Laura Hamilton

Biography

Laura Hamilton stepped in front of the camera long before Hollywood’s golden age had a name. In 1915 she rode into The Apaches of Paris, bringing the city’s underworld to life for audiences still new to moving pictures. A year later she appeared in Hearst-International News Pictorial, No. 84, a newsreel that let moviegoers glimpse the world beyond their hometowns. When talkies arrived, she adapted without missing a beat, turning up opposite the era’s bright young things in 1929’s Why Leave Home?—proof that her career spanned the birth of feature films and the dawn of sound.