In films from 1916, statuesque actress Margaret Livingston was one of filmdom's finest "vamps." Livingston's most famous performance in the temptress category was as "The Woman of the City" who bewitches farmer George O'Brien and inveigles him into a murder scheme in F. W. Murnau's haunting Sunrise (1927). Blessed with an appealingly husky voice, she made a successful transition to talkies in films like Seven Keys to Baldpate (1929) and Call Her Savage (1932). Her best-known talkie "appearance" went uncredited: when star Louise Brooks refused to return to the U.S. to film new dialogue sequences for the previously silent The Canary Murder Case (1929), Livingston dubbed Brooks' voice in the completed footage and doubled for the actress in over-the-shoulder medium shots (the deception does not go unnoticed). Retiring in 1934, Margaret Livingston became the fourth and final wife of bandleader Paul Whiteman, outliving him by eighteen years.
by Hal Erickson
biography
