Pretty VIOLA BARRY was born as Gladys Viola Wilson on March 5, 1894, in Evanston, Illinois, to Jackson Stitt Wilson and Emma Agnew Wilson, second of their two daughters. J. Stitt Wilson was a well-known minister and lecturer, most famously serving as the mayor of Berkeley, California, in 1911 as a socialist.
Barry’s attraction to the stage hit early, although she does not have the same poverty-driven career path that many of her peers did. Gladys Wilson changed her name to Viola Barry at the early age of twelve and stepped into the footlights. She became famous quickly after a tour of England that featured her in some of Shakespeare’s famous heroine roles – Viola, Juliet, and Portia – before she was sixteen. Her father was conveniently touring Europe at the same time on a lecture series. In 1910, she joined the West Coast Belascos in “The Test,” and her career continued to thrive.
In 1911, while performing “Is Matrimony a Failure?” for the Burbank Theater Stock Company, she eloped with Jack Conway, a moving pictures actor. She was barely eighteen. His career evidently influenced her; as early as 1911, her name was being used in Selig advertising. She and Conway worked together in over a dozen short westerns. Barry then worked during 1912 for Nestor, and then moved to Biograph in 1913. She made at least six films for D.W. Griffith during that spring and summer in California. She changed film companies almost yearly, moving in 1914 to Bosworth, then to Triangle/Fine Arts in 1916.
Viola Barry was a talented and striking young woman. Her films needed little padding or fluff other than her name – she had drawing power. In an interview in 1913, an enraptured reporter described her as “an attractive young woman with an abundance of fair hair, eyes of deepest blue and a short upper lip that is distracting to the opposite sex.” (The reporter was female.)
Her marriage to Conway had crumbled by 1918, after having two children – Rosemary and Virginia. Conway went on to marry Virginia Bushman, Francis X. Bushman’s daughter. In 1920, Barry was named as a correspondent in the divorce suit of Frank McGrew Willis by his first wife Marie. Mrs. Willis further charged that little Virginia Conway was actually her husband’s child. Barry, ever a minister’s daughter, struck back vehemently and publicly: “Mrs. Willis accuses me of living with her husband,” she told reporters. “I was not the one who broke up her home. It was broken up when I first met them.” And Virginia was three years old, not two as charged, born before Barry had even met the Willises. However, despite the accusations and whatever the truths, Barry married F. McGrew Willis in 1921. He was a prominent screenwriter who worked for Fox during the 1920s. After his retirement and during World War II, he helped to implement the Voice of America radio broadcasts. He and Barry had three children – Gloria, McGrew Jr., and James.
Barry’s film work was understandably reduced to character parts and bits while she raised five children. Her last role was in 1932. She was so far removed from the screen that in 1941 the Oakland Tribune reminisced about her “…Viola Barry, whose name has been completely lost in film records.” Barry’s daughter Rosemary Foster Martin became well known as a screenwriter. Barry’s sister Violette Stitt Wilson married director Irving Pichel after a moderate film career of her own. F. McGrew Willis died in 1957, and Viola Barry Willis died on April 3, 1964. She and her family are buried at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.
Viola Barry’s name has been confused with that of Peggy Pearce in several sources. They were not related, and they indeed were two separate people.
SOURCES:
“J. Wilson Stitt,” Oakland Tribune, 13 February 1910.
Los Angeles Times, 24 November 1910, p. I 16.
“No Failure for Them,” Los Angeles Times, 27 February 1911, p. II 3.
Bonnie Glessner, “Sea Wolf in Controversy,” Los Angeles Times, 21 August 1913, p. III 1.
“Husband’s Baby Not Hers?” Los Angeles Times, 11 December 1920, p. II 3.
“Says Baby is Legitimate,” Los Angeles Times, 12 December 1920, p. I 4.
1930 U.S. Census, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California.
Oakland Tribune, 25 March 1941, p. 11.
“Rites Held for Star of Silent Films,” Los Angeles Times, 7 April 1964, p. 32.
