Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Religious Zionist. Republican. Movie fanatic. Gun owner. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.
The lives of Hollywood stars are too frequently tragic tales of absent fathers, cruelly ambitious mothers, and madly dysfunctional families.
Mexican-American actress, Lupe Velez (July 18, 1908 – December 13, 1944) “The Mexican Spitfire” was a beautiful, passionate, emotionally fragile woman best known for a series of 1930’s B movies in which she plays a delightfully scatter-brained character who speaks broken English punctuated by rapid fire bursts of Spanish.
To read Part I, 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 rebuild her shattered career.
[Read more…] about Silent Star Esther Ralston: Why Do All My Husbands Want to Kill Me? Part III
Part I here.
Esther Ralston was blessed with a lovely, melodic voice, thus it’s something of a puzzle why Paramount dropped Esther’s option in 1929.
Esther was a rising star who, between 1924 and 1929, starred or co-starred in twenty-five films. She was a natural for talkies.
But the mystery is soon cleared up as Esther explains:
[Read more…] about Silent Star Esther Ralston: Why Do All My Husbands Want to Kill Me? Part II
They called her, the American Venus.
She lived in a Hollywood mansion with a staff of servants. Her chauffeur drove a limited edition limousine. But she ended her days in a trailer park in Ventura, California.
[Read more…] about Silent Star Esther Ralston: Why Do All My Husbands Want to Kill Me? Part I
When asked to define the essence of Hollywood glamour, the multi-talented director Edmund Goulding replied:
“It’s the magnetism that changes the current of every movie fan’s life and persuades a girl that she must have a dress like the one Joan Crawford wore in her last picture. It’s the mesmerism that induces a boy to spend his last penny on a dress suit so that he can take his best girl out in the same style in which Clark Gable escorted Myrna Loy.”
Perfect.
As a child growing up in Brooklyn, my maternal grandmother, Genia Keiler, referred to “fancy head shmattes,” or as we know it: The Turban.
We don’t see many turbans anymore, except on the heads of murderous jihadis.
But there was a time in Hollywood when the simple turban was transformed into an object of high glamour.