Pauline Garon

Biography

Born in Montreal, the youngest of 11 children, Pauline Garon spent seven years at one of the most prestigious convent schools in Montreal, le Sacre-Coeur. She wasn't yet 20 when she ran away to New York to become an actress. After some success on Broadway in plays such as "Buddies" and "Sonny," she made her first movie, either as Dorothy Gish's double or in a small part, in Remodeling Her Husband (1920). She got her first important film role the following year as William H. Tooker's daughter-in-law in The Power Within (1921). By 1922, her star was rising steadily: she was Owen Moore's leading lady in Reported Missing (1922) and was the ingenue in Henry King's much-acclaimed adaptation of Sonny (1922). In 1923, she was hailed as Cecil B. DeMille's new discovery, and he cast her in Adam's Rib (1923). She was also a Wampas Baby Star that year. Until the end of the decade, Pauline Garon was a popular flapper and a second-rank star. She starred in more than 20 films, most of them Povery Row productions. She also played the second female lead in many A movies. In the 'thirties, after a few leads in French versions of Hollywood films and in comedy shorts, she would get smaller and smaller roles despite her pleasant voice and her perfect "Hollywood English" pronunciation. By 1935, she was only playing bit roles; her last one was in How Green Was My Valley (1941) in which she said only one word: "Divorce." She died, of a brain disorder, at the Patton State Hospital in 1965.