Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Movie fanatic. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.
Seraphic Secret would like to add a brief follow-up to yesterday’s post about the non-apologies of Barbara Walters, Anna Wintour and Joan Juliet Buck for their enabling of the murderous Assad regime of Syria.
There is one theme that constantly appears when western progressives make excuses for their support and friendships with barbarians: “They were educated in the west.”
[Read more…] about Western Education: Breeding Ground for Mass Murderers
Moore’s image of carefree flapper was at odds with reality.
Flaming Youth was a huge hit and propelled Colleen Moore to international stardom—as she knew it would.
Colleen was smart about her career. But like so many young, inexperienced Hollywood actresses, when it came to men her choices were based on on gauzy, romantic notions that were limited to idealized Hollywood images. The hard work of marriage, and the importance of shared values rarely entered the calculus of love and marriage.
In 1923, Moore, 22, married John Emmett McCormick, 29, a clever but highly unstable studio executive who was obsessed with Moore’s image and career. Moore was a staunch Catholic who believed in the sanctity of marriage.
During their engagement, McCormick would, without a word, disappear for days at a time, then show up, gaunt, hollow-eyed, shaking, reeking of liquor, begging forgiveness, and pledging his undying love.
Moore’s mother counseled Colleen to break the engagement. A wise mother, she warned her vulnerable daughter that marrying McCormick would ruin Colleen’s life. But Colleen, like so many young and innocent women was convinced that with time, love and proper nurturing she would change her husband.
Colleen and John were married while Flaming Youth was in production.
In her superb autobiography, Silent Star, Colleen describes the wedding supper. In screenplays we call this foreshadowing:
John proposed a toast to my dad and mother for having given me to him—a funny, sentimental, beautiful toast. Then he downed his champagne in one gulp. Downed a second glass the same way. I remember watching him and thinking what bad table manners.
After the wedding party, Colleen and John drove to their new house where John carried his bride across the threshold.
Ah, romance.
Colleen Moore, studio portrait before she bobbed her hair.
Inside their home, John cracked open a bottle of champagne:
I took only a sip or two, afraid it would make me sick. John drained the entire bottle. His voice got louder. He became glassy-eyed. His mouth hung loose. He no longer looked like himself, but like some caricature of him.
Seeing the bewilderment on my face, he said to me, “It’s our wedding night, and I am drunk.”
Then he started to cry—a sloppy, maudlin, drunken berating of self. I stared at him, shocked beyond words at this unknown creature groveling there.
I burst into tears and ran upstairs to our room. Sitting there crying, I wondered if I should go home. I shook my head. How could I face running home to mother on my wedding night?
I went out to the hall to the top of the stairs and, looking down, saw that the living room was dark. A light shone from the guest room. I went down the hall to it and looked in. There was John in his pajamas sprawled on the rug with a nearly empty bottle of Scotch beside him, a large stain on the rug where some of the liquor had run out of the bottle.
I stood there for a moment staring at him. Then I ran back to our room and locked the door and crawled into the big double bed and buried my face in the pillow, sobbing my heart out.
The next morning, Moore unlocked her bedroom door and discovered that John was gone. Moore drove to the studio where everyone crowded round and offered congratulations on her marriage. The crew and actors asked where her husband was—for McCormick had been on location every day, making sure that the studio PR machine was functioning smoothly, promoting Colleen Moore as the next great Hollywood star.
Moore, a thorough professional and a disciplined actress, told cast and crew that her husband had gone to the train station to see his parents off.
Then she went to her director and asked to start the day’s shooting.
In Hollywood, then and now, it’s all about illusion.
Colleen Moore, Photoplay Magazine.
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
Karen and I wish all our friends a lovely and meaningful Rest in Shabbat.
This Jewish movie star from the silent screen also wishes you
a good Shabbos. Can you identify her? Hint: Her father was a
Rabbi. Answer on Sunday.