Wallace Reid still rouses excitement today as Jeff, the blacksmith
in D. W. Griffith's famous film, The Birth of a Nation. Audiences
thrill to the rip-roaring brawl between Jeff and a band of
villainous renegades. The fight was largely real, and many people
saw Wally for the first time in that immortal film. They said he
became "a star overnight," but he had appeared in more than a
hundred films before. In Wally, his story is fully told for the
first time. He was "born in a trunk" to an actress mother and a
famous playwright father. Wally barely survived the infamous St.
Louis cyclone when the storm tore that city apart, but he emerged
from the carnage to grow into a popular student, athlete, and early
film hero. His handsome looks inspired directors to place him in
front of cameras, but his ambitions were to be a writer and
director. When director Cecil B. DeMille picked him to appear
opposite opera diva Geraldine Farrar in her first films, his
aspirations became lost in the dizzying idolatry of worldwide
audiences. Wally's popularity soared to a height rivaled only by
Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, but his pedestal of fame stood
on shaky ground. Genuine tragedy fell upon Wally and his film crew
when their train derailed in an isolated Sierra Mountain location.
His injuries were treated with morphine, and his family and friends
watched helpless as he became caught unaware in the deathly grip of
the drug. Dorothy Davenport, his wife and a beautiful star in her
own right, remained faithfully by his side, while he wrestled with
the demons that threatened to take his life. Wally draws from many
original sources and major archives to show how he was received in
his time and the importance of his role in the development of
motion pictures. The entertaining and informative book contains an
extensive biographical treatment, a detailed filmography, and more
than 200 rare photographs, posters, advertisements, and lobby cards
that capture the glamour of Hollywood's Golden Years.
General
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