Bessie Love

In June 1915, while a student at Los Angeles High School, Horton went to the set of a Western film to meet with actor Tom Mix, who had recommended that she visit him if she ever wanted to "get into pictures".[11] However, when Mix was unavailable, she was advised to meet with pioneering film director D. W. Griffith,[11] who gave Horton the stage name "Bessie Love" and a small role in his Intolerance (1916). Although Intolerance was her first performance to be filmed, it was her ninth film to be released.[8] Love dropped out of high school to pursue her film career, although she completed her diploma in 1919.[12]

Her "first role of importance"[13]—in the second of her films to be released—was in The Flying Torpedo (1916). She later appeared opposite William S. Hart in The Aryan and with Douglas Fairbanks in The Good Bad-Man, Reggie Mixes In, and The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (all 1916). In her early career, she was often compared to Mary Pickford,[14] and was even called "Our Mary" by Griffith.[15]

In 1918, Love signed a nine-film contract with Vitagraph.[lower-alpha 1][16] She took an active role in the management of her career, upgrading her representation to Gerald C. Duffy, the former editor of Picture-Play Magazine,[17] and publicizing herself by playing the ukulele and dancing for members of the military.[18] Even glowing reviews of her films criticized the venues in which they were shown, citing this as a reason she was not a more awarded actress.[19]

As her roles got larger, so did her popularity. In 1922, Love was chosen as a WAMPAS Baby Star.[20][21] In 1923, she starred in Human Wreckage with Dorothy Davenport and produced by Thomas Ince.

Because of her performance in The King on Main Street (1925), Love is credited with being the first person to dance the Charleston on film,[22] popularizing it in the United States. Her technique was documented in instructional guides,[23] including a series of photographs by Edward Steichen.[24] She subsequently performed the dance the following year in The Song and Dance Man.[25]

In 1925, she starred in The Lost World, a science fiction adventure based on the novel of the same name by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1927, she appeared in the successful Dress Parade, and was so impressed by her experiences on location that she wrote the unpublished novel Military Mary.[26] A year later, she starred in The Matinee Idol, a romantic comedy directed by a young Frank Capra. Despite these successes, Love's career was on the decline.[27] She lived frugally so that she could afford lessons in singing and dancing.[28]

Love toured with a musical revue for sixteen weeks,[29] which was so physically demanding that she broke a rib.[30] The experience she gained on the vaudeville stage singing and dancing in three performances a day prepared her for the introduction of sound films.[31] She was signed to MGM in 1928.[31]

In 1929, she appeared in her first feature-length "talkie", the musical The Broadway Melody. Her performance earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the success of the film resulted in a 5-year contract with MGM and an increase in her weekly salary from US$500 to $3,000 (equivalent to $44,000 in 2018)—$1,000 more than her male co-star Charles King.[32] This success was later deemed one of "the most notable comebacks" of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, alongside Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce and Gloria Stuart in Titanic.[33]

She appeared in several other early musicals, including 1929's The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and 1930's Chasing Rainbows, Good News, and They Learned About Women. However, the public tired of musicals, putting her career in decline. In 1930, Love is quoted as saying, "I guess I'm through. They don't seem to want me any more."[34]

She semi-retired, and focused on raising her daughter, born in 1932. In 1935, Love moved to England and did stage work and occasional films there. She also performed on BBC Radio as a member of their Drama Repertory Company.[35] Love briefly returned to the United States in 1936 to obtain a divorce.[3][36]

During World War II in Britain, when Love found acting work hard to come by, she was the "continuity girl" on the film drama San Demetrio London (1943), an account of a ship badly damaged in the Atlantic but whose crew managed to bring her to port. She also worked for the American Red Cross.[37]

After the war, she resumed work on the stage and played small roles in films, often as an American tourist.[38] Stage work included such productions as Love in Idleness (1944)[39] and Born Yesterday (1947).[39][40][41] She wrote and performed in The Homecoming, a semiautobiographical play, which opened in Perth, Scotland in 1958.[42][43] Film work included The Barefoot Contessa (1954) with Humphrey Bogart, and Ealing Studios' Nowhere to Go (1958). She also played small roles in The Greengage Summer (1961) starring Kenneth More, the James Bond thriller On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), and in John Schlesinger's Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). In addition to playing the mother of Vanessa Redgrave's titular character in Isadora (1968), Love also served as dialect coach to the actress.[44]

In October 1963, Love was the subject of This Is Your Life, when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in central London.[45][46]

Love appeared in John Osborne's play West of Suez,[47][48] and as "Aunt Pittypat" in a large-scale musical version of Gone with the Wind (1972).[49] She also played Maud Cunard in the TV miniseries Edward & Mrs. Simpson in 1978. Her film work continued in the 1980s with roles in Ragtime (1981), Reds (1981), Lady Chatterley's Lover (1981), and—her final film—The Hunger (1983).

After several years of declining health,[2][58] Love died at the Mount Vernon Hospital[58][59] in Northwood, London from natural causes on April 26, 1986.[2][58][59] Her ashes are interred at Breakspear Crematorium in Ruislip, Hillingdon, England.[60][61]

All of Love's sound films are extant.