Silent film star lived in Glens Falls area in the ‘70s
Silent film star Esther Ralston, known in her heyday as “The American Venus,” made and lost multiple fortunes and was married and divorced three times.
She lived in the Glens Falls area in the 1970s for about a decade, where she worked as an interior design consultant at The Lighting Studio on Quaker Road in Queensbury, appeared once in a local community theater production, and frequently spoke to service clubs and social organizations about her former career on stage and screen.
“I’ve had a wonderful, colorful, exciting, fun life,” she told The Post-Star in 1975. “I’ve had more heartaches, I suppose, than any 10 women, and more fun than any 20.”
She lost her first fortune in the stock market crash and a second fortune to a thieving business manager, yet maintained a vibrant personality.
“World renown and fame have not spoiled her one bit,” Beatrice McKinney of The Troy Record wrote in 1970. “Miss Ralston is modest, practical, and down to earth. She is constantly on the go and will even stand on her head to amuse her grandson.”
Standing on her head was the stunt that got Ralston started in show business at 18 months old, touring with her family’s vaudeville troupe.
She got her start on screen as a young teen in 1915 in a minor role in the silent film “The Deep Purple,” and went on to act in nearly 100 movies.
In “The American Venus,” the silent film from which she got her nickname, Ralston portrayed Mary Gray, the daughter of a cold cream manufacturer, who a company PR man entered in the Miss America contest at Atlantic City.
Other major silent film roles were in Charlie Chapin’s 1921 film “The Kid” and in a 1924 version of “Peter Pan.”
Her first talking picture was “The Stardust Paradise” in 1928.
Her final two films were “Tin Pan Alley” and “San Francisco Docks” in 1940.
She then acted on stage and in radio soap operas for a time before retiring.
In 1975 she took to the stage one last time to star in the Lake George Towers Hall Playhouse production of “Arsenic and Old Lace.”
Ralston moved from Long Island to Salem, in Washington County, in 1969 to live with her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren.
She later lived at Robert Gardens Apartments in Queensbury.
In 1978, she moved to Ventura, California to live in a home that her son, an Air Force major, bought for her.
She was 91 when she died in California in 1994.
Sources: The Post-Star, July 1, 1969; Jan. 8, 1970; May 20, 1975; April 28, 1978; The Glens Falls Times, Nov. 28, 1968; The Troy Record, June 10, 1970; New York Times, Jan. 27, 1994; IMBd.
