What ever became of Anita Stewart? (1933) 🇺🇸

September 21, 2024

She is one of the few ex-stars who isn’t yearning to come back There’s a reason for that

by Katherine Albert

When I first started to write this series about the former favorites the editor of Modern Screen said to me, “Where are you going to find all these people? They must be scattered all over the face of the world.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “I’ll wager that ninety percent of them are right in Hollywood, hoping and praying that they’ll get back in pictures.”

So far this has proven true. But in the case of Anita Stewart it’s half right and half wrong. She’s in Hollywood, but she’s not hoping and praying that she’ll get back in pictures. For Anita is doing fine, and — what’s more — she’s happy.

Most of them aren’t. Most of them are sad and broke and gallantly pitiful as they tell their friends that they’re going in a big picture “a week from Wednesday.”

With Anita it’s different.

True, she has had her heartaches but they’re not the heartaches of a lost career — not now. Remember when Anita was the brightest star in the Louis B. Mayer sky? Remember when her salary was $7,000 a week, at that time an unheard of sum? Remember her brilliant marriage to Rudy Cameron? And then the inevitable divorce? Then, suddenly, you stopped seeing Anita Stewart pictures and Louis. B. Mayer, her producer, was concerned with the famous Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer merger and devoting his time to the building up of new stars.

What happened was the inevitable. Anita had served her usefulness on the screen. Her course was run. She had lasted longer than most and public interest waned. It’s the same story. It happens every day in Hollywood.

But this waning in public interest, this persistent knowledge that perhaps the career game is up, devastates most stars. It did not devastate Anita because something more important and more heart-breaking than failing popularity came to occupy all her thought and take all her energy.

Her brother, whom she loves with a beautiful and tender devotion, became seriously ill. The state of his health took all of Anita’s time and attention. For awhile she tried to nurse him herself and then she saw that he needed expert care as much as he needed her sisterly devotion. She sent him to the best sanatarium that money could secure but she could not bear to send him too far away. He was — and is — close enough for her to visit him and cheer his days.

He has been ill for years. He still is, but never once during those years has Anita’s devotion and loyalty waned. And, knowing how much of her heart is with him, the first question her friends ask her is, “And how is your brother?” And Anita’s answer is always the same, “His health is not improved — but he, he is so cheerful and bright and so really wonderful.”

So that was the cross Anita had to bear and that is why, with this to occupy her, her picture career was a small and puny worry. It is a tragic thing that her brother must be ill and yet that was the very thing that kept Anita from brooding over her career and becoming as pitiful as other stars, contemporaries of hers, who are no longer popular.

For, with the exception of the grief she feels over her brother, she is as happy as any prosperous youngish matron in any town in the world. Several years ago she married George Converse, a tall blond man with a powerful physique as well as charm and distinction of manner. His family are wealthy and cultured people and Converse, in his own right, is well-to-do. Their wedding was a simple and charming ceremony performed in the lovely patio garden of the Chateau Élysée. And upon that day Anita looked more lovely than she had looked even when she was at the height of her picture career. That was because she was so happy and so very much in love.

From then on her life had flowed like a quiet smooth stream. She stays in Hollywood for two reasons — first to be near her brother and second because it is her home and all her friends are there. You will see her lunching with her friends — mostly the stars of her own movie era but often the newer players as well — in all of the smart restaurants of Hollywood. She is often in Sardi’s, often in the Brown Derby at lunch time.

She and her husband live in a charming apartment and their small dinners are dignified, discreet and delightful. She likes the social side of life, enjoys bridge with her girl friends, and the theatre and concerts with her husband. She lives, in short, the average and nicely balanced life of a well-to-do society woman anywhere. If you did not recognize her and met her at some nonprofessional gathering you would not know that she had ever been an actress.

And I doubt very much, vivid as your memory of her may be, that you would recognize her. Instead of the black hair that distinguished her when she was a star, her hair is now a light auburn — and very becoming.

She dresses beautifully and is, I think, better looking than she has ever been. Besides her social duties she has, during the last year, been writing her memoirs.

Now I wouldn’t say that if a screen role were offered Anita on a silver platter she would refuse it. The lure of greasepaint and spotlight is strong and when once the purr of the camera has been heard it is like a siren song, but, unless she had a sudden financial misfortune, I believe that Anita would not seek a job.

She is one of the lucky few. She is one of the stars who has retired gracefully — and that group is so pathetically small. She is living a nice, average life with a charming husband and among her old friends who, unlike her once ardent public, have not forgotten her.

Anita’s story is different from the rest. There would not be so much heartache in Hollywood if more were as fortunate and as happily adjusted as she.