Claire Alexander

Claire Alexander was born Clara Cecilia Alexander on January 6, 1897 in New York City. Her family moved to California when she was a teenager. Claire's father, Thomas Alexander, became a Technical director at MGM studios. In 1915 she won Hollywood's first bathing beauty contest and made her film debut in A Girl Of Yesterday with Mary Pickford. She was offered a contract at the David Horsley studios and became George Ovey's leading lady in the "Cub Comedies". The petite actress was just four feet, ten inches tall and wore children's sized shoes. She was always cast as an ingenue. Between 1916 and 1917 she appeared in more than fifty movies including The Ransom, Beach Nurse, and Jerry's Picnic. Claire was so overworked that she had to be hospitalized for exhaustion. She married George "Duke" Zalibra, a cameraman, on December 12, 1917. After leaving Horsley studios she only made a few more films. Her final role was in the 1919 short Charlie The Hero directed by Alfred J. Goulding. Claire and her husband moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Duke was arrested for forgery in 1920 and spent several months in a Reno jail. Soon after she divorced him and returned to Los Angeles. In 1924 she married twenty-nine year old Richard Collins. Tragically on November 17, 1927 she died from double pneumonia. Claire was only thirty years old. She is buried at Calvary cemetery in Los Angeles, California.