Pauline Garon

Marie Pauline Garon was born on September 9, 1900, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the youngest of eleven children born to Pierre-Auguste Garon and Victoria Connick. Of French and Irish descent, she did not acquire English until she was ten years old. Her father worked first for the Canadian postal department before transitioning to an insurance agency. Her parents enrolled her at the Couvent Sacré-Coeur, one of Montreal's most prestigious schools, where she studied for seven years and became the institution's first graduate to pursue a career in theatre.

As a young woman of around twenty, Garon left Canada for New York City, where she began performing on Broadway. Her stage credits included the play Lilies of the Field, the musical A Lonely Romeo, and the play Buddies, with her Broadway appearances spanning 1919 to 1921. It was her work on the Broadway stage that brought her to the attention of director Henry King, who cast her in his 1922 film adaptation of Sonny after seeing her perform in the stage production.

Garon entered film through an unconventional route, making her screen debut as a body double for Dorothy Gish in Remodeling Her Husband. She also doubled for Sylvia Breamer in Doubling for Romeo in 1921. Her first significant acting role came that same year in The Power Within. Upon arriving in Hollywood in 1920, she was associated with D.W. Griffith. She appeared opposite Owen Moore in Reported Missing in 1922, and her performance in Sonny earned her considerable praise. She co-starred with Richard Barthelmess in that First National Pictures release.

By 1923, Cecil B. DeMille promoted Garon as a major new discovery, casting her in two films including Adam's Rib. That same year she was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars. Her popularity grew steadily, and she was producing at least five films annually, taking lead roles in B movies and supporting parts in higher-profile productions. In 1927 she appeared alongside Gloria Swanson and John Boles in The Love of Sunya.

Garon's career began a sharp decline by 1928. She appeared increasingly in French-language versions of Paramount Pictures films as well as lower-profile English-language productions. By the early 1930s she was receiving small uncredited parts, and by 1934 she had effectively disappeared from film. She later surfaced in a minor role in How Green Was My Valley in 1941 and made brief appearances in the westerns Song of the Saddle in 1936 and The Cowboy and the Blonde in 1941.

In her personal life, Garon became an American citizen on February 20, 1928. She married actor Lowell Sherman on February 15, 1926, though Sherman's influence led her to decline a long-term contract with Paramount Pictures. The couple separated in August 1927. In February 1940 she eloped to Yuma, Arizona, with radio actor Clyde Harland Alban; they divorced in 1942. She married Ross Forrester, widower of actress Marion Aye, in May 1953 and remained with him until his death. In 1924, rumors circulated that she had become engaged to professional golfer Gene Sarazen while filming The Average Woman, but Garon issued a full denial in March of that year.

Garon's health deteriorated significantly in her later years. She collapsed at 20th Century Fox studios on June 5, 1952, and was subsequently a patient at Patton State Hospital, a psychiatric institution in San Bernardino, California. She died on August 30, 1965, ten days before her sixty-fifth birthday, from a brain disorder.