Gladys Brockwell

Brockwell made dozens of films in the late 1910s, for Fox and other studios, generally heavy dramas like "Her One Mistake" and "The Devil's Wheel" (both 1918) and "Pitfalls of a Big City" (1919). Through the 20s, she was given meaty character roles in big-budgeted films and starred in several of her own vehicles as well. Perhaps her best known roles were Nancy Sykes in "Oliver Twist" (1922), the insane mother in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1923) and Janet Gaynor's evil sister in "Seventh Heaven" (1927). Among Brockwell's other hits were "So Big" (1924), "Twinkletoes" (1926) and supporting John Gilbert and Jeanne Eagels in "Man, Woman, and Sin" (1928). As a stage-trained character actress, Brockwell had nothing to fear from talking pictures. Signed by Warner Brothers, she appeared as a gun moll in the first all-talking feature-length picture, "Lights of New York" (1928) and went on to make four other talkies before her death in mid-1929 as the result of a car accident.