Grace Darmond on AllMovie

Although starring in the first Technicolor film, The Gulf Between (1918), blonde Grace Darmond was rather more known for her four serials released between 1916 and 1922. A Canadian by birth, Darmond grew up in Illinois, where she became a well-known stock company actress appearing in such melodramas as A Texas Steer and House of a Thousand Candles. A chance meeting with Colonel William N. Selig of the Selig Polyscope Company led to a screen contract in early 1914 and Darmond spent a year with Selig appearing in scores of low-budget comedies and drawing-room dramas before landing the leading role in her first serial, The Shielding Shadow (1916). Directed by Louis Gasnier and Donald McKenzie, the team that had given the world the groundbreaking The Perils of Pauline (1914), The Shielding Shadow read like a Pearl White reject and probably was. Darmond, however, did well enough to be awarded a starring contract with Vitagraph. It was a step up from Selig at least, but her films remained in the low-budget category. She wasn't the nominal heroine in W.S. van Dyke's The Hawk's Trail (1920), Rhea Mitchell was. But Darmond's presence as the leading lady's imperiled sister gave the low-budget offering some credibility and she was the focal point once again in The Hope Diamond Mystery (1921), from poverty row's Kosmik Films, and A Dangerous Adventure (1922), from the upstart Warner Bros. Both were released in 15 chapters and both made money. By the mid-'20s, Darmond, whose offscreen exploits often made the headlines and not always for flattering reasons, had drifted into vamp roles and by 1927 even those dried up. Long in retirement, the former serial queen died of lung cancer in her Hollywood home.