Alberta Vaughn

Alberta Vaughn (June 27, 1904 – April 26, 1992) was an American actress in silent motion pictures and early Western sound films. She appeared in some 130 motion pictures.

Career

Born in Ashland, Kentucky, Vaughn was a selected as a WAMPAS Baby Star along with Clara Bow and Dorothy Mackaill in 1924. Her movie career began in 1921 and continued until 1935. She often co-starred with actor Al Cook in comedies. She made Randy Rides Alone (1934) with John Wayne. In 1932, she was a member of the cast of Intermission, a play by Irving Kaye Davis in September 1932. The production opened in San Francisco, California and co-starred Madge Bellamy and Judith Voselli. Vaughn made her last onscreen appearance in the 1935 film The Live Wire opposite Richard Talmadge.

Alberta Vaughn and Richard Talmadge share a cigar in The Live Wire (1935).

Personal life and death

In 1926, Vaughn became engaged to actor and leading man Grant Withers. After announcing their engagement in October 1929, Vaughn traveled to New York to film some talking sequences for a movie she was filming in Hollywood. Withers broke off the engagement after he discovered Vaughn went out with friends to nightclubs in New York. Immediately after the wedding was called off, Vaughn returned to Hollywood as the fiancee of noted attorney (later agent and producer), Charles K. Feldman.

On April 8, 1934, Vaughn wed assistant casting director Joseph Egil of Paramount Pictures. They were married in Yuma, Arizona. She married a second time in 1948, this time to roofing contractor John R. Thompson.

In March 1949 Vaughn was jailed on an intoxication violation in Pasadena. She chose incarceration instead of paying a $25 fine. Her jail term was twelve and a half days. A previous drunken charge, then pending, would have added an additional four months to her sentence. Vaughn was arrested after an argument with her husband, John R. Thompson. The incident followed her release after serving eight months of a one-year sentence on the earlier instance.

She died in Studio City, California in 1992, aged 87, and was buried in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.

Selected filmography