Alma Rubens

Born: 1897-02-17

From Wikipedia Alma Rubens (February 19, 1897 – January 22, 1931) was an American film actress and stage performer. Rubens began her career in the mid 1910s. She quickly rose to stardom in 1916 after appearing opposite Douglas Fairbanks in The Half Breed. For the remainder of the decade, she appeared in supporting roles in comedies and drama. In the 1920s. Her first stage opportunity came when a chorus girl in a musical comedy theater troupe became ill. Rubens was chosen to take her place and joined the troupe as a regular performer. There she met Franklyn Farnum who was also a member. He later convinced Rubens to leave the troupe and try her hand at film acting. Her breakthrough performance was in 1916 in the movie Reggie Mixes In. She made six more films in that same year. In 1917 she starred in The Firefly of Tough Luck, which was a big success. She gained fame when she became Douglas Fairbanks's leading lady in The Half Breed (1916), and supported Fairbanks and Bessie Love in the cocaine comedy The Mystery of the Leaping Fish later that same year. In 1918, Alma announced that she was changing the spelling of her last name of Rueben to "Rubens" because it caused too much confusion in the movie industry and in publications. She later told Photoplay magazine, "As a matter of fact my name is not the same [spelling] as the painter's. It's either Reubens or Ruebens-I forget which. I never could spell it. Couldn't remember where the 'e' came. So I let it go Rubens." In 1920, she completed The World and His Wife, opposite Montague Love which further solidified her popularity. In 1924, she starred in The Price She Paid and Cytherea. Rubens developed a drug addiction which eventually ended her career. She died of pneumonia shortly after being arrested on narcotics charge in January 1931. A funeral service was held on January 24 at the Little Church of the Flowers at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale. Her body was then shipped to Fresno where a second service was held at the Christian Science Church on January 26. She was interred in Ararat Massis Armenian Cemetery in Fresno. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Alma Rubens has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6409 Hollywood Blvd.


Placeholder

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

as Girl at the Marriage Market (uncredited)
Released: 1916-09-04

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven...

Movie page

The Birth of a Nation

as Belle of 1861
Released: 1915-02-08

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons,...

Movie page

The Mystery of the Leaping Fish

as Wealthy Gent's Female Confederate
Released: 1916-06-11

Coke Ennyday, the scientific detective, divides his time into periods of "Sleep", "Eat", "Dope"...

Movie page

Cytherea

as Savina Grove
Released: 1924-05-04

Lee Randon, weary of business duties and a conventional home life, acquires a long-lost sense of...

Movie page

Enemies of Women

as The Duchess de Lille
Released: 1923-04-15

The dashing but arrogant Prince Michael Fedor Lubimoff has to flee Tsarist Russia after falling...

Movie page

The Half-Breed

as Teresa
Released: 1916-07-30

In an attempt to brand himself as a serious actor, the smiling swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks...

Movie page

The Americano

as Juana de Castalar
Released: 1916-12-23

Doug is an American mining engineer. Pres. Valdez of Paragonia wants him to reopen the country's...

Movie page

The Valley of Silent Men

as uncredited
Released: 1922-09-10

The hunter becomes the hunted, an officer of the Royal Mounted, fleeing, fighting for his life. ...

Movie page

The Dancers

as Maxine
Released: 1925-01-04

Young Tony, unable to make a living in crowded and fast-paced London, goes to South America in...

Movie page

The Rejected Woman

as Diane Du Prez
Released: 1924-05-04

Diane Duprez falls in love with Leslie in the snows of a Canadian village. And when they are...

Movie page

Show Boat

as Julie Dozier
Released: 1929-07-27

This film sticks very closely to the Edna Ferber novel, rather than the musical based on the...

Movie page

Under the Red Robe

as Renee de Cocheforet
Released: 1923-11-12

A young man is tasked by the powerful Cardinal Richelieu to capture one of the cardinal's...

Movie page

Reggie Mixes In

as Lemona Reighley
Released: 1916-06-10

Reggie, a wealthy young man about town, is eager for excitement, so he takes to visiting the...

Movie page

The Masks of the Devil

as Countess Zellner
Released: 1928-11-17

Baron Reiner, a charming though unscrupulous Viennese aristocrat, becomes infatuated with...

Movie page

The Heart of Salome

as Helene
Released: 1927-05-08

1927 picture starring Alma Rubens and Walter Pidgeon.

Movie page

The Cold Deck

as Coralie
Released: 1917-10-31

Gambler "On-the Level" Leigh (William S. Hart) is forced to leave his high rolling lifestyle to...

Movie page

A Man's Country

as Kate Carewe
Released: 1919-07-13

Dance-hall queen Kate Carewe is the toast of the gold-mining camp of Huxley's Gulch. One day a...

Movie page

Humoresque

as Gina Berg (formerly Minnie Ginsberg)
Released: 1920-05-29

Young Leon Kanter dreams of being a great violinist. His parents scrape up the money for a...

Movie page

The Children Pay

as Editha, the Girls' Stepmother
Released: 1916-11-26

What will become of the Children in a home divided....

Movie page

Find the Woman

as Sophie Carey
Released: 1922-04-02

This whodunit bears no relation to the 1918 picture of the same name, but both films...

Movie page

She Goes to War

as Rosie
Released: 1929-06-07

A young woman disguises herself as a man and follows her fiancéé into the trenches during World...

Movie page

The World and His Wife

as Teodora
Released: 1920-07-18

Elderly Spanish nobleman Don Julian is happily married to Teodora, a beautiful young girl, when...

Movie page

Marriage License?

as Wanda Heriot
Released: 1926-09-05

1926 picture starring Alma Rubens and Walter McGrail.

Movie page

Is Love Everything?

as Virginia Carter
Released: 1924-11-30

Virginia Carter accedes to her family's pressures and marries Jordan Southwick, who comes from a...

Movie page

Siberia

as Sonia Vronsky
Released: 1926-03-28

Officer in the Imperial Russian Army, Petroff, is in love with Sonia, a schoolteacher who casts...

Movie page

The Winding Stair

as Marguerite
Released: 1925-10-25

Paul is a fearless French Foreign Legion officer. Ordered to quell a native uprising at a...

Movie page

The Ghost Flower

as uncredited
Released: 1918-08-18

Giulia, a Neapolitan girl, much against her will, becomes the mistress of a wealthy gangster....

Movie page

Master of His Home

as Millicent Drake
Released: 1917-08-12

Unhappy with her daughter's choice to marry a miner instead of her choice, a man of wealth, a...

Movie page

Truthful Tulliver

as Grace Burton
Released: 1917-01-07

Truthful Tulliver, a Westerner and a journeying newspaperman, followed by Silver Lode Thompson,...

Movie page

A Woman's Awakening

as Cousin Kate (as Alma Rueben)
Released: 1917-03-24

A 1917 film directed by Chester Withey.

Movie page

The Gangsters and the Girl

as uncredited
Released: 1914-08-07

Molly Ashley, a child of the slums, is charged with being an accomplice to a shoplifter....

Movie page

Fine Clothes

as Paula
Released: 1925-08-09

The owner of a London clothing store is driven out of business, but later makes a triumphant return.

Movie page

East Lynne

as Lady Isabel
Released: 1925-11-23

This most famous of Victorian melodramas was more than half a century old, and had already been...

Movie page

The Gown Of Destiny

as uncredited
Released: 1917-12-30

Rejected by the army because of his petite size, French dress designer Andre Leriche conceives...

Movie page