People active in the silent era and people who keep the silent era alive.
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Photograph: Silent Era image collection.
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Corliss Palmer
Born 25 July 1899 in Edison, Georgia, USA, as Helen Caroline Palmer.
Died 27 August 1952 in Camarillo, California, USA, of chronic myocarditis.
Sister Katherine Palmer.
Married publisher Eugene V. Brewster, December 1926; divorced, 1931.
Married William Taylor, 1939; until her death, 27 August 1952.
Corliss Palmer began on her career path after having won a highly-publicized beauty contest in 1920 and may have appeared in her first motion picture in 1921 in a production financed by Eugene Brewster, editor of Motion Picture Magazine, with whom she was having an affair. The affair caused Brewster’s divorce and resulted in a suit that awarded $200,000 in damages to his second wife, Eleanor Brewster, for alienation of affection. Brewster and Palmer were married only hours after his divorce was finalized.
Palmer talent as an actress was questionable as she did not appear with any regularity in films until 1926, likely through the promotional efforts of Brewster. Corliss worked in one-off films for First National Pictures, Incorporated (1926 and 1928), Hal Roach Studios, Incorporated (1926), Chadwick Pictures Corporation (1927), Universal Pictures Corporation (1927 and 1928), James Ormont Productions (1927), Paramount Pictures Corporation (1927), Circle Pictures (1928), Imperial Productions (1928) and Tiffany-Stahl Productions, Incorporated (1928-1929). Palmer appeared in her final motion picture for Sono-Art Productions in 1931.
Eugene Brewster was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1931 and Corliss filed for divorce soon after. There followed a series of small jobs during the Depression years and advancing alcoholism in her life. Corliss began an affair with screenwriter Albert J. Cohen and was again identified as co-respondent in a divorce action in 1932. Palmer was hospitalized in 1933 for acute alcoholism. She married again in 1939 but alcohol remained her crippling weakness and she was instutionalized in 1950, dying in a psychiatric hospital in 1952.
References: Website-IMDb; Website-Wikipedia.
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[From unidentified publication, 1933] Police Hold Hysterical Beauty — Suffering from chronic alcoholism, a woman who police said was Corliss Palmer, former beauty contest winner, film actress and estranged wife of Eugene Brewster, one-time millionaire screen magazine editor, was held in the detention hospital at San Francisco. Police found her at a hotel in an hysterical condition. Miss Palmer was named co-respondent in a recent divorce action. Police say she told them she tried to “drown her sorrows in liquor.”
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