Moore, Owen - Rare Signed Photo - 1st Husband Mary Pickford - d. 1939
4 5/8 x 6 5/8 (trimmed borders) double weight, sepia photo. Signed in black fountain pen.
“Sincerely Owen Moore”
Small smudge to the "n" of "Sincerely". Lower right corner bend, pin hole just touching bottom left curve of the “O” in “Owen”. Very faint stray line (pencil?) on the back of his hair.
Pencil writing on verso, along upper edge has been partially obscured by border trimming. The words, “Divorced” and “1920” are still visible. Extremely rare autograph in all forms.
Bio: Owen Moore (12 December 1886 – 9 June 1939) was an Irish-born American actor, appearing in more than 279 movies spanning from 1908 to 1937. While working at D. W. Griffith's Biograph Studios, Moore met a young Canadian actress named Gladys Smith, whom he married on January 7, 1911. Their marriage was kept secret at first because of the strong opposition of her mother. However, Smith soon overshadowed her husband under her stage name, Mary Pickford.
Pickford left Biograph Studios to join the Independent Moving Pictures (IMP) to replace their star, Florence Lawrence. Carl Laemmle, the owner of IMP (IMP later merged into Universal Studios), agreed to sign Moore as part of the deal.
This humiliation, together with his wife's meteoric rise to fame, drastically affected Moore, and alcohol became a problem that led to violent behavior and his physically abusing Pickford. In 1916, Pickford met actor Douglas Fairbanks. In 1920, Pickford filed for divorce from Moore when she agreed to his demand of $100,000 settlement. Pickford and Fairbanks married days later.
Moore appeared in many successful films for Lewis J. Selznick (father of producer David O. Selznick and agent Myron Selznick), in the late teens and early 1920s. He was a popular star at Selznick Pictures along with Olive Thomas, Elaine Hammerstein, Eugene O'Brien and Conway Tearle. He also appeared in films for his own production company as well as Goldwyn and Triangle.
Moore married a second time to silent film actress, Katherine Perry, in 1921. With the advent of sound film, Moore's career declined, and he became a supporting actor for newer stars. He competed, as the third lead, with Cary Grant and Noah Beery, Sr. for the attentions of Mae West in She Done Him Wrong, Paramount's most lucrative film of 1933. His last film appearance was as a movie director in the 1937 drama A Star Is Born, starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March – ironically a movie about a former film star who turned to alcohol, much like himself at that time.
After years of fighting alcoholism, Moore was found dead on 9 June 1939, in his apartment in Beverly Hills, California.