Enid Eulalie Bennett (15 July 1893 – 14 May 1969) was an Australian silent film actress, mostly active in American film. Early life Bennett was born on 15 July 1893 in York, Western Australia, the daughter of Nellie Mary Louise (née Walker) and Frank Bennett. She had an older brother, Francis Reginald "Reg" Bennett (born 1891), and a younger sister, actress Marjorie Bennett (born 1896). After an unsuccessful attempt to start his own school, Frank took up the role of headmaster at the newly established Guildford Grammar School in 1896. He died in 1898, when he drowned in a river while suffering from depression. Nellie later married the new headmaster, Alexander Gillespie, in 1899. With him, she had a daughter named Catherine (born 1901) and a son named Alexander (born 1903). Following Gillespie's death in 1903, Nellie supported her five children by working as a school matron. Bennett attended Lionel Logue's acting and elocution classes in Perth, and after receiving encouragement from a visiting actress in 1910, she joined a touring company. By 1912, Bennett had joined the Fred Niblo-Josephine Cohan touring company, performing comedies around Australia and understudying for Cohan herself, for which she received consistently positive reviews. Her family had moved to Sydney by this time. In 1917, Reg was killed during the Battle of Passchendaele while serving with the First Australian Imperial Force. Career In the early part of 1915, theatre agents J. C. Williamson's decided to make short films of some of their popular plays, to forestall the release of imported American filmed versions. They used Niblo as director, and members of his troupe appeared in Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford and Officer 666. Enid Bennett appeared in both. Three reels of Officer 666 survive today in the National Film and Sound Archive. Film historians Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper describe it as "a crude production doggedly faithful to the stage." Both films were released in Australia after Bennett left for the United States in June 1915, travelling with Niblo and Cohan. Her first appearance in the U.S. was in Henry Arthur Jones' play Cock o' the Walk at George M. Cohan's Theatre on Broadway in late 1915. Roles of increasing importance in films followed soon after. One of her most important early films was The Little Brother in 1917, where she appeared opposite William Garwood. This brought her to the attention of studios, in particular Thomas H. Ince,