ALICE WHITE & JOCELYN LEE in BROADWAY BABIES (First National, 1929)

                               

fig. 1 Alice White and Chas Delaney

Broadway Babies is the story of three women. No, not the three girls of the title played by Alice White, Marion Byron and Sally Eilers. In fact, although billed just below Miss White, Byron and Eilers have really little to do other than provide pulchritude appeal. No, the interesting women are Miss White, motherly character actress Bodil Rosing, and junior league femme fatale Jocelyn Lee. Alice, you see, is all set to follow her greed rather than her heart and ditch her poor boyfriend Charles Delaney in favor of gambler Fred Kohler. And she is supported by Miss Rosing who, to her regret, had followed her heart instead of her head and gone from vaudeville stardom to performing menial backstage work. Miss Lee, meanwhile, goes after every man in sight, more of less indiscriminately. Alice at one point calls her "a big hunk of baloney."

All of this comes to us from faraway 1929 which was supposedly a time where actors were standing still better to  e n u n c i a t e  into flower pots. Nothing could be further from the truth regarding Babies, which constantly moves. No, what sinks this backstage movie - and, to be frank, the reputation of Alice White along with it - are production numbers featuring singers who can't really sing and dancers who can't dance. A common complaint at the time and the main reason why backstage musicals took such a hit at the box offices around 1930 that most were sold as dramas instead. 

                                  

fig. 2 Alice White

A former secretary for, of all people, Teutonic auteur Josef Von Sternberg, Alice White (1904-1983) was heavily promoted in this and several other backstage musicals by director Mervyn LeRoy who clearly saw in her another Clara Bow. But like Clara herself, Alice became somewhat grating in sound films and her time in the sun proved brief.

Not so brief, however, than Jocelyn Lee (1902-1980), the villainess of Broadway Babies, who enjoyed a 1926-1933 screen career but was much better known for marrying and quickly divorcing movie directors Henry "Pathe" Lehrman and Luther Reed. (In the case of Lehrman, Jocelyn followed in the footsteps of one Virginia Rappe, whose death after a wild Labor Day party in 1921 became a cause célèbre still discussed today.) Neither of Lee's divorces was done in quiet and she even faced an arrest warrant after physically attacking Reed. A third union, to movie executive James Seymour apparently quieted her down but by then her career was running purely on fumes.

Née Mary Alice Simpson and hailing from Chicago, Jocelyn Lee had trod the boards as a chorus girl with the "George White Scandals" and the "Follies" before embarking on a screen career playing mostly chorus girls and minor Bad Girls. I wish I could say that her performance in Babies was memorable but, alas, her quick fade from Hollywood is quite understandable.     

                                                         

VIOLET DUNN & THE BLACK CAMEL (Fox, 1931)

Violet Dunn gained fame as one of the featured dancers in Philip Dunning & George Abbott's "Broadway," a substantial hit that racked up more than 600 performances 1926-'28. The illustration, courtesy of New York Public Library's Billy Rose Collection, is a 1929 Arent Cigarette Card actually promoting Miss Dunn's performance. 

There is no doubt in my mind that this Violet Dunn is indeed the Violet Dunn that enjoyed a brief, two movie Hollywood career for Fox in 1931, appearing in Doctor's Wives, starring Warner Baxter, and The Black Camel, the second Warner Oland Charlie Chan movie and the first to have survived.

                                           

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Yes, indeed: Violet Dunn, who plays movie star Dorothy Revier's maid in a most seething manner, turns out the be the culprit of one of the story's two killings. (The other murder is committed by none other than Dwight Frye, who plays the butler. Yes, indeed, the butler done it!) Miss Dunn, you see, was actually the widow of an actor who Miss Revier had sort of killed back in the day and her vengeful act is at least somewhat plausible. The means to commit said murder and old Charlie's deducing are pure pulp fiction, however. And that is as it should be.

This Viola Dunn, who on the cigarette card is listed as "American," is nevertheless most likely the Canadian-born actress who went on to some legitimate stage success replacing Glenda Farrell in the 1970 Broadway hit "Forty Carats."

Valeska Suratt: the poor man's Theda Bara

Surviving portraits of silent screen vamp Valeska Suratt usually depict a zaftig woman wearing outrageous outfits but recently I came across one that actually show a handsome woman if a bit long in the tooth to be portraying man eaters. 

                             

I actually have a sentimental fondness for Madame Suratt although none of her films seems to have survived: of all the bios I submitted while employed by the All Movie Guide, more than 2000, this one brought me the greatest headache. For reasons known only to the powers-at-be at AMG, while the on site editors left movie reviews pretty much alone they just couldn't help meddling with personal bios. Not by catching misspellings, mind you, or grammatical errors, which certainly would have been welcomed, but by changing words apparently just, well, because they could. I finally put my foot down, figuratively speaking, when Valeska Suratt came out as a completely garbled mess complete with non sequiturs and, yes, misspellings. I demanded that my byline be removed, end of story. The senior editor agreed, and, lo and behold, they kept their grubby little paws off my work for the duration. Below is the published version of my Suratt bio. Still not word perfect but close enough.

"Ridiculous looking by modern standards, silent screen femme fatale Valeska Suratt arrived with some fanfare in 1915 as producer Jesse J. Lasky's The Immigrant. An obvious imitator of Theda Bara, Surratt (who actually hailed from Terre Haute, IN) was quickly corralled by Bara's employer William Fox. Although this suggests a move to keep Bara in line, it may have been an effort to corner the vamp market altogether. After all, Fox also had the equally devastating Virginia Pearson in his stable. Suratt did her bodice-ripping best in films with titles such as The Siren and The Slave (both 1917), but the vamp craze was already waning and there was really only one Bara anyway. Suratt later claimed to have written a screenplay about Mary Magdalene which she misguidedly handed over to Will H. Hays, of the notorious Hays Code. Hays, Suratt stated, passed it on to director Cecil B. DeMille, who of course would go on to create The King of Kings (1927), featuring Jacqueline Logan as the biblical femme fatale. When no royalties were forthcoming, Suratt sued Hays, DeMille, and screenwriter Jeanie MacPherson. She lost, left show business altogether, and reportedly, later became something of a religious zealot and a recluse."

Anne Neyland in HIDDEN FEAR (United Artists, 1957)

For several years I had the pleasure of spending Thanksgiving and other festive occasions with director Andre de Toth, who would occasionally boast that he knew how to correctly pronounce the Danish name of my hometown of Copenhagen: København. The reason for de Toth's arcane knowledge was that he co-produced and directed a movie there, the Euro noir Hidden Fear. To me, however, this was long a "lost film." Until now. Last night I had what I can only term the dubious pleasure of viewing what may in fact be Andre de Toth's worst film. Yes, Hidden Fear is filmed in and around Copenhagen and includes a host of well regarded Danish actors supporting Robert Payne and Hollywood veterans Alexander Knox and Conrad Nagel. But the screenplay is more murky than noir and with the typical underlit sets and bad sound endemic to Danish films of the period it is hard to follow. One performer stands out, though: Anne Neyland. Miss Neyland, playing a model? stage performer? prostitute? it is difficult to determine exactly who she is or indeed what she is doing in Copenhagen, looks ravishing in a fur stole amidst what appears to be a warm Danish summer day. Although earning "introducing" billing despite having show girled it around Hollywood for at least five years, the Mississippi born Texas reared former "Miss Dallas" is today best remembered as the "other girl" in Elvis Presley's signature opus, Jailhouse Rock, filmed shortly after her Danish detour. Neyland, alas, had little good to say about the burgeoning Elvis. "He's a joke," she told the press. "He's just a small town boy, animalistic and honest but small town. I want nothing more to do with him." Well then ...! Meanwhile, as Elvis Presley became a legend, Anne Neyland did Motorcycle Gang (1957) and some television. She was out of show business by 1965.    

Happy Halloween everybody! 

                                       

FAYE EMERSON (from my unpublished "FADEOUT: the final film of ...")

Elizabeth, LA, 8 July 1917 - Selva, Majorca, Spain, 9 March 1983 (stomach cancer)

There was something hard as nails about blonde Faye Emerson, and despite the fact that she was the wife of Elliott Roosevelt, and thus the daughter-in-law of America's  32nd president, this Warner Bros. contract actress played mainly femme fatales and, truth be told, not even all that interesting ones at that. Even such roles began to wane in the late 1940s, however, and there were rumors of a suicide attempt. Suddenly she was back in the headlines but in a completely different venue: television. When the notoriously unreliable Diana Barrymore dropped out of an upcoming panel show, the famous CBS eye turned to Faye, who had ad-libbed brilliantly at the latest Democratic National Convention. As a result, this underused screen actress became the first superstar of the new household appliance, notable for her glamorously low-cut gowns and sharp wit. She divorced Roosevelt in 1950 ('Elliott and I parted on friendly terms,' she assured the press) and married bandleader Skitch Henderson, a union that ended in divorce after seven years. Once voted "Television's Most Appealing Female Personality," Emerson called it quits in 1962 and, unimpeded by either husbands or family, settled in Europe, a very wealthy recluse.

GUILTY BYSTANDER (Film Classics, 1950) D: Joseph Lerner. CAST: Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson (Georgia Thursday), Mary Boland, Sam Levene, J. Edward Bromberg, Kay Medford. Although she later appeared as herself in A Face in the Crowd (1957), this was Emerson's final feature film acting assignment. She plays the ex-wife of a down-and-out former police officer (Scott), whose son has been kidnapped. Produced on the very cheap, Guilty Bystander was one of the earliest films noir to be filmed entirely on location in New York City. It also marked the screen swan song for veteran character actor J. Edward Bromberg (1903-1951), a victim of the House Un-American Activities inspired blacklist.

ELLEN DREW (from my unpublished "FADEOUT: the final film of ...")

Kansas City, MO, 23 November 1915 ñ Palm Desert, CA, 3 December 2003 (liver disease)

Ellen Drew, who was formerly known as Terry Ray, was very pleasant to have around. Pleasant and a little dull, to tell the truth. Whenever Paramount needed a nice girl-next-door type in the early 1940s, they called on either Ellen or Frances Gifford. But whereas Gifford found lasting fame as Jungle Girl (1941), Drew drifted about without making much noise. She is chiefly remembered for the Preston Sturges classic Christmas in July (1940) and perhaps for taking no less than five husbands, including screenwriter Sy Bartlett. 

The final film of Ellen Drew

OUTLAW'S SON (United Artists, 1957) D: Lesley Selander. CAST: Dane Clark, Ben Cooper, Lori Nelson, Ellen Drew (Ruth Sewall), Charles Watts. Drew replaced Marsha Hunt, who had a prior engagement, in this low-budget Western in which she is raising her "orphaned nephew " (Cooper) when the lad's outlaw father (Clark) suddenly shows up.

                                                       

TOM DRAKE (from my unpublished FADEOUT: the final film of ...)

Brooklyn, NY, 5 August 1918 -- Torrance, CA, 11 August 1982 (lung cancer)

A handsome but rather dull young leading man of the 1940s, the former Alfred Alderdice had the good fortune of having Judy Garland sing "The Boy Next Door" to him in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). They both looked beautiful in Technicolor, but then MGM made the mistake of letting him play composer Richard Rodgers in another colorful musical, Words and Music (1948). The words and music were, of course, delightful, but Drake was blandness personified and it was downhill from there. His rather obvious homosexuality may have been overlooked when wooing Judy Garland back in 1944, but it became a liability in the less forgiving 1950s, and he was soon forced to augment his movie income by selling used cars.

The final film if Tom Drake

CYCLE PSYCHO (Cinemation, 1975) D: John Lawrence. CAST: Tom Drake (Dick Ridelander), Amy Thompson, Stephen Oliver, Joe Turkel. In a massive comedown, the erstwhile boy next door plays a crazed killer blackmailing a businessman (Turkel) into procuring young girls to satisfy his erotic fantasies. A ho-hum "shocker" released on video as "Savage Abductions." Drake appeared in three made-for-television movies the following year, but then retired permanently.

                                                          

Character actress HELEN BROWN and TAILSPIN TOMMY IN THE GREAT AIR MYSTERY (Universal, 1935)

If mothers were superfluous in B Westerns - and as anyone with even a modicum of interest in the subject will know they certainly were few and far between - these caring souls were even more so in cliffhanger serials. What, indeed, could such a character accomplish in a genre that hinged entirely on action for the sake of action? Obviously, the target audience for this type of entertainment were small fry and the eternally young-at-heart who would not stand for watching the hero or heroine's dear old ma being tied to a buzz saw, now would they? Yet in the early years of talkie serials where producers often looked to popular pulp fiction yarns or radio series, they did turn up occasionally. The best example is perhaps former silent screen star Clara Kimball Young in Bela Lugosi's The Return of Chandu (1934), a chapterplay unusually heavy in female pulchritude of all ages. But there were a few others.

Helen Brown turned up as the eponymous hero's mother in Tailspin Tommy in the Great Air Mystery (1935), but disappears after the first chapter's introductory sequence. Not before, however, serving Tommy and his sidekick Skeeter a plate of homemade fried chicken. Despite the brief screen time, she actually managed to achieve screen billing. As did Fritzi Brunette, also taking part in the chicken dinner (Mrs. Tompkins calls her Martha and I believe she is supposed to be Tommy's aunt). Poor Fritzi, though. A veteran screen performer who had starred in pre-world war I melodramas, she was filmed from behind only. Miss Brunette died in Hollywood at the age of 58 in 1943.

Hailing from Washington state, Heken Brown was a busy character/bit player in Hollywood whose screen and television career lasted from 1935 until shortly before her death from cancer at the age of 78 in 1994. Her final credited appearance came in an episode of the hit series "ER."

Character actress RUTH ROBINSON and ROLL ALONG, COWBOY (Principal, 1937)

Cecilia Parker, in the Smith Ballew oater Roll Along, Cowboy, enjoys something few grade B, or in this case grade Z, actresses ever did: having a living ma. As we have seen most sagebrush heroines came complete with an aged and widowed father (or, if he turned out to be a wolf in sheep's clothing, uncle), but once in a while, and for plot purposes, they would have a mater who, as in the present case, owes heavily on a mortgage held by a dastardly villain. 

Miss Parker's much beleaguered mother is played here by Ruth Robinson, who turned up in scores of mostly unbilled bits in A films and TV shows between 1938 and her death at the age of 76 in 1966. 

Robinson plays a similar role in the 1941 Bill Elliott Western Across the Sierras, where she witnesses her shopkeeper husband being gunned down by the avenging villain he helped send to prison. This time, her daughter is played by genre regular Luana Walters. Ironically, the hero, Bill Elliott, played the blackguard out to steal her cattle in Roll Along, Cowboy.

Robinson's final series Western appearance came in Gene Autry's Down Mexico Way (1941). She later guested on such TV shows as "Range Rider" and "Buffalo Bill,Jr."

MARI ALDON: from my unpublished "FADEOUT: the final film of ..."

  Lithuania, 17 November 1925-Las Vegas, NV, 31 October 2004.

Reared in Canada and a former ballerina, Mari Aldon drifted about Hollywood from the mid-1940s, finding herself left on the cutting-room floor for Forever Amber (1947) and playing typical starlet assignments when she suddenly nabbed a co-starring role opposite none other than Gary Cooper in Distant Drums (1951), a "Western" set among the Seminoles in Florida. She was then briefly seen as Phil Carey's wife in the Joan Crawford starrer This Woman is Dangerous (1952) and was Warren Stevens' girlfriend, again briefly, opposite Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) before segueing into B-Movies (the British lensed Race for Life [1954]), television and a marriage to veteran film director Tay Garnett. 

THE MAD TRAPPER (1972) D: Tay Garnett. CAST: Mike Mazurki, Mari Aldon, Fritz Ford, Vic Christy, Jimmy Kane. Aldon, who last appeared on television in a 1966 Bonanza episode, "The Fighters," returned to the big screen in this outdoor melodrama directed by her husband. Or did she? When the film, a fairy tale filmed in Alaska about a trapper (Mazurki) suspected of murder sharing his wilderness cabin, and life, with a lynx, was finally released in 1975, Aldon was no longer listed in the cast, which now appeared entirely without female participation.