June Caprice

COP11 · August 27, 2010

June Caprice (November 19, 1895 – November 9, 1936) was an American silent film actress.

Early life and career

Born Helen Elizabeth Lawson in Arlington, Massachusetts, she began her acting career in live theatre and in 1916 signed with the Fox Film Corporation.

In 1916 William Fox searched to find a "second Mary Pickford." By the summer of that year he believed he had located the woman he predicted would be the best known female on the screen within six months time.

She made her debut on July 9 at the Academy of Music (Manhattan) on 14th Street (Manhattan), in Caprice of the Mountains. A New York Times film critic said of her, "she is young, pretty, graceful, petite, with an eloquence of gesture that augurs a bright future in the movies."

Adopting the stage name June Caprice, she made sixteen films for Fox, half of which were directed by Harry F. Millarde. The two began a personal relationship and eventually married.

In 1919, June Caprice signed with Pathé for whom she appeared in six film projects. Some of the movies were made in the old Pathe studio in New York City. Her last film work was a 1921 fifteen-episode science fiction serial called The Sky Ranger (aka The Man Who Stole the Moon).

Retirement

She left the film business to begin a family, giving birth to a daughter June Elizabeth Millarde in 1923. It is believed she returned to working on stage and modeling, appearing on 1920s Coca-Cola company calendars holding a fountain glass of Coke.

In 1931 her husband died at the age of forty-six. Caprice died five years later from a heart attack in Los Angeles. She had been suffering from cancer. She was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Caprice's daughter was thirteen years old when orphaned and was raised by her grandparents on Long Island, New York. June Millarde became a cover girl known as Toni Seven.

The June 17, 1949 issue of Time reported that she was the heiress to an estimated $3,000,000 fortune.