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A veteran stage trouper who had toured for impresarios Charles Frohman and Henry Miller, dark-haired character actress Gertrude Berkeley played Mother Frochard opposite Theda Bara and Jean Sothern in the 1915 Fox version of The Two Orphans. She went on to play more benign matriarchs in War Brides (1916), which she had originally performed on Broadway, and Break the News to Mother (1919), as Raymond Bloomer's long suffering ma. Berkeley found fame as a mother offscreen as well by raising future choreographer/director Busby Berkeley, he of the kaleidoscopic chorus lines.