Actress. She is remembered for a prolific albeit drug shortened career in silent features. Born Alma Rueben, not Genevieve Driscoll as stated by some sources, to a mixed Irish-German family, she hooked-up with a local theatrical troupe while still a young girl and made her initial stage appearance when the group needed a fill-in for an indisposed chorus girl. Alma followed the ensemble and the much older character actor Franklyn Farnum to Los Angeles and made her silver screen bow in the 1913 short “Banzai”. Her next appearance was to be in another short with the sadly prophetic title of “Narcotic Spectre” (1914); Alma’s good looks landed her steady work, her assignments including a small part in D.W. Griffith’s 1915 classic “The Birth of a Nation”. Her major break came opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the 1916 comedy “Reggie Mixes In” and later that same year she again joined Fairbanks for “The Half Breed” and the cocaine-themed comedy “The Mystery of the Leaping Fish”. Alma married Farnum in 1918, the union lasting only a month, and kept working steadily up thru 1924; from 1923 until 1925 she was married to Hollywood wannabe Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman and though she performed well in 1924’s “The Price She Paid” and “Cytherea”, the latter an early attempt at filming in color, her life had already started a spiral of self destruction. As cocaine took charge she experienced a series of trips to insane asylums, drug rehabs, and even jails; married from 1926 until her death to actor Ricardo Cortez she was financially supported by William Randolph Hearst and though she continued to appear on the screen her roles became insignificant. Alma’s life was out of control from 1928 on with her final screen credits the 1929 “Show Boat” and “She Goes to War”; she was last seen on stage in January of 1930 and after a late 1930 attempt at a comeback in New York fizzled she returned to Los Angeles and died of pneumonia a short time later. A few of her performances are preserved on DVD. (bio by: Bob Hufford)  Family links:  Spouses:  Franklyn Farnum (1878 – 1961)  Ricardo Cortez (1900 – 1977)  Daniel Carson Goodman (1883 – 1957)* *Calculated relationship