French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 250.
Spanish collector card by Chocolate Amatller, Marca Luna series 9, no. 4. Photo: First National. Edna Purviance in A Dog's Life (Charlie Chaplin, 1918).
British postcard in the 'Pictures' Portrait Gallery, no. 94, by Pictures Ltd., London.
Too serious for a comic role?
Olga Edna Purviance was born in 1895 in Paradise Valley, Nevada. She lived there until 1898. Then the family moved to Lovelock, where her parents ran a hotel. In 1902, her parents divorced. She was a talented piano player as a teenager. In 1913, Edna went to San Francisco and moved in with her married sister Bessie while attending business college. She began working as a stenographer in San Francisco.
In 1915, a talent scout for Charles Chaplin discovered Edna in a café and invited her to the Essanay Studio. Chaplin was looking for a leading lady for his next film, His Night Out. He was not convinced about her at first and thought she would be too serious for a comic role. Finally, he gave her the part, and she debuted in His Night Out (Charlie Chaplin, 1915).
Her relationship with Charles Chaplin became, at one point, romantic as well as professional (1915-1917). However, the romance was abruptly over after he was forced into a shotgun wedding with 16-year-old Mildred Harris. Nevertheless, Purviance continued to be his leading lady.
Over the next seven years, she appeared as his leading lady in over 30 Chaplin films made by Essanay, Mutual, and First National. These included the classics The Tramp (1915), The Immigrant (1917), Easy Street (1917), The Kid (1921), and The Idle Class (1921).
Her sweet, girlish counterbalance to his rambunctious antics became a marketable commodity. It was later speculated that if they had married, Chaplin could have been spared much of the domestic troubles and scandals that would plague him in his life.
British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in his film A Night in the Show/Charlie at the Show (Charles Chaplin, 1915), in which he played a double role. Right of him, Edna Purviance, the man may be George Cleethorpe. Caption: Unrequited Love.
British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance in In the Park (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Scene, Charlie in the Park (Charlie in the Park).
British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin in A Woman (Charles Chaplin, 1915), also with Edna Purviance as the daughter and Charles Inslee as the father. Caption: Charlie in the Shivers (Charlie the Perfect Lady.)
Vintage postcard, printed in Italy, by CVB Publishers / News Productions, no. 56617. Photo: C. Bubbles Inc. / Collection de la Cinematheque Suisse. Edna Purviance and Charlie Chaplin in Work (Charles Chaplin, 1915).
British postcard by Red Letter, no. 4. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance.
Showing her more concern and consideration than his former wives
As a repayment for Edna Purviance's years of work with him, Charles Chaplin intended real stardom for her with the film drama A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (Charlie Chaplin, 1923). The film was a commercial failure, though it advanced the career of Adolphe Menjou.
Edna Purviance made two more silent films. The first was Sea Gulls / A Woman of the Sea (Josef von Sternberg, 1926), produced by Charles Chaplin. Chaplin never released the film, and now the film is considered lost. In 1933, the negative was destroyed so that all losses incurred by the production could be written off.
Edna's final silent production was the French film Éducation de prince / Education of a Prince (Henri Diamant-Berger, 1927). In France, Purviance was injured when she fell from a sleigh being pulled by runaway horses in Lyons. Armand Bernard, who had just made the Éducation de prince / Education of a Prince with her, was injured trying to stop the horses.
After her retirement, Charles Chaplin kept Purviance on his payroll at $1000 a month for decades, showing her much more concern and consideration than he did to any of his former wives. Her last two appearances were non-speaking extra parts in his Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952).
In 1938, Edna Purviance married John P. Squire, a Pan-American Airlines pilot, who died in 1945. Chaplin's monthly payments resumed after her husband's death. Edna Purviance died of throat cancer in 1958 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Los Angeles. She was interred in the West Mausoleum at Grand View Memorial Park, Glendale, California. She was portrayed by Penelope Ann Miller in the film Chaplin (Richard Attenborough, 1992).
British postcard by Red Letter, no. 6. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin and Edna Purviance in Work (Charles Chaplin, 1915).
British postcard by Red Letter. Photo: Essanay. Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance and Leo White in A Jitney Elopement (Charles Chaplin, 1915). Caption: Charlie Threatens Count. (Charlie's Elopement.)
French postcard by Lobster Films, Prsi, no. 30. Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance, Eric Campbell and Albert Austin in The Rink (Charles Chaplin, 1916).
Spanish collector card by Chocolate Amatller, Marca Luna series 9, no. 13. Photo: First National. Charlie Chaplin in A Dog's Life (Charles Chaplin, 1918).
Spanish collector card by Chocolate Amatller, Marca Luna series 9, no. 16. Photo: First National. Charlie Chaplin in A Dog's Life (Charles Chaplin, 1918).
French postcard by A.N., Paris in the series Les Vedettes de Cinéma, no. 70. Photo: United Artists.
Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.
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