Music To My Ears 4

This one's a bit of a mystery.  Another picture of the same woman, at least I think so, with yet another name.  So, is it Mary Reagan, Ann Parker or Penny?  In any case she loves Bill.  Stamped on the back, "MAX MUNN AUTREY, M. Ph.  Photographic Artist 7009 Sunset Blvd.-Hollywood 28, Calif."  There's also the stamp on the lower left corner of the print.  I was able  to find a bit about Autrey on line.  He was a successful photographer, both at his own studio and as the official photographer for Fox Studios in the 1920's.  I'm about to put some of Autrey's portraits on my Fair Use blog.

Click on Music To My Ears in labels to see more.

Dolores Del Rio and Her Hollywood Home

What can I say?  I love Dolores Del Rio.  She was born in Mexico, moved to Hollywood during the silent era and started working in the movies almost immediately.  She made a couple  of really good silents, especially What Price Glory and Ramona, and then, despite the accent, made an easy transition to sound films, making a few classics along the way.  Right of the top of my head, Madame Du Barry, Flying Down to Rio, In Caliente, and Journey Into Fear.  As the Hollywood parts became harder to get, she returned to Mexico and became a big star all over again, and when she was working, Mexican cinema was in a golden era.  As she aged out of lead actress territory, she came back to the United States and finished up her career with TV and smaller movie parts.  She died in 1983, aged 78. 

Next time I get to the Hollywood Walk of Fame with all the cheesy tourist shops I'll have to check if someone is still making postcards of star's homes.  I doubt it, but you never can tell.

May You Live In Interesting Times, Lilian Harvey

I'm sure most people have heard the old Chinese curse about living in interesting times.  Well, I'm not sure such a curse ever existed or if it's the invention of some B-movie writer, or if it's all that bad to live in such eras.  In any case, Lilian Harvey lived in interesting times.

Lilian Harvey was born Helene Lilian Muriel Pape in 1906, in London.  Her mother was English, her father was a German businessman.  Not a good combination for the twentieth century. At the beginning of World War 1, Lilian and her parents were living in Magdeburg, Germany.  Unable, or perhaps unwilling to leave, Lilian's parents stayed in Germany, but fearing for their daughter's safety, they sent young Lilian to live with relatives in Switzerland, where she learned to speak French, along with the German and English she already knew.

After the war, she returned to Germany to be with her parents.  After graduating form the German version of high school, she began studying voice and dance at the Berlin State Opera, while also pursuing theatrical work.  She also changed her name to Lilian Harvey.  She danced in revues, sang on stage, acted in plays, and also began working in silent movies.

One of the things about silent movies was that they were an international art form.  A silent movie made in Germany, with translated inter-titles, could play anywhere in the world.  When sound came along, suddenly, there were national cinemas.  Movies made in the large market of the United States, with an audience in other English language markets, continued apace, but  a country like Germany, with a much smaller population, had to adapt.  What the German, as well as other European film industries did, was to film the same movie, in multiple languages, all at the same time.  A situation made for Lilian Harvey.  Thanks to her training, she could sing and dance, her stage experience had given her a  good voice for talkies, and she could speak fluent, unaccented, German, English, and French.  And while these were all advantages, she was also a charming performer, with a gift for light comedy, as well as enough range to handle a dramatic role.  Far more important for a movie actor.

So, with the advent of sound movies, Lilian Harvey became an international star.  Not all of the German actors could work in multiple languages, so Lilian often found herself filming a scene with a German costar, then doing the same scene again with an English, or French actor.  Laurence Olivier's first film role was opposite Lilian in an English version of Hokuspokus.  In the mid thirties, Lilian Harvey accepted an invitation to work at Fox Studios in Hollywood.  She made a few films, none as popular as her European films, so she walked away from George White's Scandals.  The film was a major hit, and her replacement, Alice Faye became a big star.

While Harvey was still popular with German audiences, she had fallen out of favor with the German, Nazi government.  Despite the Nuremberg Laws that made it impossible for Jews to work in film, she continued her friendship with many of her Jewish colleagues.  In 1937, she bailed out her friend, choreographer Jens Keith, who had been arrested for violating Paragraph 175, a Nazi era law criminalizing homosexuality.  While out on bail, Keith fled to Paris.  Lilian Harvey was arrested by the Gestapo, but  released several days latter.  In 1939, Lilian Harvey herself fled Germany, moving to France.  Eventually she was stripped of her German citizenship for entertaining French troops.  Her large real estate holdings and bank accounts were also seized.

In 1942, Lilian Harvey, once again, moved to the United States.  This time there would be no film work.  (Her last films were shot, in France, in 1940.)  She did work on stage, and was also a nurse in Los Angeles.  After the war, she moved to France, where she worked as a singer.  It wasn't until 1949 that she returned to Germany to give a series of concerts.  Her career petered out after that.  Eventually she retired to Antibes on the French Riviera, where she supported herself running a souvenir shop.  She died in 1968, at the age of 62.

The photo is a German tobacco card, from the 1930s.

A Girl From the Golden West

This one is a bit interesting.  The card isn't well made and there are no company names or logos on the back.  It also looks to be a movie tie in.  In 1915, Cecil B. DeMille directed a movie called The Girl of the Golden West.  Close to the title of this card, but just a bit off.  The star of the film was Mabel Van Buren, and the woman on this card looks a lot like her.  Most people think that the movies ended up in Los Angeles because of all the sunny weather.  I'm sure that helped, but the reality is a bit more shady.  Inventor Thomas Edison, the patent holder for early motion picture equipment insisted on being paid for every foot of movie film shot, processed or projected.  To enforce those patents, he hired a goon squad who busted up the film productions that weren't in compliance.  The movies ended up in Hollywood because it was far away form Edison's strong hold in New Jersey.  I like the idea that some low end stereoview company was ripping off Cecil B. DeMille; that they left their company name off the back of the card to make it difficult for DeMille's agents to find them.

Ramon Novarro

I'm not one to collect autographed pictures of actors, but I was scrolling through EBay, 99cents, free shipping, click and it was mine.

So, who was Ramon Novarro? He was born Jose Ramon Gil Samaniego, in 1899, the son of a successful Mexican dentist. In 1916, fleeing the Mexican revolution, Ramon and his family ended up in Los Angeles. A year latter, in 1917, Ramon was earning money as a dancer, singing waiter, piano teacher, and movie extra. For five years he struggled in his career, the occasional small part, but mostly background. And then he was cast as the lead in The Prisoner of Zenda. Three years latter, in 1925, now renamed Ramon Novarro, he had the biggest success of his career. The lead in Ben Hur: A Tale of Christ. His film career continued into the sound era, getting the romantic lead opposite Greta Garbo in Mata Hari, in 1931. That was it, the peak. After that, it was a slow slide into smaller and smaller parts. Eventually his work was mostly in episodic television.

In 1968, Ramon Novarro, a gay man who often picked up street hustlers. was murdered in his North Hollywood home by two of those hustlers, who thought that, because he had once been a movie star, he must be rich.

The Epworth League Album 7, Old Folks (And Young) At Home

The picture of the little girl and her cats seems somewhat out of place on this page. A grand daughter, perhaps, of one of the older seated men, she looks like a model for silent movie star Mary Pickford from Rebbecca of Sunnybrook Farm or Mary Miles Mitner from Anne of Green Gables. Looking at those old silent films, I've always assumed that the look of those actresses was an idealized notion of a rural America that the film makers thought would sell tickets to an urban audience living in tenements. It's surprising to find an actual child who has that care free and innocent image.

Most people have at least heard of Mary Pickford, but Mary Miles Mitner's name may not be familiar to non silent movie fans. During the silent era, Mitner was a very successful child actress who rivaled Pickford in box office appeal. Her career ended in 1923 when she was implicated in the murder of director William Desmond Taylor. Born in 1902, the 21 year old Mitner was involved with the much older and married Taylor. Though never charged, Mitner never made another film. Mitner's mother and Mabel Normand were also said to be involved with Taylor.