Kathryn Adams

“St. Louis was Kathryn Adams’ birthplace. She showed talent for singing and after several years of study, joined Louisiana Lou, a musical comedy. This engagement was followed by one in Hop o’ My Thumb. She went to New York determined upon an operatic career. Several of her friends were motion picture actresses and she decided to try the films. She was immediately successful. She was with Tom Terriss in The Pursuing Shadow and went to Metro to play ‘The Lady That’s Known as Lou’ in The Shooting of Dan McGrew. After engagements with World, Fox and Famous Players she became a member of the Thanhouser stock company and has been at the New Rochelle studios for more than a year. Miss Adams was the wife who almost went astray in The Shine Girl and has a strong vampire role in Divorce and the Daughter. Mr. Thanhouser believed that Miss Adams’ Olivia in the Vicar of Wakefield will be the finest thing she has ever done.”

A 1916 directory noted that she was 5’7” tall, weighed 130 pounds, and had blonde hair and dark gray eyes. For recreation she enjoyed music and singing.

The following is from an unattributed clipping dated May 26, 1917, preserved in the Robinson Locke Collection: “Miss Adams has played a number and a variety of roles that would do credit to a more experienced picture player. She has been seen in prominent straight roles as leading lady, in vampire and in character parts. Perhaps she will best be remembered in the role of Olivia in The Vicar of Wakefield, in the screen version of the play in which Frederick Warde was featured. Playing opposite Mr. Warde, Miss Adams appeared as Eppie in Silas Marner, and in a whole series of recent productions. Her latest part before coming to the Goldwyn studio was in Hinton’s Double, a current feature release.

“Under the Thanhouser management Miss Adams was persistently cast as a vampire, and it has been remarked of her that for pure prettiness Miss Adams was one of the most alluring ‘vamps’ ever screened.... Miss Adams is of that type which has been described as concentrated blonde; over a face of slender and delicate lines she carries a mass of golden hair which is almost a pale straw color.”

In early 1917 she lived at 508 West 139th Street, New York City and was with Famous Players. In 1917 she was seen in Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (Hyclass Producing Company for Weber Photo Dramas, states rights release), and in May of that year she was with the Goldwyn studios. Kathryn Adams was in films through at least the 1940s and died in Hollywood, California on February 17, 1959.

Note: Another actress named Kathryn Adams worked for Universal in the early 1940s, appeared in Unfinished Business, and was engaged to marry young actor Hugh Beaumont, with the ceremony scheduled for May 1942, per an article in The New York Post, April 14, 1941.