Born Today May 21: Lola Lane (Not So Silent Edition)

1906-1981

American singer, actress and member of the Lane Sisters, Lola Lane was born on this day in Macy, Indiana.  Her birth name was Dorothy Mullican.  She was the second eldest of the Lane Sisters.  In all there were five sisters, but one--Martha--did not enter show business.  Their father was a doctor, and the family grew up in Indianola, Indiana.  Her first job that had anything to do show business, was a job playing piano in the local silent film house.  She was then sent to Des Moines to study music at Simpson College, but was expelled for cutting classes--this was fine with her, as she had not wanted to go in the first place.  There are two versions of what happened next, so there is no need to speculate; suffice to say that somehow she and her older sister wound up in New York.  Still using her birth name, she was given a $450 a week vaudeville contract there.  It was at this time that she and her sisters decided to change their surname to "Lane," and the Lane Sisters were born. Not liking her first name, she chose to change that as well. She then went a the tour circuit with Gus Edwards "Ritz Carlton Nights" and made her Broadway debut in 1928.  She caught the attention of film director Benjamin Stoloff and he gave her a part in his up coming talkie Speakeasy (1929) [yet another lost film :-(].  She would appear in two more films in 1929, both of them talkies.  The first of these was a exhibition reel from Fox to taut the MovieTone sound system that they had decided would be there choice for bringing full sound to their films:  Fox Movietone Follies Of 1929 is unfortunately also lost.  She next appeared in another Stoloff film The Girl From Havana, which is, you guessed, another lost film. All of these were victims of the tragic 1937 Fox film vault fire.  The first film that she had a role in that is not lost is The Big Fight (1930).  Though not as famous as an actress as a couple of her other sisters, Lola did, none the less, have steady work in films until she decided to retire in 1946.  The last film she appeared in was They Made Me A Killer (1946).  Lola Lane died of arterial disease at the age of 75 in Santa Barbara, Ca. on the 22 of June 1981.  She is buried there in Calvary Cemetery, along with her 5th husband of many years under her married name Lola Hanlon.

For More:

IMDb

The Lane Sisters (Wikipedia)

Leave Virtual Flowers @ Find A Grave

The Next Studio Innovation: Glass Ceilings

Interior of a very early glass ceiling studio

When you need lighting--what better way to get it than from the sun?  While the very first studio, Edison's Black Maria, was covered completely in tar paper and had more in common with early photographic rooms in the 1830's than it did with what we would think of as a film production studio, it quickly became clear (literally) that as films got longer in length, a better source of lighting was required and artificial light was not really an option given the technology of the day (the Black Maria did actually have a roof that could be opened to the sun).  Glass ceilings were the solution.  As they evolved some studios were eventually made entirely of glass plates. And thus became known as "greenhouse studios."

Back lot of a studio in Fort Lee NJ after 1915.  Not the multiple large glass plated buildings.

As the studio systems and company began their permanent westward migration out to California, many of these massive structures left behind on the east coast were then converted into storage space for early films (note:  early Hollywood had some glass paneled studios of their own in the early days).  This proved to be disastrous for FOX, when in 1937 the nitrate film stored a New Jersey facility spontaneously caught fire and burned almost the entire FOX silent catalog (almost all of Theda Bara vamp films for them went up in flames), the fire also claimed the life of one person, and severely injured two more (anyone who has seen Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, is familiar with the extreme flammability of nitrate film!).

Kinda Spooky!  The very first Universal studio under construction on Main Street in Fort Lee, NJ.  It's easy to see where the glass paneling is meant to go.