Edith Johnson

Biography

Edith Johnson never planned on fame; Rochester, New York, simply handed it to her. Growing up in the shadow of Eastman Kodak’s headquarters, she was plucked from campus life at Vassar and christened “The Kodak Girl,” her face blooming across every glossy ad page of the 1910s until newspapers crowned her “the most photographed girl alive.” The flashbulbs hadn’t cooled before Selig Polyscope offered a contract the week she tossed her graduation cap. Her earliest pictures paired her with athletic leading man William Duncan; sparks on-screen turned to vows off it, and the newlyweds soon traded Selig for Universal in 1916. Two years later they hopped to Vitagraph, where Duncan directed and the couple co-starred in cliff-hanging serials that left audiences breathless and box-office tills ringing. Universal lured them back, but studio red tape finally outran the adrenaline; after 1924’s snow-swept adventure *Wolves of the North* they cashed out, took a vaudeville victory lap, then vanished into suburban life and the happy chaos of raising children. Duncan eventually slipped on a cowboy hat to play Hopalong Cassidy’s sidekick Buck Peters, but Edith never again stepped before a camera. She lived eight quiet years beyond her husband, dying in 1969, content to let the most photographed girl in the world fade into private, un-photographed memory.