Belle Bennett

Belle Bennett was a stage and screen actress who started her professional career in vaudeville. She was born in Milaca, Minnesota.

Bennett appeared in circus performances during her childhood. Her father was Billie Bennett, owner of a circus. He trained her to be a trapeze performer after she spent some years in the Sacred Heart Convent in Minneapolis, Minnesota. By age thirteen she was appearing in public. Performances with stock companies led Bennett to Broadway. There she appeared in theatrical productions staged by David Belasco.

Bennett was cast in numerous minor Hollywood motion pictures like the western film A Ticket to Red Horse Gulch. Then Samuel Goldwyn selected her from among seventy-three actresses for the leading role in Stella Dallas. The film has been ranked as one of the finest movies of all time. While filming the movie her son, sixteen-year-old William Howard Macy, died. Macy had posed as Bennett’s brother for some time because of her fear that her employers might find out her true age. She was actually thirty-four rather than twenty-four, which she had claimed to be.

After playing the mother role in Stella Dallas Bennett was typecast for the remainder of her film career. She later appeared in Mother Machree, The Battle of the Sexes, The Iron Mask, Courage, Recaptured Love and The Big Shot .