America Chedister

America Chedister (October 21, 1895 – November 1, 1975) was an American actress and singer who worked in both musical theatre and film. Born America Cooney in St. Clair Township, Benton County, Iowa, she was the daughter of Thomas Cooney and Frances McFadden. Her professional name was drawn from her maternal grandmother, America Susannah Chidester.

Chedister came to the attention of director Edward H. Griffith while she was working as a showgirl, and the two subsequently married. Her film career spanned 1921 to 1926 and included roles in Dawn of the East (1921), in which she played Mariya, and Scrambled Wives (1921), in which she appeared as Mrs. Halsey. In 1922 she took the role of Lady Anne Boyle in A Stage Romance, and that same year she appeared in The Sea Riders, a picture written and directed by her husband and set in a Cape Breton fishing village. Later film appearances included Enemies of Women (1923), in which she was cast as a French Beauty, and Atta Boy (1926), in which she played a Fashionable Woman. A portrait of Chedister by photographer Arnold Genthe, dating from November 1921, is held in the Library of Congress.

Her Broadway career ran from 1923 to 1924. At the Globe Theatre in 1923, she originated the role of Mrs. DePuyster Fish in the musical comedy Jack and Jill. That same year she also appeared in the revue The Greenwich Village Follies.

In 1929, Edward Griffith purchased a one-acre plot in Three Arch Bay, a newly developed area of Laguna Beach, California. By 1932 he had constructed one of the first houses in the community as a beach retreat. The residence, named The Lugger, incorporated porthole windows and staircases salvaged from ships, and its Map Room was taken from a vessel called the Mary Dollar. The property also included a lighthouse built between the house and the ocean, along with two separate guesthouses. Among the guests entertained there were Lionel Barrymore and Claudette Colbert. The Griffiths lived at the property in retirement until their deaths, and it is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Chedister died in Laguna Beach in November 1975 and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. In her will she left funds to the Laguna Beach library, which were used to construct a picture book room.