Mary Alden

Mary Maguire Alden (June 18, 1883 – July 2, 1946) was an American actress known for her work in both film and theater. She stands out as one of the pioneering Broadway performers who transitioned to Hollywood.

Alden was born in New York City and began her professional journey on the stages of Broadway, where she spent five years honing her craft. Her move to Hollywood marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with the Biograph Company and Pathé Exchange. One of her most notable performances came in D.W. Griffith's controversial film, Birth of a Nation (1915), where she portrayed a mixed-race girl in love with a politician from the North. The following year, she appeared in Griffith's ambitious film, Intolerance, alongside actresses Mae Marsh, Miriam Cooper, and Vera Lewis. In 1917, after her role in Less Than The Dust with Mary Pickford, Alden took a brief hiatus from the screen to act on stage.

Alden garnered critical acclaim for her performances in The Old Nest (1921), where she played a mother, and in The Man With Two Mothers (1922), produced by Sam Goldwyn, where she portrayed an elderly woman. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, she starred in numerous films, including The Plastic Age (1925), The Joy Girl (1927), Ladies of the Mob (1928), and Port of Dreams (1929). Her final credited roles were in the films Hell's House, Rasputin and the Empress, and Strange Interlude, all released in 1932.

Mary Alden passed away in 1946 at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, where she had lived for the last four years of her life. She was 63 years old at the time of her death.