16 Facts About Lucille Ricksen

Lucille Ricksen died of tuberculosis on March 13,1925, at the age of 14.

Lucille Ricksen's parents were Danish immigrants named Samuel and Ingeborg Nielsen Ericksen.

Lucille Ricksen had an older brother, Marshall, who was born in 1907 in Chicago, who appeared in early silent films.

Lucille Ricksen began her career as a baby model, initially within poorly-paid modeling roles.

Shortly thereafter, Goldwyn cast the 11-year-old in a comedy serial entitled The Adventures of Edgar Pomeroy, and from this point on, Lucille Ricksen's acting and modeling commitments increased greatly, although at least outwardly, Lucille Ricksen enjoyed the fame and attention her career attracted.

In one review of her performances in this series, Lucille Ricksen was described as: "One of the most promising Hollywood actresses" and through this acting role, Lucille Ricksen formed close acquaintances with many notable directors, actors and actresses of the 1920s.

Lucille Ricksen was next cast in the 1922 Stuart Paton directed comedy The Married Flapper opposite Marie Prevost and Kenneth Harlan and the 13-year-old's career opportunities began to improve dramatically.

In 1922, Lucille Ricksen was signed to a contract with actor and director Marshall Neilan, who cast her in the commercially and critically successful Neilan-directed drama The Stranger's Banquet in which she was cast alongside both Claire Windsor and Hobart Bosworth.

Lucille Ricksen is known to have preserved flyers and posters documenting her career, and to have cut and pasted newspaper clippings relating to any works in which she held a role into a journal.

Lucille Ricksen's first assigned role as the leading female actress in a major film was in the 1923 movie The Rendezvous; a World War I satire in which she was cast as a deaf Russian peasant girl named Vera.

From 1920 to 1925, Lucille Ricksen starred opposite some of the most popular actors of the silent era, including Conrad Nagel, James Kirkwood, Sr.

In 1924, at age 14, Lucille Ricksen was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars; a promotional campaign sponsored by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers in the United States, which honored thirteen young women each year who they believed to be on the threshold of movie stardom.

Lucille Ricksen had appeared in prominent roles in 10 films that year, including the popular drama The Painted Lady opposite George O'Brien and Dorothy Mackaill.

Lucille Ricksen was bedridden for the last few months of her life, and her distraught mother Ingeborg maintained a bedside vigil over her daughter, insisting that both the press and all contacts Lucille Ricksen had made throughout her filming career cease until she had recovered.

Nonetheless, Lucille Ricksen was visited on a weekly basis by film director and screenwriter Paul Bern, who brought her flowers and would read magazines to her while he held her hand.

Lucille Ricksen died just two weeks after her mother, on March 13,1925, at age 14.