I was born with the name Juliet Riley on April Fools day of 1902. My mother, Charlotte Shelby was a failed actress in her own right and felt the need to live through me. One of the very first "movie mom's" I suppose. I was only five when she pushed me into acting. My father forbade my mother to use his last name for theater, so she, my sister and I took the name Shelby.
By 1911, "Little Juliet Shelby" was a very well known actress on Broadway.
Alittle while later, I was given the name of a dead cousin so that, even though I was ten, I could play a 17 year old dwarf. Mary Miles Minter was born! I was a legitimate theater actress by the age of 12.
But my mother wasn't happy with theater, for whatever reason, and shuffled me off to Hollywood. I was already in my second film in 1915, a little thing called "The Fairy and The Waif." It was another success, for my mother more then anyone. So I signed a contract with Metro films. It called for 6 pictures, but only five were released. My mother had "pissed off", for lack of a better term, Mr. Mayer and I was let go.
However, my career continued undeterred through 1921. I was overworked and had ground out film after film after film, in some cases more then actresses much older then me. During this time, I met Mr. William Desmond Taylor. Pity is that because of that dear man, I'm not very well known for my films anymore
In 1919 I played in "Anne of Green Gables" for him, my first film under his direction as a matter of fact. I fell head over heels for him and soon we were seeing each other, which put me further from my overbearing mother.
And then it happened. In 1922, my dear sweet Mr. Taylor was murdered; shot if you wanna get technical. I can't remember what happened. Had I fibbed to the police? The scandal overshadowed that of a Mr. Fatty Arbuckle. All sorts of things began to surface, including some very private letters I'd written to my beloved Mr. Taylor, as well as some...souveneirs that he'd aquired from me.
My career was ruined. I was washed up at the ripe old age of twenty. I made two more films, true, but it was never the same after that and my contract was terminated in two shakes of a lamb's tail. I had never been truly happy with stardom and let's face it, with Mr. Taylor dead...why should I have stayed?
In 1937, my sister Margaret and I sued our mother for not handling our money very well. We won, but Margaret died just a few years later, having been a victim of the bottle.
It was then that I disappeared from a public that had long ago abandoned me. I did eventually marry a nice man named Brandon O. Hildebrandt, which was changed to "O'Hildebrandt" because of my interest in numerology. I stayed with that nice man until his death. But until I died in 1984, I still loved my dear Mr. Taylor.
In my later years, I was the victim of several vicious robberies, though it came as a shock to even the police when I explained that I had once been a big Hollywood movie star.
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