Born in Sculcoates, Kingston upon Hull in 1903, British-American actress Dorothy Mackaill had begun making the transition from “Follies Girl” to film actress in 1920. That same year she appeared in her first film, a Wilfred Noy-directed mystery, The Face at the Window.
Mackaill rose to leading-lady status in the drama The Man Who Came Back (1924), opposite rugged matinee idol George O’Brien. In 1924, she also starred in the western film The Mine with the Iron Door, shot on location outside of Tucson, Arizona. That same year, the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers of the United States presented Mackaill with one of its WAMPAS Baby Stars awards, which each year honored thirteen young women whom the association believed to be on the threshold of movie stardom. Other notable recipients of the award in 1924 were Clara Bow, Julanne Johnston and Lucille Ricksen.
Her career continued to flourish throughout the remainder of the 1920s, as she made a smooth transition to sound with the part-talkie The Barker (1928). She made several films for MGM, Paramount and Columbia before retiring in 1937, to care for her ailing mother.
Mackaill resided in Honolulu, Hawaii, during the last 35 years of her life. She died there of liver failure in her room at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in 1990, aged 87. Take a look at these fabulous photos to see the beauty of young Dorothy Mackaill in the 1920s and 1930s.
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