Margery Wilson

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Wilson was born in Gracey, Kentucky as Sara Barker Strayer, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Holmes B. Strayer.{{cite news|last1=Talley|first1=Rhea|date=March 12, 1950|title=Kentuckian Has Made Charm A Career|page=68|work=The Courier-Journal|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/25062406/margery-wilson-12-mar-1950/|access-date=August 5, 2021|via=Newspapers.com}}

She received higher education in philosophy and literature while also pursuing social service work. Starting out, Wilson gave public performances in Cincinnati at clubs, schools, and churches. Later, she was able to tour from Ohio to Atlanta with the John Lawrence Players as the leading lady.{{Citation needed |date=August 2024}}

By the age of 16, she founded her own theater company. She and her sister left for London on a world tour as musical entertainers.{{Cite web|url=https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-margery-wilson/|title=Margery Wilson – Women Film Pioneers Project|website=wfpp.columbia.edu}} She changed her name when she was 16 in 1913 because her relatives disliked having the family name associated with acting.{{cite news |title=Native Kentuckian, Margery Wilson, Writes Life Story |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/82886053/margery-wilson/ |access-date=August 6, 2021 |work=The Lexington Herald |date=November 4, 1956 |page=41|via = Newspapers.com}}

In 1914, Wilson traveled to Los Angeles to pursue a career in Hollywood. She was in a wide range of motion pictures but is best known for her portrayal of Brown Eyes, a character in the D.W. Griffith film Intolerance. She had three dozen roles, many of them leads.{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/05/obituaries/margery-wilson.html|title=Margery Wilson|work=The New York Times|date=February 5, 1986 |accessdate=November 13, 2015}}

Wilson also was one of Hollywood's earliest women directors. Her career as a film writer, director, and producer was short, lasting from 1920 to 1922. Those three years did not include the time she toured with her films. She directed at least three movies: That Something (1920), The Offenders (1921), and Insinuation (1922). There are no surviving prints of any of her directing efforts.{{Cite book|title=Early women directors|last=Anthony.|first=Slide|date=1977|publisher=A.S. Barnes|isbn=049801701X|location=South Brunswick [N.J.]|oclc=2005395|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/earlywomendirect0000slid}} She finished her work as a film director by her late twenties.

Wilson had two children. Both of them predeceased her. She left the film production business to take care of her children after marrying Otto Meeks, the owner of a ranching empire (or "a prominent Western industrialist"). After his death, she married Grover Paulette Williamson. Her third husband, Vance Link Bushnell, died in 1947. Although she was no longer in film production, she stayed connected to the business by contributing to pamphlets about famous people. Owing to her Hollywood connections, she was able to write 50 of the pamphlets.{{cite web|title=Margery Wilson|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/05/obituaries/margery-wilson.html|work=The New York Times|date=February 5, 1986 |accessdate=13 November 2015}}

She wrote guidance books that coached husbands on how to protect and treat their wives. In 1951, her book How to Make the Most of Wife was published. These books could also be considered inspirational nonfiction. Her autobiography, I Found My Way, was published in 1956.

{{Incomplete list|date=April 2011}}

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• The Lucky Transfer (1915, short) - The little girl
• Double Trouble (1915) - Elizabeth Waldron
• The Primal Lure (1916) - Lois Le Moyne
• Eye of the Night (1916) - Jane
• Intolerance (1916) - Brown Eyes
• The Return of Draw Egan (1916) - Myrtle Buckton
• A Corner in Colleens (1916) - Rose
• The Honorable Algy (1916) - Patricia
• The Sin Ye Do (1916) - Alice Ward
• The Habit of Happiness (1916)
• The Bride of Hate (1917) - Mercedes Mendoza
• The Gunfighter (1917) - Norma Wright
• The Last of the Ingrams (1917) - Mercy Reed
• The Desert Man (1917) - Jennie
• Wolf Lowry (1917) - Mary Davis
• The Clodhopper (1917) - Mary Martin
• The Mother Instinct (1917) - Marie Coutierre
• Mountain Dew (1917) - Roxie Bradley
• Wild Sumac (1917) - Wild Sumac
• Without Honor (1918) - Jeanie McGregor
• The Flames of Chance (1918) - Jeanette Gontreau
• The Hard Rock Breed (1918) - Shiela Dolan
• The Law of the Great Northwest (1918) - Marie Monest
• The Hand at the Window (1918) - Laura Bowers
• Old Love for New (1918) - Gwendolyn Alcot
• Marked Cards (1918) - Ellen Shannon
• Venus in the East (1919) - Martha
• Crooked Straight (1919) - Vera Owen
• Desert Gold (1919) - Mercedes Castenada
• The Blooming Angel (1920) - Carlotta
• That Something (1920, co-director) - Dorah Holmes
• The House of Whispers (1920) - Clara Bradford
• Why Not Marry? (1922)
• Insinuation (1922, director) - Mary Wright
• The Offenders (1922, co-director)

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{{Reflist}}

{{commons category}}

• {{IMDb name|id=0933805|name=Margery Wilson}}
• [https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-margery-wilson/ Margery Wilson] at the Women Film Pioneers Project
• [http://www.virtual-history.com/movie/person/2089/margery-wilson Literature on Margery Wilson]

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Category:1896 births

Category:1986 deaths

Category:American film actresses

Category:American silent film actresses

Category:American women film directors

Category:People from Christian County, Kentucky

Category:20th-century American actresses

Category:Women film pioneers

Category:Film directors from Kentucky