Enid Bennett

Enid Eulalie Bennett (15 July 1893 – 14 May 1969) was an Australian silent film actress, mostly active in American film. Early life Bennett was born on 15 July 1893 in York, Western Australia, the daughter of Nellie Mary Louise (née Walker) and Frank Bennett. She had an older brother, Francis Reginald "Reg" Bennett (born 1891), and a younger sister, actress Marjorie Bennett (born 1896). After an unsuccessful attempt to start his own school, Frank took up the role of headmaster at the newly established Guildford Grammar School in 1896. He died in 1898, when he drowned in a river while suffering from depression. Nellie later married the new headmaster, Alexander Gillespie, in 1899. With him, she had a daughter named Catherine (born 1901) and a son named Alexander (born 1903). Following Gillespie's death in 1903, Nellie supported her five children by working as a school matron. Bennett attended Lionel Logue's acting and elocution classes in Perth, and after receiving encouragement from a visiting actress in 1910, she joined a touring company. By 1912, Bennett had joined the Fred Niblo-Josephine Cohan touring company, performing comedies around Australia and understudying for Cohan herself, for which she received consistently positive reviews. Her family had moved to Sydney by this time. In 1917, Reg was killed during the Battle of Passchendaele while serving with the First Australian Imperial Force. Career