Julia Bruns

Julia Eliza Bruns (1895 – December 24, 1927) was an American actress, model, and silent film performer whose career spanned stage work in the United States and Europe as well as appearances in Hollywood and French cinema. She gained wide public recognition as a model, with her image appearing on numerous magazine covers and Sunday feature pages. In 1917, artist James Montgomery Flagg illustrated her likeness, and she was publicly referred to as "America's most beautiful girl."

Bruns made her first stage appearance in 1913 in The American Maid, a play written by John Philip Sousa. That same year, on October 12, she was a passenger aboard a Baldwin Red Devil aircraft piloted by Tony Jannus, a contestant in a New York Times derby. The plane climbed to nearly 4,000 feet and remained airborne for twenty minutes over Oakwood Heights, Staten Island. Her early stage work also included a part in Help Wanted, written by Oliver Morosco. In November 1916, she was among a cast of fifty performers in Willard Mack's theatrical drama Her Market Value, produced at the Olympic Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.

Her Broadway credits between 1913 and 1918 included The American Maid, Miss Information, The Blue Pearl, and The Squab Farm. The Squab Farm, staged at the Bijou Theatre in 1918, marked Tallulah Bankhead's first stage role. When Bankhead unknowingly broke a longstanding theater superstition by whistling in the communal dressing room and was rebuked for it, Bruns invited her to share her private dressing room. Also in 1918, Bruns was involved in an accident at the Loews 7th Avenue Theatre in New York City, an incident significant enough to close the theater for several days before it reopened on October 7 with a presentation of The Blue Pearl.

Bruns also performed abroad, appearing in London productions of Business Before Pleasure and Potash and Perlmutter, the latter of which she had also performed in 1915 in the role of a typist. She returned to New York in January 1920 following that London engagement. That same year she starred in Beware of Dogs at the Broadhurst Theatre, a comedy that also featured William Hodge, who both wrote the play and performed in it.

Her film career consisted of three motion pictures. The first, No Place for Father (1913), was directed by Lionel Barrymore and released by Biograph Studios in the Bronx. In At First Sight (1917), she played the role of Nell alongside actress Mae Murray and actor Sam Hardy. Her third and final film, Quand on aime (1919), was produced in France and paired her with actor Paul Guide under the direction of Henry Houry.

In September 1925, Bruns was arrested in Chicago for the theft of jewels valued at $1,000, and she admitted to detectives that she had stolen them to obtain money for narcotics. She refused to go to jail unless her two dogs — a chow chow named Babe and a German Shepherd named Von Hindenburg — accompanied her, and she kept both animals in her cell along with an autographed photograph of Enrico Caruso. In 1926, she wrote a series of articles about her experiences as a drug addict and her attempts to find a cure.

Bruns died of alcohol poisoning on December 24, 1927, in a furnished room at 109 East 105th Street in New York City. She was discovered dying that evening by Charles H. Brile, an automobile agency manager. Dr. Donato Bracco of 341 East 116th Street was summoned but arrived after she had already died. She was 32 years old.