Tula Belle

Active - 1916 - 1919  |   Born - Jun 28, 1909   |   Died - Oct 13, 1992   |   Genres - Drama, Fantasy, Crime

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Biography by AllMovie

Silent screen child-actress Tula Belle (née Høgh) is remembered for one film only, Maurice Tourneur's surviving The Blue Bird from 1918. Tula played Mytyl in this charming fairy tale which, despite its age and slight decomposition, remains a prettier film than the 1940 Shirley Temple remake. The stepdaughter of American actor/director Gordon Hollingshead, Tula Belle began her screen career with the Thanhouser Company in 1915 and she was Dick Primrose in that studio's The Vicar of Wakefield (1917), a quaint drama of life in merry old England. The Hollingshead family (which also included Tula Belle's mother and sister) left Thanhouser when the company folded in 1917 and Tula Belle signed on as Mytyl opposite little Robin McDougal's Tyltyl in The Blue Bird, for years a popular favorite of children everywhere. She later appeared in bit parts in The Miracle Man (1919) and Old Dad (1920), but left films as a young teenager. Gordon Hollingshead went on to become head of the shorts department at Warner Bros.