Corinne Griffith (November 21, 1894 – July 13, 1979) was an American actress. Dubbed "The Orchid Lady of the Screen", she was one of the most popular film actresses of the 1920s and widely considered the most beautiful actress of the silent screen. Shortly after the advent of sound film, Griffith retired from acting and became a successful author.
Corinne Griffith was born as Corinne Mae Griffin in Texarkana, Texas to John Lewis Griffin and Ambolina (Ambolyn) Ghio on November 21, 1894. Her parents were married on July 6, 1887 in Texarkana according to their wedding announcement listed in the Dallas Morning News. Her grandparents, Anthony and Augusta Ghio, were born in Italy, and she had an older sister named Augusta. Although Griffith's actual date of birth is widely disputed with conflicting information throughout her career, 1894 is her actual birth year according to the 1900 and 1910 Censuses. She attended Sacred Heart Convent school in New Orleans and worked as a dancer before she began her acting career. A November 20, 1915 newspaper article from the Dallas Morning News states that Corinne Griffin is going to use "Corinne Griffith" as her stage name, and that her grandfather, Anthony L. Ghio, was a wealthy former three-time mayor of Texarkana. Griffith began her screen career at the Vitagraph Studios in 1916. She later moved to First National, where she became one of their most popular stars. In 1929, Griffith received an Academy Award nomination for her role in The Divine Lady.
Griffith's first sound film, Lilies of the Field was released in 1930. Griffith's voice did not record well (the New York Times stated that she "talked through her nose"), and the film was a box office flop. After appearing in one more motion picture, the British film Lily Christine in 1932, she retired from acting. She returned to the screen in 1962 in the a low-budget melodrama Paradise Alley, which received scant release.
Corinne Griffith was one of the few film stars to move successfully into new careers once her stardom had ended. She was an accomplished writer who published eleven books including two best sellers, My Life with The Redskins and the memoir Papa's Delicate Condition, which was made into a 1963 film starring Jackie Gleason about the Ghio and Griffin family. Her actual family names were used in the film. Her ventures into real estate were particularly successful (at one point she owned four different major office buildings in Los Angeles, each of them named after her) and she was one of the major forces in Republican politics in California for decades.
During her marriage to Marshall, she composed the lyrics to the Redskins "fight" song "Hail to the Redskins" which became one of the most famous football anthems.
Griffith was married four times. She married actor and frequent co-star Webster Campbell (1920—1923), producer Walter Morosco (1924—1934), and the owner of the Washington Redskins football team George Preston Marshall (1936—1958). In a 1955 cook book Eggs I Have Known, Griffith referred to him as "The Marshall without a plan."
In 1966, within a few days, she married and divorced her fourth husband, Broadway actor Danny Scholl (Call Me Mister). Scholl was 45, more than 25 years Griffith's junior. In court she testified that she was not Corinne Griffith. She claimed that she was the actresses' younger (by twenty years) sister who had taken her place upon the famous sister's death. Contradicting testimony by actresses Betty Blythe and Claire Windsor, who had both known her since the 1920s, did not shake her story. In 1974, Adele Whitely Fletcher, editor of Photoplay, said Griffith was still claiming that she was her own younger sister.
Griffith was a member of the Christian Science religion.
She introduced Philadelphia Eagles owner, and future NFL Commissioner, Bert Bell to his future wife, Frances Upton, a former silent film star and Ziegfeld Follies girl, like herself. She also introduced NFL coach Curly Lambeau to his third wife, Grace Garland, also a silent film star and Ziegfeld Follies girl.
On July 13, 1979, Griffith died of heart failure in Santa Monica, California, aged 84. At the time of her death, her personal estate was worth over one hundred and fifty million dollars. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Corrine Griffith has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street.
