First off we didn't do too bad with the filmography. What is right vs what we had listed is preeettttty close. Release dates are based off when they first appeared in the newspapers, and I'd like to remind everyone that the way films were released was well...complicated to us modern folk (usually there was a 2 or so year run, and many were reissued. The Soul of Broadway was being screened in 1919!) Again the old listing was close, but this is what I'd dare call the official Valeska Suratt Filmography.
Purple means fully exists
Blue means partially exists or a clip exists
Pink means lost
1915:
The Soul of Broadway (October)
The Immigrant (November)
1916:
The Straight Way (October)
Jealous (November)
The Victim (December)
1917:
A New York Peacock (February)
She (April)
The Slave (June)
The Siren (June)
Wife Number 2 (July)
A Rich Man's Plaything (October)
A few notes on the differences. The Immigrant was her second film and was just a month after Soul of Broadway. She never did make a film called "The Kreutzer Sonata". There was a film with that name released in 1917 but it did not star her. "She" barely got any ink at all when it was first released and had a really stretched out run. Judging by the months FOX must have worked her through late 1916 and released all her films in one final go. She later would claim she hadn't worked on a film since November 1916.
Most of 1917 is just articles about her various films making the rounds. She began her work with the troops and also her beauty company (complete with newspaper columns/ads) selling things like 'Valeska Suratt Face Powders'. By the start of 1918 she was back onstage in New York performing in "The Purple Poppy". No mention was made of why she was back on stage or if she had quit films. Her beauty articles continued and by May it was announced she had left the stage because she had taken ill (influenza?). The article claimed she had left vaudeville forever and might return to 'photoplays'. Apparently not because by August she was back doing The Purple Poppy which continued through the end of 1918. Ironically in May 1919 she did an interview which appeared in several papers, claiming she had quit pictures for good and that the kleig lights had left her blind for random periods of time (quite believable).
She kept herself in the headlines through 1922, still swearing she was done being a 'vampire'. After that she disappears for quite awhile despite her predictions of becoming like Ethel Barrymore. What's even more interesting is her lawsuit with Cecil B DeMille didn't even turn up much press! An article in 1937 speaks of movies and lawsuits and mentions the case. It says she sued him shortly after the release of the film (10 years earlier) saying he plagiarized the story she had written. According to the article the case was thrown out as the court ruled she had 'plagiarized her story from the Gospel of St. John'. Which makes one wonder what exactly did DeMille really do? Other sources say the suit was quietly settled...lord knows what went on!
I still like what I call the 'Posh Spice Angle' of Valeska. She was on Broadway before entering films and even then her publicity made note of her fashions (14 costume changes, etc). At the height of her film career I found two articles that were quite fabulous. One claimed she had 920 gowns or as they put it '100 a film'. A later article upped the number to a round 1000. The 920 one claimed she bitched after acting out 3 (going on 4) scenes in the same gown, saying her fans wouldn't find it believable. Fantastic!
Added bonus: an Indiana paper recently did a well researched article on Valeska. Click here to read.
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