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Davenport`s family was well known in the theater. Her aunt, Fanny Davenport, was considered one of the great actresses of the time. Her father, Harry Davenport, was a Broadway star. With her background on the stage, she was in her early teens when she started playing bit parts in the fledgling film industry.
By the time she was 17, she was a star at Universal. Davenport was a horsewoman of distinction, and did many of her own stunts in films. While with Universal, she would meet a young actor (and assistant director-gopher scenariowriter) named Wallace Reid. The two soon became involved in a relationship. They married on October 13, 1913.
Davenport and Reid continued to work together as he directed and starred with her in two films per week for the next year. When Wallace left Universal, Dorothy also left films, only to return in 1916 to appear in a small number of movies.
While filming on location in Oregon for The Valley of the Giants (1919), Wallace Reid was injured in a train wreck. As a remedy for the pain from this injury, studio doctors administered large doses of morphine to Reid of which he became addicted to. Reid`s health slowly grew worse over the next few years, and he died of the addiction in 1923. After Reid`s death, Davenport and Thomas Ince co-produced the film Human Wreckage (1923) with James Kirkwood, Sr., Bessie Love and Lucille Ricksen, a film that dealt with the dangers of narcotics addiction. Davenport then took a break from film, and would not return to the screen again until directing and acting in The Red Kimono (1925).
She and husband Wallace Reid had two children. She was married to him until his death on 18 January 1923. She never remarried.
Dorothy Davenport died at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in 1977 in Woodland Hills, California. She is interred with her husband in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.
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Aunt of writer-director Dirk Wayne Summers.
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