circle (1915)
51. The Buzzard's Shadow (1915) .... Alice Corbett
52. The End of the Road (1915) .... Grace Wilson
... aka A Web of Intrigue (USA: reissue title)
53. Pardoned (1915)
54. The House of a Thousand Scandals (1915) .... Martha Hobbs
... aka The House of Scandals
55. The Great Question (1915)
56. The Secretary of Frivolous Affairs (1915) .... Loulie
57. The Governor's Lady (1915) .... Katherine Strickland
58. David Harum (1915) .... Mary Blake
59. A Fool There Was (1915) .... The Wife's Sister

Allisson May

May Alisson "THE UPLIFTERS" 1919 Herbert Blache