Biography

Popular Hollywood leading man of late silents and early talkies. He is best remembered for his teaming with Janet Gaynor in 12 screen romances between 1927 and 1934. He retired from films in the early 1940s, but TV audiences of the 1950s would see him as Gale Storm's widower dad in the popular television series My Little Margie (1952).

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Bill Takacs <kinephile@aol.com>

His father was a talent agent in Boston. When he went to college he became a member of the football team. A very sporty person, young Charles nevertheless opted for an acting career. First a theater actor, he decided to move to California and to try his luck in Hollywood. After three years as an extra he was given a good role in "Old Ironsides" and soon became a matinée idol.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Guy Bellinger

IMDB Farrell Bio

Charles Farrell had several careers, all associated with the Hollywood film community. He broke into films in the 1920s as an extra and bit player for Paramount Pictures, working in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Ten Commandments, and The Cheat. After signing with Fox Studios, he was paired with fellow newcomer Janet Gaynor in the romantic drama 7th Heaven. The film's success meant they went on to star opposite one another in more than a dozen films in the late 1920s and into the talkie era of the early 1930s.

In 1934, as his acting career was winding down, he and Ralph Bellamy opened the Palm Springs Racquet Club in Palm Springs, California. The small desert community, which became a trendy health retreat in the early 1900s, by the time the club was established, had evolved into a popular getaway for Hollywood stars and ent4rtainers.

Farrell became a major player in the developing prosperity of Palm Springs in the 1930s through the 1960s. He was elected to the city council in 1946 and served as mayor from 1947 to 1955.

During WWII he joined the U.S. Navy in 1942, working as an administrative officer with Fighting Squadron 17 and later spent time on the USS Hornet.

He appeared several times on the radio show The Jack Benny Program, including the 1941 episode "Murder at the Racquet Club." He returned to acting, this time the small screen, to play Gale Storm's father Vern Albright on My Little Margie between 1952 and 1955. In 1956, he starred in The Charles Farrell Show, where he played a fictionalized version of himself as the owner of a racquet club. Farrell sold his real-life racquet club in 1959 for $1.2 million but returned as club operator in 1965 when it was sold again.

Farrell married Virginia Valli, a former silent film star, on February 1, 1931 in Yonkers, New York and the couple settled in Palm Springs. She died from a stroke on September 24, 1968, after which, according to historian Stephen O'Brien, he became increasingly reclusive until his death from heart failure on May 6, 1990 in Palm Springs. He was buried next to his wife at the Welwood Murray Cemetery.

Farrell was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, located at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard for motion pictures and 1617 Vine Street for television. In 1992, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars was dedicated to him. Farrell Drive in Palm Springs was named in his honor as one of the developers of the city, and a statue of Farrell was dedicated in front of Palm Springs International Airport in 1999.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Herr Schenk