May Allison

May Allison (June 14, 1890 – March 27, 1989) was an American actress born in Rising Fawn, Georgia, the youngest of five children of John Samuel Allison and Nannie Virginia (née Wise) Allison. She built her reputation primarily in silent films during the early twentieth century, though her career also encompassed stage work.

Allison made her Broadway debut in 1911, playing "Beauty" in Walter Browne's Everywoman. Her Broadway credits include Apartment 12-K, in which she appeared in 1914. She subsequently relocated to Hollywood, California, as the motion picture industry was establishing itself.

Her screen debut came in 1915 in A Fool There Was, a star vehicle for Theda Bara, in which Allison appeared as an ingenue. That same year, director Allan Dwan cast her opposite actor Harold Lockwood in the romantic film David Harum. Audiences responded strongly to the pairing, and Allison and Lockwood went on to appear together in approximately twenty-five films during the World War I era, becoming one of the first celebrated on-screen romantic duos. Their partnership ended in 1918 when Lockwood died at age 31 after contracting Spanish influenza. Following his death, Allison's career declined considerably, though she continued making films throughout the 1920s. Her final film was the 1927 production The Telephone Girl, which also starred Madge Bellamy and Warner Baxter.

Allison married four times. A secret marriage to Col. William Stephenson in Santa Ana, California, in December 1919 was annulled in February 1920. On November 25, 1920, she married writer and actor Robert Ellis in Greenwich, Connecticut; she filed for divorce in December 1923, citing cruelty. On November 15, 1926, with Ivan and Adela Rogers St. Johns as witnesses, she married Photoplay magazine editor James R. Quirk, who died in 1932. Her final marriage, to Cleveland industrialist Carl Norton Osborne, took place on March 2, 1934, and lasted until his death in 1982.

In her later years, Allison spent time at her vacation home in Tucker's Town, Bermuda, and was a patron of the Cleveland Orchestra. She died of respiratory failure in Bratenahl, Ohio, in 1989 at the age of 98, survived by a stepdaughter and four stepgrandchildren. She was buried at the Gates Mills South Cemetery in Gates Mills, Ohio.