Alma Rubens(1897-1931)
- Actress
Alma Rubens was born Alma Genevieve Reubens in
San Francisco, California. She was interested in entertaining at an
early age. Like most young girls, she enjoyed fantasy play acting and
by the time she was 19 had become a full-fledged star. She didn't have
to wait long like some of the starlets who haunted casting offices
continually. Her break came in 1916 in the film
Reggie Mixes In (1916). Six more
films followed that year, and she won critical acclaim in
The Half-Breed (1916). In 1917 she
again starred in a box-office smash,
The Firefly of Tough Luck (1917).
She became a busy young actress with role after role and hit after hit.
In 1924, as Mildred Gower, she performed magnificently in
The Price She Paid (1924).
After a busy 1925, Alma suddenly found it difficult to obtain work, but
it was not because her star had suddenly dimmed--it was because of her
addiction to heroin. The money she made dwindled away in search of the
next high. She was in and out of mental asylums, but it didn't really
help much because she was still dabbling in drugs. Weakened by her
habit, she died in Los Angeles in 1931, of pneumonia. She
was less than a month away from her 34th birthday. Her final two films
were two years earlier,
Show Boat (1929) and
She Goes to War (1929).
