Roberta Arnold

Roberta Arnold, born Minerva Bussenius on September 22, 1896, in San Francisco, California, was an American stage and silent film actress who performed on Broadway between 1916 and 1928. She moved to Los Angeles as an infant, where she was raised by her father, a Southern California businessman, and her mother, an officer in the Native Daughters of the Golden West. Feeling her birth name too great a handicap for the stage, she constructed her professional name from two family sources: her father's first name, Robert, and the surname of an uncle named Arnold.

Arnold's ambition to act dated to age seven, when she began keeping a scrapbook of theatrical pictures that she later described as her most precious possession. Her parents doubted the seriousness of her aspirations, and when she formally announced at fourteen that she intended to become an actress, her mother burned the scrapbook in a bonfire. Despite this, Arnold pursued her goal and made her professional debut around age seventeen in 1910 at the Los Angeles Belasco Theatre, appearing as a non-speaking extra in a production of Forty-five Minutes from Broadway. She subsequently joined Oliver Morosco's stock company, where her work included productions of Peg o' My Heart and The Bird of Paradise, the latter featuring Carlotta Monterey. Her final Los Angeles stage appearance before relocating to New York was in Upstairs and Down in 1916, which was the most popular Los Angeles play of that season and simultaneously marked her Broadway debut.

On Broadway, Arnold took on leading roles in several productions. She appeared in Adam and Eva in 1916 and earned particular recognition for her performance in The First Year, written by and co-starring Frank Craven. Arnold played the character Grace Livingston for more than a year, describing the role as human and real and a genuine person as created by Craven. Her Broadway credits also included the plays Chicken Feed, Adventure, and Seven Sisters, among other productions. In 1925, she appeared in Pig Iron, a role the San Francisco Examiner characterized as the opportunity of her career. Beyond the stage, Arnold appeared in the silent film Sands of Life.

Her performances drew notable critical attention. The magazine The Independent credited her with subtle line readings that placed the comedy in the class of The School for Scandal, and Time observed that audiences either liked her or did not, adding that most people did.

Arnold's personal life included three marriages. She married actor Herbert Rawlinson on January 1, 1912; in 1922, Rawlinson sued her for desertion and the marriage ended in divorce. She subsequently married aviator and stunt pilot Frank J. Lynch, from whom she was divorced in 1927, and in 1929 she married playwright and screenwriter John Willard. Her sister Carolyn acted briefly under the name Carolyn Arnold before marrying a French nobleman. Roberta Arnold died on August 27, 1966, and was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.