{"id":290577,"date":"2025-10-10T00:24:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T00:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/290577\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T00:24:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T00:24:19","slug":"movie-star-colleen-moore-helped-found-chicago-film-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/290577\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie star Colleen Moore helped found Chicago film festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chicago International Film Festival<\/a>, which returns this weekend, debuted 60 years ago<\/a> under the direction of 22-year-old independent filmmaker Michael Kutza<\/a> with financial and in-kind support from Colleen Moore.<\/p>\n

At the time, Moore may have appeared to some as just another name in the Tribune\u2019s society pages. She was feted<\/a> for her philanthropy, provided dispatches from her travels to France<\/a>, Italy<\/a> and Russia<\/a>, and even won $25<\/a> in 1957 for writing about her fondest memory of Christmas. She visited Sophia Loren\u2019s Roman villa<\/a> and the Sacramento estate of then-California Gov. Ronald and Nancy Reagan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A Chicago resident from the late 1930s until the 1970s, Moore had already lived a full life before she married local stockbroker Homer Hargrave<\/a> and became adoptive mother to his children, Homer Jr. and Judy.<\/p>\n

Moore starred in silent films during the early 20th century and successfully made the jump to \u201ctalkies,\u201d or movies with sound. She has a star<\/a> on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and her hand- and footprints are preserved in concrete outside Grauman\u2019s Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. The fun-loving actress \u2014 who was once described by Playboy as \u201cabout as sexy as a Shirley Temple doll\u201d \u2014 had a keen fashion sense and a passion for creating outrageous dollhouses.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look back at Moore\u2019s career and life, with excerpts from her 1968 biography, \u201cSilent Star,\u201d<\/a> and the Tribune\u2019s archives.<\/p>\n

1917
\n\"ActressActress Colleen Moore, left, is shown around 1925 with her brother Cleve, who appeared with his sister in the film “We Moderns.” (First National Pictures Inc.)<\/p>\n

Born Kathleen Morrison near the U.S.-Canadian border in Port Huron, Michigan, Moore spent her formative years in Atlanta and Tampa Bay, Florida. Her dream of becoming an actress was achieved with help from her Chicago-based uncle Walter C. Howey<\/a>. He had been an editor at the Chicago Inter Ocean, the Tribune and William Randolph Hearst\u2019s Chicago Herald and Examiner and also was the inspiration for Walter Burns in Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur\u2019s play \u201cThe Front Page.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Howey helped usher D.W. Griffith\u2019s controversial films \u201cThe Birth of a Nation\u201d<\/a> and \u201cIntolerance\u201d past Chicago censors. (Yes, there was a time \u2014 not so long ago \u2014 when the\u00a0police decided what movies<\/a> Chicagoans watched.) In return, Griffith agreed to cast Moore in one of his films.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was being sent to Hollywood \u2014 not because anybody out there thought I was any good, but simply to pay off a favor,\u201d Moore wrote in \u201cSilent Star.\u201d \u201cI stayed deflated for maybe a minute. How did I care how I got there? What mattered was I was finally going.\u201d<\/p>\n

But before Moore left for California with her grandmother as her chaperone, her uncle provided one more suggestion for the actress \u2014 a name change. After taking still photos and providing a screen test at Chicago\u2019s Essanay Studios, he took her family out to dinner at College Inn inside the Sherman House Hotel<\/a> at Clark and Randolph streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s to Colleen Moore, the newest Griffith discovery and a future movie star,\u201d Howey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy own name, he explained, was too long to fit on a movie marquee. Twelve letters was the limit,\u201d she recalled. \u201cIt felt peculiar getting an entirely new name at the age of 15, but then everything I was doing now was new. Besides, hadn\u2019t Mary Pickford been born Gladys Smith? I began to feel quite professional.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, Moore boarded the Santa Fe Chief for Hollywood.<\/p>\n

Early Hollywood years
\n\"ColleenColleen Moore, having cut off her long hair, starred with Ben Lyons in the 1923 movie “Flaming Youth.” Editor’s note: This historic print has illustration designs around the edges. (Associated First National)<\/p>\n

The auburn-haired actress with one blue eye and one brown arrived in Hollywood two days after Thanksgiving. She made three movies that year \u2014 \u201cThe Bad Boy,\u201d \u201cAn Old-Fashioned Young Man\u201d and \u201cHands Up!\u201d<\/a> Always in the background or in a supporting role in her early career, including appearances opposite Western star Tom Mix in \u201cThe Wilderness Trail\u201d (1919) and John Barrymore in \u201cThe Lotus Eater\u201d (1921), Moore yearned for a starring role.<\/p>\n

Desperate to succeed, Moore altered her appearance in hopes of being cast in the flapper movie \u201cFlaming Youth\u201d<\/a> (1923). Moore\u2019s mother grabbed a pair of scissors \u201c\u2026 and, whack, off came the long curls. I felt as if I\u2019d been emancipated,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThen she trimmed my hair around with bangs like a Japanese girl\u2019s haircut \u2014 or, as most people called it, a Dutch bob. It was becoming. More important, it worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film was a hit and Moore became the girl-next-door every young woman wanted to look like.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo longer did a girl have to be beautiful to be sought after,\u201d she wrote. \u201cAny plain Jane could become a flapper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aug. 18, 1923
\n\"ActressColleen Moore with her first husband, John McCormick, circa 1926. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019d been in love with me before he met me!\u201d Moore wrote about her Aug. 18, 1921, introduction to 27-year-old John McCormick, a press agent for First National Studios. McCormick, who handled publicity for \u201cThe Lotus Eater,\u201d asked Moore, then 19, just hours later to marry him.<\/p>\n

They were officially engaged a year later and married<\/a> exactly two years after their first meeting. Though McCormick negotiated better contracts for Moore, he also was an alcoholic who disappeared for days at a time \u2014 including on their wedding night.<\/p>\n

Moore filed for divorce<\/a> in April 1930, citing \u201cmental cruelty.\u201d It was finalized<\/a> that May.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn didn\u2019t love me, Kathleen Morrison McCormick,\u201d she wrote. \u201cHe was in love with his dream girl, Colleen Moore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore\u2019s close friend Adela Rogers St. Johns<\/a> drew on actual events from the marriage for her original story \u201cA Star Is Born.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

1928
\n\"Thimble,Colleen Moore holds dollhouse-size items \u2014 thimble, powder box, mirror, nail file, comb, brush and jewel box \u2014 at the Congress Hotel in 1936. (Zack\/Chicago Herald and Examiner)<\/p>\n

Shortly before her divorce, Moore and her parents decided to design and commission a fantastical dollhouse that would include 1,500 custom miniature items created by more than 100 artisans specifically for its rooms. The end result: a 9-square-foot castle with a 12-foot-tall tower that had running water, electric lighting and bejeweled walls and floors at a cost of nearly $500,000. Missing, however, were dolls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith an empty castle and full imagination, it\u2019s easy to people the rooms with running, laughing elves and fairies,\u201d Moore wrote.<\/p>\n

\"BoysBoys from the Chicago Boys Club help assemble Colleen Moore’s lavish dollhouse at The Fair Store in 1948. Proceeds from the exhibition went to the club. (Howard Borvig\/Chicago Herald-American)<\/p>\n

Moore\u2019s Fairy Castle<\/a> toured the United States during the Great Depression as a way to raise money for charity<\/a> before it arrived at the Museum of Science and Industry<\/a> in 1949, where it remains today.<\/p>\n

May 1937
\n\"HomerHomer Hargrave and his wife, former actress Colleen Moore Hargrave, stop in Chicago on their way to California in 1937. (Chicago Herald and Examiner)<\/p>\n

Moore retired from acting and became a Chicagoan after she married Hargrave, her fourth husband. He was a widower who had been the first chairman of the Midwest Stock Exchange and former vice president of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith.<\/p>\n

She learned how to manage her finances<\/a> and wrote a book titled \u201cHow Women Can Make Money in the Stock Market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nov. 4, 1965
\n\"AColleen Moore Hargrave, second from left, tours the old Essanay Building at 1345 W. Argyle St. during the Chicago International Film Festival in 1965 with producer King Vidor, left, Alison Hunter Wrigley III and William “Bill” Wrigley III. Wilding Studios, which made industrial films, was operating in the space. (Al Phillips\/Chicago Tribune)<\/p>\n

The first Chicago International Film Festival opened, and Moore enlisted a board of female directors<\/a> to keep it going. She presented producer King Vidor<\/a> with the festival\u2019s D.W. Griffith Memorial Award.<\/p>\n

She died in California<\/a> in 1988.<\/p>\n

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Originally Published: October 9, 2025 at 2:51 PM CDT<\/p>\n