Julia Faye

Biography

A lilting Virginia drawl followed Julia Faye from the cradle—Richmond, 1892—through every studio corridor she ever sauntered down. Six months after her first cry, the family relocated to St. Louis, trading tobacco warehouses for river-town bustle, yet French-American blood and Southern cadence stayed stitched to her voice. Illinois State University classrooms, where she was supposed to prepare for chalkboards and lesson plans, quickly lost out to camera lenses that worshipped the curve of ankle and length of calf. Editors crowned her “America’s prettiest feet,” and magazine covers paraded those celebrated gams until Cecil B. DeMille—alerted, legend says, by Wallace Reid at a champagne-soaked soirée—requested a look. One audition later, Fine Arts/Paramount signed the leggy newcomer; if the leading lady’s stems didn’t measure up, Julia slipped in as the anonymous substitute. 1916 found her trading elegant stillness for custard-pie chaos at Keystone, a prized Bathing Beauty who could take a pratfall and still flash a wicked grin. Sennett shorts kept her busy, but DeMille—ever the epic orchestrator—pulled her back to bigger canvases: Pharaoh’s hard-eyed consort in The Ten Commandments (1923), a tambourine-jangling gypsy in The Volga Boatman (1926), Martha bustling through Jerusalem in The King of Kings (1927). Dynamite (1929), co-scripted by Jeanie Macpherson—rival both on page and in the producer’s affections—handed Julia her meatiest dramatic slice. Talkies, however, had little use for the smoky purr that once sold silent close-ups; roles thinned, bank account followed. Three years spent studying scenario construction under DeMille’s wing produced no saleable scripts, only a lingering loyalty: the director kept her on salary, slipping her into wordless cameos—courtier, party guest, passing face in the crowd—until the final curtain of The Buccaneer (1958). Off-screen, the alliance with DeMille endured, tolerated by his wife Constance Adams as an open secret among Hollywood’s plush parlors. When the cameras finally closed their eyes, Julia settled into quiet retirement, dying in April 1966 at 72. Today, a star at 6500 Hollywood Boulevard immortalizes the girl who once insured her legs and walked straight into cinema history.