Anita Page, one of the few surviving stars of silent cinema, has died in her sleep this weekend aged ninety eight.
She began her career in 1925 working in extra roles on movies such as A Kiss for Cinderella and Love 'Em and Leave 'Em before breaking into silent cinema with Our Dancing Daughters.
Starring Alongside Joan Crawford Our Dancing Daughters follows Diana (Crawford) and Ann (Page) who both fight for the attention of Ben Blaine (Johnny Mack Brown) but he marries Ann.
But Ben and Diana realise that they are in love with one another and after Ann falls to her death due to drunkenness they can be together.
1929 film The Broadway Melody was also a major success for the actress who at this time was making the transition into talking pictures.
The Broadway Melody was the first sound picture to win an Academy Award for Best Picture and until this weekend Anita Page was the last known living attendee of those very first Academy Awards in 1929.
She became one of Hollywood's busiest and most popular actresses throughout the late twenties early thirties starring alongside the likes of Busta Keaton and Clark Gable, with whom she was romantically linked at the time.
However when her studio contract expired in 1933 she announced her retirement from acting at the tender age of twenty six.
She married composer Nacio Herb Brown that same year but the marriage was annulled just twelve months later as Brown's divorce had not be finalised by the time the couple were married. She married a gain in 1937 to navy pilot Lieutenant Hershel A. House with whom she had two daughters.
The couple lived in California until his death in 1991.
After turning her back on Hollywood for sixty years she returned to the big screen in 1996 with Sunset After Dark and went on to appear in several low budget horror movies.
Her public appearances diminished over the last few years due to poor health and she finally passed away in her sleep this weekend due to natural causes.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw