
Virginia Pearson
1886 - 1958Virginia Belle Pearson (March 7, 1886 - June 6, 1958) was an American stage and film actress. She made fifty-one films in a career which extended from 1910 until 1932.
Born in Anchorage, Kentucky, Pearson worked for a brief time as an assistant in the public library in Louisville, Kentucky after completing school. Pearson trained in the tradition of the stars of the American stage, and played in stock productions in Washington, D.C. and New York City. In New York she played the heroine in Hypocrisy, a story which laid bare "the shame of society." She was promoted by William Fox of Fox Film Corporation for the same kind of strong vamp parts as those played by Theda Bara. Among her movies is Blazing Love (1916), Wildness of Youth (1922), The Vital Question (1916), Sister Against Sister (1917), The Red Kimona (1925), Wizard of Oz (1925), and The Phantom of the Opera (1925).
In 1916 Pearson and her husband, movie actor Sheldon Lewis, severed their ties with the Virginia Pearson Producing Company. The couple affiliated themselves with the Independent Productions Company, capitalized at $1,000,000. In 1924 the couple were forced to declare bankruptcy. In 1928, Pearson was legally divorced from Lewis. At the time, it was considered bad box office for screen actresses to be married. However the two remained constant companions., and resided for many years at the old Hollywood Hotel. Later they lived at the Motion Picture Country Hom.
Virginia Pearson died of uremic poisoning in Hollywood on June 6, 1958 nearly a month to the day after Sheldon Lewis. She was 72. Funeral services were held at the Pierce Brothers Hollywood Chapel. She was buried with an unmarked grave in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.
Impossible Catherine
John B. O'Brien
Virginia Pearson, William B. Davidson
The head of the Kimberly household rules it with an iron fist. Unfortunately the head of the Kimberly household isn't Grant (J.H. Gilmore), the father and wealthy Wall Street magnate -- it's his spoiled, headstrong daughter Catherine (Virginia Pearson). She is so willful that she has earned the name "Impossible Catherine," and her whole focus in life is to prove women's superiority over the masculine gender.
Impossible Catherine
Lightning Hutch
Charles Hutchison
Charles Hutchison, Edith Thornton
A scientist invents a poison gas; the villain and his gang will do anything to get the formula; our hero, "Lightning Hutch", is sent to save the scientist, the scientist's beautiful daughter, and the formula.
Lightning Hutch
Silence
Rupert Julian
Vera Reynolds, H.B. Warner
Jim Warren, a crook, is married to Norma, but there was a flaw in their marriage papers and he must marry her again to protect their unborn child. He returns home and gives her some money but it has been stolen and she is sent to jail as an accomplice. To get her out, he is forced to marry another woman and Norma, thinking Jim has deserted her marries Phil Powers, and gives birth to Jim's daughter. Years later, Jim meets his daughter in the midst of a blackmail scheme against Norma over her earlier imprisonment. The daughter shoots the blackmailer, and Jim takes the blame.
Silence
The Stain
Frank Powell
Edward José, Thurlow Bergen
An ambitious bank teller (Edward Jose) steals a large deposit and starts life over under an assumed name. While he is becoming a lawyer and making his way up the ladder of success with the help of a political boss, the wife he left behind (Eleanor Woodruff) remains destitute and is forced to give up her child to an orphanage. The girl is adopted and grows up (played as an adult by Virginia Pearson) to become the secretary to an honest young lawyer. But the girl has the same quirk that her father had, and it causes her to steal a bracelet at a department store. She is arrested and finds herself before her father, who is now a judge.
The Stain
The Writing on the Wall
Tefft Johnson
Joseph Kilgour, Virginia Pearson
Irving Lawrence owns some of the most decrepit tenements in town and is an all-around bad guy. He won't cooperate with the efforts of his wife, Barbara, to help the poor and sees other women behind her back. Muriel, one of his cast-offs, meets and marries Barbara's brother, Payne. Lawrence makes trouble for Muriel and fabricates a scandal involving his kindly brother Schuyler and Barbara.
The Writing on the Wall