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Dark and willowy American silent-screen actress Madeline Hurlock played something as rare as comedy vamps. She had been a dancer in New York prior to entering films (sponsored, it was said, by Gloria Swanson). Having signed with Paramount, Hurlock was getting nowhere fast when spotted by Mack Sennett, who lured her away with promises of a starring career. "The greatest stars in the business have come from comedy," Hurlock defended her decision, probably thinking of Swanson who, despite vociferous denials, had been a Sennett Bathing Beauty. Like Swanson before her, Hurlock frolicked on the beach in Santa Monica with cross-eyed Ben Turpin (whom Sennett always considered a scream), and starred opposite walrus-mustachioed Billy Bevan in what proved her best comedy, A Sea Dog's Tale (1926). In this outright satire, she played Vanilla of Salami, a proud princess of that faraway kingdom best known as a "link of the Sausage Islands." Such punning aside, Sennett was being passed by upstart Hal Roach and, tellingly, Hurlock's most revived film, Duck Soup (1926), was indeed made by Roach. Rediscovered as late as 1974, Duck Soup proved a not-too-memorable farce about a couple of hoboes trying to convince prospective buyers Hurlock and Robert Kortman that they own the abandoned Blood mansion. The hoboes are played by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in their first true teaming, giving the film a historical importance far outweighing any true comedic merits. Hurlock left the screen at the coming of sound and married playwright Marc Connelly. They were divorced in 1935, and she wed yet another literary legend, Robert E. Sherwood, a union that lasted until Sherwood's death in 1955. Biographies of both writers have treated Madeline Hurlock with less than kindness.