Biography

Early information on Florence La Badie is sketchy. She is thought to have been born in New York City in 1888, and she was either taken away from or she was given up for adoption by her birth mother. Florence was adopted by a married couple named LaBadie, who legally gave the child their last name. Her adoptive father, Joseph LaBadie, is believed to have been an attorney in Canada, and the family spent time in Montreal, where Florence grew up. She was educated in both Montreal and New York, and after graduation from high school she worked as a model for well-known illustrator (and, later, film director) Penrhyn Stanlaws.

She took up a career on the stage in 1908. She signed up with director Chauncey Olcott's theatrical company, and went on the road with them. In 1909 she went with a friend, Mary Pickford, to the American Biograph film studio in New York to watch Pickford at work in In the Window Recess (1909), and Pickford got her a bit part in the picture. La Badie didn't make any films for a year after that, and then she signed a contract with Biograph.

In 1911 she left Biograph for Thanhouser. She met with great success in Thanhouser's pictures, and she was gradually promoted to lead roles, working there from 1911-1917 (making her the player who worked at Thanhouser the longest). She became the best-known of all of Thanhouser's players and she was wildly popular in fan magazines and trade journals.

Although she was engaged twice (to actor Val Hush and to writer Daniel Carson Goodman), she never married. She was the "companion" of film mogul Marcus Loew for several years.

On August 28, 1917, while driving a car near Ossining, New York, with her fiancé Daniel Goodman, the car's brakes failed and the car plunged down an embankment at high speed, rolling over when it hit the bottom. Goodman escaped with relatively minor injuries, but she was thrown from the car, incurring a compound fracture to her pelvis. She was taken to a hospital in Ossining, where her conditioned worsened. She died of septicemia (infection) on August 28. She was 29 years old.
- IMDb mini biography by: frankfob2@yahoo.com

The first major female motion picture star to die.

Died from injuries sustained in a road accident two months previous.

Off screen pseudonym: Gertrude Gordon

Buried at Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, USA.

The February 4 1915 edition of the Ocala Evening Star erroneously reported that la Badie had died of tuberculosis a few weeks earlier.

[on her role in When Love Was Blind (1917)]I cannot think of anything worse than to be blind. For hours and hours I have been compelled to go about with my eyes closed, and it gives me an idea of what people who are really sightless have to suffer. I hope that I will never have to play such a part again.