A Word on Lucille Ward

Notes on stage and screen actress Lucille Ward (1880-1952).

A native of Dayton, Ohio the first years of the 20th century saw Ward touring with vaudeville and stock companies, and appearing in musical comedies. Big-boned and heavily set, even as a young woman Ward was cast in matronly roles, sometimes playing characters twice and three times her age. Success in a vaudeville sketch called “Miss 318” resulted in Lew Fields hiring Ward to appear in a vaud act supporting Marie Dressler in a scene from Tillie’s Nightmare. Which in turn got her hired to tour as the star in a 1912 road version of the play, the first actress to be entrusted with Dressler’s signature role.

In 1914 and 1915 she appeared in silent comedies for Universal and Mack Sennett, playing cooks, aunts, dowagers and such like, working with the likes of Ford Sterling, Henry Lehrman, Charles Murray, Edgar Kennedy, et al. This led to a three period with the American Film Manufacturing Company where she starred in more genteel comedies. Throughout the late teens and ’20s Ward was a supporting player in features including such pictures as How Could You, Jean? (1918) with Mary Pickford, Traveling Salesman (1921, one of Fatty Arbuckle’s last as a star), The Girl in the Limousine (1924) with Larry Semon, His Majesty Bunker Bean (1925) with Matt Moore, A Woman of the World (1925) with Pola Negri and Chester Conklin, and several with Reginald Denny.

When sound came in, Ward and Lucien Littlefield were tried in a series of shorts based on JP McEvoy’s Potter comedies (as WC Fields had). But mostly she was a bit player in features. These included The Public Enemy, The Maltese Falcon, Night Nurse, Blonde Crazy, Side Show, and Sob Sister (just some of the ones from 1931); Frisco Jenny (1932), State Fair (1933), Servants Entrance (1934), The Little Colonel (1935), After the Thin Man (1936), Christmas in July (1940), and Henry Aldrich’s Little Secret (1944), among many others. All told, Ward appeared in over 150 films.

For more on the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on silent comedy please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.