by Hans J. Wollstein
biography
A member of director D.W. Griffith's famous stock company in 1912, buxom blonde Sylvia Ashton later became a leading character actress for Famous Players-Lasky (Paramount), where she would prove a special favorite of director Cecil B. DeMille. Often playing rather silly women, Ashton is perhaps best remembered today as ZaSu Pitts' indomitable German mother in Erich Von Stroheim's classic Greed (1924). Retiring at the changeover to sound, Ashton returned for a bit as Gloria Swanson's aunt in Von Stroheim's unfinished Queen Kelly (1929).
