Grace Cunard

Grace Cunard
Born Harriet Mildred Jeffries
April 8, 1893
Columbus, Ohio, U.S.
Died January 19, 1967(1967-01-19) (aged 73)
Woodland Hills, California, U.S.
Occupation Actress, screenwriter, director
Years active 1910–1946
Spouse(s) Joe Moore (19??-19??; divorced)
Jack Shannon (1925–1967; her death)

Grace Cunard (April 8, 1893 – January 19, 1967) was an American actress, screenwriter and film director. Her sister was actress Mina Cunard.

Career

Hell's Crater (1918)
The Gun Runners (1920)

Born Harriet Mildred Jeffries in Columbus, Ohio, by her late teens she was already acting on live theatre and in silent films using the stage name, Grace Cunard. Although not clearly documented, it appears Cunard made her motion picture debut in 1910 in an uncredited role in a D.W. Griffith production for Biograph Studios.

In 1911, she had a significant secondary role in the Thomas H. Ince western, Custer's Last Fight. After making a number of westerns, she continued to work with actor-director Francis Ford at Universal Studios in a variety of dramas, and came to considerable fame starring in serials. She starred in Universal Pictures' first serial, Lucille Love, Girl of Mystery (1914), and quickly became Universal's serial queen. The following year Cunard did a 20-episode adventure/mystery called The Broken Coin, and in 1916, the very successful The Adventures of Peg o' the Ring.

In an era when the fledgling film industry saw actors and other film studio personnel frequently pitch in to do multiple tasks, Cunard was no exception, and wrote close to one hundred screenplays. As well, between 1914 and 1921, she directed 11 films and produced two others. With age, her career shifted to leads in B-movies and secondary roles or bit parts in others. Nonetheless, she worked regularly until the mid-1940s, mostly at her home studio, Universal.

Two of her more visible roles are in the 1942 serial Gang Busters (a small role, but important enough to serial audiences for her name to appear prominently in the ads and posters) and the 1945 Gloria Jean-Kirby Grant musical Easy to Look At (in which she plays a Broadway seamstress). When Universal changed hands in 1946 and discontinued its program of serials and low-budget features, Cunard retired, at the age of 53.

Personal life

Cunard was married twice. The first time was to actor Joe Moore; they ended in divorce in 1925. She later married film stuntman Jack Tyler Shannon, with whom she remained for the rest of her life. Both unions were childless.

Death

Grace Cunard Shannon died of cancer, aged 73, in 1967 in Woodland Hills, California. Her husband died in December 1968; the couple is interred jointly in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery, Chatsworth, California.

Selected filmography

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