Later career and "talkies"
Mildred Harris enjoyed a prolific film career in the 1920s and achieved leading lady status opposite such renowned film actors as:
Conrad Nagel, Milton Sills, Lionel Barrymore, Rod La Rocque and the Moore brothers,
Owen and
Tom. Like so many of her silent screen peers however, Harris found the transition to
talkies rather difficult. Among her few memorable roles of the talkie era was her critically lauded performance in the 1930 film adaptation of the
Broadway musical
No, No, Nanette, opposite
ZaSu Pitts, Louise Fazenda and
Lilyan Tashman.
Modern day audiences will remember Harris' parody of a temperamental and demanding movie starlet (a role she played in real life only several years earlier) in the
Three Stooges comedy,
Movie Maniacs. Harris' starlet is in the process of receiving a
pedicure when
Curly Howard, in an effort to light his
cigar, strikes a
match on the sole her
bare foot, startling her.
As the 1930s continued however, Harris' career slowed dramatically. Harris tried for a second act in
vaudeville and
burlesque, at one point she toured with the comic
Phil Silvers. Harris continued to work in film in the early 1940's, largely through the kindness of her former director
Cecil B. DeMille, who cast her in bit parts in 1942's
Reap the Wild Wind, and 1944's
The Story of Dr. Wassell. Her last film appearance was in the 1945 motion picture
Having A Wonderful Crime, which was released posthumously.
In 1944, Mildred Harris died unexpectedly of
pneumonia at age 42 and was laid to rest at the
Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles,
California.
For her contribution as an actress in the motion picture industry, Mildred Harris was given a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6307 Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles, California.
rss feed