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Marion Shilling began her career as a silent film ingenue for MGM
and went on to play heroines in Westerns of the 1930s. Stage
actress Esther Muir made the transition from Broadway to Hollywood
just as talkies became popular. Hugh Allan was a leading man in the
last years of the silents only to leave the film business in 1930
because of the uncertainty surrounding his transition to sound
films and his disgust with studio politics. These three performers
and thirteen others (Barbara Barondess, Thomas Beck, Mary Brian,
Pauline Curley, Billie Dove, Edith Fellows, Rose Hobart, William
Janney, Marcia Mae Jones, Barbara Kent, Anita Page, Lupita Tovar,
and Barbara Weeks) reminisce here about Hollywood and the movie
business as it made the transition.
"We were like dragonflies. We seemed to be suspended effortlessly
in the air, but in reality, our wings were beating very, very
fast." - Mae Murray "It is worse than folly for persons to imagine
that this business is an easy road to money, to contentment, or to
that strange quality called happiness." - Bebe Daniels "A girl
should realize that a career on the screen demands everything,
promising nothing." - Helen Ferguson In Dangerous Curves Atop
Hollywood Heels, author Michael G. Ankerich examines the lives,
careers, and disappointments of 15 silent film actresses, who,
despite the odds against them and warnings to stay in their
hometowns, came to Hollywood to make names for themselves in the
movies. On the screen, these young hopefuls became Agnes Ayres,
Olive Borden, Grace Darmond, Elinor Fair, Juanita Hansen, Wanda
Hawley, Natalie Joyce, Barbara La Marr, Martha Mansfield, Mae
Murray, Mary Nolan, Marie Prevost, Lucille Ricksen, Eve Southern,
and Alberta Vaughn. Dangerous Curves follows the precarious routes
these young ladies took in their quest for fame and uncovers how
some of the top actresses of the silent screen were used, abused,
and discarded. Many, unable to let go of the spotlight after it had
singed their very souls, came to a stop on that dead-end street,
referred to by actress Anna Q. Nilsson as, Hollywood's Heartbreak
Lane. Pieced together using contemporary interviews the actresses
gave, conversations with friends, relatives, and co-workers, and
exhaustive research through scrapbooks, archives, and public
records, Dangerous Curves offers an honest, yet compassionate, look
at some of the brightest luminaries of the silent screen. The book
is illustrated with over 150 photographs.
"People who like films and stars of that era, from the 1920s on
through the 1950s, I think, would like to have such a
personally-written account of some of the highlights of an
actress's life. Most picture us all as rich and famous and never
hear of another side. I've even thought of the title: The Real
Joyce Compton: Behind the Dumb Blonde Movie Image. Sound good? It's
a thought." --Excerpt of a letter from Joyce Compton to Michael G.
Ankerich, 27 January 1988 The Real Joyce Compton: Behind the Dumb
Blonde Movie Image is the story that Joyce Compton, one of the
screen's finest comediennes and most versatile actresses, wanted
told. Her career, which consisted of an estimated 200 films,
stretched from 1925 to 1957. Breaking into films during the silent
era, she appeared in a string of ingnue roles, imagining herself as
a new Mae Murray, but it was after the beginning of sound that
Compton found her niche in comedy. In her own words, she recounts
her frustrations over studio politics and shares her experiences of
working and socializing with such screen favorites as Clara Bow,
Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich, Joel McCrea, George O'Brien, John
Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Johnny Mack Brown, Janet Gaynor, and George
Raft. Compton opens up about her often overly protective parents,
her off-screen romances, her one heartbreaking attempt at marriage,
her deep religious faith, and her struggle to support her family
after her film career ended. With candor and insight that only
someone who was there can share, Compton discusses the transition
from silents to talkies; working with incompetent directors in
those early sound movies; living on locations; the competition she
experienced with the "star" actresses of the studio; freelancing
versus working under a studio contact; and the day-to-day life of
an actress working in early Hollywood. The Real Joyce Compton
begins with a biography of the actress, written by co-author
Michael G. Ankerich, based on formal interviews, conversations, and
correspondence over their 10-year friendship. The book also
contains a detailed filmography of Compton's film appearances and
is lavishly illustrated with over 80 photographs, many of which are
from Compton's own personal collection.
Mae Murray (1885--1965), popularly known as "the girl with the
bee-stung lips," was a fiery presence in silent-era Hollywood.
Renowned for her classic beauty and charismatic presence, she
rocketed to stardom as a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies, moving
across the country to star in her first film, To Have and to Hold,
in 1916. An instant hit with audiences, Murray soon became one of
the most famous names in Tinseltown. However, Murray's moment in
the spotlight was fleeting. The introduction of talkies, a string
of failed marriages, a serious career blunder, and a number of
bitter legal battles left the former star in a state of poverty and
mental instability that she would never overcome. In this
intriguing biography, Michael G. Ankerich traces Murray's career
from the footlights of Broadway to the klieg lights of Hollywood,
recounting her impressive body of work on the stage and screen and
charting her rapid ascent to fame and decline into obscurity.
Featuring exclusive interviews with Murray's only son, Daniel, and
with actor George Hamilton, whom the actress closely befriended at
the end of her life, Ankerich restores this important figure in
early film to the limelight.
This is a collection of 23 original interviews with stars of the
silent screen, with biographical information and a filmography
included for each. Interviewed are Lew Ayres, William Bakewell,
Lina Basquette, Madge Bellamy, Eleanor Boardman, Ethlyne Clair,
Junior Coghlan, Joyce Compton, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Dorothy
Gulliver, Maxine Elliott Hicks, Dorothy Janis, George Lewis, Marion
Mack, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lois Moran, Baby Marie Osborne, Muriel
Ostriche, Eddie Quillan, Esther Ralston, Dorothy Revier, David
Rollins and Gladys Walton.
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