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May McAvoy (September 8, 1899 – April 26, 1984) was an American actress who worked mainly during the silent film era. Some of her major roles are Laura Pennington in The Enchanted Cottage, Esther in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, and Mary Dale in The Jazz Singer.
McAvoy appeared in her first film, entitled Hate, in 1917. After appearing in more than three dozen films, she co-starred with Ramón Novarro and Francis X. Bushman in director Fred Niblo’s 1925 production of Ben-Hur, released by MGM. The feature-length film was one of the most lavish and spectacular productions of the silent movie era.
Although her voice was not heard in The Jazz Singer, McAvoy did speak in several other films, including the second “all-talkie” released by Warner Brothers, The Terror, which was directed by Roy Del Ruth and co-starred Conrad Nagel.
For years a rumor circulated that McAvoy retired from the screen at the transition to sound films because of a lisp or speech impediment. In truth, she married the treasurer of United Artists, who asked her not to work.
Later, she returned to films and played small roles during the 1940s and 1950s, making her final film appearance in a small part in the 1959 version of Ben-Hur.
May McAvoy Biography / Wiki
| Name | May McAvoy |
| Also Know | |
| Gender | Female |
| Known For | Acting |
| Place of Birth | New York City, New York, USA |
| Date of Birth | 1899-09-08 |
| Age(as in 2022) | 84 |
| Deathday | 1984-04-26 |
May McAvoy Acting Movies
| Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
| Morals | Carlotta Carlotta | 1921-10-31 | Reared in a Turkish harem and threatened with marriage to a man she does not love, Carlotta escapes to London with an English adventurer. When he is k… |
| The Bedroom Window | Ruth Martin | 1924-06-08 | William C. DeMille, Cecil B. DeMille’s talented director brother, teamed with his favorite collaborator, scenarist Clara Beranger, for the 7-reel sile… |
| The Fire Brigade | Helen Corwin | 1926-12-20 | Terry O’Neill is the youngest of a family of Irish firefighters. He falls in love with Helen Corwin, but complications ensue when Terry learns that he… |
| Three Women | Jeannie Wilton | 1924-10-04 | A frivolous middle aged socialite is suddenly put upon to have her daughter live with her. Her conniving paramour dumps her for the daughter, leaving … |
| The Mad Whirl | Cathleen Gillis | 1925-03-02 | A teenager with permissive parents gets too caught up in wild parties and the fast life…. |
| Only 38 | Lucy Stanley | 1923-06-17 | The death of her clergyman husband causes Mrs. Stanley, young mother of teenage twins, to change her style of life…. |
| A Private Scandal | Jeanne Millett | 1921-06-11 | A French orphan girl is adopted into the home of wealthy Americans. There she becomes romantically involved with a farm worker and at the same time en… |
| My Old Dutch | Sal Gratton | 1926-05-23 | Silent family drama…. |
| The Savage | Ysabel Atwater | 1926-07-18 | Rivalry between two behavioral scientists gets out of hand…… |
| The Road to Glory | Judith Allen | 1926-02-07 | May McAvoy is a woman who is blinded in an auto accident and relies on prayer to regain her sight…. |
| The Terror | Olga Redmayne | 1928-09-06 | Guests at an old English manor house are stalked by a mysterious killer known only as “The Terror”…. |
| The Lion and the Mouse | Shirley Ross | 1928-05-21 | Judge Ross, on the Federal Bench, rules in favor of a large company in litigation before him, unaware that a smaller company in which he owns consider… |
| Caught in the Fog | The Girl | 1928-08-24 | Wealthy Bob visits his mother’s Florida houseboat in order to remove her jewelry and stumbles upon a bobbed-hair bandit and her male accomplice, who m… |
| Stolen Kisses | May Lambert | 1929-02-23 | A crotchety old coot wants his son and daughter-in-law to have kids so he can have grandchildren, but so far they haven’t done so. In a somewhat ham-h… |
| Slightly Used | Cynthia Martin | 1927-09-03 | Slightly Used film… |
| Tarnish | Letitia Tevis | 1924-08-01 | … |
| The Passionate Quest | 1926-07-10 | The Passionate Quest is a 1926 American drama film directed by J. Stuart Blackton and written by Marian Constance Blackton. It is based on the 1924 no… | |
| If I Were Single | May Howard | 1927-12-17 | Rich girl Joan Whitney does her flirtatious best to break up the marriage of May and Ted Howard and almost succeeds, but not before May Howard has a l… |
| The Top of New York | Hilda O’Shaunnessey | 1922-06-18 | Hilda lives in a tenement apartment with her aunt, Mrs. Brady, and her crippled younger brother Micky, and works in a department store where her boss … |
| A Homespun Vamp | Meg Mackenzie | 1922-02-12 | The story of Meg Mackenzie, the orphaned niece of two stingy Scotsmen, Donald and Duncan Craig. She’s kept busy taking care of their home in the count… |
| Irish Hearts | Sheila | 1927-05-21 | Sheila, a feisty Irish girl, loves Emmett, a somewhat shady Irish boy. When Emmett goes to America, Sheila and her father follow and join him. However… |
| The Jazz Singer | Mary Dale | 1927-10-06 | A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first… |
| Lady Windermere’s Fan | Lady Windermere | 1925-12-26 | A society woman believes her husband is having an affair, a misconception which may have dire personal consequences for all involved…. |
| The Enchanted Cottage | Laura Pennington | 1924-03-23 | The Enchanted Cottage stars Richard Barthelmess as Oliver, a physically and emotionally wounded World War I veteran who comes home to a fiancée who p… |
| No Defense | Ruth Harper | 1929-04-05 | No Defense is a 1929 romantic drama directed by Lloyd Bacon and starring Monte Blue. It was a silent film with part talking and sound-effects by the V… |
| Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ | Esther | 1925-12-25 | Erstwhile childhood friends, Judah Ben-Hur and Messala meet again as adults, this time with Roman officer Messala as conqueror and Judah as a wealthy,… |
| A Perfect Lady | Claire Higgins | 1918-12-01 | Dancer Lucille Le Jambon (whose real name is Lucy Higgins) loses her job when the morals committee of Sycamore, Kansas, headed by the self-righteous D… |
| Kick In | Myrtle | 1922-12-17 | After serving time in Sing Sing, Chic Hewes wants to go straight, but when he refuses to be a stool pigeon for the cops, they hound him mercilessly. H… |
| Clarence | Cora Wheeler | 1922-10-15 | Clarence Smith is an ex-soldier who is hired for odd jobs by Mr. Wheeler primarily because he has overheard a family argument. And the Wheeler househo… |
| The Devil’s Garden | Norah | 1920-11-22 | William Dale, a servant for Lord Barradine, marries Mavis, a maid. Dale wants to move up in life, and with Lord Barradine’s influence, becomes distric… |
| Hollywood: Style Center of the World | Saleslady | 1940-05-29 | This short promotes the premise that movies often create a demand for the fashions seen in them. It starts with a vignette in rural America. A mother … |
| The Way of a Woman | Grace Lee | 1919-07-27 | A 1919 film directed by Robert Z. Leonard…. |
| Mr. Blabbermouth! | 1942-08-08 | Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, America was rife with rumors about the size of Japan’s armed forces and how well-equipped they were to wage … | |
| Movie Pests | Woman Whose Vision Gets Blocked (uncredited) | 1944-07-08 | This Pete Smith Specialty short takes a humorous look at the inconsiderate pests whose annoying habits make enjoying a movie impossible…. |
| I’ll Say So | 1918-12-22 | Hearing that the United States has just declared war on Germany, Bill Durham hurries to a recruiting station to enlist, but because he has flat feet, … | |
| The Woman Under Oath | Edith Norton | 1919-06-29 | After a forward introduces the question of whether women are temperamentally suited for jury duty, Jim O’Neil, a young shipping clerk, is found holdin… |
| Whispers | Gossip (uncredited) | 1941-02-08 | In this John Nesbitt’s Passing Parade short we see how gossip can be used to spread propaganda or to ruin a person’s reputation…. |
| Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch | Australy Wiggs | 1919-02-16 | Mrs. Wiggs, a loving mother whose husband has abandoned her, supports her many children and lives in hope of her husband’s return…. |
| Main Street on the March! | Window Shopper (uncredited) | 1941-12-09 | This Best Short Subject Academy Award winning film begins in the spring of 1940, just before the Nazi occupation of the Benelux countries, and ends im… |
| Sentimental Tommy | Grizel | 1921-03-26 | Grizel is the daughter of the Painted Lady, who believes that her lover will one day return. Grizel is ostracized by the other children of the town. T… |
| Sucker List | Secretary (uncredited) | 1941-07-26 | In this MGM Crime Does Not Pay series short, a man and his racketeer buddies devise a scheme to bilk those already seemingly desperate for money of wh… |
| Dulcy | Miss Murphy – Van Dyke’s Secretary (uncredited) | 1940-10-04 | A dizzy young woman aranges to turn her inventor-boyfriend’s vacation into a chance meeting with a possible investor who happens to be her brother’s f… |
| Luxury Liner | Woman (uncredited) | 1948-11-09 | Capt. Jeremy Bradford has a particularly exciting luxury liner cruise in store when he’s charged with transporting a troupe of opera singers to Rio de… |
| Third Finger, Left Hand | Telephone Operator (uncredited) | 1940-10-11 | Magazine editor Margot Merrick pretends to be married in order to avoid advances from male colleagues. Unfortunately, things don’t go to plan when Jef… |
| The Yellow Cab Man | Minor Role (uncredited) | 1950-03-25 | Pirdy is accident prone. He has been denied insurance from every company in town because he is always getting hit or hurt in some way. On the day that… |
| Ringside Maisie | 1st Nurse (uncredited) | 1941-08-01 | Young undefeated boxer Terry Dolan, who’s been lying to his invalid mother about his career, confides to Maisie that he hates and is terrified by boxi… |
| Born to Sing | (uncredited) | 1942-02-18 | A group of children put on a show in order to prove that a down and out musician was the real composer of a Broadway show’s songs…. |
| A Trip to Paramountown | Herself | 1922-07-10 | Documentary short film depicting the filmmaking activity at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, featuring dozens of stars captured candidly and at wor… |
| Love Crazy | Sanity Hearting Secretary (uncredited) | 1941-05-23 | Circumstance, an old flame and a mother-in-law drive a happily married couple to the verge of divorce and insanity…. |
| Two Girls and a Sailor | Dowager (uncredited) | 1944-06-14 | A sailor helps two sisters start up a service canteen. The sailor soon becomes taken with gorgeous sister Jean, unaware that her sibling Patsy is also… |
| Ben-Hur | Woman in crowd (uncredited) | 1959-11-18 | In 25 AD,Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew in ancient Judea, opposes the occupying Roman empire. Falsely accused by a Roman childhood friend-turned-overlord of tr… |
| Rio Rita | Hotel Guest (uncredited) | 1942-03-11 | Doc and Wishey run into some Nazi-agents, who want to smuggle bombs into the USA from a Mexican border hotel…. |
| Phantom Raiders | Middle Telephone Operator | 1940-06-07 | In this second Carter mystery, a mysterious rash of cargo ships sinking in Panama leads insurers Llewellyns of London to hire vacationer Nick Carter a… |
| Two Girls on Broadway | Chatworth’s Secretary (uncredited) | 1940-04-19 | Eddie Kerns sells his song to a Broadway producer and also lands a job dancing in the musical. He sends for his dance partner-fiancée Molly Mahoney w… |
| Mystery Street | Nurse (uncredited) | 1950-06-23 | When a young woman’s skeletal remains turn up on a Massachusetts beach, Barnstable cop Peter Moralas teams with Boston police and uses forensics, with… |
| The Bad and the Beautiful | Pebbel’s Secretary (uncredited) | 1952-12-25 | Told in flashback form, the film traces the rise and fall of a tough, ambitious Hollywood producer, Jonathan Shields, as seen through the eyes of vari… |
Credit: TMDB
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