Dorothy Bernard

Biography

Born under the Southern Cross on 25 June 1890 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Dorothy Bernard first drew breath far from the klieg lights that would later claim her. By her mid-teens she had traded coastal winds for California sun and stepped before the camera, bewitching silent-era audiences as the fiery gypsy in *The Little Gypsy* (1915), chasing the elusive hues of *The Rainbow* (1917), and following the wanderlust of *The Wild Goose* (1921). Off-screen, she pledged her heart to A. H. Van Buren. Half a lifetime later, on 15 December 1955, her own final curtain fell in Hollywood, California, the same town that had once ushered her into the flickering dream of film.