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Ohio natives Harland Wynn Tucker of Toledo and Marie Walcamp of Dennison were movie stars of the silent film era who married each other. They met when acting together in a series produced by Universal Studios, known as The Dragon's Net, and their wedding was held in 1920 in Tokyo, Japan. Here, the honeymooners are aboard ship en route back to the United States.
Harland was the son of Judge Robert Tucker of Portland, OR, of the family of Jones and Catherine (Welker) Tucker. He was considered a "hearththrob" although he never had starring movie part. Early in his career, he played leading roles in stage plays in Los Angeles. In 1935, he portrayed Lord Throgmorton in the play Mary of Scotland, authored by Maxwell Anderson and Helen Hayes and later made into an RKO Radio film starring Katharine Hepburn and Fredric March. In 1936, he was in the film Charlie Chan At the Opera for Twentieth Century Fox. Among his other movie appearances were in Kid Galahad (starring Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart), Missing Witnesses (starring Dick Purcell, John Litel and Jean Dale) and Slim, all circa 1937.
Marie was the daughter of Arnold and Mary (Mackel) Walcamp. Her filmography included more than 100 productions between 1913 (The Werewolf) and 1927 (In a Moment of Temptation), many of them silent films where she often was a heroine of the action and Western genre. Reported one newspaper, "Her popularity in series and westerns during WWI was second to none in the industry."
The Tuckers dwelled in Hollywood and are known to have performed together in films such as On the Ragged Edge (1928) and in carnivals with Jack Benny. They separated in February 1934 but within a few months were reconciled. For years, they are known to have traveled to Ohio to visit Marie's brother Harry and to nearby Pittsburgh, leading Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph columnist George Seibel to write in 1935 that "Marie Walcamp, who is a Pittsburgh girl, was famous before she married George Sharp's leading man. She was the desperate cowgirl of the early Western movie serials; more redskins, greasers, and cattle-rustlers have bitten the dust before her trusty rifle than the total losses at Gettysburg."At her tragic death at the age of 42, syndicated Hollywood columnist Robbin Coons wrote the following:
Marie Walcamp is dead, victim they said, of worry over poor health. The new generation of film fans would not remember the name. Once upon a time kids stomped and whistled and cheered when it flashed on the screen, usually on Saturday matinees, which was serial pictures. Marie, with her blonde curls streaming, dared death week after week with the brawly little Eddie Polo... When Marie went abroad the natives cheered as loudly as for Mary Pickford, then the queen of screen drama. They mobbed her and fought for her autograph. And when she died she rated a couple of sticks of type. Hollywood has no serial queens today to compare with those of the Marie Walcamp era.
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