Alice Lake (1895-1967) is a textbook example of an actor who scaled the heights during the silent era, but ended in poverty, all but forgotten.
Lake started out as a dancer while still in her teens, before making her first films in the mid-1910s. She did a lot of work for Mack Sennett, and often performed with Roscoe Arbuckle. In The Cook (1918) she was the waitress who had to be repeatedly rescued by Arbuckle and Buster Keaton from the attentions of Al St John.
She also played straight roles in dramas, such as Jack Conway’s Lombardi, Ltd (1919). In 1921, she played Jean Oliver in the original version of The Hole in the Wall.
Lake had leading roles in over eighty silent pictures, but the quality of her parts declined with the introduction of sound, and after 1933 she made only ten or so uncredited appearances. Two of these were in Metro musicals, Stage Mother and Babes in Toyland.
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