The Misfits (1961) was reissued in the UK and Ireland in June, and also headlined a major retrospective, ‘Marilyn’, at the British Film Institute on London’s Southbank. The month-long season featured all but one of the sixteen films Marilyn Monroe made from 1952-62, of which The Misfits would be her last. Her leading man, Clark Gable, suffered a fatal heart attack days after filming ended, while Monroe – who battled insomnia, drug addiction, and the collapse of her marriage during the shoot – never completed another movie.

Marilyn’s posthumous celebrity is unstoppable, yet many of her fans may never see her on the big screen – although in her lifetime, she transfixed cinema audiences. Watching her as divorcee Roslyn Tabor, dancing with Guido (Eli Wallach) in his abandoned desert hut, one is reminded of Monroe’s potent physicality. Several drinks later, she wanders outside and hugs a tree. Even if unsteady on her feet, she exudes balletic grace.

Photo by Inge Morath

The screenplay, by husband Arthur Miller, draws on Marilyn’s biography in particular. Did she really want to expose her mother’s neglect, and her own childlessness, in this performance? Her subsequent rejection of Miller suggests not. In one scene, Guido peeks at pin-up shots in her closet. The film seeks to condemn her sexual objectification, but is also innately voyeuristic.

A disturbing bar scene, in which drunken cowboys slap the behind of an unwitting Roslyn while she plays paddleball, is even more jarring as cameraman Russell Metty had previously shot a gratuitous close-up of her rear during a horse-riding sequence. Nonetheless, director John Huston refused Marilyn’s request to show her bare breast in a bedroom scene, bowing down to the censors of an era when innuendo was rife but actual nudity was taboo.

Befitting Miller’s theatrical background, The Misfits is essentially a three-act drama – and by its midpoint, with the exit of her friend Isobel (Thelma Ritter), Monroe is left alone among the men, while the semi-lunar bleakness of the Nevada landscape is intensified by Metty’s monochrome cinematography. The interior scenes verge on claustrophobic, as if the viewer is in the same room, in real time, witnessing the disintegration of the narrative (and the actors themselves.)

As Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift) enters, the real-life accident that deformed his visage several years before is referenced into his character’s backstory. He later falls off his horse in a rodeo, and a bandaged head completes this portrait of a wounded soul. Later, outside a bar, he rests his head on Monroe’s lap. Surrounded by wrecked cars and garbage, she tries to comfort him.

Photo by Eve Arnold

Although Marilyn idolized Gable, her empathy with Clift makes this dialogue a highlight of The Misfits, and one of the outstanding scenes of her career. Clift, burdened by alcoholism and the strain of hiding his bisexuality, would make three more films – including Freud, another fraught epic with Huston – before his death in 1966.

After they return to the hut where Roslyn now lives with Gay Langland (Gable), she finds herself having to ‘mother’ all three cowboys, whose display of drunkenness is utterly convincing. As her rural idyll falls apart, she reluctantly joins the men on their mission to round up wild horses in the hills. But when she learns that the horses are to be slaughtered for dogfood, Roslyn tries to stop the men – leading to a bitter confrontation with Gay.

These harrowing scenes benefit most from the panoramic view of the big screen. The pursuit and capture of the horses only seems to reflect the desperation of their hunters. Filmed from a distance, Roslyn screams at the men. She appears hysterical, but today’s filmgoers will be disturbed by the realism of the chase.

By contrast, the final frames – with Gay and Roslyn driving away in the dark – seem to signal a neat Hollywood ending, providing tentative hope in a film plagued by existential doubt.

Miller and Huston seemed unable to conceive of Roslyn making it on her own. But behind the scenes, Monroe would soon divorce Miller – and before long, the sexual revolution and feminist surge would transform relationships between men and women. Roslyn’s affinity with animals and nature now seem less like the irrational fears of a neurotic woman, than a glimpse into our dystopian present when ecological disaster is becoming a reality.

But this was an era that Gable, Monroe and Clift would never know. Critics were bemused by the film, and it opened to a muted reception. Even now, The Misfits wields an unsettling power. When Guido tells Roslyn, ‘Here’s to your life. I hope it lasts forever’, there was an audible gasp from the stalls. This ironic nod to mortality might be too much to bear.

A 52-minute documentary, The Thanhouser Studio and the Birth of American Cinema, will be screened in the US on TCM tonight, July 5, at 9 PM (Pacific Daylight Time), followed by three classic Thanhouser movies, made from 1912-13, when the studio was at its peak (their prodigious output accounting for an estimated 25% of independent films released in America.)

From 1916-17, a young Jeanne Eagels starred in three films produced at the Thanhouser lot: The World and the Woman, The Fires of Youth and Under False Colors. The first two are still in print, and can be viewed here. By 1918, however, the studio would close its doors.

‘They brought the dramatic qualities of theater to the screen as they all found their way into moviemaking, they lavished attention on elaborate film sets in their roomy studio, and they took their cameras on location,’ writes critic Sean Axmaker (who has also championed Jeanne’s later work.) ‘The resulting films were vibrant and lively, with often complex stories, dynamic staging, and creative camera angles and lighting. The Thanhouser brand was a recognized mark of quality to audiences and distributors alike and a century later, the Thanhouser brand still stands for high production values, sensitive direction, intelligent stories, and fluid, energetic storytelling.’

For those unable to catch the documentary on TCM, it is also available to view at Vimeo On-Demand, while DVDs can be purchased from Amazon or the Thanhouser website.

I am pleased to offer these lovely bookplates (featuring vintage artwork of Jeanne as Sadie Thompson in Rain), and postcards featuring the cover art for Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed to all readers. They’re free of charge, so if you’d like me to sign one (or both) please contact me here.

The weeks following publication are an anxious time for any author, as we nervously, and somewhat impatiently await feedback from our readers. Now, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed has its first customer review on Amazon.com – from fellow author Steffan B. Aletti, and happily, it’s a rave!

Thank God Eric Woodard has seen fit to resurrect Jeanne Eagels, one of the most beautiful and fascinating of the great stage stars of the early 20th Century … For those of us who had to rely pretty much on Kim Novak’s almost entirely fictional 1957 ‘biopic’, this book is revelatory, restoring her to her rightful place as a major actress respected throughout the English-speaking world and, most famously, the creator of Sadie Thompson … This book will finally put those outrageous fictions to rest …  Well worth reading if you want to learn about Broadway and Hollywood during the first couple of decades of the 20th century.

So if you’ve read and enjoyed Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, please consider writing a short review for Amazon, Goodreads or your personal blog. (And finally, I would like to quote my ever-gallant writing partner, Eric: ‘I didn’t resurrect her alone …’)

Jeanne Eagels confronts her lover, played by Herbert Marshall, in ‘The Letter’ (1929)

A viewing of Bette Davis’ The Letter remake led one blogger back to Jeanne Eagels’ original performance as the murderess Leslie Crosbie, over at Classic Hollywood:

I re-watched it to see if there was anything noirish about it and wasn’t disappointed. Jeanne’s performance is powerful, the French director Jean De Limur also had scenes that wouldn’t disappoint noir fans. Jeanne Eagels descending the stairs to meet with her murdered lover’s Chinese mistress is pure noir cinematography. I must say this version is my favorite version of W. Somerset Maugham’s The Letter.

Although a work-print has been available for some time, a fully restored version of The Letter (1929) was released on DVD in 2011.

In the first of a new series, I look at some of the major figures featured in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed. First up is Billie Burke: star of Broadway, wife of legendary producer Florenz Ziegfeld, she is perhaps best-known today for her role as Glinda in The Wizard of Oz. Back in 1912, Billie was starring in The Mind-the-Paint Girl, a play by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero, with Jeanne Eagels in a supporting role.

Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke was born on August 7, 1884, to Blanche and William ‘Billy’ Burke, who worked as a singer and clown at the Barnum & Bailey circus. After several years touring America and Europe, the family settled in London, where in 1903, nineteen year-old Mary – or ‘Billie’, as she was known – made her debut on the West End stage.

She returned to New York City a few years later, starring in a string of hit Broadway musicals, including Mrs. Dot, Suzanne, and The Runaway. On September 9, 1912, after a week trial run in Atlantic City, she opened at the Lyceum Theatre in Sir Arthur Wing Pinero’s ‘play within a play’, The Mind-the-Paint Girl.

Her character, Lily Parradell, was the leading lady at a musical comedy theatre in London. She headed a cast of thirty, including an up-and-coming actress, Jeanne Eagels. Six years her junior, Jeanne was cast as ‘Olga Cook’ and had eight lines to speak.

The Mind-the-Paint Girl was warmly received by critics and audiences. Shortly before the Christmas holidays, however, attendance began to wane. With expenses exceeding box office profits, producer Charles Frohman decided to close Mind-the-Paint Girl on January 4. The show then went on tour, ending in Chicago early March. Jeanne’s only review from an unknown critic proclaimed, “The girl with the red heels on her shoes has personality!”

In her 1949 memoir, With a Feather in my Nose, Burke recalled, “One of the pretty young actresses in my play was Jeanne Eagels, to whom no one paid much attention then except to observe that she was lovely to look at and pleasant to have around.” That is why Burke’s husband-to-be, producer and owner of his own theatre, Florenz Ziegfeld, offered Jeanne a weekly salary of $100 to join his Ziegfeld Follies. As financially tempting as the offer must have been, she boldly rejected it.

Determined to become a dramatic actress, Jeanne was not swayed by the lure of rhinestones, beads, feathers, and elaborate headdresses.

On June 9, 1913, Jeanne’s first short film – The Ace of Hearts – was released. “After an original start, the picture develops into a conventional ‘dream melodrama’”, the New York Dramatic Mirror’s film critic noted. “However, it introduces a young actress of promise and prettiness, Jeanne Eagels, who suggests Bill Burke. Outside of Miss Eagels, the acting is fair.”

Billie Burke’s screen debut, in Peggy (1915) was more auspicious, and she quickly became one of America’s most popular silent movie stars, in a series of roles similar to her character in The Mind-the-Paint Girl. Her daughter, Patricia Ziegfeld Stephenson, was born in 1916. Within a few years, Billie returned to the stage.

Jeanne Eagels was now an established Broadway star in her own right, and her path often crossed with Billie’s. In October 1920, they both appeared in the All-Star Testimonial Performance, mounted by the Actors Fidelity League at the Century Theatre. (The AFL was an ‘anti-union union’ formed to rival the Actors’ Equity Association during a dispute that had closed many theatres that year.)

In January 1923, Billie and Jeanne were among the guests at the home of Clara Novello Davies, as she welcomed her son, Ivor Novello, home from England. Shortly afterwards, the two actresses appeared together in a skit entitled ‘Nothing But Hits’, as part of the 41^st Annual Actors Benefit at the Century Theatre. The event was a sell-out, with thousands turned away from the box office. The entire show was repeated at the 5,000-capacity Hippodrome Theatre, with a society pageant featuring the “Fashions of War” now included in the 50¢ to $3 ticket price.

When the family’s savings were wiped out in the 1929 stock-market crash, Billie Burke considered a return to Hollywood. She made her ‘comeback’ in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), playing the mother of Katherine Hepburn – another Broadway actress making her screen debut. Sadly, Billie’s husband died while she was still filming.

In 1933, Billie played a scatter-brained society hostess in Dinner at Eight, also directed by George Cukor. Although under contract to MGM, she was considered ‘too old’ to play herself in The Great Ziegfeld, a sanitised 1936 biopic. Myrna Loy was cast as the young Billie.

Billie appeared opposite Cary Grant in Topper (1937), and her performance in Merrily We Roll Along (1938) earned her an Oscar nomination. In 1939, Billie played her most beloved film role, as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz.

By the 1940s, Billie had moved into radio. In 1950, she played Elizabeth Taylor’s future mother-in-law in Father of the Bride. She became one of the first female talk-show hosts on television, but her failing memory made her decide to leave the stage. Her last screen appearance was in Sergeant Rutledge, a 1960 Western directed by John Ford.

Billie Burke died, aged eighty-five, in Los Angeles on May 14, 1970, and was buried at the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, Westchester County, New York. A memorial statue stands at her graveside. A park in the suburb of Hastings-on-Hudson is named the Burke Estate. For many years her framed photo was displayed above the exit staircase at the Ziegfeld Theatre, but it vanished after renovations. However, an opening night program, bearing a picture of her in The Mind-the-Paint Girl, is still displayed in the lobby of the Lyceum Theatre.

Jeanne Eagels, ‘The Letter’ (1929)

Dan Callahan is an author and film historian, who has published biographies of Barbara Stanwyck and Vanessa Redgrave. (We refer to his Stanwyck bio, The Miracle Woman, in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed. As an aspiring actress, Barbara was strongly influenced by Jeanne, and saw her most famous stage role in Rain several times.)

On The Chiseler today, Callahan has written about Jeanne, including some interesting thoughts about her penultimate movie role in The Letter (1929), in which she played another of W. Somerset Maugham’s anti-heroines – the murderous Leslie Crosbie.

The Eagels movie of The Letter is a primitive early talkie, seemingly undirected and stiffly acted by the rest of the cast. (It is thought that what is left of it is a work print, which would explain some of its deficiencies, though not all.) But Eagels’s devil-may-care performance is so deeply in some zone of its own that it comes through the ether to grab you by the throat and it won’t let go. There’s a palpable sense of risk to Eagels’s acting here, as if she were pushing herself and about to collapse at any moment. And maybe the film suits what she is doing. After all, some paintings are more at home in caves than in pretty frames on museum walls …

When her husband means to punish her by keeping their marriage going anyway after her confession, for form and for show, she shouts her revenge at him and kills herself with it: ‘I, with all my heart and soul still love the man I killed! Ha, ha! Take that, will you! With all my heart, and all my soul, I still love the man I killed.’ Eagels has sung those words ‘heart’ and ‘soul’ so that they feel like incantations, and then she just nods to herself and The Letter comes to its abrupt end. By contrast, Bette Davis had to be browbeaten by director William Wyler into saying this line to her husband’s face (she had wanted to look away), and she only says it once.

There is little visible technique in Eagels’s performance in The Letter, no distance to her reckless playing, so that when Leslie is flaming out it is clear that she herself is flaming out, and this links Eagels to a later 1950s Method actress like Kim Stanley, another stage star who finally had to retreat because she couldn’t sustain the level of emotional intensity she liked for long.

As part of an ongoing series covering major figures in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, I’m looking at the life of Helen Broderick – who danced in the first Ziegfeld Follies, and made the transition from star of Broadway musicals to one of Hollywood’s most beloved character actresses. She was also a loyal friend of Jeanne Eagels, and the mother of Broderick Crawford.

Helen Broderick was born on August 11, 1891, in Philadelphia. She came from a theatrical family, and on her IMDB page, I.S. Mowis gives an amusing take on how she became an actress: “The story goes, that at the age of fourteen she ran away from home, because her mother, who appeared in operatic comedy, was totally obsessed by the theatre. Paradoxically, all the people she met turned out to be performers, and Helen (who needed to make a living, after all) ended up where she hadn’t wanted to end up – on the stage.”

A young Helen Broderick

In 1907, Helen appeared in the first season of the legendary Ziegfeld Follies. It was while toiling in the chorus of Jumping Jupiter (1910-11) that she discovered a gift for comedy. Jumping Jupiter opened on August 3, 1910, in Chicago, to a packed house and rave reviews from the city’s newspapers. Joining Helen as a chorine was Jeanne Eagels, almost a year her senior (though she claimed to be younger.) Jeanne had recently left the Dubinsky Brothers troupe, after more than two years of touring the Midwest in various tent shows.

In Jupiter, Richard Carle starred as a professor who attempts to save a good friend’s reputation from the threats of a spurned Parisian coquette. The extremely thin plot was fattened up with fifteen musical numbers, plus comic turns featuring Carle and a chorus of twelve lovely young ladies.

Each of the girls was named after popular automobiles of the time: Buick, Packard, Cadillac, Pierce, and so on. Jeanne was listed in the programme as Miss Renault, while Helen Broderick played Miss Winton. “One night, Ina Claire was unable to perform and Helen Broderick stood in as the romantic lead,” Mowis writes. “She soon had the audience in stitches, trampling about the stage like an elephant, rolling her big saucer eyes and attempting to croon ‘Cuddle Near Me All Day Long’ in her rather unique voice.”

After the Chicago run ended on October 13, a four-month tour commenced, crisscrossing the Midwest in towns and cities much larger than those preferred by the Dubinskys, and finally reaching Manhattan in March 1911.

Jeanne had become particularly close to Helen, and they would remain friends for life. They found a room at the Claridge Hotel and settled in for what they hoped was a long and successful run. Unfortunately for the cast and crew of Jumping Jupiter, what had played well in Chicago and smaller towns was deemed too lowbrow for a more sophisticated audience. The show was savaged in the New York press, and folded on March 24 after just twenty-four performances.

For Jeanne, who had only just arrived in New York, this was a crushing disappointment. But Helen had recently married Lester Crawford, another cast member. Their son, William Broderick Crawford, was born on December 9, 1911. Throughout her ‘lean years’, Jeanne enjoyed a warm friendship and practical assistance from Helen and her family.

During the summer of 1915, Jeanne stayed at their 67^th Street apartment. While appearing together in vaudeville, Helen and Lester were saving for a home on Long Island to raise their son Broderick, currently living with his grandparents. Nights were spent dining on chow mein and ginger ale, or chili con carne and beer, while Jeanne performed impersonations and shared theatrical gossip.

Throughout the next decade, Helen appeared in a series of musicals, comedies and revues. She made her screen debut in a short, High Speed, which she also co-wrote. By the end of the decade she was playing leads and featured roles, most notably in Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929-30), with music by Cole Porter.

Less than two months after Jeanne Eagels died in 1929, Helen completed a manuscript entitled My Memory of Jeanne Eagels, in the hope of fashioning it into a play. The Missourian, as the project was renamed, would focus on Eagels’ early life and rise to stardom. They had drifted apart in recent years, but Broderick remained fond of Jeanne, last meeting her in the lobby of the Morosco Theatre shortly before her untimely death. Sadly, Helen’s project never materialised – but her reminiscences were among the more reliable passages in The Rain Girl, Eddie Doherty’s controversial 1930 biography of Jeanne.

In 1931, Helen reprised her role as Violet Hildegarde in a big-screen adaptation of Fifty Million Frenchmen, and like many other stage actors of her generation, began making the transition to Hollywood character actress. She would go on to appear in a total of thirty-seven films, most memorably as the wisecracking sidekick to Ginger Rogers in Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936), two classic RKO musicals showcasing the dancing partnership of Rogers and Fred Astaire.

As Madge Hardwick in ‘Top Hat’ (1935)

Helen also played supporting roles in a number of B-movies, many of which can still be found on VOD and Youtube. In 1940, she starred opposite Anna Neagle in a movie adaptation of the hit musical, No No Nanette. Three years later, she appeared in Stage Door Canteen alongside her Broadway peers (including Ina Claire, another pal from Jumping Jupiter days.) The film, which was nominated for two Academy Awards, chronicled the theatrical community’s efforts to bolster the morale of American troops in World War II.

That year, Bette Davis starred in a remake of The Letter, Jeanne Eagels’ penultimate movie. On her right little finger she sported a square of small diamonds which Jeanne had worn in the same role, almost a dozen years before. After filming wrapped, Davis returned the ring to Helen Broderick.

Helen’s final film, Because of Him, was released in 1946. Her son, Broderick Crawford, enjoyed even greater success, winning an Academy Award for his role in All the King’s Men (1949.) Helen died aged sixty-eight in Beverly Hills on September 25, 1959, and her husband, Lester Crawford, passed away in 1962.

Laini Giles was born in Austin, Texas and lives in Edmonton, Alberta with her husband and three cats. An early devotion to Nancy Drew, and her discovery of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon, spurred a lifelong interest in mysteries and scandals. She blogs about history, books and movies at Sepia Stories.

In her debut novel, Love Lies Bleeding (2013), a detective investigates the death of his great-aunt, a high society debutante torn between two lovers. Published on August 1, 2015, The Forgotten Flapper is based on the true story of one of Hollywood’s first stars, Olive Thomas. With only one full-length biography to date (by Michelle Vogel), Laini conducted her own extensive research, and was inspired by Loving Frank, Nancy Horan’s novel about Frank Lloyd Wright, to approach her subject from a fictional perspective.

Olivia Duffy was born in Charleroi, near Pittsburgh in 1894. Her father, a brick-mason of Irish descent, died when she was twelve. She married a clerk, Krug Thomas, at sixteen, but wasn’t ready to settle down. Two years later, she left him to live with her aunt in New York. While working as a shopgirl, she entered – and won – a contest to find ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in New York.’

Olive Thomas, as she was now known, modelled for commercial artists and graced the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. Artist Harrison Fisher wrote a letter of recommendation to Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld, and in 1915, she joined the Ziegfeld Follies. She quickly graduated to a more risqué after-show, The Midnight Frolic, staged for the wealthiest patrons on the roof garden of the New Amsterdam Theatre.

For a time, Olive became Ziegfeld’s mistress – but was disillusioned when he refused to leave his wife, actress Billie Burke. She decided to try her luck in Hollywood, where she met her future husband, Jack Pickford – the dissolute brother of ‘America’s Sweetheart’, Mary Pickford.

Portrait by Alberto Vargas, 1920

In 1917, Olive made her first feature-length movie, A Girl Like That, and was signed to Triangle Pictures, where she starred in Madcap Madge, the first in a string of hits. She left Triangle for Myron Selznick’s fledgling company in 1918, establishing her ‘baby vamp’ persona in films such as The Flapper (1920.)

In The Forgotten Flapper, Laini Giles retells Olive’s story in her own voice, and the ingénue with the mischievous smirk comes back to life. She was a quick learner, impulsive and generous. On camera and on location, she was a risk-taker, one of the pioneering talents who made Hollywood the world’s film-making capital. The hazardous nature of her job – in an era of unregulated creativity – is illustrated in several ‘on location’ episodes.

To establish herself as a motion picture actress, Olive needed to build a more durable persona. In partnership with screenwriter Frances Marion, she became the prime exemplar of the ‘baby vamp’: “modelled after the vamp characters like Theda Bara, but they were younger and more innocent. They lured men into bad situations by flirting and manipulation … breaking rules and carving out a new, more liberated niche in society.”

Aware that her stardom might not last, Olive learned every aspect of the business – even directing a few scenes of An Even Break (1917) after petitioning her bosses. “I wondered if I’d chosen the wrong profession, that maybe I should consider directing instead,” she muses. “If for no other reason than to torture the people I didn’t like.”

Unfortunately, Olive’s ambitions were often derailed by her chaotic love life. In retrospect, her marriage to Jack Pickford was doomed from the start. His alcoholic binges and drug addiction, rampant infidelity and insatiable appetite for trouble made him less than an ideal partner. No saint herself, Olive’s immaturity led her to take him back again and again.

She remained loyal to her family in Pittsburgh, and the contrast between her brothers’ integrity and Jack’s lassitude is striking. The novel also deals with the social background of the era, including America’s entry into World War I. Whereas Jack became involved in a scheme which allowed rich young men to bribe their way out of military service, and used his family connections to escape an dishonorable discharge, Olive’s brother fought for his country selflessly. Olive later found work for him in the film industry, and cared for his son after his beloved wife died.

Olive Thomas as ‘The Flapper’

Nonetheless, both Mary Pickford and her mother, Charlotte, both strongly disapproved of Olive, believing she had married Jack to further her career. In turn, Olive was sympathetic towards Jack’s sister Lottie – the black sheep of the family – and Mary’s first husband, Irish-born actor Owen Moore, whom she spurned for that other great star of the silent era, Douglas Fairbanks.

While Jack may have been Hollywood’s original bad boy, and their marriage was marred by immaturity, the other men in Olive’s life were little better. From Ziegfeld, who treated her as a plaything, to Myron Selznick – who both indulged, and exploited her – Olive was repeatedly let down by her lovers. But though her romances may have ended in tears, they were filled with passion and adventure.

With husband Jack Pickford

In August 1920, Olive and Jack attempted to reconcile and set sail for a European vacation. On September 5, after a boozy night out in Paris, the couple returned to their suite at the Ritz Hotel. After Jack went to bed, Olive ingested a mercury solution prescribed to Jack to relieve the sores caused by his recently-diagnosed chronic syphilis.

Five days later, Olive Thomas was dead at twenty-five. Rumours circulated that she had committed suicide, or that Jack had tricked her into drinking poison to collect her life insurance money. Although much of this was mere speculation, Olive’s tragic death was one of many Hollywood scandals that would trigger the instigation of ‘morals clauses’ and censorship as the studio system took hold.

She would never enjoy that decade known as the ‘Roaring Twenties’, and her fame was quickly supplanted by a new generation of ‘flappers’, that youthful phenomenon she had shrewdly anticipated. Had she lived, Olive Thomas might have realised her dream to become of Hollywood’s first female directors.

The Forgotten Flapper is a racy, action-packed read. It is beautifully designed, with each chapter beginning in a different setting, and sections divided into ‘intermissions’ and ‘reprises’, befitting a real-life ‘flicker’. Reflecting the legend that Olive’s ghost haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre, the novel begins and ends with two amusing, and bittersweet chapters, as told from ‘beyond the grave’. The rest is effectively a fictional memoir, but I would have liked to hear more from the spectral Olive Thomas.

The book also includes an extract from Laini Giles’ next project, The It Girl and Me, chronicling the rise and fall of Clara Bow from the perspective of Daisy DeVoe, the secretary who befriended and ultimately betrayed the star, in one of the last great scandals of early Hollywood.

The Forgotten Flapper is now available in paperback and via Kindle.

Ethel Barrymore, 1937

Next up in the series profiling major figures in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed is Ethel Barrymore, the grande dame of America’s greatest theatrical dynasty.

Ethel Mae Blythe was born in Philadelphia on August 15, 1879, daughter of actors Maurice Barrymore (whose real name was Blythe), and Georgiana Drew. Her brother Lionel was then a year old, and another child, John, would follow in 1882. After their mother died of tuberculosis in 1893, Ethel and Lionel were forced to quit their education and join the family business.

Ethel Barrymore made her first Broadway appearance in 1895, opposite her uncle, John Drew Jr. While acting on the London stage, Ethel turned down a marriage proposal from a young Winston Churchill. Back in America, producer Charles Frohman gave her a star-making role in Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines (1901.)

Ethel Barrymore, 1901

Her most famous line – ‘That’s all there is, there isn’t any more’ – was first uttered in Sunday (1904), and she would repeat it whenever audiences demanded a curtain call. In 1905, she played Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

After starring in W. Somerset Maugham’s Lady Frederick, Ethel married Russell Griswold Colt, grand-nephew of the American gun-maker. Their son Samuel was born that year, followed by Ethel in 1912, and John Drew in 1913. However, the marriage was troubled from the start.

Over the next few years, she starred in Sir Arthur Wing Pinero’s Trelawny of the Wells, J.M Barrie’s Alice Sit-By-the-Fire, C. Haddon Chambers’ Tante, and George V. Hobart’s Our Mrs. Chesney. In May 1915, Charles Frohman was one of 1,195 passengers killed off the Southern coast of Ireland, when the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. After Frohman’s body was recovered, Ethel attended his funeral at the Temple Emanu-El in New York.

Among the other guests was Jeanne Eagels. Eleven years younger than Ethel, she had been a chorine in Frohman’s production of a Pinero musical, The Mind-the-Paint Girl. A rising star, she would soon play more significant roles in plays by Chambers, Barrie and Hobart.

The Nightingale, Ethel’s first film, was released in 1914. A few of her silent movies are still in print, including The Awakening of Helena Richie (1916) and The Call of Her People (1917.) As America entered World War I, Ethel often rubbed shoulders with Jeanne Eagels while performing in theatrical fundraisers.

The most spectacular event of all, The National Red Cross Pageant, was staged in October 1917, and filmed for nationwide release. Ethel appeared alongside her brothers, Lionel and John Barrymore, personifying the city of Flanders in a glorious costume inspired by Belgian paintings, while Jeanne Eagels supported Ina Claire as Joan of Arc, in a tribute to France. Unfortunately, the film is now lost.

After playing Marguerite Gautier in a stage adaptation of The Lady of the Camellias, Ethel starred in A.A. Milne’s Belinda, Zoe Akins’ Declassee, and was reunited with her brother John in Clair de Lune. At thirty-three, she played Shakespeare’s Juliet. A devout Catholic, she divorced her husband in 1923 and never remarried. That year, she starred in Arthur Hopkins’ The Laughing Lady, and as Lady Teazle in Sheridan’s School for Scandal.

Ethel Barrymore in 1924

Her turn as Paula in Pinero’s The Second Mrs. Tanqueray in 1924 was followed by two more Shakespearean roles – as Ophelia in Hamlet, and Portia in The Merchant of Venice. She socialised with Jeanne Eagels, now the toast of Broadway in the sensational adaptation of Maugham’s Rain, at parties hosted by Ivor Novello and Noel Coward, and at Happy Rhones’ mixed-race nightclub. Like Eagels, Ethel would find her greatest success in a Maugham play, The Constant Wife. On November 29, 1926, Jeanne attended the premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre, where she had opened in Rain four years previously.

In 1928, Eagels was fired from the touring production of Her Cardboard Lover, after failing to perform for a week. She was subsequently suspended from the legitimate stage by the Actors’ Equity Association for a period of eighteen months. Ethel Barrymore, who was Vice-President of Equity, refused to be drawn on the subject – but while some thought the punishment excessive, it has been suggested that without Barrymore’s intervention, the ban might have been permanent.

Jeanne’s fortunes improved after she was cast in an early talking picture, The Letter, her second Maugham role. In August 1929, she began filming Ethel Barrymore’s stage hit, The Laughing Lady, but production stopped after Eagels was struck down with ‘Klieg eyes’ – an adverse reaction to harsh studio lights – and had to undergo surgery. She was replaced by Ruth Chatterton. Although she was now free to return to the stage, Jeanne Eagels’ health never recovered and she died on October 3, aged thirty-nine.

After the advent of sound, Ethel was reunited with her famous brothers in Rasputin and the Empress (1932.) Her final Broadway credits were The Corn is Green (1943) and Embezzled Heaven (1945.) She moved to Hollywood, winning an Oscar for her role in None But the Lonely Heart (1944), and appearing in The Spiral Staircase (1945), The Paradine Case (1947), Portrait of Jennie (1948) and Pinky (1949.)

Ethel Barrymore died of cardiovascular disease on June 18, 1959, two months before her eightieth birthday. The Ethel Barrymore Theatre, built by the Shubert Brothers in 1928, still stands at 243 West 27^th Street, in midtown Manhattan.

Next up in a series profiling key figures in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed is Elsie Ferguson, once considered the most beautiful actress on the Broadway stage, and an ‘aristocrat of the screen.’

Elsie Louise Ferguson was born on August 19, 1883, the only child of a leading New York attorney, Hiram Benson Ferguson, and his wife Amelia, an amateur actress. She grew up in Manhattan, and was introduced to theatrical impresario Sam Shubert as a teenager. At seventeen, Elsie made her stage debut as a chorine in the hugely popular musical, Florodora, followed by a road company production of The Belle of New York.

A year later, she joined the chorus of Klaw & Erlanger’s The Liberty Belles on Broadway, earning twenty dollars a week. By 1903, she had a speaking part in The Girl From Kay’s, which led to roles in Dolly Dollars and Brigadier Gerard, a comedy by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

In 1906, the former showgirl Evelyn Nesbitt – a friend of Elsie – became the focus of a national scandal when her husband, Pittsburgh millionaire Harry K. Shaw, murdered her lover, the renowned architect, Stanford White. After a journalist reported that Elsie had known about Nesbitt’s affair with White, she accepted an offer to appear on the London stage, and avoided having to testify in the ‘trial of the century’.

She returned to Broadway in 1908, acting in melodramas such as Pierre of the Plains before achieving star status in Such a Little Queen (1909.) Over the next few years, she took the lead in several more shows, before playing ‘Miriam’, a reformed streetwalker, in a hit imported from London. Hubert Henry Davies’ Outcast opened at the Lyceum Theatre in November 1914.

One of Klaw and Erlanger’s most successful plays, Outcast was slated as a road show for the Southern circuit before Ferguson embarked on her own Midwest to Pacific Coast tour. In October 18, 1915, it was reported that Jeanne Eagels, eight years younger than Elsie, would bring Outcast to Trenton, New Jersey on October 21.

Landing the role of Miriam was no fluke, but the result of months of hard work and ingenuity. While Jeanne had earlier been mistaken for Billie Burke, strangers now stopped to ask if she was Elsie Ferguson. Their resemblance was uncanny, especially in profile, and Jeanne exploited the likeness to her advantage. She studied photographs of Ferguson, imitating her much-admired hairstyle and elegant fashions to impress producer Thomas C. Riley.

Outcast opened in Trenton, with Jeanne joining most of the original London cast. While those first reviews are now lost, critics from below the Mason-Dixon Line extolled her performance. Variety observed that “Eagels is creating talk for her masterful delineation of the principal part.” In 1916, Eagels would star in The World and the Woman, a cinematic adaptation of Outcast.

Ferguson went on to play Portia in a 1916 revival of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, opposite the revered English actor, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, as Shylock. After turning down previous movie offers, in 1917 she signed a lucrative three-year contract with Paramount, earning $5,000 week for a projected eighteen pictures.

In her screen debut, Barbary Sheep, Elsie was directed by her friend, Maurice Tourneur. He also directed her in The Rise of Jenny Cushing (1917) and Rose of the World (1918), and a less well-received adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, in which Elsie played Nora. In 1918, she starred in Heart of the Wilds, based on her Broadway hit, Pierre of the Plains; and as Mary Hamilton in an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree.

Her only surviving silent movie is Witness for the Defense (1919.) Often cast as a high society lady, Elsie was dubbed ‘the aristocrat of the screen’. Like Jeanne Eagels, she also had a growing reputation for difficult behaviour. In 1920, she made her Broadway comeback in Sacred and Profane Love. This was filmed in 1921, first in a two-year, four-picture deal with Paramount, and directed by William Desmond Taylor, who would be murdered later that year. In Forever (1921), she co-starred with another scandalous Hollywood figure, Wallace Reid, whose career was blighted by morphine addiction. He died in 1923.

In 1922, Elsie filmed a new version of her Broadway hit, Outcast, before returning again to Broadway. She played Kate Hardcastle in a 1924 revival of Oliver Goldsmith’s Restoration comedy, She Stoops to Conquer. In 1929, she starred in Scarlet Pages at the Morosco Theatre, which she intended as her swansong. Her first and only talking picture, the 1930 screen adapation of Scarlet Pages is still extant.

At fifty-one, Elsie married her fourth husband, Victor Egan, and they settled on a farm in Connecticut, while maintaining a second home in France. She was cast as the Duchess of Richmond in Becky Sharp, the 1935 screen adaptation of William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. But after her friend, Lowell Sherman – who had developed the project – was not hired to direct, she dropped out and was replaced by Billie Burke. She made a brief reappearance on the stage in Outrageous Fortune (1944.)

Elsie Ferguson’s husband died in 1956, and she passed away on November 15, 1961. Aged seventy-eight and with no living heirs, she bequeathed her $1,000,000 fortune to New York City’s Animal Medical Center.

Next up in the series profiling major figures in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed is Francine Larrimore, who made theatrical history as Roxie Hart in Chicago.

Francine La Remée was born in France on August 22, 1898. She moved to America as a child, and made her debut on the New York stage in Where There’s a Will (1910), under the name of Larrimore. Her uncle was the great Yiddish actor, Jacob Adler, and her cousin, Stella Adler, would later become a leading teacher of acting.

At fifteen, Francine appeared alongside Holbrook Blinn in Edgar Wallace’s The Switchboard, and later in George V. Hobart’s Moonlight Mary. Her first major success was in the Rudolf Friml musical, Sometime (1918), while in Nice People (1921), she co-starred with Tallulah Bankhead and Katherine Cornell.

Known for playing vivacious, ‘pouty girls’, Francine could sing, dance, and had excellent comic timing. In Parasites (1924), she joined a cast including Clifton Webb, and in Noel Coward’s This Was a Man (1926), she played Carol Churt, whose “vivid personality is composed of a minimum of intellect and a maximum of sex.”

In late 1926, Francine won a part which would redefine her career – but it nearly didn’t happen. Jeanne Eagels, fresh from a sensational four-year run in Rain, was cast as Roxie Hart, celebrity murderess, in Maurine Dallas Watkins’ Chicago. However, Eagels was unhappy with almost every aspect of the upcoming production. After arguing with director Sam Forrest about how Roxie should be played – she wanted a sympathetic portrayal, whereas Forrest favoured burlesque – producer Sam Forrest agreed to find a new director. But even after replacing him with her friend, George Abbott, and hiring new actors, Eagels was still dissatisfied.

Chicago was rescheduled to open on December 20 at the Apollo Theatre in Atlantic City, but this didn’t appease Jeanne. On December 12, she withdrew from the project. Producer Sam Harris was scrambling to locate an actress to replace her and settled upon Francine Larrimore. This Was a Man was scheduled to close the Saturday night before the Monday premiere of Chicago. For ten days, Francine performed in one role while rehearsing the other. Originally tailored for Jeanne, Roxie was now rewritten for Francine.

Chicago opened on schedule – and to acclaim – in Atlantic City, before moving on to New Haven, Connecticut. The play’s foul language aroused indignation and calls for censorship from some patrons. Turning the controversy to his advantage, Harris closed the play in New Haven three days early and moved the play to New York’s Music Box Theatre on December 30. “With only ten days of rehearsals and nine days playing out of town,” one critic observed, “Francine Larrimore appeared in Jeanne Eagels’ shoes before a critical first night audience and did more than make good.” Chicago made Francine a star, just as Rain had done for Eagels, and her next role, in Let Us Be Gay (1929), was also a hit.

Even after Jeanne’s untimely death in 1929, Francine Larrimore’s professional life often shadowed that of her tempestuous rival. Columnist Ward Morehouse recalled that Sam Harris had optioned Sidney R. Buchman’s Storm Song for Jeanne. When she died, Harris relinquished the rights to Robert V. Newman, and Francine eventually took the lead. The production toured before coming to Broadway, with Larrimore’s illness closing the show in Washington, D.C. Storm Song never reopened, and her next role was in a 1931 comedy, Brief Moment. She was also the lead contender for a proposed 1932 revival of Rain on Broadway, but those plans were abandoned.

Eagels’ tempestuous life was the barely concealed subject of Shooting Star, which opened at the Selwyn Theatre on June 12, 1933. Francine Larrimore was cast as Julie Leander, causing her to be described as a ‘ghost player’ for the tragic diva. “Shooting Star is more like a skyrocket than a star,” Stephen Rathburn wrote in a review for the New York Sun. “Miss Larrimore did the best she could, but it is doubtful if a constellation of stars could prevent this drama from falling.”

Shooting Star closed after just sixteen performances. Francine’s next, and final Broadway role was in Spring Song (1934.) She also appeared in a handful of films, including John Meade’s Woman (1937), and an uncredited part in The Devil’s Daughter (1939), a ‘race film’ shot in Jamaica and starring Nina Mae McKinney. Like Jeanne Eagels, who lost out on playing Sadie Thompson in Hollywood’s version of Rain, Francine would never portray Roxie Hart on the screen.

She was married twice, first to songwriter Con Conrad (famed for hits like ‘Margie’ and ‘Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me’), and then to Henry T. Mannon, who died in 1972. Francine Larrimore died in New York, aged seventy-six, on March 7, 1975.

Next up in the series profiling key figures in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed is Fredric March. One of Hollywood’s versatile actors, his career spanned six decades.

Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel was born in Racine, Wisconsin, on August 31, 1897. His mother was a schoolteacher, and his father a Presbyterian church elder. After studying at the University of Wisconsin, he became a banker, but an emergency appendectomy made him think again, and in 1924, he made his Broadway debut under the name of Fredric March. In 1927, he married actress Florence Eldridge, and they later adopted two children.

By the late 1920s, Fredric was a leading man at Paramount Pictures, romancing ‘It Girl’ Clara Bow in her first talkie, Dorothy Arzner’s The Wild Party (1929.) In April that year, he worked with the most celebrated actress of the stage, Jeanne Eagels, in her final film, Jealousy. He was a last-minute replacement for Anthony Bushell, after studio executives found the Englishman’s work unsatisfactory.

Jeanne Eagels with Fredric March in her final movie, ‘Jealousy’ (1929)

Jealousy was based on a play by Louis Verneuil, and had been staged at the Maxine Elliott Theatre in 1928, with Fay Bainter. In the movie, Jeanne Eagels played Valerie, a Parisian boutique owner and wife of Pierre, a poor and temperamental artist. Envious of Valerie’s warm relationship with former lover Rigaud, Pierre is furious when, in good faith, Rigaud lends Valerie money to open a dress shop. Discovering Valerie in Rigaud’s apartment, Pierre assumes the worst and kills his supposed rival. When another man is accused of the murder, Pierre does nothing. The truth is finally uncovered in an overwrought courtroom finale, with Pierre confessing his crime and accepting his fate.

Fredric March was cast as Pierre, with Halliwell Hobbes playing his rival. Jeanne became ill during filming, and found the film-making process exhausting. “Jeanne Eagels was great,” March recalled, “but the film we made together was a stinker.” Unfortunately, the movie is now believed lost.

Jealousy was released on September 16, 1929, to mediocre reviews. Paramount had heavily promoted the film with full-page advertisements, some in full colour, published in fan and industry publications. “Jeanne Eagels makes it more important than it really is,” was one critic’s verdict, but another cited Fredric March’s performance as “the more convincing of the two.”

Eagels began making another film for Paramount, but had to be replaced due to poor health. On October 3, she died. While her body lay in state at Campbell Funeral Home at 66th Street and Broadway, across the street, business was quite brisk at the Loew’s Lincoln Square Theater, where large posters proclaimed “Jeanne Eagels in Jealousy, her latest all-talking motion picture!”

In 1930, Fredric won his first Oscar nomination for The Royal Family of Broadway, a comedy in which he played a character based on John Barrymore. He would win in 1932 for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, sharing the honour with The Champ’s Wallace Beery.

One of the screen’s most versatile actors, Fredric proved equally adept as a leading man or in character parts, and resisted signing long-term contracts with any studio. He worked again with Hollywood’s only female director, Dorothy Arzner, in Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), and appeared in Ernst Lubitsch’s classic comedy, Design for Living (1933.) He played the poet Robert Browning in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934); Death, in 1934’s Death Takes a Holiday; Vronsky, in the 1935 adaptation Anna Karenina, with Greta Garbo; and Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (1935.)

In John Ford’s Mary of Scotland (1936), starring Katherine Hepburn as Mary and Fredric as the Earl of Bothwell, his wife, Florence Eldridge, played Queen Elizabeth I. In 1937, Fredric played Norman Maine in the first version of A Star is Born, and sparred with Carole Lombard in Nothing Sacred.

His career continued to flourish during World War II, as he co-starred with Veronica Lake in I Married a Witch (1942), and played the titular hero in The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944.) He won his second Oscar for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946.)

At the same time, he continued to work on the stage, playing Mr Antrobus in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth (1942.) In 1947, he won a Tony award for Years Ago. Playwright Arthur Miller, who owned a Connecticut farm neighbouring Fredric’s, wanted him to play Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. March declined, and the part went to Lee J. Cobb, but Fredric would star in the 1951 movie of Miller’s masterpiece.

That year, he also starred in Miller’s adaptation of the classic Henrik Ibsen play, An Enemy of the People. During the next decade, Fredric worked in television, and starred in movies including The Bridges of Toko-Ri (1953), and The Desperate Hours (1955), and Inherit the Wind (1960), as well as a Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, winning a second Tony award.

In 1961, Fredric March was cast as Reverend Davidson in a television remake of Rain, with Marilyn Monroe to follow in the footsteps of Jeanne Eagels in her greatest Broadway success, as Sadie Thompson. Unfortunately, the project never came to fruition. Fredric’s career continued apace in films such as Seven Days in May (1964), and Hombre (1967), a revisionist Western starring Paul Newman.

Fredric underwent surgery for prostrate cancer in 1970, but recovered well enough to play barman Harry Hope in his final movie, a 1973 adaptation of O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. He died from cancer on April 14, 1975, aged seventy-seven. His wife of almost fifty years, Florence Eldridge, passed away in 1988.

Next up in an ongoing series profiling key figures in Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed is Émile Chautard. One of cinema’s early pioneers, he directed more than 100 films, and acted in sixty.

Émile Pierre Chautard was born in Paris on September 7, 1864. He began his career as a stage actor at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe. In 1910, he began making short films at the Éclair Films studio, playing King Louis XIV in Fouquet, l’Homme au Masque de Fer. His first film as director, Barberine, was released on April 28. Chautard became Éclair Films’ artistic director, and chief director of its theatre school. Over the next four years, he directed nearly seventy shorts, also writing and acting in many of them. Among the most prestigious were Eugénie Grandet (1910) and Cesar Birotteau (1911), both based on novels by Honore de Balzac; Le Mystère de la Chambre Jaune, or The Mystery of the Yellow Room  (1913), and L’Aiglon (1914.)

With Europe now at war, Chautard decided to try his luck across the Atlantic, along with other French film pioneers, including Maurice Tourneur, Léonce Perret, and Lucien Andriot. Chautard’s first directorial credit after landing in New York was The Arrival of Perpetua (1915), for the World Film Corporation, based in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he would spend the next four years. The film featured Vivian Martin, one of the first stage stars to sign a movie contract. This was quickly followed by The Boss, produced by William A. Brady, and starring Holbrook Blinn and Brady’s daughter, Alice. Chautard also helped to develop Camille, directed by Albert Capellani and starring Clara Kimball Young.

Chautard directed another Broadway import, Robert Warwick, in Human Driftwood (1916), and Warwick would join a young Madge Evans in Sudden Riches. Actor Montagu Love appeared in Friday the 13^th, while another Warwick picture, The Heart of a Hero, is still available on DVD. In 1917, Warwick would star in The Man Who Forgot, a five-reel tale of addiction, adapted by Chautard from a novel by James Hay Jr. Moving Picture World praised Chautard’s ‘skilful’ direction.

He worked again with Alice Brady in A Hungry Heart, and directed Ethel Clayton in The Web of Desire, praised by Photoplay’s Julian Johnson ‘as one of the most carefully made and convincing World photoplays in many months.’ Actor Henry Hull appeared alongside Robert Warwick in The Family Honor, while Montagu Love worked with Chautard again in Forget-Me-Not.

Jeanne Eagels, then twenty-six, had won acclaim for her stage role in Outcast (1916), reprising the part on the screen in her first feature-length movie, The World and the Woman, produced at the Thanhouser studio in New Rochelle. Founded in 1909, Thanhouser was one of the first motion picture studios in America and had produced over a thousand silent shorts and full-length films.

On March 24, 1917, it was announced that Thanhouser had signed Jeanne to appear in two films opposite Frederick Warde. Both these pictures would be directed by Émile Chautard. In The Fires of Youth, Warde played ‘Iron-Hearted Pemberton’, a wealthy industrialist who returns to his hometown, only to discover he is loathed by his employees at a steel mill.  Pemberton disguises himself and takes a job at the factory, lodging with a local family and falling in love with Rose (played by Eagels.)

Jeanne Eagels in ‘The Fires of Youth’ (1917)

The Fires of Youth was released on June 17 to good notices. The original five-reel Pathé Exchange version, lasting more than an hour, is now missing. The Imperial Film Company re-released a two-reel, thirty-one minute version, which is now available to view on the Thanhouser website.

Chautard would direct Jeanne in her second feature opposite Frederick Warde, Under False Colors. was a timely film, set in Russia prior to the March 1917 dethronement of Czar Nicholas. Warde played John Colton, a millionaire who takes in Vera (Eagels), posing as a friend’s daughter who is fleeing Poland for America. ‘Vera’ is really the Countess Olga, having assumed the Polish girl’s identity when the boat they were traveling on was torpedoed and sank.

Under False Colors was released on September 23, with promotional blurbs proclaiming Jeanne ‘The Most Charming Woman on the American Stage!” Fortunately, this was a sentiment with which critics agreed whole-heartedly, citing her alliance with Warde as one of the ‘best starring combinations ever seen on the screen.’ Sadly, Under False Colors is now considered lost.

Émile Chautard (seated) directs Frederick Warde (left) and Jeanne Eagels (right) in ‘Under False Colors’ (1918)

In his next film, Magda (1917), Chautard directed Clara Kimball Young. He worked with Frederick Warde again in The Heart of Ezra Greer, and with Italian actress Lina Cavalieri in The Eternal Temptress.

As World War I came to an end, Chautard chose not to return to France, but continued working for studios including Famous Players-Lasky, founded by Jesse Lasky and a precursor of Paramount Pictures. In 1918, he again directed Clara Kimball Young in The Marionettes and The House of Glass, produced by Young’s own company; and Alice Brady in The Ordeal of Rosetta, as well as former stage actress Pauline Frederick in Lasky’s Her Final Reckoning and A Daughter of the Old South, and Elsie Ferguson in Under the Greenwood Tree.

In 1919, Chautard would direct Pauline Frederick in Out of the Shadow, Paid in Full and Eyes of the Soul, and Elsie Ferguson in His Parisian Wife and The Marriage Price. While filming The Mystery of the Yellow Room, a remake of his 1913 film which he also produced, Chautard hired Josef Von Sternberg, a native Austrian whom he had mentored at World Film, as his assistant director.

Chautard’s next film, The Black Panthers’ Club (1921), starred another Broadway actress, Florence Reed. In Living Lies (1922), he directed Edmund Lowe, who had appeared onstage with Jeanne Eagels a year previously, in In The Night Watch. Chautard would reunite with Pauline Frederick for The Glory of Clementine (1922), and direct Billie Dove in Youth to Youth. Colleen Moore, the quintessential flapper, starred in Chautard’s Forsaking All Others, while the last of his forty American films as director, Daytime Wives (1923) and Untamed Youth (1924), both starred Derelys Perdue.

Émile Chautard (right) with June Collyer and Gary Cooper in ‘A Man From Wyoming’ (1930)

In his final decade, Émile Chautard returned to acting, appearing in nearly sixty films, including a handful made in France. After making his American acting debut in Paris at Midnight (1926), he played supporting roles in Frank Borzage’s 7^th Heaven (1927), and opposite Colleen Moore in Lilac Time (1928) and Marion Davies in Marianne (1929.)

Chautard’s acting career surpassed the transition to sound. He had an uncredited part in Morocco (1930), directed by his former protégée, Josef Von Sternberg, and starring Marlene Dietrich. Chautard would play bit parts in Von Sternberg and Dietrich’s subsequent movies, as Major Lenard in Shanghai Express (1932), and ‘Chautard’, a nightclub manager, in Blonde Venus (1932.) He played an uncredited role in Rasputin and the Empress (1932), and General Pelletier in The Three Musketeers (1933.) In 1934, Chautard played a train conductor in Design for Living, Ernst Lubitsch’s adaptation of a Noel Coward farce.

His last film, Viva Villa!, would be released posthumously. Émile Chautard died on April 24, 1934, aged sixty-nine. He is interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Liz Smith is a legendary columnist whose career began in the 1950s. She has known everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to Madonna, and continues to offer her wise and witty opinions on today’s entertainment world. In her regular New York Social Diary column today, she has written an in-depth review of Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed.

The liberties taken with Jeanne’s life were extraordinary.  Now, there is some redress in a new book, Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed by Eric Woodard and Tara Hanks.  And of course, the real story is far more interesting than the exaggerations.

Eagels, who began working on stage as a teenager, was an intense woman and an even more intense actress, one who seemed lit from within, a fire too hot not to cool down and too blazing not to take a toll.  Her great legacy was a staggering four-year run as Sadie Thompson in the stage adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s Rain. This role would define her, in ways both positive and negative. There were those who felt that the always highly strung Eagels was driven over the edge, playing this role for such a long time.

She was fiercely independent, intelligent, resistant to authority (she famously fought against joining Actor’s Equity) and subject to substance abuse … A Life Revealed offers a startling look at the actress and her times. Stage work remains hard work, but in Jeanne’s day it was downright grueling. Her climb to the top was long, and once she attained stardom, she intended to keep it … Her films were few, but her strange, unique quality was just as evident on screen, especially in 1929’s The Letter …

I recommend this new book because it is packed with detail and drama, and does bring Jeanne Eagels into 21st century focus as an ambitious, driven woman who often fought the system, but could not defeat her own demons.

Of Irish descent, Ina Fagan was born in Washington on October 15, 1893. She never knew her father, who had died in a car accident four months previously. With no family breadwinner, Ina and her mother went to live in a boarding-house. From an early age, Ina had a talent for impersonations, and made her vaudeville debut in 1909 as ‘the dainty mimic’, under her mother’s maiden name of Ina Claire.

Her first Broadway appearance was in the chorus of Our Miss Gibbs, running from August-October 1910. She then won a featured role as Molly Pebbleford, the ‘ingénue’ in Jumping Jupiter, a musical comedy starring Richard Carle, which had opened in Chicago in August. From October onwards, the play enjoyed a successful four-month tour of the Midwest, before reaching Broadway in March 1911.

Among Ina’s friends in the chorus was Jeanne Eagels, making her Broadway début. At twenty, Jeanne was three years older than Ina, and had left the Dubinsky Brothers troupe to join the chorus of Jumping Jupiter.

Unfortunately, New Yorkers were less enamoured of the show than provincial audiences, and it closed after just twenty-four performances. While Jeanne was left without a job, Ina Claire had already been offered the lead in another musical, The Quaker Girl, which ran for over a year.

One of Ina’s first fans was a young F. Scott Fitzgerald, who confessed to a ‘melancholy love’ for her. From 1915-16, she performed in Ziegfeld’s Follies, and made her movie debut in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Wild Goose Chase. Then in 1917, Broadway producer David Belasco cast her in a hit comedy, Polly With a Past. She would reprise her role in a 1920 film.

Fund-raising efforts within the theatrical community had increased ten-fold since the United States entered World War I in April 1917. On October 5, nearly 7,000 people gathered at an open-air theatre on Long Island. A series of giant tableaux celebrated great historical achievements of the Allied nations. The French honorarium told the story of Joan of Arc in three scenes. Jeanne appeared as a supporting character when Joan (Ina Claire) was permitted by King Charles (Guy Faviéres) to lead the French army.

Ina Claire (kneeling) and Jeanne Eagels (right) at rehearsals for The National Red Cross Pageant, 1917

A photograph taken during the week of September 23 at the Hippodrome Theatre shows the cast rehearsing in street clothes. The one-night performance was also filmed, and shown in movie theaters around the country. Entitled The National Red Cross Pageant, the film raised thousands of dollars to send overseas. It is now lost, with only a handful of photographs capturing the spectacle.

“This was perhaps the most attractive episode,” Moving Picture World commented in its October 27 review. “The court group was most picturesque, this scene requiring a group of horses, which gave greater realism to the whole. Here were a larger number of talented people than in any other scene.”

Ina Claire as Joan of Arc

In June 1918, Jeanne joined Belasco’s roster in another hit comedy, Daddies. In October 1919, while starring in another Belasco production, The Gold Diggers, Ina appeared in the All-Star Testimonial Performance, mounted by the Actors Fidelity League at the Century Theatre. Jeanne was among her co-stars. That year, Ina married for the first time, to James Whittaker. They divorced in 1925.

Over the next decade, Ina starred in a series of acclaimed comedies penned by some of the leading playwrights of the era. Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife would be filmed in 1923, with Gloria Swanson taking Ina’s role, and remade by Ernst Lubitsch in 1938. The Awful Truth would also be adapted for the screen, and The Last of Mrs. Cheyney was later remade with Joan Crawford.

In November 1922, Jeanne Eagels began a phenomenal four-year run as Sadie Thompson in Rain, based on W. Somerset Maugham’s short story. Gloria Swanson played the role in a 1928 film, followed by Joan Crawford in 1932. While Jeanne became an overnight sensation, Ina continued to shine in sophisticated comedies, including Maugham’s Our Betters. In January 1923, they performed together in a skit entitled ‘Nothing But Hits’, part of the 41^st Annual Actors Fund Benefit at the Century Theatre.

In 1929, Ina reprised her role in The Awful Truth, one of the first sound pictures. Unfortunately, like many early talkies, it was rather static and has been overshadowed by the 1937 remake starring Irene Dunne. Jeanne made her first sound movie, another Maugham vehicle – The Letter. Although William Wyler’s 1940 remake was generally more accomplished, many believe Eagels’ dramatic performance surpassed even that of her successor, Bette Davis.

On October 3^rd, a few days after Ina graced the cover of Time magazine, Jeanne died. Earlier that year, Ina had married John Gilbert, Eagels’ leading man in the 1927 film, Man, Woman And Sin. They divorced in 1931.

Like Jeanne, Ina preferred working in the theatre to movies, which she judged ‘a director’s medium.’ She played to her comedic strengths in three successful plays by S.N. Behrman, as well as an adaptation of Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers.

But like many of her theatrical peers, Ina also made her mark in Hollywood. In The Royal Family of Broadway (1930), she played a character based on Ethel Barrymore. Her imitation was so deft and funny, in fact, that Barrymore threatened to sue Paramount. In The Greeks Have a Word for Them (1932), an adaptation of Zoe Akins’ play, Ina starred alongside Joan Blondell and Madge Evans. Perhaps her best-known screen role is a rather unsympathetic one, as the Grand Duchess Swana – who vies with a beautiful Russian communist (played by Greta Garbo) for the affections of Count Leon (Melvyn Douglas) – in Lubitsch’s classic 1939 comedy, Ninotchka.

Ina married for the third time that year, to William Rose Wallace Jr. In her final film, Claudia (1943), she played the mother of a young bride (Dorothy McGuire.) She also made a cameo appearance in Stage Door Canteen. She returned to the stage sporadically, playing her last role in T.S. Eliot’s The Confidential Clerk (1954.) In 1960, she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Her husband passed away in 1976, after a marriage lasting nearly forty years. On February 21, 1985, Ina Claire died of a heart attack in San Francisco, aged 92. She was interred at Mount Olivet Cemetery, Salt Lake City.

One of my favourite Hollywood stars, Rita Hayworth, was born on this day in 1918. Hollywood’s ‘love goddess’ also starred in a 1953 musical remake of Rain, entitled Miss Sadie Thompson. In Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, myself and co-author Eric Woodard devoted an entire chapter to the actresses who followed in Sadie’s footsteps.

Rita would have been almost twelve years old when Jeanne died. In an interview with John Kobal for his book, Rita Hayworth – The Time, the Place, the Woman (1977), she recalled enjoying Eagels’ movies as a child.

I was eight when we moved to Los Angeles. My father had a [dance] studio on Vine Street and Hollywood Boulevard. After my classes were over I had to take care of my two brothers because my family was working. So we used to go to the movies. We’d go to the Iris Theatre where they had all the silent movies, because it cost so little – ten cents for kids – and I used to take them and we’d sit there for hours. I liked Jeanne Eagels and Ruth Chatterton, and all of those people. I always wanted to stay longer but Vernon and Eddie got angry because they wanted to leave when they got tired of that stuff…

Incidentally, Ruth Chatterton – Rita’s other idol – would replace Jeanne Eagels in her last film, The Laughing Lady, after the actress became fatally ill.

As I revealed in an article earlier this year, there also striking parallels between Rita’s career and that of another screen beauty, Marilyn Monroe, whose own dream of playing Sadie Thompson would never be fulfilled.

My review of Asif Kapadia’s documentary, Amy, is featured in Issue 5 of Art Decades, out now. This marks the first anniversary of the magazine. Singer Sophie Auster graces the autumnal cover, and the contents include a profile of filmmaker Candida Royalle, who died recently; art by Kevin Bittle; photography by Dylan Staley, John Levy, and editor Jeremy Richey, featuring models Andrea Margaret, Barbara Scheider, and Carmen Stinson; and self-portraits by Zaira Mandouj.

As before, Art Decades 5 has a strong female focus. There is also a literary aspect to this issue. Jeremy Richey interviews British horror author Anthony Crowley; and Bryce Wilson looks back at Bret Easton Ellis’ 2006 novel, Lunar Park. Adding to the UK contingent is Steve Langton, who remembers seeing artists from the Ramones to the Dead Kennedys play at Nottingham’s Rock City.

My own favourite piece is a profile of nouvelle vague actress Bernadette Lafont, excerpted from Marcelline Block’s recently published book, French Cinema in Close-Up. For the rest of 2015 at least, Art Decades will be a monthly publication. In the next issue, I’ll be talking about Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed.

My review of Amy coincides with the film’s release on DVD, Blu-Ray and i-Tunes this week. A soundtrack is also available, featuring rare demos and live recordings from Amy, as well as instrumental themes by Antonio Pinto. Art Decades 5 can be ordered from Amazon (for £7.79 in the UK, or $12 in the US.) If you’re a regular reader, you can subscribe here.

Jean de Limur (centre) with Charlie Chaplin (right), 1923

Jean Chamur Limur was born on November 13, 1887, in Vouhé, a town in Southern France. He began his film career as an actor in Hollywood, under the name Jean de Limur. In his 1921 debut, The Three Musketeers (starring Douglas Fairbanks), Limur played several several minor roles but did not receive a screen credit.  His fencing skills won him a role in The Three Must-Get-Theres (1922), another Dumas adaptation.

In A Woman of Paris (1923), De Limur had a walk-on part. He also began working behind the scenes, as a researcher. Starring Edna Purviance, the film was written and directed by Charlie Chaplin. It was Chaplin’s first drama as an independent at United Artists, and also his first failure with the public. Shortly before his death in 1977, Chaplin returned to the film, and it was reissued posthumously with a new score, hailed by critics as one of the finest movies ever made.

De Limur worked as a technical assistant on The Arab (1924), a Ramon Novarro vehicle in which he also played a supporting character. After appearing in Human Desire (1924) and Love’s Bargain (1925), both starring Clive Brook and Marjorie Daw, he increasingly worked behind the camera.

He is credited as a writer for William Wellman’s war drama, The Legion of the Condemned (1928), starring Gary Cooper. That year, he adapted Rudolf Österreicher’s play, Three Sinners, for the screen. It was produced by Paramount, with Pola Negri starring.  He then contributed to another Paramount picture, The Magnificent Flirt, with co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz.

Monta Bell, who had directed Greta Garbo in her Hollywood debut, Torrent (1926), had left MGM to become head of production at Paramount’s Astoria lot in New York, where he became De Limur’s mentor. On October 28, 1928, De Limur began shooting his first film as director, an all-talking adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s play, The Letter. His leading lady, Jeanne Eagels, had previously starred in Bell’s Man, Woman and Sin (1927.) Photographs taken on the set show Eagels conferring with Bell, and as cameraman George Folsey remembered, Bell actually directed most of the picture: “… but he did it kind of in the background. I think he was trying to groom De Limur to be a director.”

Nonetheless, De Limur was credited as director of The Letter, which opened on March 27, 1929 to excellent reviews. By then, De Limur was directing his second film, Jealousy. Eagels was again his star, with Bell supervising. However, there were problems from the outset, with the New York Times reporting that Eagels had broken down on the set after rehearsing a long, difficult scene.

Jeanne’s illness temporarily halted production on April 3. It was rumored that she had been absent from the set for several days, after a series of rows with De Limur prompted her “retirement” from the studio. Paramount’s publicity director, George Brill, denied the actress had walked out, stating, “She’s ill. But is anxious to return to work.” Filming was completed without further incident on April 12, and De Limur sailed for Europe eight days later.

Jealousy was released on September 16 to mediocre reviews. Paramount had heavily promoted the film with full-page advertisements, some in full color, published in fan and industry publications. Eagels began making another film with Bell, but had to withdraw due to ill-health. On October 3, she died shortly after arriving at her doctor’s office. While her body lay in state at the Campbell Funeral Home at 66th Street and Broadway, business was quite brisk across the street at the Loew’s Lincoln Square Theater, where large posters proclaimed “Jeanne Eagels in Jealousy, her latest all-talking motion picture!”

After returning to France, De Limur made over twenty films, directing Adolphe Menjou in Mon Gosse de Pére (1930) and The Parisian (1931.) In 1933, he assisted director G.W. Pabst for his three-language saga, Adventures of Don Quixote. In his last acting credit, De Limur also played The Duke. His risqué drama, La Garçonne (1936), starred Marie Bell, Arletty and Edith Piaf.

By the time World War II broke out in 1939, De Limur was living in fascist Italy, making films under the supervision of Luigi Freddi, head of the state-controlled General Directorate of Cinematography. De Limur’s penultimate film, Apparizione (1943), starring Alida Valli, was denounced following the Allied Liberation. He returned to France to direct his final movie, Le Grande Meute, in 1945.

Following his retirement from the world of cinema, De Limur spent almost fifteen years working for the Simca car-making company. In August 1953, he was photographed on holiday in Antibes with (among others) a young John F. Kennedy. Jean De Limur died in Paris on June 5, 1976.

Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck was born in Indiana on November 19, 1889. His father, Jacob Grant Hollenbeck, a ticket clerk, had married Mabel A. Parmelee, daughter of a railroad conductor, earlier that year. They separated in 1891, and ‘little Webb’ was raised by his mother. They moved to New York City in 1892, and Mabel remarried in 1900.

The young Webb took classes in theatre and dance, leaving school at thirteen to study music and painting. At seventeen, he sang with the Boston Opera Company. By 1908, the nineteen-year-old was known as Clifton Webb, a professional ballroom dancer who would appear in over two dozen operettas before making his Broadway debut in 1913’s The Purple Road, with mother Mabel also joining the cast.

In 1914, Clifton and Mabel (now calling herself Mabelle Webb) sailed for Europe, where they befriended a young American actress. Born in Kansas City in 1890, Jeanne Eagels had made her Broadway debut as a chorine three years previously, before graduating to a dramatic role in The Governor’s Boss, which had folded in April. While Jeanne was still a struggling actress, Webb was already an established star. Nonetheless, both he and Mabelle quickly grew fond of her.

“The great thing about Jeanne was our intense love for one another,” Webb wrote in his unfinished memoir, Sitting Pretty. “We were too much alike. She had that husky kind of voice combined with her cock-eyed sense of humor and anybody who has a sense of humor endears themselves to me immediately.”

“We went to a party [in Paris] given for (actress) Gaby Deslys,” Webb continued, “and everybody came dripping jewels, but Jeanne always did the reverse. She came in a beautiful organdie dress . . . having no jewels . . . she loved the reverse scene.” This may have been a matter of necessity rather than a bid for the spotlight. On July 6, Variety reported that Jeanne’s hotel room had been robbed.

After returning from Europe, Clifton appeared in Dancing Around, an Al Jolson musical. In 1915, he held his own in a star-studded revue, Ned Wayburn’s Town Topics. In January 1917, he began a nine-month run in Jerome Kern’s Love O’ Mike. In April, America entered the First World War.

On October 5, nearly 500 performers volunteered their time for the Rosemary Pageant, in aid of the American Red Cross. 7,000 people gathered at an open-air theatre on Long Island. A series of giant tableaux celebrated great historical achievements of the Allied nations. The French honorarium told the story of Joan of Arc in three scenes, with Jeanne Eagels playing a supporting character.

Rehearsing the National Red Cross Pageant, 1917. Clifton Webb (fourth from left), and Jeanne Eagels (second from right)

A photograph taken during the week of September 23 at the Hippodrome Theatre shows the cast rehearsing in street clothes. One of the spectators, Clifton Webb, was scheduled to dance the Pavane with Mrs. Ben Ali Haggin, wife of one of the producers. The one-night performance was also filmed, and shown in movie theaters around the country. Entitled The National Red Cross Pageant, the film raised thousands of dollars to send overseas.

Over the next four years, both Clifton and Jeanne’s fortunes flourished. In May 1921, accompanied by Clifton and Mabelle, Jeanne set sail aboard La France. She hoped to spend time in England, France, and Spain, while Clifton performed in Europe.

Since their first meeting in 1914, Mabelle and Clifton had taken Jeanne under their wing. She was always welcome at their West 58th Street apartment, mingling with fellow actors, artists, writers, opera singers, and musicians. She was also often spotted with Clifton at the opera, dining in restaurants, or ice-skating in Central Park. If one of the friends had a night off, they were usually found backstage at the other’s current show.

“We never went anywhere without one another,” Webb recalled. “People would say ‘God damn it—if you aren’t married, you should be.’” Wedding rumors were fueled on May 13, when the Evening Telegram published a photograph of Jeanne leaving for Europe with a large orchid pinned to her coat and referring to Clifton as her “fiancé.” Until then, her love life had mostly been a private affair, but a syndicated article released after Jeanne’s departure under the headline “How the Young Stage Dancer Won the Leading Lady” changed all that.

Webb’s only comment on the subject came nearly thirty years later, in his memoir, Sitting Pretty. “Jeanne and I had discussed marriage and were ready to take the step,” he wrote. “I talked it over with Mother. She gave me some advice. If you feel that way, wait a little while. You know what happens to most people when they marry in haste. We had a very romantic affair but marriage would have been fatal—we were very much alike. The moment she knew she had me, she would not have wanted me, and with me the same way. We were very sensible about it.”

Of course, Webb’s homosexuality—an open secret within the entertainment world—meant that theirs would have been a chaste love. His biographer, David L. Smith, suggests that the purpose of Webb’s trip was to visit an older male lover. While marriage to her best friend might have seemed like an ideal arrangement, it’s possible that neither Jeanne nor Clifton would have been satisfied if it had become permanent.

Clifton and Mabelle Webb, 1923

When Webb returned to New York in 1923, Jeanne’s role as Sadie Thompson in Rain – a sensational drama, based on W. Somerset Maugham’s acclaimed short story – had made her the toast of Broadway.  Upon visiting her dressing room at the Maxine Elliott Theatre, Clifton discovered that Jeanne was not alone. Her companion was Ted Coy, a stockbroker and former athlete. Webb initially disapproved of the romance because Coy was a married man, but he would later leave his wife for Jeanne.

After a three-month run in the musical, Jack and Jill, Clifton’s next role was in a comedy, Meet the Wife, starring a young Humphrey Bogart. In 1925, he joined musical star Marilyn Miller in Sunny. In Treasure Girl (1928), Clifton performed Irving Berlin’s ‘Easter Parade’ and the Gershwins’ ‘I’ve Got a Crush On You’, both of which would become standards.

1928 was a turbulent year for Jeanne Eagels. In April, she was banned from the legitimate stage for eighteen months by Actors’ Equity, after failing to show up for work. Eagels insisted that she had been ill, and exhausted by the rigorous demands of touring. But rumours were swirling that Jeanne had been drinking heavily.

“The point is this: Jeanne Eagels never drank a lot,” he wrote in his memoir. “She couldn’t drink a lot—one drink and she’d be off. It was only when she played in Rain, beginning about the second year—and then in the show she would drink champagne. The rain never dried up and everybody felt this constant wet and dank.”

Jeanne Eagels in ‘Jealousy’ (1929)

That summer, Eagels was granted a divorce from Ted Coy after a stormy, two-year marriage. She went on to make her first sound picture, The Letter, with Jealousy following the next year. Meanwhile, Clifton Webb was starring in a new musical revue, The Little Show, which opened on April 30, 1929, running for over 321 performances. Then on the evening of October 3, tragedy struck. After feeling ill for several days, Jeanne Eagels visited her doctor on Park Avenue. Minutes after arriving, she suffered convulsions and died.

“It was a Thursday night: I remember as I had a matinee the next day and was staying in town at the Algonquin Hotel,” Clifton Webb recalled. “I was playing in Little Show at the Music Box Theatre and was in my dressing room when a stage-hand told me. Said he’d seen it on the Times Square board and called the New York Times to confirm it. I called the doctor and got him. He was rather blasé about it: ‘Yes, it was an unfortunate accident.’ I phoned Mabelle and she was of course speechless. We wanted to talk to somebody about this tragedy and ended up with Tallulah Bankhead and Beatrice Lillie at the Elysee where Tallulah lived and stayed for up for hours. Then next day after my performance we went to see her—she was laid out at Campbell’s.”

Jeanne’s body was taken to the Campbell Funeral Home at 66th Street and Broadway, and placed into a silver and bronze casket. Years later, Clifton would remember that when Jeanne was brought out, “There she was lying with a pompadour. So my mother called an attendant and asked for a comb and she took it and dressed her hair. Jeanne wore her hair in ringlets. Mabelle took flowers and put them in her hands. So we did all we could.”

At twelve o’clock, the front doors were opened, and a crowd of well-wishers began filing past the casket. In a little over an hour, more than 150 people paid their respects. Jeanne lay in state all Friday afternoon and evening. One newspaper described how Mrs. Webb “tenderly rearranged the draperies and flowers, reluctant to leave their friend of over sixteen years.”

After a memorial service at Campbell’s, Jeanne’s body was taken to Kansas City for a family funeral. A simple headstone was decorated with a cross that read “Jeanne Eagles (her family name)—Died October 3, 1929.” Several years later, Clifton Webb was performing in Kansas City and wanted to pay his respects. “I called Jeanne’s mother and she took me out to the grave,” he wrote. “I saw the birth name on it and I said ‘Julia, Jeanne would turn in her grave if she saw her name spelled that way—she’d spit in your eye.’”

In October 1930, a year after Jeanne’s death, Clifton starred in another revue, Three’s a Crowd, opposite Libby Holman, who became a lifelong friend. This was followed by Flying Colors (1932) and As Thousands Cheer (1933.)

In 1932, a young showgirl named Dea Lloyd made headlines with her claim to be Jeanne Eagels’ daughter. Jeanne’s family told reporters that the girl who called herself “Julie Eagels” had visited Clifford and Mabelle Webb in Chicago, claiming she was the daughter of Beatrice Lillie. She then changed her mind, and told them she was Jeanne’s daughter.

“You must very fond of Julia then,” Mabelle Webb commented, referring to Jeanne’s mother.

“Who is Julia?” the girl replied blankly.

Back in Kansas City, Jeanne’s relatives denied that any steps had been taken legally against “Julie Eagels.” They regarded the girl as “an imposter, unworthy of serious consideration.” Dea Lloyd soon vanished from the spotlight, emerging a couple of years later to announce she was expecting twins.

In 1939, Webb played ‘Ernest’ in a revival of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Then in 1941, he starred as Charles Condomine in the original Broadway production of Blithe Spirit, the classic supernatural comedy by his friend, Noel Coward. His final stage role was in another of Coward’s plays, Present Laughter (1947.)

After seeing Webb’s performance in Blithe Spirit, director Otto Preminger offered him the part of Waldo Lydecker, a sinister radio columnist, in his next film, Laura. Darryl F. Zanuck – head of Twentieth Century-Fox – disapproved of the choice, considering Webb too effeminate. Preminger insisted that he be cast, and upon its release in 1945, Laura was hailed as a classic of film noir, and Zanuck signed Webb to Fox.

In 1946, Clifton starred in another film noir, Henry Hathaway’s Dark Corner; and in an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, The Razor’s Edge. In Sitting Pretty (1948), Webb played what would become his most popular screen character, the eccentric babysitter, Mr Belvedere.

During filming of Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), Clifton Webb and director Elliott Nugent were discussing a piece of music his eponymous character was to play in a scene. When he finishes, the listener asks, “Beethoven?” Webb then replies, “No, Belvedere.” Clifton suggested to Nugent and musical director Alfred Newman that he could use a concerto he’d written as a tribute to Jeanne Eagels many years ago. After running through the piece, both men were impressed enough to use it in the film.

In another family comedy, Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), Webb played the husband of Myrna Loy, and father to their large brood. In 1953, he appeared in the original Titanic, followed by Jean Negulsco’s Three Coins in the Fountain and Woman’s World in 1954.

Filmed in England, The Man Who Never Was (1956) was based on the true story of ‘Operation Mincemeat’ (the elaborate plan to trick the Axis powers about the Allied invasion of Sicily during World War II), and saw Webb playing the part of Royal Navy Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu.

In 1960, Mabelle Webb died aged ninety-one. Clifton never recovered from the loss of his adored mother, and after his final screen appearance as a priest in Satan Never Sleeps (1962), he retreated from the limelight. On October 13, 1966, seventy-six year-old Clifton Webb died of a heart attack at his Beverly Hills home. He was buried alongside his mother at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.