{{short description|American actress}} {{Infobox person | name = Violet Bonita Radcliffe | image = Violet Radcliffe as al Talib.jpg | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth date|1904|08|20}} | birth_place = Niagara Falls, New York, United States | death_date = {{death date and age|1965|05|04|1904|08|20}} | death_place = New York, United States | occupation = Child actress | years_active = 1913–1918 | relatives = }}
'''Violet Radcliffe''' (20 August 1904, Niagara Falls - 4 May 1965, Los Angeles) was a child actress active during Hollywood's silent era. She appeared in several dozen films for Fine Arts, Fox, and Pathe, and was frequently cast as a villain or as a little boy.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/355222395/?terms=%22violet+radcliffe%22+actress|title=Violet Radcliffe|date=29 Dec 1917|website=The Chicago Tribune|language=en|access-date=2019-08-17}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|date=1919|title=Child Parts|url=https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/2160/32189_1220702381_0020-00165?pid=1884&backurl=https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv%3D1%26dbid%3D2160%26h%3D1884%26tid%3D163154042%26pid%3D202122896877%26usePUB%3Dtrue%26_phsrc%3Dilm28652%26_phstart%3DsuccessSource&treeid=163154042&personid=202122896877&hintid=&usePUB=true&_phsrc=ilm28652&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&_ga=2.118264206.605399925.1565932251-603179934.1542181463|journal=Motion Picture Studios Directory}}</ref> One of her best-known roles was as Dirty Face Dan in a number of serials.
== Biography == According to several US censuses, Violet Bonita Radcliffe was born August 20, 1904, in Niagara Falls, New York, to Harry Belmont Radcliffe and Ida F. Davenport.<ref name="familysearch">{{Cite web |title=Violet Bonita Radcliffe |url=https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LBS5-N11 |access-date=2022-12-02 |website=www.familysearch.org}}</ref><ref name="nitrateville" /> However, during her career she was said to be four years younger, resulting in an assumption she was born in 1908.<ref name="Horak" /> She began performing when she was only two months old, and she was quite young when she appeared in her first film, 1913's ''Quo Vadis''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/99839256/?terms=%22violet+radcliffe%22|title=Company of Children|date=22 May 1915|website=The Ogden Standard|language=en|access-date=2019-08-17}}</ref>
She played boys role in at least eighteen films between 1915 and 1917.<ref name="Horak"/> She specialized in comedies and fairy tales in which all the actors were supposedly under the age of ten.<ref name="Horak"/> She played a series of lovable villains for Majestic, including the character Dan in ''The Straw Man'', ''Bilie's Goat'', ''The Little Cupids'' and ''The Little Life Guard'' (1915).<ref name="Horak"/> She then went to Fox role of Al-Talib in ''Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp'' (1917) and Long John Silver in ''Treasure Island'' (1918).<ref name="Horak"/>
She played Prince Rudolpho in ''Jack and the Beanstalk'' along Francis Carpenter, Virginia Lee Corbin and Carmen De Rue.{{sfn|Lussier|2018|p=38}} She became regular with Carmen De Rue in the Fox Kiddie Features.{{sfn|Lussier|2018|p=37}}
She left the movies in 1918, aged supposedly ten.<ref name="Horak">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3QRYCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA35 |title=Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934 |last=Horak |first=Laura |date=26 February 2016 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=9780813574844 |page=35}}</ref> Little was known of what became of her after her career in Hollywood ended, and she was assumed to have died in 1926, aged supposedly 18.<ref name="nitrateville" />
In 1922, she married Samuel Maddox, and in 1927, Archie Lee Sims, both in Los Angeles; in 1935, Eugene Woodford, in Vancouver, Washington;<ref name="nitrateville" /><ref name="familysearch" /> and in 1940, George O. Beiriger, in Las Vegas, Nevada.<ref>{{cite web |title=Nevada County Marriages, 1862-1993 |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QL4G-PTRK |website=FamilySearch |access-date=11 September 2025}}</ref> In 1950 she was an inmate in Stockton State Hospital, a mental institution.<ref>{{cite web |title=United States, Census, 1950 |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6XG8-78DP |website=FamilySearch |access-date=11 September 2025}}</ref> She died May 4, 1965, in Los Angeles, named Violet Bonita Beiringer.<ref name="nitrateville">{{Cite web|url=https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?t=30013|title=Silent Child Actress Violet Radcliffe Real Death Date Found|date=8 April 2010|website=NitrateVille|access-date=2020-09-28}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0705379/|title=Violet Ratcliffe|website=IMDb|access-date=2020-09-28}}</ref>
== Selected filmography == *''Treasure Island'' (1918) *''The Babes in the Woods'' (1917) *''Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp'' (1917) *''Jack and the Beanstalk'' (1917) *''Cheerful Givers'' (1917) *''Everybody's Doing It'' (1916) *''A Sister of Six'' (1916) *''Gretchen the Greenhorn'' (1916) *''The Little School Ma'am'' (1916) *''Going Straight'' (1916) *''Let Katie Do It'' (1916) *''Quo Vadis?'' (1913)
== References == {{reflist}}
==Bibliography== * {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vOxzDwAAQBAJ&q=Violet+Radcliffe&pg=PA37 |title="Bare Knees" Flapper: The Life and Films of Virginia Lee Corbin |first=Tim |last=Lussier |publisher=McFarland Publishing |date=11 October 2018 |pages=218 |isbn=9781476675688 }}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Radcliffe, Violet}} Category:American child actresses Category:Actresses from New York (state) Category:1904 births Category:1965 deaths Category:20th-century American women