Mary MacLaren

Mary MacLaren (19 January 1896 – 9 November 1985) was an American film actress known for her roles in Shoes (1916), Creaking Stairs (1919), and 

The Three Musketeers (1921). 

She is the sister of actress Katherine MacDonald (1891–1956)

Mary MacLaren was born as Mary MacDonald on January 19, 1896, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was drawn to show business at an early age; she was a chorus girl by age thirteen and a Hollywood extra by the age of fourteen.

MacLaren began her stage career in The Winter Garden Company in New York City with Al Jolson in The Passing Show of 1914 and Dancing Around.

She made her screen debut in 1916 with six Lois Weber's movies: John Needham's Double (based on an 1885 novel of the same name by Joseph Hatton), the anti-abortion drama Where Are My Children?, Shoes, Saving the Family Name, and Idle Wives, and Wanted: A Home. Shoes, a five-reel melodrama, concerned a shopgirl who becomes a prostitute in order to purchase a new pair of shoes. With Weber's 1917 movie The Mysterious Mrs. Musslewhite, MacLaren as "Phyllis Woodman" was able to show a lighter side than that of her somber screen persona.

In the following period, MacLaren was seen in a wide of movies such as Henry MacRae's Money Madness (1917), Ida May Park's Bread (1918), Tom Ricketts' Secret Marriage (1919), and Phil Rosen's The Road to Divorce (1920). Her last role of any prominence came in Fred Niblo's The Three Musketeers (1921), in which she was cast as Queen Anne of Austria alongside Adolphe Menjou who portrayed Louis XIII.

She received eighth billing in her final silent film, The Dark Swan, starring Marie Prevost and Monte Blue (released by Warner Bros. in late 1924.)

MacLaren then retired from film work and married a Scottish Colonel, George Herbert Young, and moved to India with him. The marriage was not agreeable to her, nor was their chosen country. They divorced in 1928. MacLaren returned to Hollywood but was able to regain her past success. She managed to support herself for the next several years by appearing in bit parts in over seventy-five films (many uncredited), the last one being Compton Bennett's romance-drama My Own True Love, starring Phyllis Calvert and Melvyn Douglas.

MacLaren was also an expert tennis player and ardent enthusiast. 

In the late forties, she turned her longtime Hollywood residence into a rooming house and makeshift animal shelter. An ardent pet lover, she was long affiliated with the National Catholic Society for Animal Welfare.

In 1979, MacLaren resisted attempts by Los Angeles County from declaring her mentally incompetent and taking over her finances for living in her home with too much clutter and pets. She appeared before the Superior Court commissioner who ruled that she was capable of managing her own affairs. The city eventually won in court, and her house was auctioned off.

MacLaren was married three times. Her first marriage was with Scottish army general George Herbert Young from 1924 until the divorce in 1928. 

In 1965, she had a short-lived marriage to a wheelchair-bound, blind man. She later admitted that it was motivated by pity. 

She was then married to her third and final husband Robert S. Coleman from February 23, 1965, until his death on October 11, 1971.

MacLaren died of respiratory illness on November 9, 1985, in Hollywood, California, at the age of 89.

• Where Are My Children? (1916)
• Saving the Family Name (1916)
• Shoes (1916)
• The Mysterious Mrs. M (1917)
• The Plow Woman (1917)
• The Vanity Pool (1918)
• The Unpainted Woman (1919)
• The Petal on the Current (1919)
• Bonnie Bonnie Lassie (1919)
• The Pointing Finger (1919)
• Rouge and Riches (1920)
• The Forged Bride (1920)
• The Road to Divorce (1920)
• The Three Musketeers (1921)
• The Wild Goose (1921) (Extant; Library of Congress)
• Across the Continent (1922)
• The Face in the Fog (1922)
• Under the Red Robe (1923)
• On the Banks of the Wabash (1923)
• The Uninvited Guest (1924)
• The Phantom Broadcast (1933)
• Headline Shooter (1933)
• Westward Ho (1935)
• The New Frontier (1935)
• Saddle Aces (1935)
• Chatterbox (1936)
• King of the Pecos (1936)
• What Becomes of the Children? (1936)
• Reckless Ranger (1937)
• Prairie Pioneers (1941)