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Barbara Castleton

actress (1894-1978)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ4858807
Source-derived summary

Barbara Castleton (September 14, 1894 – December 23, 1978) was an American silent film actress. Castleton appeared in motion pictures from 1914 through 1923, accumulating 28 screen credits.

Career

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Castleton was one of the lower echelon stars who made films for Samuel Goldwyn Studio, along with Cullen Landis, James Kirkwood, and Rowland Lee. The company's major stars were Madge Kennedy, Geraldine Farrar, Will Rogers, and Tom Moore. Her first performance as a film actress came in The Ordeal (1914). She had the lead in Branding Iron (1920), a film directed by Reginald Barker.

Personal life and death

Her first husband was George W. Zimmerman, an attorney from Vancouver, British Columbia. Castleton won a divorce suit from Zimmerman in October 1921 in Reno, Nevada. She contended that he gambled and lived beyond his income. The decree was granted on grounds of cruelty.

Editorial summary

“Barbara Castleton” enters the record as actress (1894-1978). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Barbara, Castleton and actress can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1894, 1978, 1914, 1923—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1894-09-14. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Barbara, Castleton and actress.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Barbara Castleton” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Barbara, Castleton and actress provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4858807. VIAF identifies the subject as 56337346. The Library of Congress control number is no2005008477. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1894, 1978, 1914 and 1923.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Barbara Castleton”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Barbara Castleton primary sources, Barbara Castleton archive and Barbara research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Barbara Castleton”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Barbara Castleton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.