Monthly Archives: March 2025

Wanda Hawley has become a star. The Realart Pictures Corporation has decided to launch her in her own pictures, with her own name printed above the name of her production, in larger letters, and that sort of thing. To her, naturally this is important, and to some others it maybe impressive-but, after all, a star by any other name would shine as brightly, and Miss Hawley, so far as shining goes, has been a star for some time, ever since 1918, in fact, when, after some experience with Fox and select forces, she became Douglas Fairbanks heroine in “Mr. Fixit”. From this picture she went to Cecil B. De Mille, who featured her in “Old Wives for New” and “We Can’t Have Everything.”  She was with William S. Hart “The Border Wireless” and with Rudolph Valentino “Virtuous Sinners” and with Bryant Washburn in “The Way of a Man with a Maid”. In the Spring of 1919, she was on Broadway in 2 pictures. She was leading woman for Wallace Reid in “You’re Fired” The Lottery Man” “Double Speed,” and Robert Warwick in “Secret Service,” “Told in the Hills” and “The Tree of Knowledge.” She had the role of Beauty in “Every Woman” and was most recently seen again on Broadway with Bryant Washburn in “Six Best Cellars.”  Invariably, Miss Hawley has been such a heroine as to make whatever her hero might do for her seem reasonable, or, at least, justifiable.  She would probably be classed as an ingénue, but that only shows how inadequate in description are simple classifications, for while she is usually ‘artless, ingenuous and innocent’ as ingénues are suppose to be, she is also intelligent, genuine and substantial which ingénues seldom are. She smiles, but does not simper. She doesn’t become silly trying to be cute, and she succeeds in being pleasant without appearing unnatural. The records assert that Miss Hawley was born in 1897, and she looks it. According to one record, her birthplace was Seattle. But another has it she was born in Scranton, PA, and moved to Seattle as a child. At any rate, she was educated first in Seattle and then in Brooklyn, where she studied music. It is said that she is an accomplished pianist and was successful as a singer until throat trouble compelled her to give up the concert stage, from which she went to the screen.