Eleanor Boardman

Charming, gentle-featured leading actress of the silent screen. A former model and 'Kodak Girl', Boardman typically played well-bred flappers or troubled heroines in "women's pictures," though she was able to surpass star glamour and add a note of sympathetic ordinariness to her screen roles. Joining MGM upon its consolidation in 1924, Boardman was one of the new studio's first stars, and one of its busiest, starring in 11 films during her first two years with the studio.

A number of her films, including "Wine of Youth" (1924), the pleasing comedy "Proud Flesh" (1925) and the lavish swashbuckler "Bardelys the Magnificent" (1926), costarring John Gilbert, were directed by King Vidor, whose second wife she would become in 1926. Vidor also helmed Boardman's best-remembered film, "The Crowd" (1928), a remarkable study of an urban Everyman. While critics who generally pictured her in roles on a higher social plane thought her miscast in "The Crowd," Boardman achieved a performance of great subtlety that ranks among the finest in the history of silent screen acting. Unfortunately, her career in sound films, hurt by a series of either poor or unpopular films, quickly waned and she retired to marry director Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast.