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I have been debating this entry for a couple days, and just trying to figure out what my stance is on the whole ordeal.
I read a snippet in a book a few weeks ago that discussed the Roscoe Arbuckle case, and I thought to myself...is Virginia Rappe the one to hate in this whole trial? When I read about the case for the first time in Hollywood Babylon years ago, I blamed her, and I blamed him a little as well. That book paints everyone involved in a bad light. But once you get the REAL story, you see that the real enemy here was Maude Delmont, the one who "represented" Virginia during the trial.
When I went to Hollywood Forever the first time, I paid my respects to her and said I was sorry for what happened. But after I read different accounts, I just walked by her grave without saying anything. I think the next time I go, I should sit with her and tell her again how sorry I am for what happened to her. Yes, she lived a wild and out of control lifestyle. She wasn't a saint, by any means! She loved to take her clothes off at parties, drink heavily, have sex with anyone and everyone...It was the 1920s, who wasn't living the high life?! The only difference is, Virginia's fast living caused her early, unfortunate death.
Virginia Rappe was born Virginia Caroline Rapp on July 7, 1895 in New York City. She was born to her unwed chorus girl (and rumored prostitute) mother, Mabel, who died when Virginia was 11. She never knew her father, and after her mother died, she was raised by her grandmother in Chicago.
Her grandmother died when she was 14, so she began working as a model to help support herself. The next year or two later, she moved to San Francisco to pursue her modeling career even further. The next year, she was given her first movie role in the film Paradise Garden. She also added an 'e' to the end of her name so her stage name would sound more sophisticated.
In 1918, she appeared in the film Over the Rhine with then newcomer, Rudolph Valentino. After appearing in this film, she was named "The Best Dressed Girl in Pictures," which led her to create her own clothing line. The movie unfortunately wasn't released until 1920, under the title The Adventuress.
She appeared in about 10 films that are known. It is possible that she appeared in more, but the director she worked for at the time, Henry Lehrman, has many lost films...so we may never know.
On September 5, 1921 Virginia attended a party at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco given by Roscoe Arbuckle. She came with her new friend, Maude Delmont, who in fact she only met a few days prior. No one really invited Virginia, so she pretty much just crashed the party.
As the party progressed and the liquor flowed, she got drunker and drunker. A few hours in, Roscoe went into the bathroom and found Virginia laying on the floor. He picked her up, laid her on the bed, and brought her some water. He returned to the party for a few minutes, and when he came back, she was on the floor in agony. She kept drifting in and out of conciousness, so he thought of an old trick his friend Buster Keaton had told him. To find out if someone is really sick or just faking, you should hold ice to their thigh. Roscoe did just that with no response. It was at this time that Maude Delmont walked in and oh I bet her mind started turning at the sight she saw!
Shortly after, Virginia began screaming and tearing her clothes off, and thinking she was just drunk and causing a scene, Roscoe wanted her out of there.
Roscoe sent word for the doctor to come around and even paid to have him look at her in a separate room. She was laid in a cold bath to try and cool down until she was moved into the new room, where she was dosed with morphine so she could sleep. The next day the doctor came in again to give her morphine and even fitted her with a catheter. FINALLY she was taken to the hospital.
Virginia Rappe passed away on September 9, 1921. Her cause of death was listed as a ruptured bladder and peritonitis.
She was buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Was Virginia's death caused by being raped with a champagne bottle? No. What about a Coke bottle? No. Was she raped by Roscoe Arbuckle at all? No. Doctors deduced that her ruptured bladder was most likely caused by one of her numerous abortions. She reportedly had two before the age of 16. It is rumored that in 1918 she actually had a daughter but put her into foster care. No one knows if this is 100% true or not. It is also rumored that she could have been pregnant when she died, but for some weird reason, her organs were removed and destroyed after her autopsy, so we will never know.
Yet ANOTHER rumor about her death is that Virginia came over to Roscoe at the party and started tickling him. Roscoe was a very ticklish guy, which she may or may not have known, but either way he got up from where he was sitting, and tried to stop her from tickling him by blocking her with his arms and legs. Apparently, he brought his leg up and kneed Virginia in the stomach which led her to stumble into the bathroom and start saying "He did it. He did this to me!" Is this why she said this? Who knows.
Virginia never married, but was engaged twice. Her first fiance was dress designer Robert Moscovitz who she met when she first moved to California. Sadly, shortly after they got engaged, he was killed in a car accident. After this loss, Virginia moved to Los Angeles. There she met producer/director Henry Lehrman and worked for him. They became engaged a short while later, and were still engaged when she died. When Lehrman died in 1946, he was buried next to Virginia.
So, what did Maude Delmont do after her "friend's" death? She claimed that Virginia ran in screaming that Roscoe had raped her and that she had told the hospital doctors the same thing. She made sure that he was arrested and charged with murder. Maude never had the chance to testify because character witnesses destroyed her reputation. She was a liar known for trying to extort money from powerful figures and was rumored to have teamed with Virginia to extort Arbuckle, but this was never proven.
Three trials later, he was finally acquitted of all charges, but Maude had done her job by ruining him in the eyes of the public. He may have been found 100% innocent, but the press had painted him black, so the audiences weren't interested anymore.
RIP Virginia.
So, the time has come where I had to make a list of who I have covered here in my blog because I keep thinking I have talked about some great people and I really haven't. My mind = completely fogged at times.
Nita Naldi was a vamp alongside Theda Bara and Valeska Suratt. And just like these other ladies, Nita was not as exotic or vamp-ish as she may have seemed on screen. In fact, all three ladies were born in the U.S. and not under the shadow of The Sphinx (as it was said Theda Bara was born).
Nita Naldi was born Anita Donna Dooley on November 13, 1894 in New York City, New York. I have also heard that she was born Mary or Donna Dooley. I have tried to look under the Census records that I have at hand, but I am unable to find anything under either of those names. Even while looking under her father, Patrick or her mother, Julia...nothing. She was supposedly named after a great aunt named Mary Nonna, but that doesn't help our case in either way.
Patrick Dooley abandoned his family in 1910, and sadly her mother died six years later leaving Nita with her brother Frank and a sister (who's name I don't know). In order to support her and her siblings, Nita began modeling and doing other odd jobs.
A few years later she began appearing on the vaudeville stage with her brother Frank. In 1918, she debuted on Broadway in a show called "The Passing Show of 1918." A year later, she joined the Ziegfeld Follies. It was while working for the Follies that she took the stage name of Nita Naldi.
She continued to appear on stage and in a few short films into 1920 when she was given a role opposite John Barrymore in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Her next role was opposite another great leading man of the day, Rudolph Valentino, in the film Blood and Sand. Nita and Valentino appeared in another film together called Cobra in 1925. After these films, she was seen as a vamp actress.
Nita appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's second directorial picture, The Mountain Eagle, in 1926. After this, she went to Europe and appeared in a few more pictures before retiring from the screen. Even though her voice was deemed usable and acceptable for talking pictures, she never made one.
In 1932, she had to file for bankruptcy and chose instead of film, to appear in a few stage shows. Critics were cruel, poking fun at her weight gain. She sued one of the newspapers, but the suit was dismissed.
In 1952, she had a better time on stage when she starred with Uta Hagen in the play In Any Language. A few years later, she helped coach Carol Channing for a role in which she had to play the role of a vamp. She helped Channing win an award for the role!
Nita Naldi passed away on February 17, 1961 of a heart attack in her apartment. She was almost up to her 66th birthday.
She was buried with her mother at Calvary Cemetery in New York. There are also three other people buried in the plot named Daniel Francis, and Bridget and Mary Dunphy. I looked on Findagrave.com to see if I could get any information on them, but there is nothing. I am not sure if they are distant relatives, or who exactly they were.
Nita was only married once, to millionaire J. Searle Barclay. They had met in 1919 while she was still performing on the stage, and he was still married. They even lived together for a short time with Nita's sister. In 1923, Nita was named as a party in Barclay's divorce from his wife. They married in 1927 while in Europe, but a few years later, she returned to the U.S. without him. It seemed that he lost most if not all of his money in his divorce. They remained married until his death in 1945, but she never spoke of him until after he died.
She was supposed to have been engaged to another millionaire named Larry Hall in the 1950s, but nothing ever came of it.
Even with all the rumors of the day, Nita swore that she never had a romantic relationship with either Valentino or Barrymore. She was good friends with both though, and was actually one of Valentino's only friends who actually got along with his second wife, Natacha Rambova.
"We were all blind as rats. Theda Bara couldn't see a foot in front of her and poor Rudy groped his way through many a love scene and I mean really groped. They all used big reflectors to get extra light from the sun - that is how we acquired that interesting Oriental look. We didn't have any censors in those days, but we did have our own bosoms and our own eyelashes. And we never took ourselves seriously." ~ Nita Naldi (How can you not love this?!)
My mom gave me the idea this year to make some of my own ornaments with pictures of the movie stars I love. So, I went and bought little frames and took pictures from two photo collages I made way back I was in high school and voila! They are necessarily my top favorites...you will notice there are no Jean Harlow, Clara Bow, or Buster Keaton....yet!
I made six for the time being. Joan Crawford, Mary Miles Minter, Theda Bara, Constance Talmadge, Lousie Brooks, and Olive Thomas. (I apologize for the rough looking pictures. My camera is broken, so I had to take these with my phone.)
If you have not seen the movie Hugo yet, go see it. Now.
My boss who is a movie nut kept telling me I had to see it. I finally got around to it today after school, and it was amazing. I am not gonna give anything away on here, just trust me. If you are a silent film fan, you are gonna wanna see this movie. I had tears rolling down my cheeks for half the film.
If you have seen it, what did you think? (Don't give anything away though!)
Well, lets just bring this full circle and look at Grace Darmond. I never knew much about her until I read Dangerous Curves and got to learn about who she was. I used to just look at her picture, but now I can look at it and see it with new eyes.
Grace Darmond was born Grace Glionna on November 20, 1893 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Her mother's name was Alice, and her father James was a musician.
When she was younger, she caught the acting bug after appearing in a school play. And lucky girl she was, a member of the audience was a member of the Selig film company who wanted to sign her up on the spot!
She made her screen debut in 1914 and actually appeared in the first Technicolor picture, The Gulf Between, in 1917. Unfortunately, the film was a failure, mostly due to the fact that the color process in the film required a special projector that ended up making the colors look odd. Also, very few theatres actually had the projector. This is sadly also considered a lost film. There are only a few frames that survive.
Although she appeared in quite a few films, she never was a big star. She either was in small roles supporting bigger stars or in films that were lesser known. She bounced from Selig, to Vitagraph, and to Paramount Studios and even some independent film companies.
Her last film role was in 1927. She did make an appearance in a 1941 film, but her role was uncredited. She just didn't make it in the talkies.
After her retirement from film, Grace disappeared from the public eye.
Grace Darmond passed away on October 8, 1963 in Los Angeles.
Grace was reportedly a lesbian since she had a relationship with actress Jean Acker beginning in 1918. However, it seems she was married not once, but twice. So, it seems that she was bisexual. Her first marriage was to Henry Matson in 1926. They divorced later that year. Her second and final marriage was to Randolph Jennings in 1928. I can't find an ending date, so I am not sure if they were married till one of their deaths or if they divorced.
Miss Jean Acker is an interesting one. She is mainly known as being Rudy Valentino's first wife...the one that locked herself in her room on her wedding night. She may not have loved him as a husband, but it seems she loved his name because she began using the stage name "Mrs. Rudolph Valentino." Nice huh?
After reading about her relationship with Grace Darmond (we will get to her later) in the book Dangerous Curves, I realized that her life deserved a deeper look.
Shall we?
Jean Acker was born Harriet Acker on October 23, 1893 in Trenton, New Jersey. I don't know her parents names or their occupations, but I do know they separated when she was still young.
She spent a few of her early years performing on vaudeville in New Jersey before she moved to California in 1919. When she arrived, she met the woman, the diva, the legend herself...Alla Nazimova. Because Nazimova was just a big star, she was able to get her new "friend" a movie contract fairly quickly.
Unlike Nazimova, Jean never made a big splash on the screen. She made about 13 movies all together during the 1910s and 1920s. When the 1930s came around, she usually only made uncredited appearances in film.
Her last screen appearance was in 1955 in a Betty Grable film.
Jean Acker passed away on August 16, 1978 of natural causes in Los Angeles.
She was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Her grave marker reads "Jean Acker Valentino"
Jean was only married once, to Valentino, in 1919. Like I stated before, on their wedding night she fled to their hotel room and locked him out. She was so upset that she then ran to her then lover, Grace Darmond's house. Rudy tried to work things out, but to no avail. They didn't divorce until 1923. Apparently, years later, Jean confided to a friend that the real reason she flew from Rudy that night was because he told her he had gonorrhea. I don't think so...
Rudy obviously wasn't her one true love. She found that in a former Ziegfeld Follies girl named Chloe Carter who she met soon after divorcing Rudy. They remained together until Chloe died. They are even buried next to each other.
As I stated before, Jean Acker was also in a relationship with actress Grace Darmond and most probably with Nazimova. They were all part of what were calling "sewing circles." This basically a term for women who were lesbian or bisexual. Who was part of the group? Well supposedly...Jean, Nazimova, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Patsy Kelly, Louise Brooks, Greta Garbo, Dolores Del Rio, Peggy Fears, Janet Gaynor, Katharine Hepburn, Lena Horne, Hattie McDaniel, Barbara Stanwyck. *whew*
Jean actually sued to be able to use the name 'Valentino' in her stage name. This pissed Rudy off (obviously), and he didn't talk to her for years. In 1923, she even toured with a little show of her own called "How She Won the Sheik," where she talked about her life with Rudy. The two eventually reconciled shortly before his death. She even visited him on his death bed and brought him linen and pillows she had made and embroidered herself.
"It was simply a case of California, the glamour of Southern California moonlight and the fascinating lovemaking of the man." ~~ Jean Acker (when asked why she married Valentino)
As some of you may or may not know, I work at a library and am an avid reader. I have loved to read ever since I can remember. My parents used to read to me before bed almost every night, and I still do that to this day. Well, my parents don't, but I do. I can't really sleep unless I read something! Thank goodness I work at a place where books are EVERYWHERE, and free at that.
I like to read a lot of different things, but one of the genres I enjoy are biographies about silent/classic film stars. I thought I would share with you some of the titles that I would recommend. And some that I would say not to waste your time on.
The first of course is the book I finished reading over a month ago called Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels by Michael Ankerich. Oh how Jessica loves this book! The research done by the author was just incredible, which I definitely appreciate. Another plus, it covered some ladies who have been almost forgotten like Lucille Ricksen and Martha Mansfield. Go out and buy it now, if you cannot afford it at this time (especially with the holidays) I will let you borrow my copy for sure. I love it that much. And you, of course ;)
Next would be Silent Players by Anthony Slide. Slide is a film historian, and I love hearing him talk because he is so knowledgeable, and also because I love his accent. This book has wonderful biographies that are just enough to give you a real taste of the actor he is writing about. From the top of my head, I can recall that he covered Mignon Anderson, Gladys Brockwell, and of course the greats are covered too. The copy of this book that is in the library system I work at has a plate in it dedicated to me. It has my stamp of approval!
Silent Lives by Lon Davis is another one that contains little biographies of a number of stars. Problem is, I know I read it and liked it, but I can't really remember much else! I do remember really liking it though, so check it out.
Silent Movies by Peter Kobel is a beautiful book. It has a lot of information in it and beautiful pictures. It is a great coffee table book, which is where mine is sitting right now. Trust me, it is hard to read while laying in bed cuz it is a big one.
As far as star biographies go, I cannot recommend enough David Stenn. He wrote Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild and Bombshell about Jean Harlow. I read both books and absolutely loved them. He includes a lot of information, and you can tell he admires these ladies because he writes very sympathetically towards them. The Jean Harlow book had me crying when he was talking about her final days and how she suffered. Now, I don't cry easily, especially at books, so that is something. Two great books about two of my idols.
Vamp by Eve Golden was a good one too. It is about Theda Bara, if you couldn't already tell by the title. I am so happy someone wrote a biography about her, and Eve Golden is such a great author anyway, so I think she did Theda justice. I don't remember much about the book since it has been a few years since I read it, but I do remember I finished the whole thing, which again means something coming from me. If I don't like a book, I don't waste my time finishing it. Make sure to check out Eve's other books as well.
Nazimova by Gavin Lambert. I was kinda scared when I requested this book and it came in because it is a thick one. And normally when a book is that thick, it can read very much like a textbook and not be very interesting. That is not the case in this book. I was captivated from beginning to end. I don't know if it was the subject matter or the writing, but I would like to believe it is both. Alla Nazimova was such a dynamic force so her story itself is incredible and I grew to love her even more after reading Lambert's work.
Okay...now I gotta be careful talking about these next books because I found out the hard way that a Facebook friend of mine is a friend of the author and I made my opinions known on his wall. Not in a thrashing, bad way, but it wasn't completely positive either. Michelle Vogel wrote biographies about Olive Thomas and Olive Borden, and, well, they are not my favorites...which sucks because I love the Olives!! The Olive Thomas book was kinda boring and choppy and the quotes from magazines was overwhelming to the point where I felt like I was reading a bad research paper that I had written the night before. It wasn't the worst book that I have read, but it wasn't my favorite. The Olive Borden book was a little bit better, but not by much. I ended up skimming through the rest of it because I couldn't just lay back and read the whole thing. Vogel also wrote a book called Hollywood Blondes that has so many mistakes, it will make you cringe. Which, again, sucks because it has some of my favorites in it and could really be a good book!
As far as autobiographies go, check out The Times We Had by Marion Davies. Her life in Hollywood and with Hearst in her own words is very endearing and I thought it was a good read. I of course recommend My Wonderful World of Slapstick because it is by Buster! Duh! He was such a humble and funny man, that is a lovely view of his life by the man himself.
I do remember picking up Life of a Star by Pola Negri, but I don't remember what I thought of it. Oops!
These are just a few of the ones I have read, but it gives props to the best. What about you guys? Read any good books lately? :)
