Virginia Valli

Short Biography

v*rginia got her start with a Milwaukee stock company and also did some film work with Essanay Studios in 1917 Chicago. Back in the theater, it would be 3 more years before she was brought out to Hollywood to act as leading lady to Bert Lytell. v*rginia would continue to appear in films throughout the decade and she would be an established star at Universal by the mid 20`s. The bulk of her films would be between 1924 and 1927. While she had no trouble adjusting to sound in The Isle of Lost Ships (1929), which she made at First National, her big salary and declining appeal both conspired to end her film career. Unable to find a suitable studio, she would make her last film The Last Zeppelin (1930) at Tiffany Studios. In 1931, she married Charles Farrell and retired from the screen to live in Beverly Hills before moving to Palm Springs.v*rginia Valli (June 10, 1898 – September 24, 1968) was an American stage and film actress whose motion picture career started in the silent film era and lasted until the beginning of the sound film era of the 1930s.Born v*rginia McSweeney in Chicago, Illinois, she got her acting start in Milwaukee with a stock company. She also did some film work with Essanay Studios in her hometown of Chicago, starting in 1916.Valli continued to appear in films throughout the 1920s. She was an established star at the Universal studio by the mid-1920s. In 1924 she was the female lead in King Vidor's southern gothic Wild Oranges, a film now being seen after several decades of film vault obscurity. She also appeared in the romantic comedy, Every Woman's Life, about "the man she could have married, the man she should have married and the man she DID marry." She made the bulk of her films between 1924 and 1927 including Alfred Hitchc*ck's debut feature, The Pleasure Garden, Paid To Love (1927), with William Powell, and Evening Clothes (1927), which featured Adolphe Menjou. In 1925 Valli performed in The Man Who Found Himself with Thomas Meighan. The production was made at a Long Island, New York studio.Her first sound picture was The Isle of Lost Ships in 1929, but her film career would not last much longer due to declining fame. Unable to find a suitable studio, she quit films after making the quickie Night Life in Reno, in 1931.Valli was first married to George Lamson and the two shared a small bungalow in Hollywood, in close proximity to the Hollywood Hotel.In 1931, she married her second husband, actor Charles Farrell, to whom she remained married until her death. They moved to Palm Springs, where she was a social fixture for many years.She suffered a stroke in 1966, and died two years later, aged 70, in Palm Springs, California. She was buried in the Welwood Murray Cemetery of that city. She had no children.