Wallace Reid
Wallace Reid

Author: E.J. Fleming

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2013-11-08

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0786477253

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For a decade Wallace Reid was the most recognized face in Hollywood, the most universally beloved actor in silent film. Today all that is widely remembered of "Wally" Reid is that he died in a padded sanitarium cell, the victim of a fatal morphine addiction. Of all the actors who have enjoyed great fame only to vanish from the public eye, Reid perhaps fell the fastest and the hardest. This first full biography recounts Reid's complicated childhood, his disrupted family history and his rise to film stardom despite these restricting factors. It documents his myriad talents and accomplishments, most notably his gift for brilliant onscreen acting. The text explores in depth how the modern studio, however unconsciously, turned the popular star, a well-adjusted man with a loving family, into a drug-dependent mental patient within three years. His death rocked the foundations of Hollywood, and the huge new industry that he helped build nearly died with "Dashing Wally Reid."

Wally
Wally

Author: David W. Menefee

Publisher:

Published: 2011-01

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 9781593936235

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Wallace Reid still rouses excitement today as Jeff, the blacksmith in D. W. Griffith's famous film, The Birth of a Nation. Audiences thrill to the rip-roaring brawl between Jeff and a band of villainous renegades. The fight was largely real, and many people saw Wally for the first time in that immortal film. They said he became "a star overnight," but he had appeared in more than a hundred films before. In Wally, his story is fully told for the first time. He was "born in a trunk" to an actress mother and a famous playwright father. Wally barely survived the infamous St. Louis cyclone when the storm tore that city apart, but he emerged from the carnage to grow into a popular student, athlete, and early film hero. His handsome looks inspired directors to place him in front of cameras, but his ambitions were to be a writer and director. When director Cecil B. DeMille picked him to appear opposite opera diva Geraldine Farrar in her first films, his aspirations became lost in the dizzying idolatry of worldwide audiences. Wally's popularity soared to a height rivaled only by Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, but his pedestal of fame stood on shaky ground. Genuine tragedy fell upon Wally and his film crew when their train derailed in an isolated Sierra Mountain location. His injuries were treated with morphine, and his family and friends watched helpless as he became caught unaware in the deathly grip of the drug. Dorothy Davenport, his wife and a beautiful star in her own right, remained faithfully by his side, while he wrestled with the demons that threatened to take his life. Wally draws from many original sources and major archives to show how he was received in his time and the importance of his role in the development of motion pictures. The entertaining and informative book contains an extensive biographical treatment, a detailed filmography, and more than 200 rare photographs, posters, advertisements, and lobby cards that capture the glamour of Hollywood's Golden Years.

"Bare Knees" Flapper

Author: Tim Lussier

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2018-11-01

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 1476675686

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One of the most popular Hollywood child stars of the late 1910s, Virginia Lee Corbin was well known to fans worldwide. With her mother as her manager, Corbin retained her popularity as she grew older. She performed in vaudeville for a couple of years before continuing her film career. Corbin fit well into the flapper mold of the Jazz Age and appeared in many films throughout the 1920s. As she matured, her mother found it ever more difficult to control her. Corbin led a difficult life. After her mother's suicide attempt, she found that all the money she had earned was gone. Her marriage (at age 18) failed and she was eventually separated from her children. The flapper struggled to remain relevant in the sound era and was trying to make a comeback when she died at 31 in 1942.

Wallace Reid; His Life Story
Wallace Reid; His Life Story

Author: Bertha Westbrook Reid

Publisher: Legare Street Press

Published: 2023-07-18

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781020515507

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A biography of the tragic silent film star Wallace Reid, written by his wife Bertha Westbrook Reid. This book tells the story of Reid's rise to fame as one of Hollywood's most popular leading men, his struggles with addiction, and his untimely death at age 31. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Biography by Americans, 1658-1936
Biography by Americans, 1658-1936

Author: Edward H. O'Neill

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2016-11-11

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 1512804940

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This volume is the most comprehensive bibliography of purely biographical material written by Americans. It covers every possible field of life but, by design, excludes autobiographies, diaries, and journals.

Scandals of Classic Hollywood
Scandals of Classic Hollywood

Author: Anne Helen Petersen

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2014-09-30

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 1101635479

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Celebrity gossip meets history in this compulsively readable collection from Buzzfeed reporter Anne Helen Peterson. This guide to film stars and their deepest secrets is sure to top your list for movie gifts and appeal to fans of classic cinema and hollywood history alike. Believe it or not, America’s fascination with celebrity culture was thriving well before the days of TMZ, Cardi B, Kanye's tweets, and the #metoo allegations that have gripped Hollywood. And the stars of yesteryear? They weren’t always the saints that we make them out to be. BuzzFeed's Anne Helen Petersen, author of Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, is here to set the record straight. Pulling little-known gems from the archives of film history, Petersen reveals eyebrow-raising information, including: • The smear campaign against the original It Girl, Clara Bow, started by her best friend • The heartbreaking story of Montgomery Clift’s rapid rise to fame, the car accident that destroyed his face, and the “long suicide” that followed • Fatty Arbuckle's descent from Hollywood royalty, fueled by allegations of a boozy orgy turned violent assault • Why Mae West was arrested and jailed for "indecency charges" • And much more Part biography, part cultural history, these stories cover the stuff that films are made of: love, sex, drugs, illegitimate children, illicit affairs, and botched cover-ups. But it's not all just tawdry gossip in the pages of this book. The stories are all contextualized within the boundaries of film, cultural, political, and gender history, making for a read that will inform as it entertains. Based on Petersen's beloved column on the Hairpin, but featuring 100% new content, Scandals of Classic Hollywood is sensationalism made smart.

Assassin of Youth
Assassin of Youth

Author: Alexandra Chasin

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-09-30

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 022627697X

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"Assassin of Youth" is a lyrical, digressive, funny, and ultimately riveting quasi-biography of a little known man: Harry J. Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The J. Edgar Hoover of pot busts, Anslinger played a major role in the creation of America s prohibitionist drug policy and the racist and ineffective carceral state that resulted. But Anslinger himself was dull, ordinary, a square. How then does Alexandra Chasin write his biography? Her treatment of Anslinger, his times, and the mentalities that arose and prevailed around and through him is part cultural history, part lyrical meditation, and only part biography. Each of her short chapters is anchored in a historical document a piece of legislation, a court decision, snatches of popular literature and the chapters engage with the voices, presumptions, insights, and blind spots of those documents to illuminate Anslinger and his world. "Assassin of Youth" is as riotous and loose a history of drug laws as can be imagined and yet, it is rooted in very close attention to language and context. Today, even as marijuana is slowly being legalized, we have not yet fully reckoned with the haze of influences and mentalities that have enabled our long embrace of severe punishments for drug possession and use. Alexandra Chasin here shows us the deep, twisted roots of our love and hatred of drugs of all sorts."