Silent film and opera star, Hope Hampton, as featured in LOVE’S SPRINGTIME (1927). She was born Mae Elizabeth Hampton on February 19, 1897 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After winning a beauty contest in her late teens, she began finding work as a film extra. She was finally “discovered” by cinema pioneer Jules Brulatour while working as an extra for director Maurice Tourneur. She made her screen debut in “A Modern Salome” (1920), and went on to feature prominently in several Brulatour-financed films. The two eventually married in 1923. The blonde beauty often played both the alluring siren and the self-empowered flapper on screen. Her films include “Stardust” (1921), “The Light in the Dark” (1922), “Does It Pay?” (1923), “Fifty-Fifty” (1925), and “The Price of a Party” (1924). After retiring from motion pictures at the dawn of sound, she turned to opera and made her debut with the Philadelphia Opera Company in "Manon," then toured with the Met in "La Boheme," "Faust" and "Romeo and Juliet." She returned to the screen in “The Road to Reno” (1938), a screwball comedy-western about a socialite who wants to get a quickie divorce from her rancher husband. Retiring to become one of New York's top socialites, she and Brulatour lived in one of the last single-family homes on apartment-filled Park Avenue. She would be later be dubbed "The Duchess of Park Avenue" by columnist Earl Wilson. In 1978, she was crowned Queen of the Beaux Arts Ball, an annual costume ball traditionally given by the students of the Ecole nationale suprrieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the spring. On January 23, 1982, the blonde star passed away of a heart attack at the age of 84. Color enhanced image by Hollywood Pinups from the b&w original.
