FEEL IT.STREAM
Florence La Badie

Florence La Badie

Acting

Biography

Florence La Badie (April 27, 1888 – October 13, 1917) was an American actress in the early days of the silent film era. Though little known today, she was a major star between 1911 and 1917. Her career was at its height when she died at age 29 from injuries sustained in an automobile accident. In 1911, her career took a leap when she was hired by Edwin Thanhouser of the Thanhouser Film Corporation in New Rochelle, New York. With her sophistication and beauty, Florence La Badie soon became Thanhouser's most prominent actress, appearing in dozens of films over the next two years. Her most remembered films of that period were The Tempest (1911), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912), a film adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson story, and the first film of Shakespeare's Cymbeline (1914). Her most well-known work was in the 1914 - 1915 serial, The Million Dollar Mystery. Athletic and daring, in these films she performed all her own stunts. In 1915, she was featured in the magazine Reel Life, which described her as "the Beautiful and talented Florence La Badie, of the Thanhouser Studios, conceded one of the foremost of American screen players". Over a course of six years La Badie's career had taken her to top-billing as a film actress.

Known For

Tannhäuser
5.0

Dramatic three-reel film based on Wagner's opera of chivalry and spiritual struggle. Wandering minstrel Tannhauser wins the heart of Elizabeth, niece of the powerful Landgrave. Later, under the spell of Venus and her nymphs, Tannhauser passes into Venusberg, a netherworld of earthly pleasures. Returning to the Landgrave's court, he praises Venus in song and sparks the righteous anger of all present. His own prayers and those of Elizabeth free him from enchantment and he takes up the habit of a monk, devoting himself to God. He sets off to seek absolution in Rome while Elizabeth waits at court, ever weakening in his absence.

Tannhäuser

1913
Madame Rex
N/A

Located in the south of France, a woman, who, after the death of her husband, is forced to assume the management of the Gambling Casino, of which he was proprietor. She places her daughter in a convent and keeps her in ignorance of her occupation. Twelve years later the mother becomes engaged to a young nobleman. The young man, however, by accident, meets the daughter, now seventeen years old, and falls in love with her, not knowing her identity. The mother realizing the truth of the situation, sacrifices her own love for the young man for her daughter's happiness.

Madame Rex

1911
Getting Even
3.8

All the young men in the mining camp flirt with Lucy. Bud, the youngest of them, doesn't stand a chance. At a dance, Bud dresses as a woman and all the men flirt with him and abandon Lucy. When his disguise is revealed, the other men are too embarrassed to approach Lucy, and Bud dances the rest of the night with her.

Getting Even

1909
David Copperfield
8.0

Thanhouser Company three-reel silent film based on Charles Dickens’s story of an English lad's tribulation-filled journey to adulthood, Thanhouser released the three films over the course of three weeks beginning on October 17, 1911, one 1,000 foot reel per week.

David Copperfield

1911
Enoch Arden
6.0

Moving Picture World described the film: "There is a small need to describe this subject as the poem of Lord Tennyson is so well known, so suffice it to say that this Biograph subject is an unusually faithful portrayal of that beautiful romance of Enoch Arden, Annie Lee and Philip Ray, taken in scenes of rare beauty". This is the combined feature version of Enoch Arden Parts I and II.

Enoch Arden

1911
The Primal Call
4.0

A young woman who is engaged to a millionaire she doesn't love meets and falls in love with a rough sailor.

The Primal Call

1911
Cymbeline
3.5

Southern California locations vividly suggest both elemental pre-Roman Britain and classical Rome. An energetic cinematic pacing and intimacy show rapidly improving narrative technique and realism well beyond the limitations of the stage. Especially cinematic are the bedchamber scene in the first reel, with its intimate cinematography and acting and special lighting effect, and the battle scene of the second reel, considered very effective in its day.

Cymbeline

1913
The Return of Draw Egan
5.2

A small town marshal’s secret past as an outlaw comes back to haunt him when an old associate shows up and threatens to expose his former dark deeds.

The Return of Draw Egan

1916
Crossed Wires
5.0

An innocent man is accused of murdering his aunt.

Crossed Wires

1915
A Strange Meeting
4.3

Mary Rollins is torn between selfish depravity and righteous living. After she's coerced into helping with the burglary of her minister's apartment, she comes face to face with her misdeeds.

A Strange Meeting

1909
East Lynne
10.0

Based on the novel of the same name by Mrs. Henry Wood (Ellen Wood).

East Lynne

1912
Fighting Blood
6.3

After the Civil War, an ex-soldier and his family settle in the Dakota Territory. The son quarrels with the father and leaves home. Riding in the hills, he spots a band of Indians attacking a neighboring homestead, and he races back to warn his family as the Indians chase him.

Fighting Blood

1911
Divorce and the Daughter
3.0

A married man suddenly inherits a fortune and finally has enough money to live his dream of becoming an artist. He moves his wife and daughter to a big expensive house and starts living the life of a "bohemian" artist. When he begins an affair with another woman, his wife leaves him and his daughter Alicia breaks off her engagement to a wealthy doctor and becomes involved in the "free love" movement espoused by one Herbert Rawlins. Rawlins, however, has his own plans for Alicia, and they don't involve "sharing" her with anyone else. Complications ensue.

Divorce and the Daughter

1916
Through the Breakers
4.2

A society couple, neglect their young daughter in favor of their social life. When the girl becomes seriously ill, the father realizes the errors of his ways and stays home with her, demanding his wife do likewise. She sneaks out to a dance and the child takes a turn for the worse. By the time she returns home the child is dead. After her husband leaves her, the mother realizes her selfishness and begs forgiveness at her daughter's grave.

Through the Breakers

1909
No image
N/A

Before Tom departs for the city, he becomes engaged to Kate. She gives him half of her broken pendant cross, with the agreement that either can end the engagement by sending his or her half to the other. In a city boarding house, Tom is vamped by a flirtatious manicurist who learns of the agreement and sends Tom half a cross, pretending it is from Kate. Tom realizes he has been tricked and returns to the country and his fiancée.

The Broken Cross

1911
The Salvation Army Lass
4.0

A girl from the New York slums falls in with crooks. After her love is arrested following a barfight turned deadly, her life seems directionless-- that is, until she's saved from the streets by a band of Salvationists. She enrolls, and soon afterward encounters her former love in the same bar. Her faith is real, and strong, and her former love doesn't like this.

The Salvation Army Lass

1909
The Marble Heart
6.5

Outside the door of the home of a sculptor and his mother, fell a poor, friendless young girl. They took the girl in and cared for her, and as time went on the mother began to regard her as her daughter. The son regarded the affectionate advances of the girl with only brotherly love. But there came a time when the misgivings of the son changed, for he began to pay scant attentions to a young beauty he met at a reception and who was characterized as a woman with a heart "cold as marble." This piqued the beauty, who was accustomed to abject adulation. She determined to bring him to her feet and in this she succeeded. She offered to pose for him, and, spurred on by such a splendid model and her praises, he produced a figure which was acclaimed by all the critics as a masterpiece.

The Marble Heart

1913
Cinderella
6.4

Elaborately produced version of the well known George O. Nichols fairy tale interrupted by just a few summarizing intertitles, with Florence LaBadie and Harry Benham.

Cinderella

1911
Undine
N/A

In the days long ago when knights were brave and venturesome, enchanted forests grew and mythical creatures lived among us.

Undine

1912
Bobby the Coward
N/A

Bobby's girlfriend thinks he's a coward when he refuses to fight a gang of toughs after they insult him. But when the gang breaks into his apartment, he fights them off, and wins his girlfriend's respect again.

Bobby the Coward

1911