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A major stage star in the first decade of the 20th century, Fannie Ward had made her Broadway debut in 1890 as Cupid in Pippino before gaining stardom on both sides of the Atlantic in such vehicles as Madam President, The Shop Girl, and The Marriage of William Ashe. Looking far younger than her birth date would suggest, Ward made a sensational screen debut as the wayward wife in Cecil B. DeMille's equally sensational The Cheat (1915), the first in a successful string of melodramas that included Each Pearl a Tear (1916), in which she is nearly seduced by her evil foster-father and A Gutter Magdalene (1916), as a country lass innocently involved with Big City gangsters. By the late 1910s, Ward was nearing 50, however, and although reviewers never failed to comment on how remarkably young she looked, she chose to retire. She was married to Jack Dean who co-starred in nearly all her films.