Novak, Jane (1896–1990)

American actress of the silent era. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, on January 12, 1896; died in Woodland Hills, California, on February 6, 1990; elder sister of silent star Eva Novak (1899–1988); married Frank Newburg (an actor, divorced); children: a daughter.

Selected filmography:

The Sign of Angels (1913); The Kiss (1914); A Little Madonna (1914); Hunger Knows No Law (1914); Into the Light (1915); The Scarlet Sin (1915); A Little Brother of the Rich (1915); The Target (1916); The Iron Hand (1916); The Eyes of the World (1917); The Innocent Sinner (1917); The Spirit of '76 (1917); The Tiger Man (1918); Selfish Yates (1918); The Claws of the Hun (1918); A Nine O'clock Town (1918); The Temple of Dusk (1918); String Beans (1918); Treat 'Em Rough (1919); The Money Corral (1919); Man's Desire (1919); Wagon Tracks (1919); The Wolf (1919); Behind the Door (1920); The Great Accident (1920); The River's End (1920); Isobel or the Trail's End (1920); Roads of Destiny (1921); The Other Woman (1921); Kazan (1921); The Rosary (1922); Belle of Alaska (1922); Colleen of the Pines (1922); Thelma (1922); Divorce (1923); Jealous Husband (1923); The Man Life Passed By (1923); The Lullaby (1924); The Man Without a Heart (1924); The Prude's Fall (UK, 1924); The Blackguard (UKGer., 1925); The Danger Signal (1925); The Substitute Wife (1925); Lazybones (1925); Lost at Sea (1926); Closed Gates (1927); What Price Love (1927); Free Lips (1928); Redskin (1929); Hollywood Boulevard (1936); Ghost Town (1937); The Yanks Are Coming (1942); Desert Fury (1947); The File on Thelma Jordan (1950); Paid in Full (1950); The Boss (1956).

Said to have been discovered by a director who saw her photograph on the dressing table of her aunt, Vitagraph star Anne Schafer , Jane Novak was still a teenager when she began her film career in 1913. During the next decade and a half, she made over 100 features and shorts, playing opposite such stars as Harold Lloyd, Hobart Bosworth, Charles Ray, Edmund Low, Richard Dix, Buck Jones, and William Hart, to whom she was also once briefly engaged. Over the course of her career, Novak invested her earnings in various business ventures with film director Chester Bennett, earning a fortune, then losing everything in the stock-market crash of 1929. Jane's younger sister Eva Novak was also a silent star, and the two appeared together in The Man Life Passed By (1923), directed by Victor Schertzinger. Novak, who was married and divorced from actor Frank Newburg, did not survive the advent of sound, although she had small roles in a handful of talkies. The actress died in 1990.

Barbara Morgan , Melrose, Massachusetts