Katherine Grant, 1904 - 1937

Photo: Hal Roach Studios

For a fleeting span in the mid-1920s, Katherine Grant stood on the precipice of Hollywood stardom. After winning the Miss Los Angeles Beauty Contest in 1922 and subsequently competing in the Miss America pageant, she was taken under the wing of Hal Roach, an important producer, director, screenwriter, and studio boss. She embarked on her film career with small roles in two of the earliest chapters of the 'Our Gang' series, and was later paired with comedic genius Stan Laurel in what I count to be thirteen short films during 1923. Yet, much of her time was consumed by a tempestuous struggle to halt the dissemination of artistic nude photographs, which she had been misled to believe were mere 'art studies' for a sculptor to employ in the creation of a water fountain.

By 1925, with the matter of the naughty pictures seemingly laid to rest, Katherine Grant had ascended to roles of greater substance, and Hal Roach deemed her to have ‘developed into the most proficient actress in the profession’. Alas, in December of that year, she was the victim of a hit-and-run accident and soon succumbed to a grievous decline, both physical and mental—exacerbated by a spartan diet she followed to maintain a slender figure, quite possibly what we would refer to today as anorexia—from which she never recovered. The final years of her life were spent within the confines of a state hospital. Katherine Grant departed this mortal coil on 2 April 1937, just a lunar month shy of her 33rd birthday, with consumption listed as the cause of death, and dementia praecox (cognitive disintegration) as a contributing factor. Verily, she was the unfortunate subject of a cruel twist of fate, without which we might have cherished her memory as we do Joan Crawford, Myrna Loy, or Norma Shearer— as a supremely gifted, eternal icon of her era.

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