Laura La Plante — A New Ingénue Star (1924) 🇺🇸

“There isn’t much to tell,” Laura La Plante, the newest Universal star, begins the tale of her life and proceeds to consume in the telling two hours and one box of chocolates, weaving into her story all those little happenings so important to each of us, giving it an individual charm which belies its commonplaceness.

But after all, hers is similar to the history of many movie girls. An ordinary childhood in an ordinary San Diego home, knowing not the pinch of actual poverty but many little economies. A visit to cousin Violet in Los Angeles four years ago suggested the possibility of movie-extra work to help buy clothes for the following year of high school.

“Can’t say I had any ideas of self-expression.” Laura is quite candid. “Didn’t think I could act. Didn’t think much about anything, except I would like to make some money.

“Violet lived next door to a director, so we went over to see him, scared half to death. He looked me over and shook his head. Too awkward, too plump — hair just plain yellow and not even curly! But I kept pestering and finally he sent me over to Christie’s [Al Christie] and they gave me extra work and ‘bits,’ on a guarantee of four days a week at five dollars per. Then I got the daughter part in ‘Bringing Up Father,’ the Jiggs comedy — and fifty dollars a week. Also the big head.

“But none of it lasted, as they discontinued the series after three pictures. Following a rôle at Ince [Thomas H. Ince], I played the second lead with Charles Ray in The Old Swimmin’ Hole — and got one hundred and twenty-five dollars a week!” Laura is a matter-of-fact little soul. “I persuaded mother we needed the money more than I needed any more high school, so she and my sister moved here and I played ‘young heavies,’ crook accomplices, and leads in serials.”

As a reward for her work with Reginald Denny in Sporting Youth, they crowned Laura’s fair head with stardom in program pictures. In the first, “Excitement,” she plays a rather too peppy, jazzy, flirtatious young creature, written for her predecessor, Gladys Walton, but the rôle promised her in her second, “An Old Man’s Darling,” is more of her type — not quite so hard boiled.

Laura’s charm lies in her freshness, her naïveté. Though nineteen, she’s still pretty much a kid, proud as can be of the way she is taking care of her mother and sister, bubbling with excitement over trifles, getting a great thrill out of every moment.

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Photo by: Roman Freulich (1898–1974)

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, June 1924