Alma Bennett

American actress Alma Bennett began her life as Alma Long on April 9, 1904, in Seattle, Washington. After her parents divorced, her father died when she was fourteen, and her mother's remarriage moved the family to San Francisco. She made her film debut in the 1919 short His Friend's Trip, then appeared in dozens of silent films such as Her Boyfriend, Lilies Of The Field, A Fool And His Money, and The Thrill Hunter. Often cast as a vamp, she worked with Wallace Beery in The Lost World and with Harry Langdon in The Jolly Jilter. In 1924 she married Frederick Bennett, a radio operator, but left him after ten months due to abuse. A five-year contract with Famous Players followed, and in 1929 she married her manager, Harry Spingler.

Like many silent screen actresses, Alma Bennett struggled with the transition to talkies. Her final film was the 1931 comedy The Great Pie Mystery. After that, she spent the rest of her life out of the spotlight, working as an assembler at an electronics plant during the 1940s. She developed a serious drinking problem as she aged, and her husband Harry died in 1953. The following year she married actor Blackie Whiteford. On September 16, 1958, she died from lobar pneumonia and severe fatty degeneration of the liver at age fifty-four. She was cremated and buried at the Chapel of the Pines crematory in Los Angeles. Her life spanned the silent era's peak and its end, and her career left a mark on early Hollywood cinema.