Harriette Underhill

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Harriette Underhill (January 25, 1877 – May 18, 1928) was an American film critic who worked for the New-York Tribune and later the New York Herald Tribune. She was the most prominent American female film critic during the silent era.

She was born in Troy, New York, and moved to New York City after marrying at a young age. She acted in theatre and even appeared in the original chorus of Florodora. Her father, Lorenzo Underhill, was a sportswriter; after his death she took over his sports column at the Tribune in 1908, writing about horse and dog shows.

Her interest in films began after she saw The Coward (1915). She asked to start writing film reviews, joining a new era when newspapers started to publish film criticism. She also wrote for film and general magazines.

In 1919 she was badly injured in a car accident but continued to write. She eventually took over Virginia Tracy’s film column at the Tribune.

Underhill died at her home in Manhattan on May 18, 1928 after a month-long illness. She kept writing until the end, even dictating copy to her doctor and nurse.

Film scholar Richard Abel described her as a perceptive, intelligent critic with a strong style. Her influence was evident, as many stars visited her during her final illness.

In 1923, Screenland magazine asked top critics to name the ten best films; every critic except Underhill included The Birth of a Nation. She once described director D. W. Griffith as “the most uneven director; some of his pictures are good and some are terrible.”

Her obituary notes that she was married and divorced three times. In a 1925 interview she joked, “I’ve been married thousands of times, perhaps because I’ve always loved anything with an element of chance or danger.”