Vola Vale

Vola Vale

Born: February 12, 1897
Died: October 17, 1970
in Buffalo, New York, USA
From Wikipedia

She was born Vola Smith in Buffalo, New York. Vale was educated in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She began her career in amateur theatricals in Rochester, New York. Then she played in stock companies for a while.

Her first movie experience was with Biograph, under the tutelage of the great film director D.W. Griffith. After a month of playing atmosphere parts, Vola was offered a genuine role. She wore a velvet gown with a train and a feathered hat. Soon she was appearing in short reel films for Biograph. 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. Aside from Biograph Vola worked for Fox Film, Famous Players-Lasky, Universal Pictures, and Paramount Pictures.

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.

Movies for Vola Vale...

Added Attractions: The Hollywood Shorts Story
Title: Added Attractions: The Hollywood Shorts Story
Character: Self (uncredited)
Released: February 5, 2002
Type: Movie
The story of the short film from the beginning of the movies in the 1890s, when all movies were shorts, through the 1950s when short subjects virtually disappeared from theaters.
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Home Sweet Home
Title: Home Sweet Home
Released: December 24, 1926
Type: Movie
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Her Big Adventure
Title: Her Big Adventure
Character: Countess Fontaine
Released: January 5, 1926
Type: Movie
Ralph Merriwell (Herbert Rawlinson) has an argument with his wealthy father, Silas (William Turner), and decides to go live on his own terms. He finds work as a bellhop in a fancy Los Angeles hotel. Meanwhile, Silas' secretary, Betty Burton (Grace Darmond), wins a thousand dollars in a contest and uses the money to vacation in the very same hotel.
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Little Annie Rooney
Title: Little Annie Rooney
Character: Mamie
Released: October 18, 1925
Type: Movie
A feisty little girl, the daughter of a beat cop, faces the challenges of growing up in a tough city neighborhood.
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The Phantom of the Opera
Title: The Phantom of the Opera
Character: Ballerina / Christines Maid (uncredited)
Released: September 22, 1925
Type: Movie
The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.
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Soul of the Beast
Title: Soul of the Beast
Character: Jacqueline
Released: May 6, 1923
Type: Movie
This northwoods comedy-drama, by way of a circus drama, was directed by John Griffith Wray for Thomas H. Ince, and stars Madge Bellamy.
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Crashin' Thru
Title: Crashin' Thru
Character: Diane
Released: April 1, 1923
Type: Movie
Crashin' Thru is a silent Western
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Good Men and True
Title: Good Men and True
Character: Georgie Hibbler
Released: November 5, 1922
Type: Movie
A 1922 modern Western
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White Oak
Title: White Oak
Character: Barbara
Released: February 1, 1921
Type: Movie
Gambler Oak Miller seeks revenge on the man who misused his sister Rose, who is ill and under the care of the woman Oak loves, Barbara. The man Oak seeks, Granger, is planning to rob a wagon train with the collusion of the Indians under Chief Long Knife. When Barbara is suspected of killing her lascivious stepfather, Oak takes the blame and is arrested just before he is needed to save the threatened wagon train.
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The Iron Rider
Title: The Iron Rider
Character: Mera Donovan
Released: November 21, 1920
Type: Movie
When law and order fade into distant memory in Angel City, the townspeople yearn for the era of the Iron Riders, a band of men who took justice into their own hands and brought order out of chaos. The organizer of the group was John Lannigan, whose son Larry decides to take up the mantle of the Riders once again.
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Common Sense
Title: Common Sense
Character: Violet Manners
Released: June 1, 1920
Type: Movie
Dan Bowers, embittered and disillusioned by an unhappy marriage, seeks solitude in the Maine woods, with a lame dog as his only companion. One day he meets Violet Manners who, with her invalid mother Marion, is visiting in a nearby village. Marion is haunted by memories of the past, and one day when Violet takes Dan to meet her mother, she discovers that he is the husband who deserted her years ago. The shock causes Marion's death, but before she dies, she justifies her past behavior toward Dan. -From the AFI Catalog of Feature FIlms.
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Overland Red
Title: Overland Red
Character: Louise Alacarme
Released: March 22, 1920
Type: Movie
Overland Red, a tramp prospector, and Collie, the boy he has befriended, stumble across an aged miner in the last stages of starvation, whose pockets reveal the map of a secret mine and a bag of gold dust.
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Alias Jimmy Valentine
Title: Alias Jimmy Valentine
Character: Rose Lane
Released: February 29, 1920
Type: Movie
The saga of Alias Jimmy Valentine began with the O. Henry story "A Retrieved Reformation". This surprise-ending tale was adapted into a stage play by Paul Armstrong, which subsequently was adapted to film several times
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Six Feet Four
Title: Six Feet Four
Character: Winifred Waverly
Released: September 13, 1919
Type: Movie
A cowboy matches the description of the man who robbed the local hotel--both are 6'4". When a young woman is robbed, suspicion falls on the cowboy again. However, he discovers that the actual culprits are a local gang headed by the sheriff. He sets out to capture the robbers and clear his name.
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A Heart in Pawn
Title: A Heart in Pawn
Character: Emily Stone
Released: March 20, 1919
Type: Movie
Toyama wants to go to college in America but his alcoholic father won't supply the funds. He gets the money to go, however, from Sada, whom he has married in secret. But Sada has a secret of her own -- she told Toyama that she got the money from a relative, but the truth is that she has signed up to do a four-year stint as a Geisha girl.
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Wolves of the Rail
Title: Wolves of the Rail
Character: Faith Lawson
Released: January 1, 1918
Type: Movie
Smoky Gap Railroad president Murray Lemantier is fed up with a bandit gang led by Buck Andrade constantly holding up his train and getting away with it. He hires ace detective David Cassidy to track down and get Buck, dead or alive. However, when Buck goes to see his dying mother she makes him promise to reform, and he does. Cassidy, though, doesn't care about that and tries to arrest him. Buck decides to do something that will once and for all show everyone that he has indeed reformed--especially Faith Lawson, a pretty station agent he's in love with.
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The Silent Man
Title: The Silent Man
Character: Betty Bryce
Released: November 26, 1917
Type: Movie
A hard-working prospector enters the town of Bakeoven to stake his claim, only to have his rights stolen and his face on "Wanted" posters. He plans reprisal.
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Zollenstein
Title: Zollenstein
Character: Princess Fulvia / Princess Zenia
Released: November 21, 1917
Type: Movie
Through negotiations with the neighboring monarch, the King of Zollenstein arranges for his son to marry the Princess of Saxonia, but later discovers that the prince already has wed Lady Maulfrey Le Fay in secret.
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The Son of His Father
Title: The Son of His Father
Character: Hazel Mallinsbee
Released: October 22, 1917
Type: Movie
A young man with little ambition is given an opportunity to set himself up in business by means of financial support from his father. But the young man becomes involved in a shady railroad deal which threatens to destroy his own father.
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The Lady in the Library
Title: The Lady in the Library
Character: Mildred Vandeburg
Released: October 19, 1917
Type: Movie
Mildred Vandeburg, an heiress who devotes her time to a hospital that she has built in the slums, breaks her engagement to her fiancé, T. Huntington Forbes, because Forbes is only interested in horses and sports. Meeda Jones, a nurse employed in Mildred's hospital, is married to a criminal named Spike, who steals some jewels and convinces his brother Dan to fence them for him. When Dan is killed as the police try to arrest him, his wife dies of shock, leaving their baby girl homeless. To help the baby, Mildred decides to take her to Forbes's home, where she informs her former fiancé that there is a "lady in the library" waiting for him.
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The Bond Between
Title: The Bond Between
Character: Ellen Ingram
Released: April 2, 1917
Type: Movie
Pierre Duval is a night watchman at a museum of art who dotes on his art student son, Jacques. One evening at the museum, Pierre finds a highly valuable painting missing, and since Jacques had just left, he believes his son stole it.
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Perils of the Secret Service
Title: Perils of the Secret Service
Character: Minna Ober (Episode #1)
Released: March 9, 1917
Type: Movie
A 9-part movie serial
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The Price of Silence
Title: The Price of Silence
Character: Aline Urmy (as Vola Smith)
Released: December 11, 1916
Type: Movie
A woman gives up her illegitimate child, and then marries without telling her new husband about the child.
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The Eagle's Wings
Title: The Eagle's Wings
Character: Kitty Miles (as Vola Smith)
Released: December 4, 1916
Type: Movie
A senator fights for the passage of a war-preparedness bill, while foreign spies conspire to plan an invasion.
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The Woman He Feared
Title: The Woman He Feared
Character: May Clive
Released: November 14, 1916
Type: Movie
Henry Clive, a wealthy widower, placed his small daughter, May, in a convent when she was a mere child, and now that her education is completed takes her home. Clive, alone, has amused himself according to his fancy, but now that his daughter has come to live with him he decides to reform.
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A Great Love
Title: A Great Love
Character: Nell Woodward
Released: July 28, 1916
Type: Movie
Kenneth Reynolds tells Nelly’s daughter the story of his love for Nelly. Kenneth was in love with Nelly, but the arrival of a stranger drove Nelly and Kenneth apart. Nelly and her lover absconded, and Nelly's father then died of grief. After some time, Nelly returned with a child, and took her last breath in Kenneth’s arms. The daughter had to cry upon hearing this story, told by the now somewhat older Kenneth, after all these years.
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The Soul of Pierre
Title: The Soul of Pierre
Released: September 15, 1915
Type: Movie
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The Iron Master
Title: The Iron Master
Character: The Iron Master's Sister (as Viola Smith)
Released: October 13, 1914
Type: Movie
Between the wealth of the aristocrat and the fortune of the successful tradesman there is a great social difference, which is emphasized in this drama.
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Liberty Belles
Title: Liberty Belles
Character: Boarding Schoolgirl
Released: May 13, 1914
Type: Movie
Liberty Belles, silent comedy film from 1914 starring Dorothy Gish, Jack Pickford, and Gertrude Bambrick.