Beatrice Banyard

Beatrice Banyard was an American actress and screenwriter whose career spanned stage and film from the 1910s through the early 1940s. Born in Spring Valley, Iowa, to A.T. Banyard and Ida Burnett, she was the second of two daughters. Banyard grew up largely in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she became a recognized figure in local society and began performing in theatrical productions as a young teenager.

In 1917, Banyard married John Stone, with whom she had two children before the couple divorced. Following the end of that marriage, she pursued a professional stage career. It was during this period that she reconnected with playwright, film director, and actor Willard Mack, a figure she had first encountered at age twelve. Mack took Banyard as his fourth and final wife in 1927. Though she left him shortly after their marriage, the two reconciled and remained together until Mack's death in 1934.

Banyard's Broadway career ran from 1925 to 1928 and encompassed five productions. She appeared in The Dove, Honor Be Damned!, Canary Dutch, Lily Sue, and The Scarlet Fox.

Around 1931, after she and Mack relocated to Los Angeles — where he had been contracted by MGM as a writer — Banyard transitioned into writing film scenarios. Her screenwriting credits include The Billion Dollar Scandal (1931), dialogue work on Reducing (1931), Strictly Personal (1933), and Myrt and Marge (1933). She also continued to act on screen, appearing in The Voice of the City (1929) and What Price Innocence? (1933), both directed by Mack.

Beyond her entertainment career, Banyard was an accomplished automobile racer, regarded as one of the foremost women racers in the United States and the holder of multiple dirt-track records on the West Coast.