Florence Deshon

Florence Deshon, born Florence Danks on July 19, 1893, in Tacoma, Washington, was an American stage and silent film actress whose career spanned Broadway and Hollywood before her death at age 28. Her father, Samuel Danks, was a Welsh-born musician and union organizer, and her mother, Flora Caroline Spatzer, was a pianist of Austro-Hungarian descent. Deshon grew up in Washington alongside her older brother, Walter, until the family relocated to New York City around 1900 so her parents could pursue musical careers.

Deshon's stage work in New York placed her on Broadway between 1913 and 1916, with credits that included Seven Chances and the musical The Sunshine Girl. It was also in 1913 that she met writer Max Eastman in Greenwich Village, and the two entered into a romantic relationship. Her film career began in 1915 with The Beloved Vagabond, and she went on to appear in more than twenty silent pictures. In 1919, Samuel Goldwyn summoned her from New York to Los Angeles, where she worked at his studio before taking on features for Vitagraph Studios through 1921. Her final screen role was Sally McTurk in The Roof Tree, directed by John Francis Dillon. During her time in Los Angeles, Deshon was also purportedly romantically involved with Charlie Chaplin, and accounts from the period describe her commuting between coasts in connection with both relationships. She returned to New York City with her mother in December 1921 with the intention of continuing her film work there.

On February 4, 1922, Deshon was found unconscious on the third floor of her apartment building at 120 West Eleventh Street in New York City, a unit she had subleased from Doris Stevens, who was then honeymooning in Europe with her husband, Dudley Field Malone. Illuminating gas was flowing from an open jet in her bedroom, and it was a newspaperwoman named Minnie Morris who discovered her upon returning to the building. Deshon was transported by ambulance to St. Vincent's Hospital, where Eastman, who had learned of her collapse while attending a theatre performance that evening, went to give blood in an effort to aid her recovery. She died the following afternoon. A medical examiner ruled her death accidental, though rumors of suicide persisted among her acquaintances, and biographers including Ross Wetzsteon and Christoph Irmscher have characterized it as such. Eastman, who had encountered Deshon briefly on the street the afternoon before her death, maintained that she had no reason to take her own life. An unsubstantiated account from a neighbor held that she had recently argued with a visitor to her apartment. Deshon died five days after William Desmond Taylor, whose death drew greater public attention at the time.