Rita Jolivet

Marguerite Lucile Jolivet (25 September 1884 – 2 March 1971), known professionally as Rita Jolivet, was a British actress in theatre and silent films in the early 20th century. She was known in private life as the Countess Marguerita de Cippico.

Origins and Family Jolivet was born on 25 September 1884 in Castleton, Richmond County, New York, one of the three children of Charles Eugene Jolivet (1840–1920) from Carmansville, New York, United States, an owner of extensive vineyards in France, and French-born Pauline Hélène Vaillant (1857–1957), a talented musician who retired from the concert stage after marrying in 1879. He had a son from a previous marriage. Cippico and Jolivet had no children together, and the marriage ended in divorce.

After the divorce, Lady Allan (the wife of Sir Hugh Montagu Allan of Ravenscrag, Montreal), another survivor of the Lusitania, introduced Jolivet to James 'Jimmy' Bryce Allan, her husband's popular Scottish cousin, who was Sir Montagu Allan. Bryce was living at “The Cliff”, Wemyss Bay, Renfrewshire.

After World War II the couple took up travelling again and sold Ballinkinrain to move to a smaller castle in Scotland, where they threw parties with royalty, heads of state and many other famous people on their lengthy guest lists.

Film career

Jolivet preferred film work to theatre in some respects, because the silent drama allowed her "more scope for dramatic expression." Her film career started in Italy with the Ambrosia Company. She made Fata Morgana (1914), Zvani (1915), L'Onore di Morire (1915), La Mano di Fatma (1915), and Cuore ed arte (1915). She returned to Italy to make Teodora (1921), in which she portrayed the Empress Theodora in a famous romance by the French dramatist Victorien Sardou; historians disagree about the character of the wife of the Emperor Justinian, but the film depicted both her as beautiful and charming. It was first shown in American cinemas in 1922.

Jolivet went to America and was affiliated to Famous Players–Lasky. Her first Hollywood film was The Unafraid in 1914.

In 1917 Jolivet and Vincent Serrano made One Law for Both; the drama, directed by Ivan Abramson, illustrated the "secret and stirring methods of revolutionaries". It is now presumed lost.

Jolivet and her husband Count Giuseppe de Cippico donated the proceeds from Lest We Forget (1918) to 'the alleviation of suffering caused by World War I.' She was an avid Liberty Bond booster, and it was reported that she sold more of them throughout the United States than Douglas Fairbanks, Sr, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford combined. In a single week in May 1918 Jolivet sold more than $5,000,000 in Liberty Bonds in Baltimore, Maryland.

Lest We Forget was shown in Washington, D.C., with Jolivet addressing audiences before three of its screenings. She told the audiences of her riveting personal experiences since the war began in August 1914, when she was in France. In the film she plays Rita Heriot, a Paris soprano who is rescued from the RMS Lusitania sinking after playing an engagement at the Metropolitan Theatre in New York.

Jolivet continued making films in France and Italy through 1926. The filmography of her later screen work includes the titles The Bride's Confession (1921), Roger la Honte (1922), Messalina (1924), Phi-Phi (1926) and Le Marchand de bonheur (1926), after which she retired from the screen

Death Jolivet died in Nice, France in 1971. Although she claimed to be 77 on her deathbed, she was almost ten years older than that.

Selected filmography The Unafraid (1915) The Masque of Life (1915–16) Monna Vanna (1915) An International Marriage (1916) Lest We Forget (1918) Theodora (1921) Roger la Honte (1922) Messalina (1924)