Wallace Reid

Wallace Reid (April 15, 1891 – January 18, 1923)

He was an actor in silent films, and referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover." Reid was drawn to the burgeoning motion picture industry by his father (James Halleck, aka Hal Reid), who would shift from the theater to acting, writing, and directing films. Wallace Reid appeared in several films with his father and, as his career in film flourished. He was featured in Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), both directed by D.W. Griffith, and starred opposite leading ladies such as Florence Turner, Gloria Swanson, and Lillian Gish, en route to becoming one of Hollywood's major screen idols. While filming The Valley of the Giants (1919), he was injured in a train wreck, and prescribed morphine to keep working, which turned into an addiction. This worsened at a time when drug rehabilitation programs were non-existent, and he died in a sanitarium while attempting recovery. Wallace Reid died at age 31, and is interred inside the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn-Glendale.