Kathleen Key — Little Sister to Lucrezia Borgia (1928) 🇺🇸
As the First Lady of the Movietone, Kathleen Key was bound to be interesting. Even if Movietone had never been invented, Kathleen would still be interesting. But that point will be reached with proper regard for coherent climax.
by Malcolm H. Oettinger
In Hollywood she was a hit in The Family Picnic on the same program with her fellow countryman, Mr. Bernard Shaw — such a hit, indeed, that the astute Mr. Fox shipped her East to make a personal appearance with the picture when it opened on Broadway.
Thus she was in New York, and not unhappy at the thought. There were the lions at the Public Library to be fed, trolling at the Aquarium, and seeing Grant’s Tomb again. Good old Grant! It had been years, it seems, since Manhattan had swum into her ken, and her ken enjoyed nothing better.
Miss Key, who is one of the six most pictorial brunettes in Hollywood — or out, for that matter — received me calmly, but cordially, in her suite at one of the unostentatiously elegant apartment hotels abutting Central Park.
“The last time I was in this great metropolis,” she said, “I was on my way home from a two-year party with Ben-Hur. Surely you, as an expert, will remember that Ben-Hur was a picture with a chariot race, a galley scene, and a few thousand actors who were eventually discovered on the cutting-room floor. But it was a swell trip. You see, I went for the ride.” She paused to light a cigarette. “Artistically speaking, I had to walk back. My part was a shadow in the final filming.”
The Key beauty is of high sex-voltage, reminding one of a youthful fusion of Alma Rubens and Evelyn Brent. As a result, producers have seen fit consistently to deploy her for ingenues. If these forward-looking gentlemen will pardon my pointing, it will be noted that the Key talents would gleam most successfully in a torrid, sultry role. This, at least, is the wide-eyed suspicion of one who has enjoyed looking at her for an hour, without let or hindrance. The Key eyes are large and melting, the Key nose pointed and sensitive, the Key lips artfully curved and prettily tinted. Here is a subject for the spectacular Mr. Zuloaga, in one of his most riotously colorful moods. Here is a black-haired, brown-eyed beauty, lush, dominant, intriguing. A Ziegfeld graduate at Sforza Castella. Circe’s daughter at the age of twenty. A little sister to Lucrezia Borgia.
Whether she admits it or not, Kate Key must spring from the bold, bad Borgias. Her extravagant, renaissance beauty is decidedly suggestive of the wicked Lucrezia, although her sparkling wit is of the variety most often associated with the Irish. Kate is Irish, she will tell you. But she is not for Smith. As a native daughter of California, she is all Hoover, and militant about it.
Speaking, as we just were, of native daughters, Mrs. Key’s daughter is one of the few luminaries in Hollywood who boasts a California birth. Before she was out of high school she was in films, making an auspicious debut in The Three Musketeers, in which she played A Frightened Peasant; and had a delightful time in the company of the Messrs. Fairbanks, Niblo, and Menjou [Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Fred Niblo, Adolphe Menjou], then just climbing the ladder.
Following extra bits in a few other productions, Kate did a very artistic and equally unsuccessful picture for Ferdinand Pinney Earle. The best part of that venture, according to the enthusiastic Miss Key, was the leading man, one Ramon Novarro. The name is familiar to most readers of the magazines of the celluloid spaces. In addition to acting, it seems Mr. Novarro played the guitar, told funny stories, and sang sad songs.
“I’d love to be original,” said Kate, “knowing how you admire originality, but New York is so warm. It melts one’s best intentions.”
I agreed, and ordered a slab of ice flanked with limes, grenadine, and seltzer. It was high time we went to work. Duty was duty, even on a muggy afternoon. What of Movietone, I demanded, and how does it differ from movies without tone?
“Well,” said Kate judicially, “there is much to be said on both sides. But all I can tell you is the actor’s viewpoint.
“Movietone is worrying the stars. The rest of the actors in Hollywood couldn’t be any more worried than they usually are. But stars realize that they will not be able to get by on a swell profile and a shapely pair of steins. They’ll have to talk, and talk well.
“It will be great for stage-wise people whose voices register, and not so hot for others. It may not last, but if it does I think you’ll see a new set of favorites, who will have to sound as good as they look. Actors like Lionel Barrymore, and Conrad Nagel will be sitting pretty. Others will be sitting —
“Since you ask me, my voice registers pretty well, too. At least, the critics say so. And God bless the critics when they’re for you! I mean, I suppose I should send them loving cups.”
Reproducing the Key conversation is at once an arduous and baffling task. She has the same iridescent, elusive wit that characterizes Nita Naldi, Will Rogers, and other quick thinkers of history. She is a satirical child with a sane outlook on pictures and a canny sense of humor. She is one of the popular people on the Coast, admired most by people with sufficient intelligence to appreciate her. In this respect she is not unlike Aileen Pringle, pet of the literate minority.
“Making Movietone was totally unlike making a regular movie,” said Kate. “And paradoxically enough, talkies must be made more quietly than noiseless movies, if you follow me. If you don’t, take a running jump. Listen closely, and I will explain how the leopard got his spots.”
She sketched rapidly on a piece of paper, talking very rapidly at the same time.
“You work in a boxed-in set like this, lined with deadening felt. The set is lined, not you. Microphones are hung directly over or near the camera, which shoots through a hole, so that the clicking is not registered on the film. You see, Vitaphone records on a synchronized record, while Movietone records the sound right on the film simultaneously with the picture.
“The director must do all his talking before he shoots, because every sound is recorded. Arm waving and sign language are permissible, but hardly helpful. If a scene is interrupted, it must be repeated from the start, because the dialogue is continuous, as on the stage. Parts must be memorized and cues must be picked up.
“Kleig lights aren’t used, because the sputter would be caught on the film. Outdoors it is even more difficult to work with Movietone. Shouts of children playing may break into your filming. Or the clatter of horses’ hoofs. Or a mailman’s whistle.
“When we were doing The Family Picnic, which was the first Movietone comedy, we had all sorts of odd experiences with the sound end of it. Once we had to stop because an airplane buzzed by overhead. Again, the detector caught the hum of a high-tension wire near by. We couldn’t hear it, but on the truck carrying the equipment sits a man at a receiving board, with earphones that pick up the slightest interruption.”
From Movietone our talk meandered to other fields, and the Key tastes proved to be widely varied. Kathleen enjoys Italian sunsets, Hearst newspapers, chicken chowmein, acting opposite Ramon Novarro, and watching Ann Pennington dance the Black Bottom. She likes fishnet stockings, week-ends in the country, the Biltmore orchestra, Movietone, iced coffee, hot tamales, and Irishmen. She dislikes warm cantaloupe, affectation, horse cars, off-key singing and cassowaries. She has never seen a cassowary, but she is very sure she wouldn’t care for one.
She is brutal in her frankness, honest as a Fairbanks scale, and open-faced as an Ingersoll. She is one of California’s gifts to the tinned-drama industry, otherwise known as motion pictures.
Some day Mr. Vidor, or Mr. von Sternberg, or Mr. Curtiz [King Vidor, Josef von Sternberg, Michael Curtiz] will get hold of Kathleen Key and transfer her rich, dramatic beauty to the silver sheet. Then you will see as sparkling a star as ever shone from Hollywood.
Kathleen Key, a black-haired, brown-eyed beauty, lush, dominant, intriguing.
Photo by: Lansing Brown (1900–1962)
Kathleen Key has a vivid, extravagant, renaissance beauty that is suggestive of the bold, bad Borgias; but her wit is of the sparkling, audacious variety distinctly associated with the Irish,” says Malcolm H. Oettinger, whose interview opposite throws new light on the timely subject of a player’s experiences with talking pictures.
Photo by: Lansing Brown (1900–1962)
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, November 1928
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