The daughter of screenwriter Tom Geraghty and the sister of writers Maurice Geraghty and Gerald Geraghty, exotic-looking Carmelita Geraghty was voted a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1924 but spent most of her screen career as leading lady to such lesser lights as Reed Howes, the erstwhile "Arrow Collar Man," and former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey. A newcomer to acting, the latter gained a profound admiration for his more experienced co-star, whose "charm and naturalness," he stated publicly, "make our romantic scenes much easier than I anticipated." Unfortunately, there was no abundance of "charm and naturalness" in Geraghty's Jordon Baker in The Great Gatsby (1926) and, a semi-professional offscreen, the actress was forced to lose a climactic tennis match to Patsy Ruth Miller in What Every Girl Should Know (1927). When talkies arrived, Geraghty was reduced to playing sullen "other women" in poverty row potboilers. Retiring in the mid-'30s to marry the writer Carey Wilson, she later became an accomplished painter, reminiscent, according to Variety, "of the French impressionists."
by Hans J. Wollstein
biography
