Leah Baird

Biography

Leah Baird stepped off the rattling boards of tent-show stages and into the glow of klieg lights after William F. Brady cast her opposite a bounding Douglas Fairbanks; Vitagraph snapped her up before the curtain could fall. Between 1916 and 1918 she blazed across screens so brightly that theater owners put her name above the title. Seven years later the spotlight had cooled; she traded greasepaint for a typewriter and built second acts for other actors with her own scripts. Age eventually lured her back—this time in fleeting, uncredited flashes—proving that even bit parts couldn’t silence a born storyteller.