Evelyn Brent's Real Name: Mary Elizabeth Riggs

Quick answer: Evelyn Brent was born Mary Elizabeth Riggs on October 20, 1895, in Tampa, Florida. She died on June 4, 1975, in Los Angeles. (TCM; Library of Congress).

From Mary Riggs to Evelyn Brent

Known as Betty as a child, Riggs was the daughter of Eleanor Warner Riggs and Arthur Riggs. She said she was born in Tampa. Accounts of her childhood vary, but she appears to have been orphaned young and lived in New York State as a teenager. She started as an extra, under her own name, at studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, then the center of American moviemaking, including in Maurice Tourneur's The Pit (1914). She made her major debut in The Shooting of Dan McGrew (1915) and was first credited as Evelyn Brent in The Lure of Heart's Desire (1916).

England and Hollywood

During and after World War I, Brent worked on the London stage and in British films. Back in Hollywood in the early 1920s, she was named a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1923, a promotion for promising young actresses. She played leads in crime dramas at FBO studios before signing with Paramount.

Von Sternberg and stardom

Brent's best-remembered work is with director Josef von Sternberg:

• Underworld (1927): as gangster's moll "Feathers" McCoy, in one of the first gangster films. Ben Hecht won the first Academy Award for writing (Best Story) for it.
• The Last Command (1928): opposite Emil Jannings, who won the first Best Actor Oscar partly for this role.
• The Drag Net (1928).

She moved into early talkies, including Interference (1928), Paramount's first all-talking film, and Broadway (1929) (Britannica).

Later career

Brent's star faded in the 1930s. She worked in lower-budget films and serials and in vaudeville, and later appeared in B-westerns, including Hopalong Cassidy pictures. She made her last films around 1950 and later worked as a talent agent. She married more than once; producer Bernard Fineman was her first husband. She died of a heart attack in 1975.