Betty Ross Clarke

Betty Ross Clarke was born May Clarke, on May 1, 1892, in Langdon, North Dakota. As a child, she moved with her family to Minneapolis, where she attended local schools and the Stanley Hall School. She later studied dancing in New York City and spent a year on the vaudeville circuit. Her initial ambition was to become a ballet dancer, but her success on stage and screen led her to give up that idea.

Clarke appeared in more than 30 films between 1920 and 1940, working in both silent and sound films. She took on credited and uncredited roles, often as a supporting or character actress. In 1921, she married Arthur Collins, a Los Angeles banker and former lieutenant in the British Royal Flying Corps. They moved to England in 1923, where she became a citizen, and then to Australia in 1926, where she performed in several plays. The couple returned to the United States in 1929, attracted by the talkies.

In 1930, she was honored as an "ardent feminist" at a luncheon of the San Francisco Center of the League of Women Voters for her support of women's voting rights. At that time, she could not vote in the U.S. because she lacked citizenship papers. She became a naturalized citizen on December 28, 1934, after her divorce from Collins. Betty Ross Clarke died in Los Angeles on January 24, 1970. She was 77. She is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.