Colleen Moore was born Kathleen Morrison in Port Huron, Michigan in 1900. Moore was fascinated by movies from a young age and hoped to make a career of acting on screen. Her family moved frequently when she was a child, living for a time in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Florida, but often spent the summers in Chicago, Illinois with Moore’s aunt, Elizabeth. Her aunt’s husband, famed Chicago news editor Walter Howey, was an acquaintance of D. W. Griffith, and Howey secured a screen test for Moore when she was 15. She tested well and soon after travelled to Hollywood to begin working under the new name Howey had devised for her: Colleen Moore. Her first credited feature length film role was in THE BAD BOY (1917), and she appeared in a dozen more films before the end of the decade, primarily in dramas and westerns in which she played supporting roles. In the early years of her career, Moore acted with numerous prominent leading men of the era, including John Gilbert in THE BUSHER (1919), Tom Mix in THE WILDERNESS TRAIL (1919), Sessue Hayakawa in THE DEVIL’S CLAIM (1920), John Barrymore in THE LOTUS EATER (1921), and Antonio Moreno in LOOK YOUR BEST (1923). She also worked with several notable directors, including King Vidor on THE SKY PILOT (1921), Gregory La Cava on HIS NIBS (1921), and Frank Borzage on THE NTH COMMANDMENT (1923).

In 1923, Moore starred in FLAMING YOUTH (1923), the film that made her an icon. For the film, she cut her hair into the Dutch boy bob that would become her signature look, and young women across the country followed suit. Her subsequent appearances in PAINTED PEOPLE (1924), THE PERFECT FLAPPER (1924), FLIRTING WITH LOVE (1924), WE MODERNS (1925), ELLA CINDERS (1926), and NAUGHTY BUT NICE (1927) cemented her image as a playful but decent flapper type, relatively modest compared to the later, more risqué onscreen depictions from Clara Bow and Louise Brooks. During production of FLAMING YOUTH, Moore also married studio publicist turned producer John McCormick. McCormick ultimately produced 16 films for Moore, including her first two talkies, SMILING IRISH EYES (1929) and FOOTLIGHTS AND FOOLS (1929), before the couple divorced in 1930. Following the divorce, Moore took some time away from acting. She returned in 1933 with THE POWER AND THE GLORY (1933), her personal favorite of her work, followed by SOCIAL REGISTER (1934), SUCCESS AT ANY PRICE (1934), and THE SCARLET LETTER (1934).

Moore retired from the screen after THE SCARLET LETTER, and divorced her second husband, stockbroker Albert P. Scott, whom she had married two years prior. Following her retirement, Moore devoted herself to her dollhouse, an elaborate miniature structure which she began assembling as early as 1928. The castle-like structure was nine square feet with a 12-foot-tall tower, cost roughly half a million dollars, and had been worked on over the years by nearly 100 people, including set designer and screenwriter Horace Jackson as well as art director and interior designer Harold Grieve. In 1935, she took the castle on a successful tour across the United States to raise money for various children’s charities and at the same time published “Colleen Moore’s Doll House: The Most Exquisite Toy in the World.” She donated the structure to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in 1949. In 1937 she married her third husband, stockbroker Homer Hargrave, and adopted his two children. The two remained married until Hargrave’s death in 1965. Moore had effectively invested much of her money earned from acting and in 1969 she released the book “How Women Can Make Money in the Stock Market.” She also wrote her autobiography, “Silent Star,” published in 1968. In 1983 she married her fourth husband, builder Paul Maginot. Moore passed away in 1988.