Gertrude Selby
{{Short description|American actress}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Gertrude Selby
| image = Gertrude Selby - 1919 MPW.jpg
| caption = Selby in March 1919
| birth_name = Gertrude Olga Selby
| birth_date = November 7, 1894
| birth_place = Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
| death_date = June 22, 1975 (aged 80)
| death_place = Los Angeles, California, U.S.
| occupation = Actress
| spouse = Townsend Netcher (div.)
}}
Gertrude Selby was an American actress who was active in Hollywood in the silent era. She appeared in dozens of films between 1914 and 1920, mostly short comedies.
Early life and education
Gertrude was born in Philadelphia to William Selby and Olga Hansen, and she was educated in New York City.{{Cite web|date=14 Apr 1916|title=The Photoplay Age|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/198976120/?terms=%22gertrude%20selby%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=The Daily Gazette|language=en}}
Career
She began her career as a vaudevillian before breaking into the nascent motion picture industry around 1914, working frequently on L-KO comedies.{{Cite web|date=6 Sep 1919|title=Hitch in Hitch|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/357472992/?terms=%22gertrude%20selby%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=Chicago Tribune|language=en}}{{Cite web|date=4 Dec 1915|title=LKO Has Famous Group of Girls|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/197920302/?terms=%22gertrude%20selby%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=Statesman Journal|language=en}}
In 1919, at age 24, she married wealthy Chicago socialite Townsend Netcher in Beverly Hills, California after a three-week courtship, against the wishes of Necher's family.{{Cite web|last=Lathrop|first=Monroe|date=17 Sep 1919|title=To Put the Bible in Films|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/654399341/?terms=%22gertrude%20selby%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=The Kansas City Star|language=en}} The couple divorced in the late 1920s, with Selby filing on the grounds of cruelty.{{Cite web|date=29 Nov 1928|title=Former Actress Sues|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/573329747/?terms=%22gertrude%20selby%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=The Birmingham News|language=en}}{{Cite web|date=26 Jan 1929|title=Help Each Other to Divorces|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/355078717/?terms=%22gertrude%20selby%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=Chicago Tribune|language=en}}{{Cite web|date=25 Dec 1928|title=Mrs. Netcher Gets Divorce for Cruelty|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/40562879/?terms=%22gertrude%20netcher%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=Lincoln Journal Star|language=en}} Netcher later married actress Constance Talmadge.
Selby appears to have retired from acting around the time she married Netcher, and spent several years post-divorce living in Spain with her mother and sister.{{Cite web|last=McIntyre|first=O.O.|date=12 Jun 1933|title=New York Day by Day|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/262047390/?terms=%22gertrude%20netcher%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=Journal and Courier|language=en}} The three were evacuated from their apartment in Barcelona at the start of the Spanish Civil War.{{Cite web|date=25 Oct 1936|title=Spanish Civil War Horrors Related by Los Angeles Girl|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/380474216/?terms=%22gertrude%20netcher%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=The Los Angeles Times|language=en}}
Selby then spent time in a penthouse in Paris before returning to the United States in the early 1940s at the outbreak of World War II.{{Cite web|last=Leimert|first=Lucille|date=30 Aug 1939|title=Chatterbox|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/385406941/?terms=%22gertrude%20netcher%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=The Los Angeles Times|language=en}}{{Cite web|date=18 Mar 1942|title=Visitor|url=http://www.newspapers.com/image/380736834/?terms=%22gertrude%20netcher%22&match=1|access-date=2021-12-29|website=The Los Angeles Times|language=en}} She does not appear to have ever remarried.
Select filmography
- Easy to Make Money (1919)
- Kidder & Ko (1918)
- Twenty-One (1918)
- The Double Room Mystery (1917)
- A Child of Mystery (1916)
- The Sign of the Poppy (1916)