Betty Balfour Trailers
29 Acacia Avenue TrailerEliza Comes to Stay TrailerSquibs Trailer
Betty Balfour (27 March 1903 – 4 November 1977) was an English screen actress, popular during the silent era, and known as the "British Mary Pickford" and "Britain's Queen of Happiness". She was best known to audiences for her Squibs series of films. Balfour was the most popular actress in Britain in the 1920s, and in 1927 she was named by the Daily Mirror as the country's favourite world star. Her talent was most evident in the Squibs comedy series produced by George Pearson, while in his Love, Life and Laughter (1923) and Reveille (1924), rediscovered in 2014, she demonstrated a serious side to her character. Her role as a wealthy heiress in Somebody's Darling (1925) was an attempt to break out of her previous role as Squibs, to avoid typecasting.
She made her stage debut in 1913, and was appearing in Medora at the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square when T. A. Welsh and Pearson saw and signed her for Nothing Else Matters in 1920. After replacing Gertrude Lawrence on stage in The Midnight Follies, Balfour was back with Pearson with her first starring role in Mary Find the Gold.
In 1916 she starred in Fred Karno's all female revue, 'All Women,' notable at the time for its all female cast, including stage manager, musical director and advanced agent.
Balfour made no attempt to break into Hollywood but like Ivor Novello she was able to export her talents to mainland Europe. She starred in the German films, Die sieben Töchter der Frau Gyurkovics and Die Regimentstochter; she also worked for Marcel L'Herbier in Le Diable au cœur, for Louis Mercanton in Croquette and La Petite Bonne du palace, and for Géza von Bolváry in Bright Eyes.
Back in Britain, she also starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Champagne (1928). Balfour's sound debut, The Nipper (1930), based on the Squibs character, was only moderately successful. Her popularity diminished in the 1930s, though she played a supporting role to Jessie Matthews in Evergreen (1934), appeared with John Mills in Forever England (1935) and played the matriarch in 29 Acacia Avenue (1945).
Balfour had less fortune in her private life. Her marriage with composer Jimmy Campbell went on the rocks in 1941 after ten years, a try of a comeback at the theatre failed in 1952. She died at age 74 in Weybridge, Surrey.
Most Popular Betty Balfour Trailers
Total trailers found: 24
13 February 1930
The wealthy Rodney Langford, who dreams of going on the stage, hopes to fulfil his ambitions by buying a failing revue called 'Raise the Roof', starring Maisie Grey.
01 September 1922
A flower girl wins £60,000 and takes her family to Paris to save her sister from her murderous husband.
09 April 1936
A British comedy film directed by Henry Edwards
01 May 1945
The Robinsons are two respectable middle class parents living with their children in a suburban house in Acacia Avenue.
15 May 1935
Forever England gives John Mills his first leading role as Brown. Born after a brief affair between his mother and a naval officer, he joins the Royal Navy during the First World War.
01 June 1924
A seamstress stops a poor ex-soldier from becoming a left-wing agitator.
11 June 1929
Marie, adopted as a baby by Warrant Officer Guippo, helps a smuggler escape because he saved his life previously.
11 June 1935
Squibs, a cockney flowerseller with a father overwhelmed by gambling debts wins through with the help of assorted friends and a romantically inclined policeman.
01 October 1934
Moving family drama of the life of a working-class Hackney couple over 40 years, inspired by the famous music hall song This moving family drama - with time for some laughs - portrays the life and hardships of a working class Hackney couple over a span of 40 years.
17 August 1928
A spoiled heiress defies her millionaire father by running off to France to pursue her lover. Things don't go entirely as planned.
01 June 1930
A producer makes a star of the cockney waif who tried to rob him.
01 April 1934
Harriet Green, a beloved and radiant music hall star of the Edwardian era, mysteriously disappears on the eve of her wedding.
01 June 1923
A chorus girl, who dreams of being a music-hall star, falls for an impoverished author.
10 September 1928
The daughter of a poor clergyman wins £500 and goes to find happiness on the Riviera.
03 March 1928
Ludivine, a lttle tomboy, takes on the too polite Delphin. Being caught, and punished, she wants him and his father to be dead.
29 March 1929
Jenny, a cheerful kitchen maid at the Paris-style Palais de Luxe, is hopelessly in love with charming head waiter Jean—only to be stood up when he forgets their planned tryst in favor of the hotel’s glamorous dancer, Lola.
28 July 1928
Syd Chaplin And Betty Balfour star in this British International Picture.
28 December 1926
The young Tony will travel from Budapest to the countryside to marry his cousin Katinka, the oldest of the seven sisters Gyurkovics.
11 May 1929
The Vagabond Queen is a 1929 British comedy film directed by Géza von Bolváry and starring Betty Balfour, Glen Byam Shaw and Ernest Thesiger.
01 November 1926
A pilot saves a dancer from a Paris nightclub owner and they stow away to Cornwall.
07 September 1926
Cinders is about a professor who inherits both a vast fortune and a luxurious hotel on the French Riviera.
01 November 1925
A squire's novelist son poses as a nurse to save an heiress from her guardian's private asylum.
24 May 1925
In the Antilles, old Tyler finds a treasure map and sets sail with his ship, the Sarah Tyler, and its crew composed of only two children: Satan and Jude.
