Flavia Arcaro

Biography

On a summer day in 1876—June 22, to be exact—Flavia Arcaro drew her first breath in the border town of Mejico, Texas. The open plains of her childhood gave little hint that she would one day face klieg lights rather than prairie winds, yet by 1915 she was commanding the screen in The Plunderer. A year later she returned to the camera’s gaze for Paying the Price, and in 1933 she stepped before it once more in the French-flavored melodrama Fifi. Nearly four decades after her birth, the bright avenues of New York City became her final backdrop; she died there on 8 April 1937.