Edna Morton

Edna Morton (April 2, 1894 – July 31, 1980) was an American actress born in Washington, D.C., who built her career primarily in film during the 1920s and made a Broadway appearance in 1923. She became known for her work in race films, most of them produced by Reol Productions, and was referred to as "the colored Mary Pickford."

Morton's film career began in 1921 with The Sport of the Gods, a production believed to have been filmed during February and March of that year. The film marked Reol Productions' debut, and Morton played the character Hattie Thompson. She appeared in several additional films that same year, including The Burden of Race, The Call of His People, and Secret Sorrow. Among her most notable screen credits are The Call of His People (1921), Easy Money (1922), and Spitfire (1922), in which she took the lead role, portraying a character named Ruth 'Spitfire' Hill. Over the course of her career, Morton appeared in ten films in total.

A frequent collaborator of Morton's was Lawrence Chenault, a fellow African American actor who co-starred with her in Spitfire and The Sport of the Gods. The two appeared together in multiple productions between 1921 and 1925, among them The Burden of Race, The Call of His People, Secret Sorrow, Ghost of Tolston's Manor (1923), and A Son of Satan (1924), the latter directed by Oscar Micheaux. Morton also stepped outside the race film genre with a role in T. Hayes Hunter's Wildfire (1925), in which she played a supporting character named Susie. Because cast listings of the era frequently identified her only as a player rather than by name, much of the documentation surrounding her career has been lost.

In 1923, Morton appeared on Broadway in The Comedy of Errors, adding a stage credit to her body of work during the same period she was active in film.

Morton married twice. Her first marriage, to Samuel A. Wilson, took place in September 1915 and ended in divorce on an undetermined date. She married Edward R. DeGrant on September 7, 1930. DeGrant died on June 6, 1973, and Morton did not remarry. She died on July 31, 1980, at the age of 86.