I was very honored to be interviewed by the lovely and talented Dixie Laite, mayor at Dametown.com. Dixie and I discuss the one-woman performance I do as Barbara La Marr, the biography I wrote on Barbara, and aspects of Barbara’s life and career. The interview may be read here.
A celebrator of dames past and present, Dixie has written many fantastic articles. Be sure to peruse her site!
I was recently asked by the Palos Verdes Pulse to write an article about Barbara La Marr and the making of her final film, The Girl from Montmartre. Partly filmed on California’s beautiful Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1925, the film was Barbara’s attempt at a career comeback shortly before her untimely passing in 1926. The article, “‘A Last Graceful Gesture of Adieu’: Barbara La Marr and The Girl from Montmartre,” may be read here.*
*(Slight spoiler alert for anyone who hasn’t yet read my biography, Barbara La Marr: The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful for Hollywood)
*Note: The title of the article has since been changed.
Not long before her passing at age twenty-nine on January 30, 1926, Barbara La Marr, one of Hollywood’s most infamous, misunderstood screen sirens, asked writer Jim Tully, “Some day, Jim, will you write about me—and tell them that I wasn’t everything I played on the screen?” To those who loved Barbara, she was far more than the debauched women she played, her demons, and the shocking headlines she spawned. Ramon Novarro, famed Latin lover of the silent screen and Barbara’s friend and costar in three of her films, found in her a sincerity, humility, and “kindness that made her lovable.” Actress Alice Terry, Barbara’s Prisoner of Zenda (1922) costar, affirmed, “[Barbara] was as lovely in her personality as she was in her ravishing looks…She was very big-hearted and generous and loved to please people.” Writer Willis Goldbeck was said to believe Barbara’s virtues to be “of the mind and spirit,” and that her weaknesses were “all of the flesh.”
This interesting piece was sent to me by cartoonist Bruce Yurgil after he discovered it in The Funnies #11, a 1937 comic book that features newspaper strips. (The piece originally ran in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on December 21, 1935.)
While the number of times Barbara read the Bible is not readily known, she was deeply religious. She received some of her childhood education in convents. As an adult, her religious inclinations ran the gamut from Catholicism to Christian Science, and it was said that her fervent interest in spirituality led her to explore (in addition to the Bible) the Koran, Confucianism, Buddhism, and the philosophical writings of Rabindranath Tagore. Highly intelligent, Barbara proclaimed that she “read omnivorously” and preferred books to any other type of company. Since she furthermore considered becoming a nun at different times in her life, she likely knew the Bible well enough to speak with some authority on it.
Barbara La Marr considered writer, director, and producer Paul Bern among her closest friends and confidants. Deeply in love with Barbara, Paul assisted her with her career, sought to protect her during her oftentimes turbulent love affairs, and helped her with her medical and funeral expenses after she contracted pulmonary tuberculosis and nephritis. “No one is really poor who can boast the friendship of Paul Bern,” Barbara stated before her passing.
In an encore appearance on David A. Health’s Cinema Chat podcast (beginning shortly after 51:00), I discuss Barbara and Paul’s relationship. The first part of the podcast features Laura Riebman, Paul’s great-niece, discussing Paul’s influential role in early Hollywood, his marriage to platinum bombshell Jean Harlow, the impact his sensational death had upon her family, and her efforts to commemorate Paul’s professional achievements with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. The podcast may be accessed here.
(My Barbara La Marr Cinema Chat podcast may be found here. I discuss Barbara’s turbulent teenage years; her many matrimonial ventures; her accomplished careers as a stock theater actress, dancer, vaudevillian, and Fox Film Corporation story writer; her ascension to worldwide fame as one of the silent screen’s leading actresses; and more.)
Barbara (on right) and Doris Pawn, her costar in The Hero (1923), decorate a Christmas tree for children in a photo published in the December 5, 1924, issue of Picture Show magazine.
Thank you to Kevin John Charbeneau for sharing this photo with me.
Many thanks to writer Dixie Laite, mayor at Dametown, for reading my book and spotlighting Barbara in Dametown’s Hall of Dame. Dixie writes, “Get ahold of Sherri Snyder’s definitive biography, Barbara La Marr: The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful for Hollywood. Sherri has the intelligence, insight and sensitivity to get Barbara’s complexity.” Dixie’s Barbara La Marr post may be read here. Be sure to check out Dixie’s many other fascinating posts as well!