Mary Loretta Philbin

 Mary Loretta Philbin (July 16, 1902 – May 7, 1993)

She was a film actress of the silent film era, who is best known for playing the roles of Christine Daaé in the 1925 film The Phantom of the Opera opposite Lon Chaney, and as Dea in The Man Who Laughs. Both roles cast her as the beauty in Beauty and the Beast-type stories. She made her screen debut in 1921 and the following year was awarded at the first annual WAMPAS Baby Stars awards, a promotional campaign sponsored by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers in the United States, which honoured thirteen young women each year whom they believed to be on the threshold of movie stardom. Over the course of 1920s, Philbin became a successful film actress and starred in a number of high-profile films, most notably in D. W. Griffith's 1928 film Drums of Love. In 1927, she appeared in the horror film Surrender, though her most celebrated role was in the Universal horror film The Phantom of the Opera in 1925. Philbin played a few parts during the early talkie era and most notably dubbed her own voice when The Phantom of the Opera was given sound and re-released. She retired from the screen in the early 1930s and devoted her life to care for her aging parents. Philbin spent the remainder of her life after leaving the film industry as a recluse, living in the same home in Huntington Beach, California. She died of pneumonia at age 90 in 1993 and was buried at the Calvary Cemetery in east Los Angeles, California.