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March 24, 2008
Colleen Moore: The Stars and Stripes
Colleen Moore, studio portrait in the Stars and Stripes.
Colleen Moore's starring vehicle, Flaming Youth (1923) was an international hit. Moore, born Kathleen Morrison, (1900-1988) and her husband John McCormick embarked on a grand tour of Europe to simultaneously promote the film, Colleen's career, and enjoy a belated honeymoon.
Colleen's look, specifically her bobbed haircut, was now a global fashion rage. Where did Moore and her mother get the idea for this cubist cut, so markedly different than the opulent tresses in favor at the time? Moore explains that her mother copied the look from a favorite childhood Japanese doll. The new hairstyle sends a message: this young lady is independent, plucky, fiery one moment, down-to-earth the next, tom-boyish but completely feminine; she's the decent and adorable American girl next door who can be a boy's best friend when he's growing up and then magically blossom into the love of his life.
In Dublin, a celebrity starved crowd of 10,000 frantic fans broke through a police cordon and grabbed at Colleen who was wearing a stunning cape covered with intricately stitched tiny feathered plumes. Finally, John had to lift Colleen and carry her to the car where she arrived “looking like a plucked chicken.”
In Switzerland the mayor of Zurich arranged a dinner party in Colleen's honor. An orchestra was present to play the the American national anthem.
Colleen describes the scene in her fine memoir Silent Star:
We'd no sooner sat down than the mayor, with a small bow to me, signaled the orchestra, who started playing “My Country,'Tis of Thee.” We all got up and stood very silent. When we sat down again, I said to the mayor, “That was the English national anthem, 'G-d Save the King.'”
I should have kept my mouth shut. The mayor sent for the orchestra leader, spoke a few words to him in German, and no sooner had we started the soup course than the orchestra struck up again, this time with John Philip Sousa's “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The Mayor stood up, beckoning to all of us, saying excitedly, “Stehen sie auf, bitte—everybody please stand up.”
We all stood, the orchestra finished, we sat down, and the American consul and I burst out laughing. When the mayor asked what we were laughing about, like an idiot I said, “That wasn't our national anthem. That's a march.”
The mayor, red in face, sent for the orchestra leader, spluttering German at him. The leader turned to me and asked the name of our national anthem. I said, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
He returned to the bandstand, the mayor watching him with an eagle eye. A few moments later the orchestra struck up “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” the mayor rose, saying, “Stehen sie auf, bitte,” and a tableful of by-now bewildered guests stood at attention once again. When we sat down, I smiled at the mayor and said, “That was lovely,”
In 1930 Soviet director Sergei Eisentstein came to Hollywood to set up several motion picture projects. The film genius who directed Potemkin met everybody in the business, partied like a pro, but, naturally, got stuck in development hell, and returned to mother Russia without a deal. Studio heads were baffled by his adaptation of Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Eisenstein said a great deal about Hollywood and the decadent capitalists he encountered. He judged Marlene Dietrich dull, Greta Garbo stupid. But Collen Moore, rhapsodized Eisenstein, was the only intelligent woman he met in Hollywood.
Colleen Moore, Desert Flower, 1925
Do check out the fine and valuable website, The Collen Moore Research Project. It is under constant construction. Among many other things there's substantial information about Colleen's first husband, studio executive John McCormick, who was, in many ways, responsible for steering the meteoric rise of her flapper film career. Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic and a deeply disturbed man.
Director Mervyn LeRoy in his fascinating autobiography Take One, describes a terrifying night when McCormick, on a bender, tried to throw Moore out of a N.Y. hotel window. Leroy—from an assimilated Jewish San Francisco family—saved Moore's life by smashing McCormick over the head with a chair. The gallant and properly violent Leroy—at the time a top “comedy constructor” for Moore—remained as her protector the entire night, the two of them aimlessly walking the streets of New York. In Hollywood past and present, major movie stars have major tzuris.
In fact, Moore and McCormick's troubled relationship inspired George Cukor's insider Hollywood drama What Price Hollywood in 1932 as well as the three versions of A Star Is Born.
Colleen Moore, Her Wild Oat 1927.
Tragically, Flaming Youth, is presumed to be a lost film. Perhaps somewhere in an attic in middle America or in an archive in Eastern Europe, lies a decaying copy of this legendary motion picture. I wouldn't be at all surprised.
And as an example of how a lost film suddenly shows up—in this case Czechoslovakia—a Colleen Moore movie, Her Wild Oat, long considered gone, gone, gone, has now been rediscovered and expertly restored. This article is an interview with archivist and historian Joseph Yranski who met Colleen Moore in the early 1970s, and remained friends with her until her death in 1988. Yranski was indirectly responsible for the rediscovery of Her Wild Oat.
Colleen Moore and the six-year-old Mickey Rooney in Orchards and Ermine, 1927
On DVD you can see Colleen Moore in Orchids and Ermine, 1927. Colleen plays a shop girl, a flapper, who's looking for a sugar daddy. But she's got to remain a Cinderella at heart, meaning she has to fall in love for the sake of love—not money. There's romance, mistaken identity, and of course true love triumphs in the end. It's a screwball comedy before screwball comedies were invented in the 30's. Moore is brilliant as a gold digger who's not as avaricious as she should be. A classic.
Here's The Scarlet Letter, starring Colleen Moore and Alan Hale, 1934. This is a sound film, late in Colleen's career. Moore was primarily a comedian but here she was trying to broaden her horizons as an actress. I haven't yet seen this film so I'm clueless. But anything with Colleen Moore is interesting.
Broken Hearts of Broadway, 1923, this is just before Moore broke through as a major star. Colleen plays the role of Mary, an aspiring actress who arrives in New York all young and wholesome. Will she betray her friends for fame and fortune? This is a charming show-biz morality tale, and Moore, as always, is genuine, vivacious, and utterly magnetic.
Reel Baseball/The Busher is a collection of baseball-themed silent movies. Colleen Moore co-stars with Charles Ray in The Busher, 1919, about a small town pitcher who is brought up to the big leagues but can't quite make the grade. Colleen plays Mazie, his local sweetheart. Charles Ray was briefly a star of the silent era who specialized in playing rural heroes. On screen Ray was a one dimensional performer who relied on an aw', shucks grin and a standard check-list of hick mannerisms which appealed to audiences—for a short window of time.
Off-screen Ray possessed a massive ego, was difficult to work with, spent his fortune lavishly, and went bankrupt when he produced and financed his own pictures. In 1935 Ray published a collection of short stories titled Hollywood Shorts, Compiled From Incidents in the Everyday Life of Men and Women Who Entertain in Pictures. Anthony Slide, in his seminal volume Silent Players, reports that, “an undercurrent of anti-Semitism is evident in a number of stories, suggesting that Ray blamed his downfall on the Jewish studio bosses such as Adolph Zukor, who came along replacing the earlier gentile producers such as Thomas H. Ince.”
Sigh.
I saw The Busher on TCM—I have a TCM addiction and I am powerless to control it—a few months ago. Moore, just 19-years old, was not yet a star, just another feature player trying to claw her way from the middle ranks. But as soon as she appears on-screen—behold!—a refreshing, exuberant presence. The petite and vivacious Moore just blows the grinning, eager-to-please Charles Ray right off screen without even trying.
Fortunately for Colleen, the camera never picked up that she had one brown eye and one blue one.
Colleen Moore as Mazie in The Busher.
John Gilbert, who rose to be the first million dollar contract matinee idol at MGM, has a supporting role in The Busher film as the spoiled rich kid who's vying for Colleen's affections over Charles Ray's salt of the earth country hero. Tragically, Gilbert, hugely talented but self-destructive, would have a tortuous love affair with the great narcissist Greta Garbo—she left him stranded at the altar—and then, with the coming of sound his career crashed and burned in a terrific orgy of booze and babes.
After her retirement from motion pictures in 1935, Colleen Moore dedicated herself to an ongoing project: building the world's most dazzling and elaborate doll house, actually a fairy castle. She toured with the doll house to raise money for children's charities.
The house is an engineering marvel. It has its own miniature sophisticated lights and wiring, a self-contained plumbing system, and a miniature library with books signed by some of the greatest authors of our time. Every single detail of the castle is simply breath taking.
The fairy castle is on permanent exhibition in Chicago's Museum of Science of Industry. Here's the homepage.
Colleen Moore was Mervyn Leroy's champion in Hollywood. She mentored the luminous teen-age Loretta Young and cast an inexperienced but jaw-droppingly handsome Gary Cooper in his first starring role opposite her in Lilac Time. Moore believed that Leroy, an incredibly bright and creative young man, could develop into a fine director. And she was right. So let's close with Leroy's warm words about this important actress and icon of the silver screen:
Colleen Moore was a remarkable girl who grew into a remarkable woman... and became, next to Mary Pickford, the biggest silent film star of them all.
Later, she would retire from the screen at the height of her fame, marry well, and spend the rest of her life doing important civic works in Chicago, writing books, raising her stepchildren, and doting on her grandchildren. She was never anything but a lady, throughout her career and her postcareer life.
Her fame, however, never went to her head in any way. Perhaps because of her affluent background, she was never spoiled by her wealth., never seduced by her notoriety, never changed by her success. She was always sweet—in the best sense of the word—and kind and pleasant to everyone she met. I doubt that there was a man who worked on her pictures who was not platonically in love with her.
Links:
Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter
Colleen Moore's Wedding Night
One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks
Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops
Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To
Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess
Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star
Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide
Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star
Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick
Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress
The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow
Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign
Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at March 24, 2008 08:08 AM
Comments
Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.
1. No profanity.2. No Israel bashing. We debate, we discuss, we are respectful. You know what Israel bashing is. The world is full of it. Seraphic Secret is one of the few places in the world that will not tolerate this form of anti-Semitism. That's it. Break either of these rules and you will be banned.
In that top pic, she is reminiscent of Diane Keaton. In some of the other photos she resembles Isabella Rossellini.
Wouldn't it be a wonderful project, Robert, if you were to go to the Motion Picture and Television Country House retirement village and seek out some of these wonderful industry old-timers and interview them. I'll gladly be a research assistant on such a project :) !
Posted by: Pearl at March 24, 2008 09:22 AM
I think the scene labeled as 'Mazie in The Busher' is actually a shot from The Painted People. The girl seated in the carriage on the left with the buggy whip may be Clara Bow.
Posted by: Stuart at July 24, 2010 01:37 PM