Mabel Taliaferro
actress
- Birth name:
- Maybelle Evelyn Taliaferro
- Born:
- 1887-05-21, New York City, New York, USA
- Died:
- 1979-01-24, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
- Professions:
- actress
Biography
Born in the electric bustle of New York City on 21 May 1887, Mabel Taliaferro stepped onto the stage while the gaslights were still flickering and stayed long enough to greet the klieg lights of Hollywood. Between 1912 and 1924 she slipped into skins as varied as a soot-smudged Cinderella, a proxy bride, and Eliza Hamilton’s devoted spouse, leaving audiences of the silent era to read whole novels in the tilt of her eyebrow. Off-camera the script was equally eventful: four weddings—to Robert Ober, Joseph O’Brien, Thomas Carrigan, and Frederic Thompson—wrote and rewrote her private plot. The final curtain fell on 24 January 1979, when she died in Honolulu, the Pacific surf replacing the applause that had once followed her every move.
