What ever became of Viola Dana? (1933) 🇺🇸

September 21, 2024

Remember how cute Viola was in her stardom days!

by Katherine Albert

I have a picture of Viola Dana in my mind’s eye that I can never forget. I can see her on the old Metro lot standing like some mischievous gamine on a little rustic bridge in the studio garden, waving a bright handkerchief to an airplane whirring all too close to her.

Those were the days when Viola was at the height of success and happiness. She was madly in love with Lieut. Locklear — the Lindbergh of his day — and she was a great star.

Locklear used to fly over the studio, dipping his plane so low that the wheels would touch the top of the stages — much to the terror of the actors and to the delight of Viola.

She was always a madcap in those days — but a true artiste in her intense, vital way. Locklear, as you know, was killed while stunt flying at night. He apparently mistook the fireworks sent up around his plane for ground lights and flew downwards instead of upwards, crashing into the earth.

It was a heart breaking time for Viola, but she went on with her career.

When her grief was at last over, she fell in love with Lefty Flynn. Her marriage to him was a real Hollywood romance, but one — like everything in Viola’s life, it seems — to be touched by tragedy.

You know, of course, the one time great football player’s weakness. To put it tactfully, he looked too long upon the wine when it was red — except that he didn’t content himself with just looking and he liked harder stuff than wine.

Viola loved Lefty — there’s no doubt about that and he loved her — but only a woman who has been married to a man like him can know what Viola suffered. The sound of his voice on the telephone (would it be, husky or clear?). His step on the front porch (would it be firm or faltering?). Her plans for the evening (would he be “himself” enough to take her to the theater party or dinner party, or would she be sitting at the telephone calling all his friends with whom he might be?).

What those months cost Viola only she, herself, knows. There was no way for it to end, of course, but in the divorce courts.

Her career, although not so poignantly personal, of course, was no less tragic.

She was, remember, a great star. Once, on a personal appearance tour, her triumphs were sung all the way across the country. All the fanfare and ballyhoo that would accompany a Constance Bennett or a Joan Crawford or a like occasion today were hers.

The theater entrances were mobbed. Crowds stood around her hotel doors.

The money from her pictures filled the coffers of the producers for whom she worked and then a circumstance occurred that was to be the downfall of so many well known stars.

Three great studios merged — Metro, Goldwyn and Mayer. Today it is one of the biggest studios — M-G-M — but at the time of the merger when the contract stars and players were taken over by the new formed company, only a few of the old Metro stars survived.

Ramon Novarro was one of these, but Viola had had her big day as a star, new faces were appearing on the screen and somewhere in the shuffle of that merger, she was forgotten.

She did the usual things — things that all waning stars do. Played vaudeville, took lesser parts with smaller companies, told her friends she was “just between pictures” but was expecting a marvelous new contract.

Like all the players of that day she had been improvident. Those were lean years after she was dropped from the regular payroll of a big studio. The years were unhappy ones, too, for Viola wanted to work.

It was not entirely pride that kept her trying to get jobs, nor was it entirely the need of money. It was more than that — it was her eagerness to give to the screen the vitality and charm that she had to give.

But as she saw herself becoming more and more a “hanger-on” and when she walked up Hollywood Boulevard to find herself unrecognized — while newer people were being asked for autographs — she knew that she could not stand it any longer, so she left the town that had witnessed her glories, her happiest and also her saddest years. And now she was entirely forgotten, except by a few old friends.

And then an obscure item in the papers announced that Viola Dana, “former famous motion picture star,” had married Jimmy Thompson, a Colorado Springs golf professional.

Word came to Hollywood that little Viola was happy at last and those who remembered and loved her read bits of her letters to each other.

She wrote that she was perfectly happy — that she was as domestic as a fireside cat, loved cooking and housekeeping and that her husband was a darling.

Remembering Viola’s gay days of dancing until the band went home at the old Sunset Inn, her friends wondered at her change but were glad she had found peace.

She liked Colorado Springs, she wrote, and had no longer any desire to be in pictures.

But suddenly she and Thompson arrived in Hollywood. The call of the cinema had been too strong for Viola. She, like so many, many others, having tasted the fruits of success and stardom, having once smelled greasepaint and felt the hot white glow of the spotlight, could resist it no longer.

For a while they had a bad time in Hollywood. Thompson found that the professional positions at the golf clubs were pretty well filled. Viola tried to get back in pictures and discovered that it was the same old heart-breaking task. But she was happier in Hollywood than in Colorado Springs — despite her cheerful letters.

Thompson at last found work at a Long Beach golf club. Viola has done a little work in Columbia shorts and she is just as ambitious as she ever was.

She goes to previews with her old friends and as she watches the new pictures unfold before her she says, “I can’t understand why I don’t get a good part. I know I could do as well as that girl!” The funny part about it is that she could!

They are never completely happy — these women who have had stardom and lost it. But Viola is as happy as can be expected. She and Thompson lead a quiet enough life. She has not forgotten the domesticity she learned to like in Colorado Springs. She works occasionally. In small pictures, to be sure, but still, in pictures.

She is at least breathing the same air she breathed when she was a great star!

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Remember how cute Viola was in her stardom days! At the left you see her in a recent Columbia short called “The Case of Poison Ivy.” She used to be one of the biggest stars!