Update: As many people guessed, this is Lois Wilson. Above, a publicity still from "The Covered Wagon," July 16, 1924.

Lois Wilson; Star of Early Silent Movies

March 9, 1988

By PAUL FELDMAN, Times Staff Writer

Early
screen star Lois Wilson, who acted in many important silent Paramount
productions, including the 1923 Western epic, "The Covered Wagon," has
died at age 93, it was reported Tuesday.

Miss Wilson, who succumbed to pneumonia in Reno, came to Hollywood in 1915 after winning a statewide beauty contest in Alabama.

She
soon wangled a small part in "The Dumb Girl of Portici," which starred
legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova, and went on to act in more than 100
silent and sound films over the next 33 years.

Her best known
roles included Molly Wingate in "The Covered Wagon" and Daisy Buchanan
in the 1926 version of "The Great Gatsby," for which she won the
Photoplay magazine best performance award.

In other features, Miss Wilson acted opposite such stars as Rudolph Valentino and John Gilbert.

After
retiring in 1941–except for a bit part in the forgettable 1949 comedy
"The Girl from Jones Beach," starring Ronald Reagan–Miss Wilson turned
to the Broadway stage, road company productions, including "The Women"
for 57 weeks, and, eventually, television.

Among the network soap operas in which she played featured character roles were "The Guiding Light" and "The Edge of Night."

Although
she never wed, Miss Wilson, a 5-foot-5 brunette, was once described as
cultivating a screen image of the "soft, marrying kind of woman."

Selected
in 1924 by Paramount to represent the motion-picture industry at the
British Empire Exposition, studio officials termed her "a typical
example of the American girl in character, culture and beauty."

She
was also typical, for that era anyway, in fudging on her age. While
various studio publicity accounts have listed her year of birth as
anywhere from 1896 to 1902, her actual birthday was June 26, 1894,
according to officials at the Riverside Hospital for Skilled Care in
Reno, where Miss Wilson died March 3.

Born in Pittsburgh to an
English father and a Bostonian mother, Miss Wilson attended grammar and
high school in Birmingham, Ala., where her family moved when she was a
toddler.

Earning a teaching certificate at Alabama Normal
College, Miss Wilson briefly taught in rural schools before winning the
beauty contest and coming west to enter a contest to publicize the
newly founded Universal City.

Miss Wilson parlayed her role in
"The Dumb Girl of Portici" into a contract with Paramount and the role
of leading lady in a series of J. Warren Kerrigan films, including "The
Covered Wagon." Her other film credits included roles in Valentino's
"Monsieur Beaucaire," "Ruggles of Red Gap," "The Vanishing American,"
and her personal favorite, the 1921 "Miss Lulu Bett."

Miss
Wilson made her stage debut in Los Angeles in 1928 and moved to New
York a decade later, appearing on the Broadway stage in such plays as
"Farewell Summer," "Chicken Every Sunday," and, in the late 1960s, "I
Never Sang for My Father."

After retiring, Miss Wilson returned
to North Hollywood, where she shared a home with a sister. She later
moved near her niece, Sheila Fitzmaurice Shay, in Reno, according to
nephew George C. Lewis.

Miss Wilson was buried at Forest Lawn
Memorial-Park, Glendale, on Monday after a memorial service at the
Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.

Just
a
reminder on how this works: I post the mystery photo on Monday and
reveal the answer on Friday … or on Saturday if I have a hard time
picking only five pictures — sometimes it's difficult to choose. To
keep the mystery photo from getting
lost in the other entries, I move it from Monday to Tuesday to
Wednesday, etc., adding a photo every day.

I have to approve
all comments, so if your guess is posted immediately, that means you're
wrong. (And if a wrong guess has already been submitted by someone
else, there's no point in submitting it again.) If you're right, you
will have to wait until Friday. There's no need to submit your guess
five times. Once is enough. The only prize is bragging rights. 

The answer to last week's mystery star: Toni Gerry!

Update: Lois Wilson and Holmes Herbert in "Another Scandal," Sept. 18, 1924.

Here's another photo of our mystery guest … with a mystery companion. Please congratulate Donna Hill, Dewey Webb, Anne Papineau, Eve Golden, Mike Hawks, Carmen, Mary Mallory, Cinnamon Carter, Dru Duniway and Sandy Reed for identifying her!