Dorothy Dalton was a silent film star who worked her way up from a
stock company to a movie career. She made her film debut in 1914 in
Pierre of the Plains (1914),
co-starring Edgar Selwyn, and appeared in
Charles E. Blaney's
Across the Pacific (1914) that
same year. Producer-director
Thomas H. Ince convinced her to leave the
stage for the movies, and she made
The Disciple (1915) and
The Three Musketeers (1916)
for him, working for Kay-Bee Pictures and the New York Motion Picture
Co. (distributed by Triangle Distributing Corp.). In 1916 and
'17 she starred in 15 more movies at Kay-Bee/New York
Picture/Triangle, nine of them for Ince. Her co-stars at the
studio included William S. Hart,
Jean Hersholt,
William Conklin and the young
John Gilbert.
After appearing in
Ten of Diamonds (1917) for
Triangle Films, she left the studio to join Ince's Thomas H. Ince Corp.,
which released through Paramount. Her debut for the Ince company was
The Price Mark (1917), followed by
Love Letters (1917), both of which
co-starred William Conklin. She stayed with Ince's company through
L'apache (1919), which was co-produced
by Ince's company and Famous-Players Lasky, and
_Black is White (1920)_ (qav), a sole production of Thomas H. Ince Corp.,
released through Famous-Players and Paramount. She also made _The Dark
Mirror (1920)_ for Famous-Players, a production supervised by Ince. Altogether they
collaborated on 31 pictures between 1915-20.
Dalton was always a top-billed star. working with the best
talent and hot properties such as
Guilty of Love (1920), based on
Avery Hopwood's 1909 Broadway
play "This Woman and This Man";
Cecil B. DeMille's
Die Todesprinzessin (1921) and
Das Piratenschiff (1922),
in which she co-starred with
Rudolph Valentino; and
Victor Fleming's
Law of the Lawless (1923). She
made all of her remaining films for Famous-Players-Lasky and Paramount,
except for her penultimate film,
The Lone Wolf (1924), in which she
co-starred with Tyrone Power Sr. (the
film was produced by John McKeown
and distributed by Associated Exhibitors.)
Once married to actor Lew Cody, the divorced
Dalton married theatrical impresario
Arthur Hammerstein--the uncle of
Oscar Hammerstein II--and retired
from the screen. Her last film was
The Moral Sinner (1924),
directed by Thomas M. Ince's younger brother
Ralph Ince. She was married to Hammerstein
for over 30 years, through his death in 1955.
Dorothy Dalton Hammerstein died at the age of 78.
