Chasing Claire Adams

Part memoir, part romance and part movie mystery, Chasing Claire Adams explores how one woman’s remarkable life sheds light on the major social, cultural and political upheavals of the early twentieth century.

Beginning on the wind swept plains of Winnipeg, moving to the music halls of London and onto the heights of the early film industry, Claire Adams was a fascinating woman who navigated the pitfalls and opportunities of the early motion picture industry to find happiness with a classic Hollywood ending in the arms of an Australian, ten years her junior. Today, few people in Los Angeles remember her name. Even fewer in Australia appreciate the scale of her movie success and the impact of her arrival in the small village of Skipton on the eve of World War 2.

Spanning two centuries, several continents and two World Wars, this is the first time her complete story can be told.

Claire Adams Mackinnon: the silent star with a social conscience, written out of history, beloved Melbourne philanthropist and the woman credited with bringing Hollywood glamour and cocktails hour to Western District.