What Ever Became of them…? (1933) 🇺🇸
When this series of articles of articles first started we asked that the readers of Modern Screen write to ask us whatever became of their favorites. And whew! What a deluge of letters!
by Katherine Albert
In spite of the Connie Bennetts, Joan Crawfords, Garbos and Dietrichs [Constance Bennett, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich], people are still interested in the old favorites and I have so many requests that I’d never be able to answer them all month by month so I’m going to take merely the most recurrent names and tell you what these old timers are up to now. Okay?
When Agnes Ayres played opposite Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik she was certainly one of the most beautiful girls ever to flash across a silver screen. Her career was fairly long — measured in cinema time — and successful. And then the inevitable happened, new faces came along, producers were looking far afield and Agnes, with dozens of others, dropped out of pictures.
She had married, if you remember, a handsome foreigner, Manuel Raechi, and they had a little daughter. But there was a divorce and Agnes, when she set out to try her luck in New York, left her child in her mother’s care. She has made some vaudeville tours, done a little radio work and managed to keep her head well above water. She is living not at the Ritz, the Waldorf nor the Ambassador where the glittering stars of today stop, but at a small yet exclusive hotel in New York.
But here’s the amazing part — she is just as beautiful today, even more so, I think, than she was when the romantic Valentino was sweeping her across a movie desert.
Funny thing — I thought that everybody knew what had become of Theda Bara but there are many requests for her so here goes. And there’s a nice little story about Theda, too.
Not so long ago some news reel concern went to her home to take pictures of the once exotic siren. They knew the sort of life she was leading — a very normal, average life — married to director Charles Brabin; being just like any other wealthy, social matron; attending the opera; entertaining and being entertained by her friends — among whom are Los Angeles’ social elite; taking an interest in her home and gardens — nothing at all like the spectacular vampire who twisted her hair around her neck and told interviewers that she had been born in the shadow of the Sphinx.
Such is Theda Bara today and thus the newsreel people hoped to show her, but no — when she heard the purr of the camera she became the woman she had been. Dressed in as exotic a gown as her present wardrobe commanded she was Theda Bara again — the Theda Bara of Cleopatra, “Lady Audry’s Secret” and “Wormwood” — the posturing, slithering queen of another era in pictures. She really has no longer any desire to return to the screen but she could not resist the old lure of the camera — even if it were only the news reel variety.
Apparently plenty of people remember Raymond Griffith — the light comedian of the silk hat. But lots of folk seem to have forgotten that he has been seen as late as All Quiet on the Western Front. Although Ray had had trouble with the producing of his pictures before talkies came and was almost in retirement at the time he knew that he could never be a talking picture actor because he is unable to speak above a whisper.
Sensitive about this defect, he has never, himself, told anyone how his voice happens to be as it is. Friends of his family have rumored that it was brought on by a spell of typhoid fever — but no one really knows. Therefore, when he saw that there was a magnificent bit in All Quiet — a Frenchman in a shell hole so badly wounded that he could not speak, Raymond begged to play it — offering to do it for nothing to be back in the studio atmosphere again.
He did the bit — the studio paid him for it, of course — and it turned out to be a magnificent piece of tragic acting.
Until a recent studio shake-up left Warner Brothers topsy-turvy he has been a writer and supervisor there and very successful, too. The men stars, as a matter of fact, fare better when their race is run than do the women. The men, as a rule, can turn to some other studio job. The women either can’t or won’t. Now Raymond has become production official of the new Twentieth Century Pictures Company, headed by Joseph Schenck and Darryl Zanuck [Joseph M. Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck].
And some of the stories about the women would break your heart — stories too cruel to tell. Many of those you have asked to know about must be left out of this article.
Not so long ago a studio official was entertaining some out-of-town theatre owners. A group of girls was called in to dine and dance with the men — to be female gigolos, in fact — paid to smile, to dance, to make themselves amusing and called for this purpose, as one would call for a bootlegger’s wine list.
When the poor, tawdry little girls filed in the official was amazed to see among them a former star whose name had once shone from the theatre marquees that the men being entertained had owned; whose salary had once been enormous and whose beauty great. She was still proud, still held her head high and when he offered to “lend” her some money and send her away she shook her head. She would earn enough she said, the only way she knew how. Of course, I cannot tell you her name although you remember it well. Poor profligate, thoughtless girl — she was always too generous when she had money.
The Motion Picture Relief Fund’s account books could tell many a sad story. A former screen siren, almost as great, in her day, as Theda Bara, is being cared for by this Hollywood charity organization, as are many, many others. But this is a gallant group and those in charge of the disposition of the funds never reveal the names — except to the board of directors — of those being cared for.
Marguerite Clark has had a happier time of it. She is married and living in Louisiana with her husband, a social registerite of New Orleans — a wealthy and respected citizen. When he first married her his friends, in that closely knit Southern society, did not know whether they would admit an actress into this group or not. But cute little Marguerite did not try to force her way in. She made no effort — other than the necessary gestures courtesy demands — to “crash” New Orleans society. As a result, they came to her. She is now definitely “taken up” and a part of the inner of inners.
Betty Blythe has not fared quite so well, until recently. She has been living on the outskirts of Hollywood playing, whenever an opportunity came her way, very small bits and sometimes no more than extra parts. Recently she has had a few fairly good roles and she is ardently hoping for a come-back.
Carmel Myers is married to a wealthy lawyer and is the mother of a grand baby. She is very contented with her life. That goes for Bessie Love, too.
In New York you’ll discover some of your old screen favorites on the stage — Dorothy Gish (and Lillian, too, of course [Lillian Gish]), Madge Kennedy, Nazimova [Alla Nazimova].
Evelyn Brent is touring in vaudeville. Aileen Pringle is still in her Santa Monica home working at the studios when opportunity presents itself.
Katharine MacDonald [Katherine MacDonald] has lent her name to a successful beauty business and gets into headlines occasionally when she has intermittent trouble with her husband.
Mary McLaren [Mary MacLaren], Katharine MacDonald’s sister, has had a very tough break — no money, no jobs. But Esther Ralston, when her beauty shop failed, went to England and returned triumphant to Hollywood with work in a British picture, “Rome Express,” to her credit. And little Jackie Coogan — imagine calling a seventeen-year-old youngster an old timer — is in his second year in a California college.
There — I think that covers the most persistent requests except those whose names I can’t mention — those stars who are still so proud that they could not bear to have the fans who once loved them know that they are living in poverty — or worse, dependent upon charity.
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Collection: Modern Screen Magazine, August 1933
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- 1933–04: Conway Tearle
- 1933–05: Francis X. Bushman
- 1933–06: Viola Dana
- 1933–07: Anita Stewart
- 1933–08: Agnes Ayres, Theda Bara and others