Bess Meredyth
actress, script_department, writer
- Birth name:
- Helen Elizabeth MacGlashan
- Born:
- 1890-02-12, Buffalo, New York, USA
- Died:
- 1969-07-13, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Professions:
- actress, script_department, writer
Biography
Buffalo, New York, greeted Bess Meredyth’s arrival on 12 February 1890, and from that first winter day she seemed destined to trade cold lake winds for the heat of spotlights. She stepped before the camera as an actress, then slipped behind it as a writer, shaping stories that still flicker across retrospectives: the maternal melodrama of Wonder of Women (1929), the Civil-War sprint of Morgan’s Raiders (1918), and the glossy heartbreak of A Woman of Affairs (1928). Off-screen, her life carried its own three-act structure, with three husbands—Wilfred Lucas, Burton Charles Leslie, and, finally, Casablanca director Michael Curtiz—sharing the marquee at different times. The final curtain fell on 13 July 1969 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, closing a life that had helped write the grammar of American film.
