Miss Brigitte Helm

I want to apologize really quick. I have a few comments on some posts that I want to respond too, but for some reason, I can't. I can publish the comments and they get added to the post, but I can't respond to them. The page loads completely blank, no clue why. So, hopefully soon I will be able to respond and discuss stuff with you guys. Stay tuned.

So, I talked about Metropolis, gotta talk a little more about Brigitte Helm, because she was pretty amazing. But, for some reason, like fellow silent stars Barbara Kent and Marceline Day, Brigitte refused to talk about her film past. Makes her even more intriguing.

Brigitte Helm was born Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm on March 17, 1906 in Berlin, Germany.

Her early life? No clue. There isn't much info about her that I can find. And the website dedicated to her..........is in German, which I don't read/speak fluently, sorry. I tried to translate it, but the translation makes no sense. I failed. I'm sorry :(

What I have found is that she enjoyed acting in school plays, but she only saw it as something fun to do. She didn't want to pursue acting as a career. In fact, she wanted to work as an astronomer.

Brigitte on the set of Metropolis

When she was 18, her mother sent in her picture to director Fritz Lang in order to help her secure a role in his new film. And, she got it! Pretty groovy to think an 18 year old girl did such a stellar job in TWO roles in such a landmark film.

After her breakthrough role, she appeared in around 30 films including The Countess of Monte Cristo and The Blue Danube, both in 1932. She did appear in some talkies, and was actually up for the role of The Bride of Frankenstein before it was finally given to Elsa Lanchester.

Apparently, her studio wanted her to only appear in vamp roles, which annoyed her. She eventually sued the studio, but lost her case. She really only took later roles to help pay off her court costs.

Her career came to an abrupt and sad end in the 1930s when her studio contract expired AND she was put on the Nazi's watch list after she married a man who was Jewish. On the flip side, Metropolis was reportedly Hitler's favorite movie, so there were a few times when he personally helped Brigitte out of jams when she was involved in a couple of traffic collisions.

After she retired, she moved with her family to Switzerland, and refused to talk about about her film career past. Her son was once approached about asking his mother to do an interview about her career. He said that his mother would disinherit him if he even asked!

Brigitte Helm passed away on June 11, 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland.

She was buried at the Ascona Cemetery in Ticino, Switzerland.

Brigitte was married twice. First to a man named Rudolf Weissbach, but don't know the dates. Her second husband was industrialist Dr. Hugo von Kuehnheim, who she married in 1935. Together, they had four sons. I am pretty sure they remained married until her death, but not 100% sure.

She was Josef Von Sternberg's first choice for Lola in The Blue Angel.

"There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator." ~ Maria in Metropolis

Metropolis

I watched Metropolis the other day for the first time.

Wow.

It ain't my bag. I just figured since I am a silent film fan, I gotta see the one that is pretty famous and well known, even among people who don't love silents. But me, I like the movies with the flappers and very 1920s looking, ya know? Metropolis was very futuristic and modern with it's ideas. It was also very German lol. Loved Brigitte Helm though, she is incredible. And I am so happy that more footage of it was found. Gives hope for the thousands of lost films out there.

I just wanted to talk about some the cool facts about the film because it was/is a pretty influential film for being as old as it is. And it is one of those films people say you should see before you die, so...go see it!

Not suprisingly, this was one of the most expensive films during that time. It was around $200 million dollars! 

It was also reportedly one of Hitler's favorite movies. Nice, eh? Fritz Lang's wife was a supporter of the Nazi party, and members saw the film as a social blueprint. Even more interesting? Fritz Lang was Jewish! Supposedly Hitler liked the film so much, he let the director flee to the United States.

Around 20-30 minutes of the film that was believed lost was found in a museum in Argentina in 2008. Shortly after, it was announced that even more footage had been found in Chile. Apparently the film cannister was purposely mislabeled to avoid being destroyed during a time of military coup in Chile. From what I have read though, the Chile film has not been put into the newly released edition. I could be wrong though, but from what I have read, that is the impression I get.

This movie took 2 years to shoot, and I can see why! I mean, movies now take that long and they have all the fancy technology, but back in 1927...man...can you imagine? A lot of hand work and fancy editing techniques.

When you first see/meet the robot, it is actually Brigitte Helm inside. See, this is why I love her. What a trooper! After her role in this film, almost all of her following film roles were starring roles.

Like I said earlier, this film was quite influential. C-3PO from Star Wars was modeled after the robot. I didn't know this till after I watch it, and it is kinda weird how they walk the same and look like they are made out of the same material. Also, the creators of "Superman" liked the film so much, they named Superman's city after the title.

Not surprising, but the film was panned by critics when it first came out. Even famous science fiction author H.G. Wells didn't like it.

This is one of my favorite silent film pictures. Brigitte looks so young and adorable, even when she is dressed as a robot! It is just so cool/bizarre how modern the picture looks, yet it was taken in the 1920s. Such an awesome picture. I wish I could get it framed and put in my house.

The Artist

I saw "The Artist" the other night and I gotta talk about it of course! If you haven't seen it yet, and don't want it any spoilers or anything, don't read!!

If you wanna discuss....you can continue :)

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First off, the moron who introduced the film ruined the end for us. He got up there and said "This is an all silent picture, well until the end when there is some talking." Me and the guy across the aisle turned and looked at it each other and he yells out "Hey, thanks for ruining it for us!" Not a huge spoiler, but annoying still.

I thought the film was pretty good. But, there points in it where I would have been perfectly content if it had ended right there. It just kinda dragged toward the end. I get that they wanted the happy ending, which I thought was very cute, but don't add 45 different scenarios to get to that place. That's just one gal's opinion though.

I wasn't a fan of the girl who played Peppy either. She was way too skinny to be playing a 1920s flapper/actress! Those girls had some meat on their bones, and I could see that girl's bones! She did have a cute smile and spunk though, so I will give her that.

I LOOOOOOVED the actor who played George Valentin. I thought he did a stellar job. He reminded me of Doug Fairbanks so much, especially his smile. It mirrored Doug so much. He was great showing the high life of stardom and also the lows that many actors and actresses experienced when the talkies came. Audience members were laughing at how scared he was at the coming of talkies, and it bothered me because I know a lot of the stars I love went through the same thing. He better win some awards for his performance. They are well deserved. Oh! And he was SOOOOOOOOO cute!! And French! Be still my heart.

I love Malcolm McDowell. He was in the movie for two minutes. Let down.

John Goodman reminded me a lot of Mack Sennett.

I saw a brief picture of Anita Page in the film, and I think either Lucille Ricksen or Edna Murphy. When it comes out on DVD I am definitely going to have to freeze frame that part and see who all was on the magazine cover.

What did you guys think of the film?

The JJs

Justine Johnstone and Julanne Johnston. Yeah, I get them confused.  I am surprised one or both of them didn't have to change their names, although in the silents it wasn't as much of a studio came as it became in the 30s and 40s. Julanne was on The Oneida when Tom Ince was taken ill, Justine was not. I am putting them both in here because they both stick together in my head. Kinda like Aileen Pringle/Alma Rubens and Pola Negri/Alla Nazimova stick in my head as pairs.

Let's start with Julanne first because that will round out the Oneida crew. And because there isn't that much information about her out there :(

Julanne Johnston was born May 1, 1900 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her parents were Howard Petterman and Ann Johnston. Not 100% sure judging by this info if her parents were married.

I am not sure if this is her birth name because she used the names 'Julanne Johnstone' and 'Julianne Johnston' in her earlier films.

Her family moved to Hollywood when she was in her teens. While there, she studied dance at the Denishawn School and honed her acting chops at the Hollywood Community Theatre.

She appeared in her first film in 1917 in an uncredited role.

Some notable silent movies she was in include The Thief of Baghdad (1924) with Douglas Fairbanks, The Big Parade (1925) with John Gilbert and Mae Murray, and Twinkletoes (1926) with Colleen Moore.

Julanne did appear in some talkies, but they were in uncredited roles. Her last film was supposedly Cleopatra (1934) with Claudette Colbert, but her part has yet to be confirmed. She retired from films when she was around 35.

She was only married once. She met her husband, David Rust while she was travelling to New York and she made a pit stop in Michigan. I couldn't find anymore information on their marriage until I looked up an ancestry record and well, I found a little bit more info. I couldn't find out when they were married, but I did find out that they had three kids. Son, David, and daughters, Patricia and Peggy.

Julanne Johnston passed away on December 26, 1988 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit, Michigan. (I was pretty excited to read that she was buried about 30 minutes away from where I live....until I failed to find exactly where she is buried. Looks like I am gonna have to make a trip up there!)

Julanne was a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1924, along with Clara Bow and Lucille Ricksen.

She was handpicked by Douglas Fairbanks to star with him in The Thief of Baghdad.

She supposedly was only five feet tall and had gray eyes.

Apparently was president of The Mary Pickford Club.......no idea what that is/was.


Like I said before, Julanne was a guest of William Randolph Hearst on The Oneida's fateful trip, and once again, no quotes from her about the incident.

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Justine Johnstone was born January 31, 1895 in Englewood, New Jersey.

Her family moved to New York when she was still young, and this is where she received her education.

Justine appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies, the Follies-Bergere, and a Broadway play called Over the Top with one of the best hoofers ever, Fred Astaire.

She made her film debut in the 1914 version of The Crucible, which starred Marguerite Clark. She only made a total of 8 films, and they were all silent. She retired from films in 1926.

Why did she leave the silver screen after such a short career? Well, Justine was one smart cookie! She enrolled in Columbia University and worked in studies in the medical field. She was a partner with two colleagues in the development of the I.V. unit used in hospitals today. She also made excellent discoveries in the fields of endocrinology, and cancer and syphilis research. Justine eventually had a laboratory built onto her home.

Justine Johnstone passed away on September 3, 1982 in Santa Monica, California.

She was interred at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory.

Justine Johnstone was married once, to producer Walter Wanger in 1919. They divorced in 1938.

According to a 1920's magazine article, Justine loved sports.

Miss Seena Owen

As far as an intro goes...I don't really know much to say about Seena. The most I know about her is that she was in Intolerance and her make-up looked really weird and hid how really pretty she was. Which, most make up back then did anyway. Can you imagine how white and greasy their faces must have looked off camera? I mean, in some pictures, Buster looks dead!

Seena Owen was born Signe Auen on November 14, 1894 in Spokane, Washington. She was the youngest of three children, brother Auden and sister Lillie, born to Jens and Karen Auen who had come to the U.S. from Denmark about five years prior to Seena's birth.

Her father found work in a pharmacy, and the family enjoyed a nice lifestyle for a few years. Seena had the opportunity of attending school in her parents native land, Copenhagen, Denmark. Unfortunately though, Jens Auen's business failed and it became necessary for his children to find jobs to help support the family as well. Seena decided to try her luck at acting and joined a stage company in San Francisco where she worked for awhile. She soon traveled further South where the movie scene was starting to settle, in Hollywood.

Seena worked as an extra before she was signed to the Kalem Film Company. She made her first credited debut in 1915 in the film A Yankee From the West. That year she also changed her stage name to 'Seena Owen,' which is how her name was pronounced anyway, but this way it was easier for people to read.

The next year, Seena appeared in D.W. Griffith's epic, Intolerance. She played 'Princess Beloved' (Belshazaar's favorite). I think everyone alive at that time was in that movie...seriously. The scene of Babylon has like 4 million extras. It always tickles me when you go to downtown Hollywood and see the replicas of the Intolerance set. I used to think they were real, and that the film was shot right there...but sadly I was wrong. Cool to imagine though, eh?

In her relatively short career, Seena had the chance to appear with some big names like Douglas Fairbanks, Lon Chaney, and Gloria Swanson. Her film with Chaney, Victory (1919), was considered lost for many years but was re-discovered in Europe and is now available to watch on DVD. Yay! Seena also appeared in a lot of Tod Browning's early shorts. You may know him more for his cult classic, Freaks. I don't know about you, but I love that movie.

Seena had a weak voice for talkies, so she only appeared in one. She officially retired from films in 1933.

Seena Owen passed away on August 15, 1966 in Hollywood.

She was interred at Hollywood Forever with her mother and siblings. I am not 100% sure her father is interred there too.

Seena was only married once, to actor George Walsh, who she met on the set of Intolerance. They were married from 1916 until 1924. They had a daughter named Patricia. Supposedly it was D.W. Griffith who set them up.

Her older sister, Lillie was a Hollywood screenwriter. She appeared in a ton of films, including 1924's Janice Meredith, which starred Marion Davies and 1959's The Shaggy Dog. Seena even helped her with writing a few movies/tv shows as well.

As I said in previous blog entries, she was on board The Oneida the night the whole Thomas Ince scandal took place. I can't find any comments ever made by her, or any of the other 'witnesses' on board that night. Hearst did a good job of shutting people up...or perhaps there really wasn't anything scandalous that occurred.

Miss Jacqueline Logan

I posted this on my Facebook page, but since some of you are not on my Facebook page...I will state it here. (By the way, if you do want to add me on Facebook, please do! My name sadly isn't really Jessica Keaton, it is Jessica Wahl).

Since my last blog was about Margaret Livingston and how she tied into the whole Tom Ince scandal, I figured why not do the rest of the gals who were also on board The Oneida that fateful trip. So, we did Margaret, next is Jacqueline Logan.

Jacqueline Logan was GORGEOUS! She is one of those girls where her face looked modern enough to where she would fit in today on screen. I think the same thing of Olive Borden. Silent stars like Alla Nazimova, Theda Bara, Mae Murray, Olive Thomas, they had a classic beauty that was perfect for silent film and the 1910s and 20s. But Jacqueline and Olive Borden had a modern look to them that I think would have worked well had they been alive now. That is just one man's opinion though.

She is also 1/3 of one of my favorite pictures from the era. This one below with Ann Pennington and Billie Dove.

How amazing do they all look?! Three perfect examples of beautiful gals in the 1920s. Oh to have been a part of their little date that day. How fun!

Jacqueline Logan was born Jacqueline Medura Logan on November 30, 1901 in Corsicana, Texas. I don't know much about her early life, and I couldn't find her on any census records that I had at my disposal. What I do know is that her father was a renowned architect and her mother was an opera singer for sometime.

Apparently during her teens she took ill and relocated to Colorado Springs for a better climate. It was there she began working as a journalist before segueing into the theater. She traveled with the stage company to Chicago where she had to lie about her age in order to keep working. She even lied to her family about why she was going to Chicago. She told them it was to visit relatives. Eventually her real age was found out and she was let go from the company. She soon left for New York.

She again told her family she was going to New York for reasons other than her theatrical ambitions. She appeared on Broadway in 1920 in a production of Floradora, where she was spotted by none other than Florenz Ziegfeld who wanted her in his Follies. She had the one of being put in a few of his rooftop shows which were just spectacular to see. Jacqueline also became a model for famed Ziegfeld photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston. Love him!

Jacqueline was given the opportunity for a screen test by then unknown actor Ben Lyons. She appeared alongside Mabel Normand in the film Molly O in 1921, and then alongside child star Jane Peters (who grew up to become the beautiful and amazing Carole Lomabrd) in the film The Perfect Crime.

She was pretty lucky when it came to costars it seemed. She had the chance to work with both Barrymores, Lon Chaney, and William Powell. Yeah........way too lucky. This makes Jessica jealous.

Although she did appear in a number of talkies, she wasn't a big success. Her roles were most supporting or brief cameos. She decided to take a break from the screen (as a lot of stars did when talkies came) and go to England to work on the stage. It was while working in England that she found a new way to work in the movies. Writing and directing. She wrote two films that were quite successful in Europe, but when she tried to do the same thing on her return to Hollywood, she was turned away. The film studios were proud of her achievements they said, they just didn't feel comfortable with hiring a female director. Nice, huh?

She retired from films completely in 1934. She did do an interview for Kevin Brownlow's documentary Hollywood in the 1970s, but her interview appears to have been lost because it was never aired and isn't in any new releases of the series.

Jacqueline Logan passed away on April 4, 1983 in Melbourne, Florida.

She was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Decatur, Illinois.

Jacqueline was only married once, to an industrialist named Larry Winston. I am not 100% sure when they married, but I do know they divorced in 1947. I have also read that she was married to a man named Ralph Gillespie during the 1920s.

She was good friends with actresses Lila Lee, Dorothy Dalton, and Lina Basquette.

She was also a hardcore right wing advocate. Damn.

Jacqueline was named a WAMPAS Baby Star of 1922 alongside Colleen Moore, Bessie Love, Mary Philbin, and her friend, Lila Lee.

Miss Margaret Livingston

Margaret Livingston.

I don't know about you, but when I think about her, the things that pop into my head are: Tom Ince, William Randolph Hearst, yacht, cover up, other woman.

Now, what happened on board Hearst's yacht is still up for debate. I personally like the version that was portrayed in the movie The Cat's Meow. It worked, it made sense. And since Ince was cremated without an autopsy...the real story is lost in the unknown. What else is unknown is the alleged affair between Ince and Margaret, which it seems did not occur. And if it did, it was hush hush.

Margaret Livingston was born on November 25, 1895 in Salt Lake City, Utah. In the 1920 Census, her name appears as "Marguerite" but I am not sure if it is just a misspelling or that was in fact her birth name. It also shows that during that year she lived in Los Angeles with her older sister Ivy, a woman named Edith Hurd (who could be their mother), and a 4 1/2 year old girl named Dorothy Atkinson who is listed as Edith's granddaughter.

When she was around 16 years old, she made her film debut in The Chain Invisible. Her most famous role was in 1927 in the film Sunrise. She wasn't a huge star of the day, but she made over 50 silents, so people were used to seeing her face.

Unlike a lot of her fellow film friends, Margaret successfully transitioned into talkies and made over 20 of them. She even did voice dubbing work for other actresses, including Louise Brooks.

In 1924, she was invited on board The Oneida, the yacht owned by William Randolph Hearst. Also on board were Heart's mistress, Marion Davies, writers Louella Parsons and Elinor Glyn, and actors Charlie Chaplin, Seena Owen, Julanne Johnston, Aileen Pringle, and Jacqueline Logan. Oh, and may I add a certain Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman. Goodman man who was in the car accident that killed his fiance, actress Florence La Badie, and he later married actress Alma Rubens, who died from the effects of drug abuse. Good Lord that guy had some shit luck!

Tom Ince became ill while on board and was taken very quietly to a hospital in San Diego. He claimed he had just drank to much, so they decided to let him go home. He died there the next day of a heart attack. All these rumors started running rampant because Ince was so young when he died and why was it all being kept so hush hush. Many began assuming Ince was the victim of mistaken identity. They thought that Hearst had seen Charlie Chaplin and Marion Davies canoodling in a stairway of the yacht and shot who he thought was Chaplin...who turned out to be Ince. Again, this is just a hearsay rumor. Interestingly though, Nell Ince, Tom's wife had him immediately cremated and buried without an autopsy. She was also well taken care of by Hearst for the rest of her life. Makes you wonder, huh?

One of Margaret's last film appearances was in one of Clara Bow's first talkies, Call Her Savage in 1932. She soon retired from film due to her weight gain that began creating problems between her and the studios. She eventually moved to Pennsylvania.

Margaret Livingston passed away on December 13, 1984.

She was interred at the First Presbyterian Church of Ewing Cemetery in Ewing, New Jersey.

Margaret was only married once, to bandleader Paul Whiteman in 1931. They remained married until his death in 1967. They never had children.

Another interesting thing I found in the 1920 Census Record I was looking at was that one of her neighbors at that time was actress Colleen Moore!