June 28, 1882 - Valeska Surratt (June 28, 1882 – July 2, 1962)

By Sherri Wright

Valeska Suratt was born in Owensville, Indiana and at the age of six, her family moved to Terre Haute. She had one stepsister, one older brother and a younger sister. She dropped out of school in 1899 and worked at a photographer’s studio. Suratt later moved to Indianapolis where she worked as an assistant in millinery at Block’s department store in Indianapolis.

Suratt began her career as an actress on the Chicago stage. Around 1900, she began appearing in vaudeville. She soon paired with performer Billy Gould (whom she later married) and the two created a successful act. In 1906, she made her Broadway debut in the musical The Belle of Mayfair. By 1907, Suratt and Gould had parted ways and Suratt began a successful solo act which featured her singing and dancing. Suratt’s success in vaudeville continued and she began billing herself as “Vaudeville’s Greatest Star” and “The Biggest Drawing Card in New York.”

During her years on the stage, Valeska was noted for the high fashion clothes she wore on stage and her name became synonymous with lavish gowns worldwide. She was sometimes called the “Empress of Fashions.” She possible was another model for the famous Gibson Girl sketchings. Vogue magazine later named her “one of the best dressed women on the stage.”

In 1915, Suratt signed with Fox. Like fellow Fox tonract players Theda Bara and Virginia Pearson, Suratt was marketed as a “vamp” and was cast as seductive and exotic characters. Suratt made her film debut in The Soul of Broadway in 1915. She made a total of eleven silent films during her career.

By 1920, Suratt’s career had begun to wane as the opularity of vaudeville fell out of a favor with audiences as did the vamp image craze. In 1928, Suratt and scholar Mirza Ahmad Sohrab sued Cecil B. DeMille for stealing the scenario for The King of Kings from them. The case went to trial in February 1930 but eventually settled without publicity. Suratt, who had left films in 1917, appeared to be unofficially blacklisted after the suit.

By the end of the 1920s, Suratt disappeared. In the 1930s, she was discovered living in a cheap hotel in New York City and was broke. In an attempt to revive her career, Suratt tried to sell her life story to one of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers. A reporter who read Suratt’s manuscript later said that Suratt wrote that she was the Virgin Mary and was the mother of God. Suratt never revived her career on the stage or in films and fell out of public view. Valeska Suratt died in a nursing home in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1962. She was 80 years old. Suratt is interred in Highland Lawn Cemetery in Terre Haute, Indiana.