Biography

Mary Maguire Alden was born in New York City on June 18, 1883. She appeared in her first film when she was 31 years old in the production of The Second Mrs. Roebuck (1914). From that point on, Mary was kept very busy in the studios in New York. When the film companies moved west, Mary went with them. She continued her torrid pace in filmmaking. Mary did make the switch from silent to sound movies, but she retired from work in 1935 after The Great Hotel Murder (1935). She died in Woodland Hills, California, on July 2, 1946.
- IMDb mini biography by: Denny Jackson

A graduate of New York's Art Students League, Mary Alden appeared in Broadway plays and other legitimate theater for several years before entering films. Probably her most memorable part was as Lydia Brown, the mulatto housekeeper of the villain Stoneman, in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915).
- IMDb mini biography by: frankfob2@yahoo.com

Graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City in 1910. Among her classmates were director Paul Bern (who was murdered by his first wife just after marrying Jean Harlow) and actors Tom Powers and George Shelton. William C. de Mille, whose father named the Academy when he was a teacher there, spoke at the graduation ceremonies for the Class of 1910. He and his brother Cecil B. DeMille also graduated from the Academy.

If I had to stand up before an audience and be just Mary Alden, I should be helpless from embarrassment and self-consciousness. It's only because I can pretend to be someone else that I am able to play at all.