Bessie Love

Acting

Bessie Love

Born 1898-09-09 · Midland, Texas, USA

Bessie Love (born Juanita Horton, September 10, 1898 - April 26, 1986) became one of the most recognizable faces of early American cinema. After her family moved to Los Angeles, she was sent to Biograph Studios, where legendary director D.W. Griffith noticed her talent and cast her in several films, including Intolerance (1916). During the silent era, she gained popularity for her lively, wholesome screen presence and worked with major stars such as Douglas Fairbanks. Her career soared in the 1920s, and she was named a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1922, marking her as one of Hollywood’s most promising young actresses. Love made a successful transition to sound films—something many silent stars struggled with. Her performance as Hank Mahoney in The Broadway Melody (1929) earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, cementing her place in film history. In the 1930s, she moved to the United Kingdom, where she continued acting in film, theatre, radio, and later television. Her career ultimately spanned from 1915 to 1983, making her one of the longest‑working performers of her generation. She died on April 26, 1986, in London at age 87.

Acting credits

On Her Majesty's Secret Service poster
6.6

With the help of Marc-Ange Draco, head of the Unione Corse crime syndicate, and Draco's troubled daughter Tracy, James Bond tracks his archnemesis, Ernst Stravro Blofeld, to a mountaintop retreat in the Swiss Alps, where he is training an army of beautiful, lethal women.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

1969

The Hunger poster
6.7

Five-thousand-year-old vampire Miriam promises her lovers the gift of eternal life. When John, her cellist companion for centuries, discovers that he has suddenly begun growing old, he attempts to seek out the help of Dr. Sarah Roberts, a researcher on the mechanisms of aging.

The Hunger

1983

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages poster
7.1

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

1916

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone poster
6.9

An aging actress travels to Rome with her husband; after he suddenly dies during the flight, she begins a passionate affair with a young gigolo.

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone

1961

Reds poster
6.9

An account of the revolutionary years of the legendary American journalist John Reed, who shared his adventurous professional life with his radical commitment to the socialist revolution in Russia, his dream of spreading its principles among the members of the American working class, and his troubled romantic relationship with the writer Louise Bryant.

Reds

1981

Lady Chatterley's Lover poster
5.4

After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.

Lady Chatterley's Lover

1981

The Ritz poster
6.0

To escape from a mobster, businessman Gaetano Proclo orders a cab driver to take him to a place where he can't be found. Unfortunately for Gaetano, the place turns out to be a gay bathhouse.

The Ritz

1976

The Barefoot Contessa poster
6.7

A washed-up filmmaker gets a second chance at stardom when he discovers stunning peasant Maria Vargas dancing in a Madrid nightclub. Goaded by his producer, the director convinces Maria to screen test for, and then star in, his next big picture. But as the producer's possessive nature and the realities of stardom weigh on Maria, she seeks a genuine lover with whom she can escape.

The Barefoot Contessa

1954

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché poster
7.2

The epic life story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), a French screenwriter, director and producer, true pioneer of cinema, the first person who made a narrative fiction film; author of hundreds of movies, but banished from history books. Ignored and forgotten. At last remembered.

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché

2018

Sunday Bloody Sunday poster
6.5

Recently divorced career woman Alex Greville begins a romantic relationship with glamorous mod artist Bob Elkin, fully aware that he's also intimately involved with middle-aged doctor Daniel Hirsh. For both Alex and Daniel, the younger man represents a break with their repressive pasts, and though both know that Bob is seeing both of them, neither is willing to let go of the youth and vitality he brings to their otherwise stable lives.

Sunday Bloody Sunday

1971

The Lost World poster
6.7

The first film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic novel about a land where prehistoric creatures still roam.

The Lost World

1925

Children of the Damned poster
6.1

Six children are found spread through out the world that not only have enormous intelligence, but identical intelligence and have a strange bond to each other.

Children of the Damned

1964

The Great Adventure poster
NR

Ragna "Rags" Jansen has found local success and acclaim in her small town as an actress, but dreams of stardom on Broadway.

The Great Adventure

1918

Vampyres poster
6.0

A duo of bisexual female vampires prey on passing motorists, whom they seduce and murder in the English countryside.

Vampyres

1974

Ragtime poster
7.0

A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.

Ragtime

1981

Gentle Julia poster
9.0

Gentle Julia is a 1923 American silent romantic drama film based on the popular novel Gentle Julia by Booth Tarkington. Directed by Rowland V. Lee, the film starred Bessie Love.

Gentle Julia

1923

No Highway in the Sky poster
7.0

James Stewart plays aeronautical engineer Theodore Honey, the quintessential absent-minded professor: eccentric, forgetful, but brilliant. His studies show that the aircraft being manufactured by his employer has a subtle but deadly design flaw that manifests itself only after the aircraft has flown a certain number of hours. En route to a crash site to prove his theory, Honey discovers that he is aboard a plane rapidly approaching his predicted deadline.

No Highway in the Sky

1951

The Broadway Melody poster
5.1

The vaudeville act of Harriet and Queenie Mahoney comes to Broadway, where their friend Eddie Kerns needs them for his number in one of Francis Zanfield's shows. When Eddie meets Queenie, he soon falls in love with her—but she is already being courted by Jock Warriner, a member of New York high society. Queenie eventually recognizes that, to Jock, she is nothing more than a toy, and that Eddie is in love with her.

The Broadway Melody

1929

St. Elmo poster
7.0

St. Elmo is a man who killed his romantic rival in a brawl. Traveling the world as a confirmed misogynist, St. Elmo returns to home and hearth only to fall in love with the daughter of the local blacksmith. The film is based on the 1867 novel of the same name written by Augusta Jane Evans. Today, St. Elmo is a lost film.

St. Elmo

1923

Soul-Fire poster
10.0

Eric Fane (Richard Barthelmess) is a composer unwilling to compromise his dream for a steady job back home in the United States. After his studies in Italy, he moves to Paris, where he is forced to write popular songs for money when he stops receiving support from his father. He tires of selling out and, after an encounter with the mob, starts to travel. He begins a madcap journey from Paris to Port Said, Egypt, and to the South Seas, where he believes he has found love with Teita (Bessie Love).

Soul-Fire

1925

The Hollywood Revue of 1929 poster
5.7

An all-star revue featuring MGM contract players.

The Hollywood Revue of 1929

1929

Isadora poster
6.2

A biography of the dancer Isadora Duncan, the 1920s dancer who forever changed people's ideas of ballet. Her nude, semi-nude, and pro-Soviet dance projects as well as her attitudes on free love, debt, dress, and lifestyle shocked the public of her time.

Isadora

1968

Catlow poster
5.1

An outlaw tries to avoid interference as he journeys to Mexico to pull off a $2,000,000 gold robbery.

Catlow

1971

No artwork available
NR

Documentary about the Welsh silent movie actor.

Gareth Hughes

2000

Behind the camera