Lela Bliss
American actress (1896-1980)
Lela Bliss (May 11, 1896 – May 15, 1980) was an American actress. She made her first silent film, Pretty Mrs. Smith, in 1915 and appeared in over 40 movies until the 1960s.
Career
Bliss appeared in supporting roles and bit parts in Hollywood films such as The Dark Mirror (1946), Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and Intruder in the Dust (1949). She often played mothers, neighbours or society women. From the 1950s on, she also appeared frequently on popular television shows including My Little Margie (as Trixie Wilson, the mother of Margie's boyfriend, in the 1952 episode "Vern's Chums"), The Twilight Zone, Maverick, Mister Ed and The Addams Family. She ended her acting career with a guest role in That Girl in 1967.
Personal life and death
Bliss was married to Canadian actor Harry Hayden from 1924 until his death on July 24, 1955. They had one child. They ran the Bliss-Hayden School of Acting at 254 South Robertson Boulevard in Beverly Hills, where their students included Veronica Lake, Mamie Van Doren and Betty White.
“Lela Bliss” enters the record as american actress (1896-1980). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lela, Bliss and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Lela Bliss” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Lela, Bliss and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16832049. VIAF identifies the subject as 160182563. The Library of Congress control number is no2010191061. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1896, 1980, 1915 and 1946.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Lela Bliss” 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.