Virginia Fox

Virginia Oglesby Zanuck (/ˈzænək/ ZAN-ək; née Fox; April 19 [year of birth disputed] – October 14, 1982) was an American actress who starred in many silent films of the 1910s and 1920s.

Fox was born as Virginia Oglesby Fox in Wheeling, West Virginia (though her grave erroneously lists Charleston as her place of birth), the daughter of Mary Elizabeth (née Oglesby) and Frederick Fox.

While on vacation from boarding school, Fox traveled to visit a friend in Los Angeles. The two made a casual stop by the studio of Mack Sennett, where she was hired on the spot and made a bathing beauty in the studio's films. She went on to star as leading lady in many of the early films of Buster Keaton, including 1920's highly regarded Neighbors.

On January 12, 1924, she married film producer Darryl F. Zanuck, with whom she had three children, Darrylin, Susan Marie, and Richard Darryl. Fox retired from acting but was known as a behind-the-scenes influence on her husband's business decisions. The couple separated in 1956 over the studio mogul's affairs with other women, although they never legally divorced. According to Zanuck biographers, she cared for him at their home from the time he became mentally incapacitated in the early 1970s until his death in 1979.

Despite some Internet accounts to the contrary, Virginia Fox was not related to William Fox, whose name was used by 20th Century Fox and continues to be used in the trademarks of the present-day Fox Corporation. William Fox founded Fox Studios in 1914 but had lost control of it by the time Zanuck acquired it and merged it with his 20th Century Pictures in 1935.

On October 14, 1982, Fox died of a lung infection complicated by emphysema at her home in Santa Monica, California after having been sick for about a year. She was buried near Darryl Zanuck at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles.