Jewel Carmen on AllMovie

Barely out of school when she began her screen career with the old Keystone comedy factory in Edendale, Jewel Carmen changed her name from Evelyn Quick when a scandal involving sexual proclivity threatened to destroy her burgeoning career. With a new moniker, the spectacularly blonde Carmen was cast opposite brunette Alma Rubens in The Half-Breed (1916), both vying for the favors of Douglas Fairbanks, and she was a beautiful and regal Lucia Manette opposite William Farnum's Charles Darnay/Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities. At the height of her screen career, 1917-1918, Carmen starred or co-starred in no less than nine feature films, but fame proved fleeting and her box-office potential had been exhausted by 1920. Her husband, director Roland West, cast her in a prominent role in his seminal haunted house thriller The Bat (1926), but it was truly a last hurrah and she retired soon after. Estranged from West but residing in the hills right above the Pacific Coast Highway restaurant he operated with comedienne Thelma Todd, Carmen received heaps of unwanted publicity in December 1935, when the vivacious Miss Todd was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in her garage. The death was ruled accidental but rumors of foul play -- most of them with no foundation whatsoever -- persist to this very day.