Editing Wallace Beery (section)

===Comedy film star – Essanay Studios===
In 1913, he moved to Chicago to work for [[Essanay Studios]]. His first movie was likely a comedy short, ''[[His Athletic Wife]]'' (1913).

Beery was then cast as [[Sweedie]], a Swedish maid character he played in [[Drag queen|drag]] in a series of short comedy films from 1914 to 1916. ''[[Sweedie Learns to Swim]]'' (1914) co-starred [[Ben Turpin]]. ''[[Sweedie Goes to College]]'' (1915) starred [[Gloria Swanson]], whom Beery married the following year.<ref name="Sonneborn 2002" />

Other Beery films (mostly shorts) from this period included ''[[In and Out (1914 film)|In and Out]]'' (1914), ''[[The Ups and Downs (1914 film)|The Ups and Downs]]'' (1914), ''[[Cheering a Husband]]'' (1914), ''[[Madame Double X]]'' (1914), ''[[Ain't It the Truth (film)|Ain't It the Truth]]'' (1915), ''[[Two Hearts That Beat as Ten]]'' (1915), and ''[[The Fable of the Roistering Blades]]'' (1915).

''[[The Slim Princess (1915 film)|The Slim Princess]]'' (1915), with [[Francis X. Bushman]], was one of his earliest feature-length films. Beery also did ''[[The Broken Pledge]]'' (1915) and ''[[A Dash of Courage]]'' (1916), both with Swanson.

Beery played a German soldier in ''[[The Little American]]'' (1917) with [[Mary Pickford]], directed by [[Cecil B. De Mille]]. He did some comedies for [[Mack Sennett]], ''[[Maggie's First False Step]]'' (1917) and ''[[Teddy at the Throttle]]'' (1917), but he gradually left that genre and specialized in portrayals of villains prior to becoming a major leading man during the sound era.