The Flickr Annaqnilsson Image Generatr

Directed by Stanley Donen

Filmed in CinemaScope (top) and 1:78:1 aspect ratio (bottom)

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

Leslie Caron's film debut

Produced and directed by Edwin H. Knopf

Directed by George Sidney

British postcard, no 11. Photo: Kalem. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. She became one of the first major stars in the US film industry and contributed in total about 200 silent films.

Anna Quirentia Nilsson was born on March 30, 1888, in Ystad, Swede, as the daughter of police constable Per Nilsson. She moved with her family to Hasslarp outside Helsingborg when she was eight years old. In her teens, she dreamed of "finding happiness" in America, and for five years she worked at the sugar fields at Hasslarp and as a clerk in Halmstad to collect money for the ticket. In 1905, she took the boat to New York where she received work as a nanny. One day she was discovered on a thriving avenue by the famous portrait painter James Carroll Beckwith and soon she was New York's highest-paid model, working for cover artists such as Penrhyn Stanlaws. In 1907 she was named America's most beautiful woman and became a model for the 1910s beauty ideal, The Gibson Girl Look. In 1911, Nilsson was offered the title role in the Kalem movie Molly Pitcher (dir. Sidney Olcott), which became the start of her acting career. Her screen husband Guy Coombs in that film, she played together with at Kalem for years. She would eventually marry him, though the marriage didn't last long. She stayed at the Kalem studio until 1915, acting in some 70 shorts, and ranked behind their top star, Alice Joyce, before branching out to other production companies, such as Fox, Erbograph, Metro Pictures, Famous Players, etc., alternating star roles with supporting parts. Feature films of special note in her post-Kalem years are the gangster movie Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915) starring Rockliffe Fellowes, Her Surrender (Ivan Abramson, 1916), the first feature in which she was the star of the film, Seven Keys to Baldpate (Hugh Ford, 1917) which still exists, Venus in the East (Donald Crisp, 1919) with Bryant Washburn, The Love Burglar (James Cruze, 1919) with Wallace Reid, Soldiers of Fortune (1919) with Norman Kerry and Wallace Beery, The Toll Gate (Lambert S. Hillyer, 1920) with William S. Hart, One Hour Before Dawn (Henry King, 1920) with H.B. Warner, The Luck of the Irish (Allan Dwan 1920) with James Kirkwood sr., What Women Will Do (Edward José, 1921), Why Girls Leave Home (William Nigh, 1921), and The Lotus Eater (Marshall Neilan, 1921) with John Barrymore.

In 1921, Nilsson returned to Sweden to act in the rural film comedy Värmlänningarna (UK title: Harvest of Hate), her only Swedish movie, directed by Erik A. Petschler, and produced by Svea Film. The main role of Anna was first given to Rosa Tillman, but when the famous star Anna Q. Nilsson turned out to visit her old homeland just at the time of the shooting of the film, Nilsson was given the part and Tillman got a supporting role. The film was a box office in Sweden and the press praised Nilsson's acting. Värmlänningarna was long believed to be lost, but in 1998 a print showed up in the Moscow film archive and was restored by the Swedish film archive. All in all, Nilsson participated in exactly 200 movies (and a handful where she played herself). All films were American, except the one mentioned above - recorded in Värmland. Anna Q. Nilsson was one of the very first big stars (and the first Swedish) in American film and one of the silent film's most engaged female actors. Nilsson was often called Hollywood's wrangle because she consistently refused to take the help of any stunt woman. She was very affectionate about Hollywood, and, soon after arriving in Hollywood, she bought a landmark, which became the heart of the film industry, and when she built a weekend house on the then still deserted beach strip of Malibu, it became "in."

In the 1920s, Nilsson successfully freelanced for Famous Players/ Paramount, Universal, First National, and many other studios and reached a peak of popularity just before the advent of talkies. In 1923, she was severely burned while filming a scene in which she drove a locomotive through a forest fire for Hearts Aflame (dir. Reginald Barker). She required a week to recuperate, but that did not impede her career. That year, she made nine movies, including Cecil B. DeMille's Adam's Rib (remade in 1949), and The Spoilers (dir. Lambert Hillyer), both with Milton Sills in the male lead. Nilsson's role as Cherry Malotte in The Spoilers would be played in later versions by Betty Compson, Marlene Dietrich, and Anne Baxter. In 1926, Nilsson was named Hollywood's most popular woman. She welcomed royalty when the Swedish Crown Prince Gustav Adolf (later King Gustaf VI Adolf) and his wife Louise Mountbatten visited Hollywood. In 1928, Nilsson was one of the highest-rated Hollywood stars, earning $ 20,000 a week, for films such as Sorrell and Son (Herbert Brenon, 1927) with H.B. Warner. In 1927 Nilsson played opposite legendary baseball player Babe Ruth in the sports comedy Babe Comes Home (dir. Ted Wilde), an early sound film. While working on this film, Nilsson seriously injured her vertebrae. In 1928, Anna Nilsson made her last film of the silent era, Blockade, which was actually a part-talkie. That very same year (other sources claim it was already in 1925 or 1929), as she was horse riding, she either fell off the horse or was kicked by the horse (versions differ), was thrown against a stone wall and broke her hip. After two years of being hospitalized and hard training, she was on her feet again, but it took until 1933 for a new film to be released with her: The World Changes (Mervyn LeRoy) with Paul Muni and Mary Astor. By then the film world had changed indeed as the sound film had set in, and Nilsson was reduced to supporting roles.

During the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, Nilsson participated in 39 sound films, always in minor roles against stars such as James Stewart, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor. In the movie Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950), she played a cameo role as herself, along with Buster Keaton and H.B. Warner, who were formerly silent movie stars, and were presented as the ‘waxworks’, playing bridge with Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond. Today she is most remembered for this film, where she has a single reply. Her very last film effort became a smaller film role in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen, 1954). During World War II, Nilsson worked with, amongst others, Bette Davis and Marlene Dietrich on the Hollywood Canteen to raise cash for the war fund. She served food to the soldiers and sold war bonds. After the war, she was rewarded by both the US state, the army, and the navy, and the Red Cross. Throughout her life, Nilsson kept in touch with her country of origin and when she was home in Sweden in 1921 to shoot Värminänningar (her only Swedish film), she bought a house for her parents at Tingsgatan in Klippan, dubbed "Quirentia". Anna Q. Nilsson was first married (1916) to actor Guy Coombs and secondly with 1923-1925 with Norwegian-American shoe dealer John Marshall Gunnerson. When she divorced for the second time, there were big headlines around the Swedish star. Anna Q. Nilsson died February 11, 1974, in Sun City, Riverside County, California, at the age of 85. She was the first Swedish actor to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Sources: Wikipedia (English, German, and Swedish) and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Directed by Richard Thorpe

Directed by Richard Whorf

Bain News Service,, publisher.

Anna Q. Nilsson

[between ca. 1920 and ca. 1925]

1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.

Notes:
Title from unverified data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards.
Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).

Format: Glass negatives.

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication. For more information, see George Grantham Bain Collection - Rights and Restrictions Information www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/274_bain.html

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Part Of: Bain News Service photograph collection (DLC) 2005682517

General information about the George Grantham Bain Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.ggbain

Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.32835

Call Number: LC-B2- 5519-2

British Real Photograph postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 175a. Sent by mail in 1932.

Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. She became one of the first major stars in the US film industry and contributed in total about 200 silent movies.

Anna Quirentia Nilsson was born on March 30, 1888, in Ystad, Swede, as the daughter of police constable Per Nilsson. She moved with her family to Hasslarp outside Helsingborg when she was eight years old. In her teens, she dreamed of "finding happiness" in America, and for five years she worked at the sugar fields at Hasslarp and as a clerk in Halmstad to collect money for the ticket. In 1905, she took the boat to New York where she received work as a nanny. One day she was discovered on a thriving avenue by the famous portrait painter James Carroll Beckwith and soon she was New York's highest-paid model, working for cover artists such as Penrhyn Stanlaws. In 1907 she was named America's most beautiful woman and became a model for the 1910s beauty ideal, The Gibson Girl Look. In 1911, Nilsson was offered the title role in the Kalem movie Molly Pitcher (dir. Sidney Olcott), which became the start of her acting career. Her screen husband Guy Coombs in that film, she played together with at Kalem for years. She would eventually marry him, though the marriage didn't last long. She stayed at the Kalem studio until 1915, acting in some 70 shorts, and ranked behind their top star, Alice Joyce, before branching out to other production companies, such as Fox, Erbograph, Metro Pictures, Famous Players, etc., alternating star roles with supporting parts. Feature films of special note in her post-Kalem years are the gangster movie Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915) starring Rockliffe Fellowes, Her Surrender (Ivan Abramson, 1916), the first feature in which she was the star of the film, Seven Keys to Baldpate (Hugh Ford, 1917) which still exists, Venus in the East (Donald Crisp, 1919) with Bryant Washburn, The Love Burglar (James Cruze, 1919) with Wallace Reid, Soldiers of Fortune (1919) with Norman Kerry and Wallace Beery, The Toll Gate (Lambert S. Hillyer, 1920) with William S. Hart, One Hour Before Dawn (Henry King, 1920) with H.B. Warner, The Luck of the Irish (Allan Dwan 1920) with James Kirkwood sr., What Women Will Do (Edward José, 1921), Why Girls Leave Home (William Nigh, 1921), and The Lotus Eater (Marshall Neilan, 1921) with John Barrymore.

In 1921, Nilsson returned to Sweden to act in the rural film comedy Värmlänningarna (UK title: Harvest of Hate), her only Swedish movie, directed by Erik A. Petschler, and produced by Svea Film. The main role of Anna was first given to Rosa Tillman, but when the famous star Anna Q. Nilsson turned out to visit her old homeland just at the time of the shooting of the film, Nilsson was given the part and Tillman got a supporting role. The film was a box office in Sweden and the press praised Nilsson's acting. Värmlänningarna was long believed to be lost, but in 1998 a print showed up in the Moscow film archive and was restored by the Swedish film archive. All in all, Nilsson participated in exactly 200 movies (and a handful where she played herself). All films were American, except the one mentioned above - recorded in Värmland. Anna Q. Nilsson was one of the very first big stars (and the first Swedish) in American film and one of the silent film's most engaged female actors. Nilsson was often called Hollywood's wrangle because she consistently refused to take the help of any stunt woman. She was very affectionate about Hollywood, and, soon after arriving in Hollywood, she bought a landmark, which became the heart of the film industry, and when she built a weekend house on the then still deserted beach strip of Malibu, it became "in."

In the 1920s, Nilsson successfully freelanced for Famous Players/ Paramount, Universal, First National, and many other studios and reached a peak of popularity just before the advent of talkies. In 1923, she was severely burned while filming a scene in which she drove a locomotive through a forest fire for Hearts Aflame (dir. Reginald Barker). She required a week to recuperate, but that did not impede her career. That year, she made nine movies, including Cecil B. DeMille's Adam's Rib (remade in 1949), and The Spoilers (dir. Lambert Hillyer), both with Milton Sills in the male lead. Nilsson's role as Cherry Malotte in The Spoilers would be played in later versions by Betty Compson, Marlene Dietrich, and Anne Baxter. In 1926, Nilsson was named Hollywood's most popular woman. She welcomed royalty when the Swedish Crown Prince Gustav Adolf (later King Gustaf VI Adolf) and his wife Louise Mountbatten visited Hollywood. In 1928, Nilsson was one of the highest-rated Hollywood stars, earning $ 20,000 a week, for films such as Sorrell and Son (Herbert Brenon, 1927) with H.B. Warner. In 1927 Nilsson played opposite legendary baseball player Babe Ruth in the sports comedy Babe Comes Home (dir. Ted Wilde), an early sound film. While working on this film, Nilsson seriously injured her vertebrae. In 1928, Anna Nilsson made her last film of the silent era, Blockade, which was actually a part-talkie. That very same year (other sources claim it was already in 1925 or 1929), as she was horse riding, she either fell off the horse or was kicked by the horse (versions differ), was thrown against a stone wall and broke her hip. After two years of being hospitalized and hard training, she was on her feet again, but it took until 1933 for a new film to be released with her: The World Changes (Mervyn LeRoy) with Paul Muni and Mary Astor. By then the film world had changed indeed as the sound film had set in, and Nilsson was reduced to supporting roles.

During the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, Nilsson participated in 39 sound films, always in minor roles against stars such as James Stewart, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor. In the movie Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950), she played a cameo role as herself, along with Buster Keaton and H.B. Warner, who were formerly silent movie stars, and were presented as the ‘waxworks’, playing bridge with Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond. Today she is most remembered for this film, where she has a single reply. Her very last film effort became a smaller film role in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen, 1954). During World War II, Nilsson worked with, amongst others, Bette Davis and Marlene Dietrich on the Hollywood Canteen to raise cash for the war fund. She served food to the soldiers and sold war bonds. After the war, she was rewarded by both the US state, the army, and the navy, and the Red Cross. Throughout her life, Nilsson kept in touch with her country of origin and when she was home in Sweden in 1921 to shoot Värminänningar (her only Swedish film), she bought a house for her parents at Tingsgatan in Klippan, dubbed "Quirentia". Anna Q. Nilsson was first married (1916) to actor Guy Coombs and secondly with 1923-1925 with Norwegian-American shoe dealer John Marshall Gunnerson. When she divorced for the second time, there were big headlines around the Swedish star. Anna Q. Nilsson died February 11, 1974, in Sun City, Riverside County, California, at the age of 85. She was the first Swedish actor to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Sources: Wikipedia (English, German, and Swedish) and IMDb.

Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Nilsson and Tor Weijden in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921). No. 2.

Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. She became one of the first major stars in the US film industry and contributed on about 200 silent films.

For more postcards, bios and clips check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp, no. 1. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Nilsson and Tor Weijden in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921).

Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. She became one of the first major stars in the US film industry and contributed in total about 200 silent movies.

Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp., no. 17. Photo: Svea Film. Anna Q. Nilsson in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921), adapted from the play by Fredrik August Dahlgren.

Plot: Anna (Anna Q. Nilsson) is a poor girl who loves Erik (Tor Weijden), the son of a rich farmer. His parents are however determined to make Erik marry the rich Britta.

Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. She became one of the first major stars in the US film industry and contributed in total about 200 silent movies.

Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp, no. 9. Photo: Svea Film. Publicity still of Anna Nilsson in Värmlänningarna (Erik Petschler, 1921).

Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. She became one of the first major stars in the US film industry and contributed in total about 200 silent movies.

Swedish postcard by A/B Nordiska Papperskompaniet, Helsingfors, no. 809.

Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. She became one of the first major stars in the US film industry and contributed in total about 200 silent movies.

Anna Quirentia Nilsson was born on March 30, 1888, in Ystad, Swede, as the daughter of police constable Per Nilsson. She moved with her family to Hasslarp outside Helsingborg when she was eight years old. In her teens, she dreamed of "finding happiness" in America and for five years she worked at the sugar fields at Hasslarp and as a clerk in Halmstad to collect money for the ticket. In 1905, she took the boat to New York where she received work as a nanny. One day she was discovered on a thriving avenue by the famous portrait painter James Carroll Beckwith and soon she was New York's highest paid model, working for cover artists such as Penrhyn Stanlaws. In 1907 she was named America's most beautiful woman and became a model for the 1910s beauty ideal, The Gibson Girl Look.

In 1911, Nilsson was offered the title role in the Kalem movie Molly Pitcher (dir. Sidney Olcott), which became the start of her acting career. Her screen husband Guy Coombs in that film, she played together with at Kalem for years. She would eventually marry him, though the marriage didn't last long. She stayed at the Kalem studio until 1915, acting in some 70 shorts, and ranked behind their top star, Alice Joyce, before branching out to other production companies, such as Fox, Erbograph, Metro Pictures, Famous Players, etc., alternating star roles with supporting parts. Feature films of special note in her post-Kalem years are the gangster movie Regeneration (Raoul Walsh, 1915) starring Rockliffe Fellowes, Her Surrender (Ivan Abramson, 1916), the first feature in which she was the star of the film, Seven Keys to Baldpate (Hugh Ford, 1917) which still exists, Venus in the East (Donald Crisp, 1919) with Bryant Washburn, The Love Burglar (James Cruze, 1919) with Wallace Reid, Soldiers of Fortune (1919) with Norman Kerry and Wallace Beery, The Toll Gate (Lambert S. Hillyer, 1920) with William S. Hart, One Hour Before Dawn (Henry King, 1920) with H.B. Warner, The Luck of the Irish (Allan Dwan 1920) with James Kirkwood sr., What Women Will Do (Edward José, 1921), Why Girls Leave Home (William Nigh, 1921), and The Lotus Eater (Marshall Neilan, 1921) with John Barrymore.

In 1921, Nilsson returned to Sweden to act in the rural film comedy Värmlänningarna (UK title: Harvest of Hate), her only Swedish movie, directed by Erik A. Petschler, and produced by Svea Film. The main role of Anna was first given to Rosa Tillman, but when the famous star Anna Q. Nilsson turned out to visit her old homeland just at the time of the shooting of the film, Nilsson was given the part and Tillman got a supporting role. The film was a box office in Sweden and the press praised Nilsson's acting. Värmlänningarna was long believed to be lost, but in 1998 a print showed up in the Moscow film archive and was restored by the Swedish film archive.

All in all, Nilsson participated in exactly 200 movies (and a handful where she played herself). All films were American, except the one mentioned above - recorded in Värmland. Anna Q. Nilsson was one of the very first big stars (and the first Swedish) in American film and one of the silent film's most engaged female actors. Nilsson was often called Hollywood's wrangle because she consistently refused to take the help of any stunt woman. She was very affectionate about Hollywood, and, soon after arriving in Hollywood, she bought a landmark, which became the heart of the film industry, and when she built a weekend house on the then still deserted beach strip of Malibu, it became "in."

In the 1920s, Nilsson successfully freelanced for Famous Players/ Paramount, Universal, First National, and many other studios and reached a peak of popularity just before the advent of talkies. In 1923, she was severely burned while filming a scene in which she drove a locomotive through a forest fire for Hearts Aflame (dir. Reginald Barker). She required a week to recuperate, but that did not impede her career. That year, she made nine movies, including Cecil B. DeMille's Adam's Rib (remade in 1949), and The Spoilers (dir. Lambert Hillyer), both with Milton Sills in the male lead. Nilsson's role as Cherry Malotte in The Spoilers would be played in later versions by Betty Compson, Marlene Dietrich, and Anne Baxter. In 1926, Nilsson was named Hollywood's most popular woman. She welcomed royalty when the Swedish Crown Prince Gustav Adolf (later King Gustaf VI Adolf) and his wife Louise Mountbatten visited Hollywood. In 1928, Nilsson was one of the highest-rated Hollywood stars, earning $ 20,000 a week, for films such as Sorrell and Son (Herbert Brenon, 1927) with H.B. Warner. In 1927 Nilsson played opposite legendary baseball player Babe Ruth in the sports comedy Babe Comes Home (dir. Ted Wilde), an early sound film. While working on this film, Nilsson seriously injured her vertebrae.

In 1928, Anna Nilsson made her last film of the silent era, Blockade, which was actually a part-talkie. That very same year (other sources claim it was already in 1925 or 1929), as she was horse riding, she either fell off the horse or was kicked by the horse (versions differ), was thrown against a stone wall and broke her hip. After two years of being hospitalized and hard training, she was on her feet again, but it took until 1933 for a new film to be released with her: The World Changes (Mervyn LeRoy) with Paul Muni and Mary Astor. By then the film world had changed indeed as the sound film had set in, and Nilsson was reduced to supporting roles.

During the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, Nilsson participated in 39 sound films, always in minor roles against stars such as James Stewart, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Judy Garland, and Elizabeth Taylor. In the movie Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950), she played a cameo role as herself, along with Buster Keaton and H.B. Warner, who were formerly silent movie stars, and were presented as the ‘waxworks’, playing bridge with Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond. Today she is most remembered for this film, where she has a single reply. Her very last film effort became a smaller film role in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen, 1954).

During World War II, Nilsson worked with, amongst others, Bette Davis and Marlene Dietrich on the Hollywood Canteen to raise cash for the war fund. She served food to the soldiers and sold war bonds. After the war, she was rewarded by both the US state, the army, and the navy, and the Red Cross. Throughout her life, Nilsson kept in touch with her country of origin and when she was home in Sweden in 1921 to shoot Värminänningar (her only Swedish film), she bought a house for her parents at Tingsgatan in Klippan, dubbed "Quirentia".

Anna Q. Nilsson was first married (1916) with actor Guy Coombs and secondly with 1923-1925 with Norwegian-American shoe dealer John Marshall Gunnerson. When she divorced for the second time, there were big headlines around the Swedish star. Anna Q. Nilsson died February 11, 1974, in Sun City, Riverside County, California, at the age of 85. She was the first Swedish actor to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Sources: English, German, and Swedish Wikipedia, IMDB.

Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1161.

Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. She became one of the first major stars in the US film industry and contributed in total about 200 silent movies.

Swedish postcard by Officin. A.-B. Svea Film Imp. Photo: Wolfenstein.

Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. She became one of the first major stars in the US film industry and contributed in total about 200 silent movies.

British postcard in the "Pictures" Portrait Gallery, no. 109, London.

Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1312.

Anna Q. Nilsson (1888-1974) was a Swedish-American actress, who peaked in the silent era. She became one of the first major stars in the US film industry and contributed in total about 200 silent movies.

Thundering Dawn, 1923, Universal Super Jewel, J. Warrem Kerrigasn, Anna Q. Nilsson, Tom Santschi,