Fern Foster

Biography

Long before the flicker of kerosene lamps gave way to klieg lights, Fern Foster stepped onto a Broadway stage beside the lanky ranch-hand-turned-actor Harry Carey. Their comedy “Two Women and that Man” unfurled at the Majestic on 18 October 1909 and folded sixteen performances later, a swift casualty of critics’ yawns. Undeterred, she traded footlights for flickers, slipping before the camera for the first time in His Day (1912). While Harry galloped toward stardom under D. W. Griffith’s Biograph banner, he still found time to craft two reels of his own for Progressive Motion Picture Co.—The Master Cracksman and McVeagh of the South Seas—installing Fern as leading lady in both 1914 adventures. When the final take wrapped, so did her career; she left the lot on her husband’s arm and never looked back. The marriage soon rode into the sunset. Harry divorced her and, in 1920, wed his “Cheyenne Harry” leading lady Olive Golden. Fern returned east, living out quiet decades until she drew her last breath in Somerville, Massachusetts on 10 June 1949, aged sixty-three. A decade later, television borrowed her name: Peggie Castle played a character dubbed “Fern Foster” in the “Lady by Law” episode of The Restless Gun, broadcast 11 May 1959—an echo on a small screen she never lived to see.