Betzwood Actors

One of the most popular and enduring of the Lubin stars, Ormi Hawley made three hundred and seventy films between 1911 and 1919. Only a handful of these survive. Known worldwide as “Opulent Ormi,” Miss Hawley had been a stage actress before catching Lubin’s eye during a Broadway performance in 1911. As a film actress, she was known for her soft, sensitive, feminine manner, but she had no qualms about tackling anything the script called for. Rafting through a river of fire, draping herself in seventeen foot long pythons, and fencing with  real swords were all in a day’s work.

Interviewed often by the newly-founded fan magazines, Hawley became an admired role model for legions of young women.

She was a gifted musician as well, and in real life she relaxed by playing Chopin in a blue room filled with bowls of violets at twilight. She was also a skilled auto mechanic. After her retirement from the movies in 1920, she married and devoted her time to painting portraits and writing children’s stories. She died in 1942 in Rome, New York.