After some random emails proclaiming Barbara LaMarr the greatest actress ever, I started looking into her more. I guess I have seen her in "Souls for Sale"...but its been awhile and I don't really remember anything specific about her, other than it wasn't really a vampy role. This vamp bullshit gets pinned on a lot of dark haired silent actresses. Alma Rubens got it too. I suspect this is because of the old myth that hair color designated whether you were a
Mary Pickford or a
Theda Bara (then what was
Mae Murray?), and the fact most of these women's films are lost.
Much like Alma, Barbara has been forgotten beyond a blip of a
Hollywood Babylon blurb that could just not have been anything farther from fact and fancy. Naturally the death hags have held her close to their morbid bosoms, she died so young after all (in fact, months before
Rudolph Valentino)! Looking into her story its obvious there is a lot more than that. Hardly a vamp, she strikes me as the quintessential 20s girl, the smart beauty who drank and slept her way through nights and somehow had a film career (with a side of writing) during the day. She puts every flapper ever to shame, and had she been properly blonde and flat chested (first thing I noticed in her photos is: BOOBIES...wow) they would probably paint her as such. More than anything she almost
looks like Louise Brooks, complete with the self destructive bent, only without the attitude.
There's been some half formed, many years in the making, attempts at telling Barbara LaMarr's story. A Jimmy Bangley was considered the de facto LaMarr researcher (complete with interviews he obtained with Eleanor Keaton, Alice Terry, Tom Gallery, and a few other stars). He ran a Barbara LaMarr fan club at
barbaralamarr.com but passed away unexpectedly at the age of 48 in 2004...which is just too young. Apparently he was a big fan of the kooky crowd, speaking at the Valentino Death Festival. In the 1990s Don Gallery, LaMarr's son, mentioned he was working with a Margaret Burk on a biography, during an interview with Bangley. Allan Ellenberger's site mentions Burk and Bangley were working on the project together at the time of his passing. The project was mentioned as early as 1996 (though Bangley makes references to interviewing stars for it who died in the 1980s), and was last heard about around 2004.
Don Gallery's birth was/is a bit of a mystery. Barbara was about 5 marriages in when she went to Texas and ''adopted'' a little boy named Marvin Carville LaMarr. The Silent stars who lived long enough (Bangley cites Alice Terry and Gilbert Roland) swore up and down LaMarr went to Texas, had the boy, went home, got married, came back, and adopted him to 'save face'. In this version of events the father is never clear (one rumor pinned Paul Bern as his father.) While fantastical sounding, its one of those 'who knows' situations...just look at Mae Murray or Olive Thomas. Whatever happened Marvin was adopted by Zasu Pitts when LaMarr died and renamed Don Gallery. He was born in either 1922 or 1923 and has lived near Catalina Island in California. Its not clear if he is still alive. The LaMarr site mentions 'rumor has it' that Gallery is continuing on with the Bangley project on his own, though one could guess this would include Burk as well. What's happened in the past 6 years to the book isn't really clear.
Don Gallery's 1996 interview with Bangley is quite interesting and
can be read here (as a pdf). He says he doesn't remember his birth mother, but has a great admiration for her. He also shared some photos and poems she had written.
The
ongoing LaMarr site has a long, interesting piece written by Bangley some years ago (the '1990s'). By far the best thing ever written about Barbara LaMarr, but I see a million red flags in it. In all due fairness to the researchers, it was written before newspaper databases and census databases were just a click away. Microfiche! I'm not sure what methodolgy they used, but it raises a lot of questions about her story for me.
Barbara was said to have been adopted, and at the time of the piece they had not found a certificate for her or confirmed where she was born (census records would be easiest.) She was known as Reatha (or Rheatha) Watson and claimed a birth town of Richmond, Virginia though her foster parents said Washington State. Her birth year was said to be 1896. This is where the easy to spot publicity department rumors start, claiming she was either the illegitimate daughter of a prestigious Virginian family, or some long lost daughter of European royalty (usually Spanish or Italian). Wherever she came from she spent most of her young years in California near Los Angeles.
Other flags go up when one realizes Adela Rogers St. Johns fills us in on the rest of her young goings ons, including the start of her writing career and her youthful travails. St. Johns usually gives a scrap of truth, but a lot of flourish with it.
More publicity stuff comes in, particularly regarding her marriages and entry into film, plus a rape rumor. Through her fame we get the mysterious obtainment of her son, what supposedly set off her addiction to morphine (an injury during Souls for Sale), more royalty rumors, affair rumors (with Mussolini no less!), and then those diet and drug rumors again. There is an oft quoted bit of LaMarr trivia is a claim she never slept more than 2 hours a night. Judging by Bangley's description of her 1924 and 1925 schedules it wasn't so much a choice as a heavy working demand from the studios. For whatever drugs she was taking it was the TB that killed her, something a hard work schedule could not have helped (ask Mabel Normand.)
There is a very fascinating story here, and if her son is still alive it'd be a shame to not see this biography completed while he is still with us. If he is no longer, then I'd love to see what Bangley and Burk did come up with. Barbara's story looks like the typical vamp one in which there is so much myth one has to hack away to find the truth. One of the most fascinating things that site and interview taught me was she was a writer, and you just never hear that of her. And like most stars of the 20s there is some stuff that I'd love to see untangled: her true entrance into film, her early life, the birth of her son, her addiction and what effect it had on her, and what happened after she passed. I haven't researched her nearly enough to say much at all, but when people lump her in as the junkie who committed suicide well...that just seems downright wrong by the bare facts laid out there.
A few of Barbara's films are known to exist, and I'd love to see a new sweep as this section was also done by Bangley in the 90s. Technology helps so much here...in 2003 history thought only 2 Olive Thomas films survived.
By 2005 they found 12. I bet there is a little more Barbara than we know. The easier to find ones are
The Nut
and
The Three Musketeers
(both with Douglas Fairbanks),
The Prisoner of Zenda
, and
Souls for Sale
. Some are on youtube, some are public domain...some are not.
