From Wikipedia
Alma Rubens (February 19, 1897 â January 22, 1931) was an
American film actress and stage performer.
Rubens began her career in the mid 1910s. She quickly rose
to stardom in 1916 after appearing opposite Douglas Fairbanks in The Half
Breed. For the remainder of the decade, she appeared in supporting roles in comedies
and drama. In the 1920s.
Her first stage opportunity came when a chorus girl in a
musical comedy theater troupe became ill. Rubens was chosen to take her place
and joined the troupe as a regular performer. There she met Franklyn Farnum who
was also a member. He later convinced Rubens to leave the troupe and try her
hand at film acting.
Her breakthrough performance was in 1916 in the movie Reggie
Mixes In. She made six more films in that same year. In 1917 she starred in The
Firefly of Tough Luck, which was a big success. She gained fame when she became
Douglas Fairbanks's leading lady in The Half Breed (1916), and supported
Fairbanks and Bessie Love in the cocaine comedy The Mystery of the Leaping Fish
later that same year. In 1918, Alma announced that she was changing the
spelling of her last name of Rueben to "Rubens" because it caused too
much confusion in the movie industry and in publications. She later told
Photoplay magazine, "As a matter of fact my name is not the same
[spelling] as the painter's. It's either Reubens or Ruebens-I forget which. I
never could spell it. Couldn't remember where the 'e' came. So I let it go
Rubens."
In 1920, she completed The World and His Wife, opposite
Montague Love which further solidified her popularity. In 1924, she starred in
The Price She Paid and Cytherea. Rubens developed a drug addiction which eventually ended her
career. She died of pneumonia shortly after being arrested on narcotics charge
in January 1931.
A funeral service was held on January 24 at the Little
Church of the Flowers at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale. Her body was then
shipped to Fresno where a second service was held at the Christian Science
Church on January 26. She was interred in Ararat Massis Armenian Cemetery in
Fresno.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Alma
Rubens has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6409 Hollywood Blvd.