Clara Knott

Biography

A Hoosier winter delivered Clara Knott on 19 January 1871, and from that Indiana morning she sprinted toward footlights and flicker-film. Between 1914’s After the Ball and 1920’s Old Lady 31, she stitched silent-era stories into the nation’s imagination; nearly a century later, the posthumous short Day-1 (2017) rekindled her ghost for a new audience. Sunset caught her final bow in Los Angeles on 11 November 1926, but the bright scratch of her name still runs through the celluloid she left behind.