Marie Doro

Who was Marie Doro?

Marie Doro was an American stage and film actress of the early silent film era.

She was born to Virginia Weaver and Richard Henry Stewart. She was a direct descendant of Patrick Henry. She was first noticed as a chorus-girl by impresario Charles Frohman, who took her to Broadway, where she also worked for William Gillette of Sherlock Holmes fame, her early career being largely moulded by these two much-older mentors. Although generally typecast in lightweight feminine roles, she was in fact notably intelligent, cultivated and witty.

On Frohman's death in the Lusitania in 1915, she moved into films, initially under contract to Adolph Zukor, though most of her early movies are lost. After making a few films in Europe, she returned to America, increasingly drawn to the spiritual life, and ended as a recluse, actively avoiding friends and acquaintances.

In the early 1950s author Daniel Blum interviewed and included her in his book Great Stars of the American Stage, an homage to many theatre performers, some dead, some still living at the time like Doro. Blum wrote a quick and mostly accurate rundown of her life and career and included several portraits from her Broadway years.