Vola Vale

 Vola Vale, born Vola Smith (February 12, 1897 – October 17, 1970)

She began her career in amateur theatricals in Rochester, New York. Then she played in stock companies for a while. After working under Bert Lytell on stage, in 1916 Vale began working in film for Biograph, under the tutelage of the film director D.W. Griffith. Among the actors she was cast with were William S. Hart, Sessue Hayakawa, Tsuru Aoki, William Haines, Harry Carey, Tully Marshall and William Russell. She was adept in playing Spanish, Italian, French, and Gypsy roles. Her ambition was to play Madame Butterfly with an actual Japanese company, as well as to act as Lorna Doone. She was most inspired by Hayakawa and hoped to learn to act inside, as he did. With Sessue Hayakawa she made Each To His Kind (1917). Before filming began it was decided that the name Smith was too common to be used by a motion picture star. She changed her professional name to Vola Vale. Her popularity soared in the 1917-1918 period as she turned out a slew of films for many different studios. In 1918 she married director Albert Russell, who specialized in westerns. She and Russell later divorced, having one child. Her popularity began to decline in 1923, and she began appearing in more and more undistinguished, low-budget independent fodder for the states-rights market. She retired from the screen in 1927. Vale died in Hawthorne, California in 1970, aged 73, of heart disease. She is interred with her son at Roosevelt Memorial Park in Gardena, California.