Profile of Gene Gauntier on Famous Like Me

Gene Gauntier (May 17, 1885 - December 18, 1966) was an American screenwriter and actress who was one of the pioneer's of the motion picture industry.

Born Genevieve Liggett in Kansas City, Missouri she made her way to New York City where she began her career in live theatre using the stage name "Gene Gauntier." In 1906 she became involved in the fledgling movie business, working for Kalem Studios in the silent film era. She was their star actress, dubbed by the studio as the "Kalem Girl," who also became their most productive screenwriter in a collaboration with director Sidney Olcott on numerous film projects.

"Tom Sawyer" was the first of over three hundred screenplays Gene Gauntier wrote and produced or sold. In 1907, she wrote the script for "The Days of '61," the first film ever made about the American Civil War. That same year she wrote the sceenplay and acted in the first Ben Hur film. At the time, there was no copyright law to protect authors and she wrote in her 1928 autobiography how the film industry infringed upon everything. As a result of the production of "Ben Hur," Harper and Brothers and the authors estate (General Lew Wallace) brought suit against the Kalem Company, the Motion Picture Patents Company, and Gauntier for copyright infringement. The suit, which eventually settled the question of American copyright law for all time, took years to make its way through the court system but the United States Supreme Court finally ruled in favor of Harper's and Wallace and against the film company.

In 1912, Gene Gauntier married actor Jack J. Clark. They divorced in 1918.

Most notably, she wrote and acted in 1912's From the Manger to the Cross, a film that Turner Classic Movies considers the most important silent film to deal with the life of Jesus Christ. It has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Gauntier had sailed to Europe frequently where her sister Marguerite was an opera singer who had trained and worked in Germany. Gene Gauntier was stranded there when World War I broke out. After writing forty-two screenplays and performing in eighty-seven films, in 1920 at age thirty-five, Gauntier walked away from the business. After leaving filmmaking, she returned to live in Europe, remaining for a number of years while writing her autobiography titled "Blazing the Trail" that was serialized in 1928/29 in the American magazine, Woman's Home Companion. The manuscript is on display in the Film Library of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Gauntier also penned two novels, "Cabbages and Harlequins" in 1929 and "Sporting Lady" in 1933.

Gene Gauntier died in 1966 in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

External link

• Gene Gauntier at the Internet Movie Database
• Gauntier filming in Ireland

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