Blonde and beautiful Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. Photoplay magazine named her 'the ideal American girl' in 1919. She became one of the first super stars of the American film industry and played in about 200 silent films, including one Swedish production. Her glittering career came to a tragic abrupt end.
British postcard in the "Pictures" Portrait Gallery, no. 109, London.
Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp. Photo: Wolfenstein.
British Real Photograph postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 175a. Sent by mail in 1932.
Anna Quirentia Nilsson (popular known as Anna Q) was born in 1888, in Ystad, Sweden, as the daughter of police constable Per Nilsson. Her middle name, 'Quirentia', is derived from her date of birth, 30 March, Saint Quirinius' Day. She moved with her family to Hasslarp outside Helsingborg when she was eight years old.
In her teens, she dreamed of 'finding happiness' in America. A neighbour, just returned from a trip to the United States came by the Nilsson home for a visit. She wore a hat made of ostrich plumes. "I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life as that hat," recalled Anna later: "and I decided that America was the place for me." For five years she worked at the sugar fields at Hasslarp and as a clerk in Halmstad to collect money for the ticket.
In 1905, she took the boat to New York where she received work as a nanny ans started to learn English. One day she was discovered on a thriving avenue by the famous portrait painter James Carroll Beckwith. Anna leaped at the opportunity. She became New York's highest paid model, working for well-known fashion photographers and fine artists, such as Penrhyn Stanlaws. In 1907 she was named 'America's most beautiful woman' and she became a model for the 1910s beauty ideal, The Gibson Girl Look.
In 1911, Nilsson was offered the title role in the Kalem film Molly Pitcher (Sidney Olcott, 1911), which became the start of her acting career. Her screen husband in that film was Guy Coombs. They played together at Kalem for years, and she would eventually marry him, though the marriage didn't last long. She stayed at the Kalem studio until 1915, acting in some 70 shorts. She ranked second behind Kalem's top star, Alice Joyce.
She branched out to other production companies, such as Fox, Erbograph, Metro Pictures, Famous Players, etc., alternating star roles with supporting parts. Feature films of special note in her post-Kalem years are the gangster film Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915) starring Rockliffe Fellowes, Her Surrender (Ivan Abramson, 1916), the first feature in which she was the star of the film, and Seven Keys to Baldpate (Hugh Ford, 1917) which still exists.
Other films include Venus in the East (Donald Crisp, 1919) with Bryant Washburn, The Love Burglar (James Cruze, 1919) with Wallace Reid, Soldiers of Fortune (Allan Dwan, 1919) with Norman Kerry and Wallace Beery.
In 1920-1921, she appeared in The Toll Gate (Lambert S. Hillyer, 1920) with William S. Hart, One Hour Before Dawn (Henry King, 1920) with H.B. Warner, The Luck of the Irish (Allan Dwan, 1920) with James Kirkwood sr., and The Lotus Eater (Marshall Neilan, 1921) with John Barrymore.
In 1921, Nilsson returned to Sweden to act in the rural film comedy Värmlänningarna/Harvest of Hate (Erik A. Petschler, 1921), produced by Svea Film. It would be her only Swedish film. The main role of Anna was first given to Rosa Tillman, but when the famous Hollywood star Anna Q. Nilsson came to visit her old homeland just at the time of the shooting of the film, Nilsson was given the part and Tillman got a supporting role.
The film was a box office hit in Sweden and the press praised Nilsson's acting. Värmlänningarna was long believed to be lost, but in 1998 a print showed up in the Moscow film archive and was restored by the Swedish film archive.
Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp, no. 1. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Nilsson and Tor Weijden in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921). Värmlänningarna was adapted from a play by Fredrik August Dahlgren. Anna (Anna Q. Nilsson) plays a poor girl who loves Erik (Tor Weijden), the son of a rich farmer. His parents are however determined to make Erik marry the rich Britta.
Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp, no. 2. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Q. Nilsson and Tor Weijden in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921).
Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp, no. 9. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Q. Nilsson in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921).
Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp, no. 17. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Q. Nilsson in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921).
All in all, Anna Q. Nilsson participated in exactly 200 films (and a handful where she played herself). All films were American, except for the one mentioned above - recorded in Värmland. Nilsson was one of the very first big stars (and the first Swedish) in American film and one of the silent film's most engaged female actors. She was very affectionate about Hollywood, and, soon after arriving in Hollywood, she bought a landmark, which became the heart of the film industry, and when she built a weekend house on the then still deserted beach strip of Malibu, it became 'in'.
Nilsson was often called 'Hollywood's wrangle' because she consistently refused to take the help of any stunt woman. In the 1920s, Nilsson successfully freelanced for Famous Players/ Paramount, Universal, First National, and many other studios. In 1923, she made nine films, including Cecil B. DeMille's Adam's Rib (remade in 1949), Hollywood (James Cruze, 1923), one of the first satires on film life, and The Spoilers (Lambert Hillyer, 1923), with Milton Sills in the male lead. Nilsson was severely burned while filming a scene in which she drove a locomotive through a forest fire for Hearts Aflame (Reginald Barker, 1923). She required a week to recuperate, but that did not impede her career.
Anna Q reached a peak of popularity just before the advent of sound film. In 1926, she was named 'Hollywood's most popular woman'. Nilsson welcomed royalty when the Swedish Crown Prince Gustav Adolf (later King Gustaf VI Adolf) and his wife Louise Mountbatten visited Hollywood. In 1928, Nilsson was one of the highest-rated Hollywood stars, earning $ 20,000 a week, for films such as Sorrell and Son (Herbert Brenon, 1927) with H.B. Warner. Nilsson played opposite legendary baseball player Babe Ruth in the sports comedy Babe Comes Home (Ted Wilde, 1927), an early sound film. While working on this film, Nilsson seriously injured her vertebrae.
In 1928, Anna Nilsson made her last film of the silent era, Blockade (George B. Seitz, 1928), which was actually a part-talkie. That same year (some sources claim it was in 1925 or 1929), while horse riding, she either fell off the horse or was kicked by the horse (versions differ), was thrown against a stone wall and broke her hip. After two years of being hospitalised and hard training, she was on her feet again, but it took until 1933 for a new film to be released with her: The World Changes (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933) with Paul Muni and Mary Astor. By then the film world had changed as the sound film had set in, and Nilsson was reduced to supporting roles.
During the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, Nilsson participated in 39 sound films, always in minor roles opposite stars such as James Stewart, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor. She played the role of the Swedish immigrant mother of Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (H. C. Potter, 1947). The film won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Young and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Charles Bickford.
In Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950), Nilsson played a cameo role as herself, along with Buster Keaton and H.B. Warner. They were referred to as the ‘waxworks’, playing bridge with Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond. Today she is best remembered for this film, where she has only one single reply. Her very last film effort was an even smaller film role in the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen, 1954).
During World War II, Nilsson worked with Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich and many other stars at the Hollywood Canteen to raise cash for the war fund. She served food to the soldiers and sold war bonds. After the war, she was rewarded by both the US state, the army, and the navy, and the Red Cross. Her money had been well invested and she threw herself into a life of charity work, reading, and extensive travel. Throughout her life, Nilsson kept in touch with her country of origin and when she was in Sweden in 1921 to shoot Värminänningar, she bought a house for her parents at Tingsgatan in Klippan, dubbed 'Quirentia'.
Anna Q. Nilsson was married with actor Guy Coombs in 1916, with actor Robert Taber, and from 1923 till 1925 with Norwegian-American shoe dealer John Marshall Gunnerson. Her second divorce drew big headlines in the newspapers. Anna Q. Nilsson died in 1974, in Hemet Convalescent Hospital, California, at the age of 85. She was the first Swedish actor to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1161.
Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1312.
Swedish postcard by A/B Nordiska Papperskompaniet, Helsingfors, no. 809.
Sources: Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), The New York Times, The Glory Days of Hollywood, Wikipedia (English, German, and Swedish), and IMDb.
British postcard in the "Pictures" Portrait Gallery, no. 109, London.
Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp. Photo: Wolfenstein.
British Real Photograph postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 175a. Sent by mail in 1932.
Dreaming of finding happiness in America
Anna Quirentia Nilsson (popular known as Anna Q) was born in 1888, in Ystad, Sweden, as the daughter of police constable Per Nilsson. Her middle name, 'Quirentia', is derived from her date of birth, 30 March, Saint Quirinius' Day. She moved with her family to Hasslarp outside Helsingborg when she was eight years old.
In her teens, she dreamed of 'finding happiness' in America. A neighbour, just returned from a trip to the United States came by the Nilsson home for a visit. She wore a hat made of ostrich plumes. "I'd never seen anything so beautiful in my life as that hat," recalled Anna later: "and I decided that America was the place for me." For five years she worked at the sugar fields at Hasslarp and as a clerk in Halmstad to collect money for the ticket.
In 1905, she took the boat to New York where she received work as a nanny ans started to learn English. One day she was discovered on a thriving avenue by the famous portrait painter James Carroll Beckwith. Anna leaped at the opportunity. She became New York's highest paid model, working for well-known fashion photographers and fine artists, such as Penrhyn Stanlaws. In 1907 she was named 'America's most beautiful woman' and she became a model for the 1910s beauty ideal, The Gibson Girl Look.
In 1911, Nilsson was offered the title role in the Kalem film Molly Pitcher (Sidney Olcott, 1911), which became the start of her acting career. Her screen husband in that film was Guy Coombs. They played together at Kalem for years, and she would eventually marry him, though the marriage didn't last long. She stayed at the Kalem studio until 1915, acting in some 70 shorts. She ranked second behind Kalem's top star, Alice Joyce.
She branched out to other production companies, such as Fox, Erbograph, Metro Pictures, Famous Players, etc., alternating star roles with supporting parts. Feature films of special note in her post-Kalem years are the gangster film Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915) starring Rockliffe Fellowes, Her Surrender (Ivan Abramson, 1916), the first feature in which she was the star of the film, and Seven Keys to Baldpate (Hugh Ford, 1917) which still exists.
Other films include Venus in the East (Donald Crisp, 1919) with Bryant Washburn, The Love Burglar (James Cruze, 1919) with Wallace Reid, Soldiers of Fortune (Allan Dwan, 1919) with Norman Kerry and Wallace Beery.
In 1920-1921, she appeared in The Toll Gate (Lambert S. Hillyer, 1920) with William S. Hart, One Hour Before Dawn (Henry King, 1920) with H.B. Warner, The Luck of the Irish (Allan Dwan, 1920) with James Kirkwood sr., and The Lotus Eater (Marshall Neilan, 1921) with John Barrymore.
In 1921, Nilsson returned to Sweden to act in the rural film comedy Värmlänningarna/Harvest of Hate (Erik A. Petschler, 1921), produced by Svea Film. It would be her only Swedish film. The main role of Anna was first given to Rosa Tillman, but when the famous Hollywood star Anna Q. Nilsson came to visit her old homeland just at the time of the shooting of the film, Nilsson was given the part and Tillman got a supporting role.
The film was a box office hit in Sweden and the press praised Nilsson's acting. Värmlänningarna was long believed to be lost, but in 1998 a print showed up in the Moscow film archive and was restored by the Swedish film archive.
Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp, no. 1. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Nilsson and Tor Weijden in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921). Värmlänningarna was adapted from a play by Fredrik August Dahlgren. Anna (Anna Q. Nilsson) plays a poor girl who loves Erik (Tor Weijden), the son of a rich farmer. His parents are however determined to make Erik marry the rich Britta.
Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp, no. 2. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Q. Nilsson and Tor Weijden in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921).
Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp, no. 9. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Q. Nilsson in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921).
Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp, no. 17. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Q. Nilsson in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921).
Hollywood's Wrangle
All in all, Anna Q. Nilsson participated in exactly 200 films (and a handful where she played herself). All films were American, except for the one mentioned above - recorded in Värmland. Nilsson was one of the very first big stars (and the first Swedish) in American film and one of the silent film's most engaged female actors. She was very affectionate about Hollywood, and, soon after arriving in Hollywood, she bought a landmark, which became the heart of the film industry, and when she built a weekend house on the then still deserted beach strip of Malibu, it became 'in'.
Nilsson was often called 'Hollywood's wrangle' because she consistently refused to take the help of any stunt woman. In the 1920s, Nilsson successfully freelanced for Famous Players/ Paramount, Universal, First National, and many other studios. In 1923, she made nine films, including Cecil B. DeMille's Adam's Rib (remade in 1949), Hollywood (James Cruze, 1923), one of the first satires on film life, and The Spoilers (Lambert Hillyer, 1923), with Milton Sills in the male lead. Nilsson was severely burned while filming a scene in which she drove a locomotive through a forest fire for Hearts Aflame (Reginald Barker, 1923). She required a week to recuperate, but that did not impede her career.
Anna Q reached a peak of popularity just before the advent of sound film. In 1926, she was named 'Hollywood's most popular woman'. Nilsson welcomed royalty when the Swedish Crown Prince Gustav Adolf (later King Gustaf VI Adolf) and his wife Louise Mountbatten visited Hollywood. In 1928, Nilsson was one of the highest-rated Hollywood stars, earning $ 20,000 a week, for films such as Sorrell and Son (Herbert Brenon, 1927) with H.B. Warner. Nilsson played opposite legendary baseball player Babe Ruth in the sports comedy Babe Comes Home (Ted Wilde, 1927), an early sound film. While working on this film, Nilsson seriously injured her vertebrae.
In 1928, Anna Nilsson made her last film of the silent era, Blockade (George B. Seitz, 1928), which was actually a part-talkie. That same year (some sources claim it was in 1925 or 1929), while horse riding, she either fell off the horse or was kicked by the horse (versions differ), was thrown against a stone wall and broke her hip. After two years of being hospitalised and hard training, she was on her feet again, but it took until 1933 for a new film to be released with her: The World Changes (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933) with Paul Muni and Mary Astor. By then the film world had changed as the sound film had set in, and Nilsson was reduced to supporting roles.
During the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, Nilsson participated in 39 sound films, always in minor roles opposite stars such as James Stewart, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor. She played the role of the Swedish immigrant mother of Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (H. C. Potter, 1947). The film won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Young and was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Charles Bickford.
In Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950), Nilsson played a cameo role as herself, along with Buster Keaton and H.B. Warner. They were referred to as the ‘waxworks’, playing bridge with Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond. Today she is best remembered for this film, where she has only one single reply. Her very last film effort was an even smaller film role in the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen, 1954).
During World War II, Nilsson worked with Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich and many other stars at the Hollywood Canteen to raise cash for the war fund. She served food to the soldiers and sold war bonds. After the war, she was rewarded by both the US state, the army, and the navy, and the Red Cross. Her money had been well invested and she threw herself into a life of charity work, reading, and extensive travel. Throughout her life, Nilsson kept in touch with her country of origin and when she was in Sweden in 1921 to shoot Värminänningar, she bought a house for her parents at Tingsgatan in Klippan, dubbed 'Quirentia'.
Anna Q. Nilsson was married with actor Guy Coombs in 1916, with actor Robert Taber, and from 1923 till 1925 with Norwegian-American shoe dealer John Marshall Gunnerson. Her second divorce drew big headlines in the newspapers. Anna Q. Nilsson died in 1974, in Hemet Convalescent Hospital, California, at the age of 85. She was the first Swedish actor to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1161.
Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1312.
Swedish postcard by A/B Nordiska Papperskompaniet, Helsingfors, no. 809.
Sources: Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), The New York Times, The Glory Days of Hollywood, Wikipedia (English, German, and Swedish), and IMDb.
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