Pearl Sindelar

Biography

Born under the gambling-town lights of Virginia City on 5 February 1887, Pearl Sindelar traded the dust of Nevada silver mines for the flicker of early movie palaces. Between the first sight of her name on a marquee and her final curtain, she slipped from sword-and-sandal spectacle—wielding intrigue in 1912’s Cleopatra—through the smoky mystery of Detective Craig’s Coup (1914), and into the jazz-age shimmer of The Glimpses of the Moon (1923). Off-screen she shared her life—and surname—with illustrator Charles Sindelar. The cameras stopped rolling for her on 9 July 1958 in Glendale, California, but the light she helped spark on celluloid still dances.