November 03, 2009
Esther Ralston: Why Do All My Husbands Want To Kill Me? Part III
Hollywood star Esther Ralston at the height of her fame, 1920's.
To read Part I of this series, please click here.
To read Part II, please click here.
Broke, with her second marriage in shambles and blacklisted by studio boss L.B. Mayer—Esther wouldn't trade amorous favors for movie roles—Esther Ralston flees to New York in 1939 to find work and rebuild her shattered career.
Esther, in her slim but resonant 1985 memoir, Some Day We’ll Laugh, tells us that she was forced to leave her daughter Mary behind in California with her mother.
Working in Summer Stock and radio, Esther meets a young entertainment columnist named Ted Lloyd. Everywhere she plays, Ted is in the audience. With characteristic understatement Esther notes that Lloyd “seemed to follow me.”
Clearly, Esther has an admirer. Not surprising in that Esther Ralston, dubbed The American Venus, was a famous Hollywood beauty. One would hope that coming on the heels of two ex-husbands who were not only unreliable, but also somewhat homicidal, Esther would steer clear of another hasty romantic entanglement, but —
To read the concluding post in my three-part series, please head on over to Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 03:32 PM | Comments (5)
September 29, 2009
Esther Ralston: Why Do All My Husbands Want To Kill Me? Part II
Esther Ralston at the height of her fame, 1920's.
To read Part I of this series, please click here.
Blessed with a lovely, melodic voice, it’s something of a puzzle why Paramount dropped Esther Ralston’s option in 1929. Esther was a rising star who, between 1924 and 1929, starred or co-starred in twenty-five films. She would seem a natural for talkies.
But the mystery is soon cleared up as Esther explains:
Since I had only a year to go on my Paramount contract, the studio sent me a new contract with a talkie clause to sign. Knowing I had been brought up in the theater before going into pictures, George decided I should ask for a hundred thousand dollars to sign this talkie clause. He sent me alone to talk to Mr. Lasky and Mr. Zukor. They were courteous as always, but explained that the new talkie panic had them worried and they didn’t feel they should have to increase my salary until they were sure I would be adequate in talkies.
Once again, the destructive Svengali-Trilby relationship asserts itself as the guiding principle for Esther and George.
To read my entire profile of Esther Ralston—this chapter tells the tale of Esther and the Anti-Semites—please head on over to Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:16 AM | Comments (4)
September 14, 2009
Esther Ralston: Why Do All My Husbands Want to Kill Me?
Esther Ralston at the height of her Hollywood stardom in the 1920's.
They called her: The American Venus.
She lived in a Hollywood mansion with a staff of servants. Her chauffeur drove her around in a limited edition limousine.
But she ended her days in an upscale trailer park in Ventura, California.
One of the enduring mysteries—for yours truly—are the scores of Hollywood starlets, innocent young women, who are attracted to bad men: drunks, gamblers, liars, tinsel town sociopaths.
Esther Ralston (1902-1994) is a prime example of an early Hollywood star who showed great promise as an actress—she played drama and comedy with equal craft—but three ill-considered marriages effectively derailed Ralston’s career and drained away her considerable fortune.
To read my complete profile of Esther Ralston, head on over to Big Hollywood.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:41 AM | Comments (2)
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