Lillian Hall-Davis (23 June 1898 – 25 October 1933) was a British actress during the silent film era, featured in major roles in English film and a number of German, French and Italian films.
Born Lilian Hall Davis, the daughter of a London taxi driver, her films included a part-colour version of I Pagliacci (1923), The Passionate Adventure (1924),Blighty (1927), The Ring (1927) and The Farmer’s Wife (1928), the latter two both directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who at the time considered her his “favourite actress.” She had a lead role in a “lavish production” of Quo Vadis (1925), an Italian film directed by Gabriellino d’Annunzio and Georg Jacoby.
Hall-Davis also appeared in a comedy short film made in the Lee DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, As We Lie (1927), co-starring and directed by Miles Mander.
Hall-Davis did not make the transition to talkies; in 1933 her “sharp career decline and health problems” prompted her to commit suicide by turning on the gas oven and cutting her own throat at home in the Golders Green area of London.
Selected filmography
- The Admirable Crichton (1918)
- Ernest Maltravers (1920)
- The Honeypot (1920)
- Love Maggy (1921)
- The Wonderful Story (1922)
- The Faithful Heart (1922)
- Brown Sugar (1922)
- Stable Companions (1922)
- The Game of Life (1922)
- If Four Walls Told (1922)
- The Knockout (1923)
- Married Love (1923)
- The Right to Strike (1923)
- I Pagliacci (1923) filmed partly in Prizmacolour
- The Farmer from Texas (1925)
- Quo Vadis (1925)
UTK Cinema Studies: History of Italian Cinema 