Wallace Reid
Acting
Born 1891-04-14
Died 1923-01-18
Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
217 credits
star on Hollywood Walk of Fame 1
Awards
Won 1 star on Hollywood Walk of Fame Award
star on Hollywood Walk of Fame 1 won
- — star on Hollywood Walk of Fame Won
Award data from Wikidata (CC0). Coverage may be incomplete.
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Wallace Reid was an American actor in silent film referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover".
Wallace Reid appeared in several films with his father, and as his career in film flourished, he was soon acting and directing with and for early film mogul Allan Dwan. In 1913, while at Universal Pictures, Reid met and married actress Dorothy Davenport. He was featured as Jeff, the blacksmith, in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and had an uncredited role in Intolerance (1916), both directed by D. W. Griffith; he worked with leading ladies such as Florence Turner, Gloria Swanson, Lillian Gish, Elsie Ferguson, and Geraldine Farrar en route to becoming one of Hollywood's major heartthrobs. Already involved with the creation of more than 100 motion picture shorts, Reid was signed by producer Jesse L. Lasky and starred in over 60 films for Lasky's Famous Players film company, which later became Paramount Pictures. Frequently paired with actress Ann Little, his action-hero role as the dashing race-car driver drew young girls and older women alike to theaters to see his daredevil auto thrillers such as The Roaring Road (1919), Double Speed (1920), Excuse My Dust (1920), and Too Much Speed (1921). While en route to a location in Oregon during filming of The Valley of the Giants (1919), Reid was injured in a train wreck near Arcata, California and needed six stitches to close a 3-inch (8 cm) scalp wound. To keep on filming, he was prescribed morphine for relief of his pain and Reid soon became addicted, but kept on working at a frantic pace in films that were growing more physically demanding, and changing from 15–20 minutes in duration to as much as an hour. Reid's morphine addiction worsened at a time when drug rehabilitation programs were non-existent. He died in a sanatorium while attempting to recover.
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Filmography
— top 60 of 217
Acting
56 credits
The Birth of a Nation
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
Their Masterpiece
The Kiss
The Affairs of Anatol
The Victoria Cross
The Animal
The World Apart
Thirty Days
The Mountaineer
The Heart of the Hills
Joan the Woman
Hunted Down
The Legend of Rudolph Valentino
The Gamblers
Carmen
The Woman God Forgot
Playmates
The Intruder
The Charm School
Regeneration
Old Heidelberg
War
Cross Purposes
The Quack
The Movie Album
A Flash in the Dark
Rimrock Jones
Believe Me, Xantippe
The Lightning Bolt
Nan of Music Mountain
A Trip to Paramountown
The House That Shadows Built
Screen Snapshots (Series 22, No. 10)
Retribution
Chumps
The Skeleton
Women and War
Sierra Jim's Reformation
The Valley of the Giants
The Test
Too Many Millions
Hawthorne of the U.S.A.
Women and Roses
The Second Mrs. Roebuck
The Hell Diggers
Making Good
The Lottery Man
The Firefly of France
The World's Champion
An Even Exchange
The Dictator
The Chorus Lady
The Ghost Breaker
Less Than Kin
The Squaw Man's Son
Directing
13 credits
The Kiss
The Mountaineer
The Heart of the Hills
The Intruder
Regeneration
Cross Purposes
The Quack
A Flash in the Dark
The Lightning Bolt
Retribution
The Skeleton
The Test
Women and Roses
Writing
5 credits
Other credits
4 credits
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