Corliss Palmer

Moving to Hollywood, she made her film debut in the 1922 short From Farm to Farm. Her affair with Eugene V. Brewster, the married publisher of Motion Picture Magazine, helped her career, as he promoted her in his publication and secured endorsements for her. Yet despite the publicity, she did not land another role until 1926, when she appeared in Her Second Chance with Anna Q. Nilsson. When Brewster filed for divorce, his wife sued Corliss for alienation of affection. Corliss married Eugene in December 1926, becoming his third wife, and they lived in a palatial California estate. The dazzling redhead then took supporting roles in A Man's Past, The Noose, and Into the Night, but her promising career soon stalled.

Her final film was the 1931 comedy Honeymoon Lane, released as her husband's lavish spending drove him into bankruptcy. Corliss left him and began an affair with married film writer Albert J. Cohen, whose wife also sued for alienation of affection in 1932. By then, Corliss was struggling with a serious drinking problem. She made headlines in 1933 when she caused a scene at a hotel and was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown. She later took low-paying jobs, including demonstrating makeup at a cosmetics counter, and remarked, "At heart I'm really a domestic sort of girl. I wasn't made for all this stuff I've been through." In 1939 she married William Taylor, a former rodeo performer, but her alcoholism worsened and her mental health deteriorated. She entered a psychiatric hospital in 1950, diagnosed with "alcoholic psychosis," and died on August 27, 1952, at the age of fifty-three. Corliss was buried in an unmarked grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica, California, until her fans later paid for a headstone. Her story remains a cautionary tale of early Hollywood fame and its costs.