Estelle Taylor — The Delaware Delilah (1930) 🇺🇸
Estelle Taylor, was in New York, taking a fling at vaudeville. She was appearing at 3:05 p. m., so at 3:04 I bought a ticket and found my way into the dim reaches of the theater.
by Malcolm H. Oettinger
An impressive silver curtain served as background for a less impressive pianist who busily sang about movie stars in general, and, in due course, Estelle Taylor in particular. There was a dramatic pause, a resounding chord, and a spotlight pointed upstage, center. Then Estelle appeared, as advertised. "In person."
However vast your experience among stellar bodies has been, Estelle, in person, is something to write home about. The Taylor figure is little short of spectacular, and some canny fellow had designed a gown that emphasized every eloquent point.
As I recall the proceedings, Estelle sang a song or two that didn't matter tremendously, retiring to change to a second gown, undoubtedly designed by the same canny fellow, that served as an overwhelming setting for the succeeding two songs. Then the act was over, with a great burst of applause, and I was on my way back to the stage door.
On the way I remarked that there had been no cooing about Hollywood and her fan public, no mention of Jack Dempsey, who is, in Hollywood, "Mr." Estelle Taylor, no attempt to be other than what she was — a movie star on vacation, making it pay.
Backstage I climbed a flight of iron steps to the headliner's suite. Vaudeville has changed. Dressing rooms have become suites. The old idea of a chair and a trunk has given way to a wicker settee, a couple of rockers, a chaise longue, and, wonder of wonders, a bath.
"Sit here and talk," said Estelle. "because this is a fireman's job; I do my act every hour. Sometimes oftener. Whenever somebody raps on the door I'm all ready to jump out on the stage and do my stuff."
The time-table showed, however, that Estelle had a two-hour respite, to say nothing of a gasoline brougham below. So we started for a cozy haven in the fertile Fifties.
There is something very genuine about this Wilmington, Delaware girl. She talks in short sentences and sounds sincere. There are no circumlocutions, no elaborate euphemisms; when something deserves a terse epithet that is precisely what it gets.
Regarding herself, she harbors no illusions. In front of the camera she is sure of her ground; on the Vaudeville platform she knows that she is a novice. Not long ago she essayed a part opposite her husband in something articulate, The Big Fight. When it opened in Philadelphia she invited a few friends from New York, saying, "The most that I can hope for is that I won't make myself ridiculous." Parenthetically, it may be added that she did not, nor did she carry the affair to success; Katharine Cornell and Alfred Lunt could not have saved that particular play.
The last time I had seen Estelle Taylor was years ago, when she was starting a purple career as the dynamic lady in "While New York Sleeps," a Fox melodrama that was something of a classic. That was in the days when Mae Murray was still the blondest ingénue in captivity, when Pearl White was attempting drama rather unsuccessfully following her triumphs as Pauline, when Louise Glaum was the grand old vampire of the screen, and some idler named DeForest had tried to show a picture that was synchronized with a phonograph record. Before any one begins to think that all this would date Estelle Taylor as one of the original Florodora sextet. Let it be said that she was barely out of her teens, trying Fox immediately after an inconspicuous Broadway debut in a play that failed to run three weeks. If I felt statistical I would be inclined to guess Estelle just this side of thirty. She doesn't look more than twenty-six.
Her face is a background for her eyes, still the most memorable pair the films have to offer. They are abnormally large and round, without being at all ingenuous, and they carry a dangerously high voltage. The Taylor mouth is not to be omitted by the snapshot reporter, either, representing, as it does, a symposium of the seductive mouths in history.
Without sinking to bald repetition, let me say that from the head down one could easily wax eloquent. The Taylor figure, I repeat, is spectacular. Proof of this statement may be found in the fact that she looked just as arresting in a sports costume as she did in her revelatory stage dresses.
The years, as the phrase goes, had wrought little change. In the Fox factory on Tenth Avenue I had been impressed by the Taylor eyes, the Taylor lines, the Taylor frankness. In the grilled basement of a brownstone front off Madison Avenue, I was again impressed by the same details. Added was a definite poise, a sureness gained by success.
Estelle Taylor was a memorable Lucrezia Borgia, in the Barrymore idea of "Don Juan." In Where East Is East, she achieved a genuine characterization. In minor pictures she has always served to vitalize the action, to lend a glow to the drama. It is this quality that makes her a fascinating personality. She has drive and gusto and that esoteric essence that I choose to call wallop.
It has been a source of conjecture why she works so seldom, why she has encountered so few opportunities to act in good pictures. "There are two reasons," she advanced. "First, I must be cast in heavy, or unsympathetic roles. I don't look innocent and girlish enough to be the heroine, thank God, so I am considered only for wanton women. Second, and more important, when I do get such a role I register too strongly, unbalancing the picture. So there you are. And here am I — bro-ken-hear-ted, practically.
"There aren't many stories written around the bad girls. After The Shanghai Gesture, what would you mention? And Will Hays wouldn't care for that."
Moreover, one might add, stars do not like the heavy to walk away with the picture. This very fact made stars of George Bancroft and William Powell, two evil fellows who made wickedness so appealing.
"I tried virtue once," said Estelle, with a wry grimace. "When we played 'The Big Fight.' I was a good girl in that. And it was a very bad play. And may such a thing never, never happen again. Of course the idea was silly. Jack Dempsey is a personality and I am an actress. Putting us on the same stage was ridiculous. Some one had an idea it would be highly lucrative, and I think they went bankrupt trying to prove the theory."
Estelle is not an idealist, nor a dreamer. She is a practical young woman with excellent sense. Her throaty voice lifts her utterances above the matter-of-fact, but sober reflection brings realization that they are matter-of-fact, after all. She is not witty in her conversation, but she is never dull. And her magnetism compares not unfavorably with that of Greta Garbo.
Second only to Garbo is Taylor as a screen siren. There is no one in Hollywood who ranks with this devastating duo. They are smoldering sisters in cinematic sin. The Scandinavian flame and the Delaware Delilah combine to make a bonfire of no mean proportions.
"You've met Lupe Velez, haven't you?" asked Estelle. "I can see by your expression that you didn't like her. Well, she's a definite creature, and you either think she's amazing, or else — in Where East Is East we had fun. I played her stepmother, you know. A droll idea. She's irresponsible, irrepressible, but delightful when you know her."
Talking about Lupe led us to speak of publicity, good and bad. Estelle said that she thought it a distinctly overrated institution, which it undoubtedly is. "Do a couple of good pictures every year and you will be remembered," said Estelle sagely. "Going to premieres, making radio speeches and indorsing hair oil won't help any career.
"Right now I'm eager to bid farewell to vaudeville and its continuous performances. I want to go back to Hollywood and do a talkie."
John Barrymore and others have said that Estelle Taylor is capable of doing important things on the screen. They are justified in making such a statement. The screen can boast of only a handful of colorful personalities, and the lovely Estelle is among them. Ask me and I will say that she is one of the three most colorful!
Estelle Taylor looks just as arresting in a simple frock as she does on the opposite page.
Photo by: White
Estelle Taylor is one of the three most colorful personalities encountered in ten years of interviewing, says Malcolm H. Oettinger on the opposite page. But take it from us, she is really more than that, as you will discover for yourself.
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, July 1930 🇺🇸