Born Today November 4: Will Rogers

1879-1935

Famed humorist, vaudevillian and radio personality and actor Will Rogers was born William Penn Adair Rogers on this date on the Dog Iron Ranch near the Cherokee (Tsalagi) town of Oologah in what was then "Indian Territory" (now located in Okalahoma in a county named for Rogers).  Both of Rogers' parents were Tsalagi (Cherokee), with his mother being from the Paint Clan; he was named for the Cherokee Colonel William Penn Adair [Note: there will be NO talk of blood quantums here (!)--for that please see Wikipedia].  Rogers often told people that he was born in Claremore (which is where his memorial is placed) because "only an Indian could pronounce 'Oologah.'"  Rogers' forays into public life span so many different outlets it's hard to name them all, especially considering that he died in his mid-50's.  Of course, he wouldn't be here on this blog if it were not for his silent film acting; but before this, he was: a cowboy (both entertainment and real), a circus performer, a vaudevillian (he was a member of Ziegfeld Follies), a bonafide stage actor and newspaper man.  His first film appearance is listed as dating from 1918 with the starring role in Laughing Bill Hyde.  After this he was given a contract by Samuel Goldwyn for 3 years at a substantial increase from his current Broadway pay.  Rogers moved to the west coast and purchased a ranch.  He settled into the film business, despite that he found the medium stifling.  He was first and foremost a comic with a voice.  He did find an outlet in title card writing, but it wouldn't be until talkies came along that his film acting really came into it's own.  He did have a substantial impact on silent comedies, despite his viewing the medium as stunted.  He wound up with a contract with Hal Roach in 1923 for a year that was good for a dozen comedic shorts that became some of his best remembered silent work.  He took a movie acting hiatus starting in 1924, having become a star and tired of the grind of over-acting without his voice; he took to the tour circuit, traveling the all over the U.S. and eventually to Europe.  It was in the UK that he next turned up in film in the British National Film produced Tiptoes in 1927.  He was in just one additional silent film in his career, before appearing for the first time in the all sound musical Happy Days in a small minstrel role; it was filmed in 1929 but not released until 1930.  The first full sound film that the public got to see him in was actually filmed after Happy Days, but released in September of 1929.  He was the full-fledged star of They Had To See Paris, a Fox film in which he played as mechanic from--of all places--Oklahoma, Pike Peters.  The film brought him a whole new level of stardom.  From this point on he would appear in a variety of big Hollywood films along side the likes of Janet Gaynor, Mickey Rooney, Myrna Loy and Ray Milland, just to name a few.  He even appeared with Boris Karloff.  In many of these roles, he was basically playing himself.  In addition to becoming a kind of movie star, he also became a huge star of the radio, with people tuning in coast to coast to hear his humorous rants and rambles.  All of this was cut short when a small prop plane that he was traveling on, piloted by aviator Wiley Post, crashed close to Point Barrow Alaska, killing both men instantly.  Rogers had become an aviation enthusiast and was on the plane when it was being tested by Post on multiple flights for the Lockheed Co.  The date was the 15th of August 1935 and Rogers was 55 years old.  He was first interred in Forest Lawn in Glendale, where so many other famous luminaries had been laid to rest.  In May of 1944 his body was exhumed and moved to it's current burial place in the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma (the town that he had joked about being born in).  The Rogers family tomb is there, adjacent to the Will Rogers Memorial Museum.  During his time in silent films, he appeared in nearly 50 comedies.  Please consult links below for so much more!  Wado (thanks) for reading!

Funeral 1935 in Glendale, California

Memorial in Point Barrow, Alaska--dedicated in 1982

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Born Today July 18: Lupe Velez

1908-1944

Tragic Mexican-American actress Lupe Velez was born María Guadalupe Villalobos de Vélez on this day in San Luis Potosi Mexico.  Her mother was a performer, of that we can be sure; there have been conflicting reports that her mother was either an vaudevillian singer of some considerable talent or, alternatively, a opera singer.  Given where they were located it was probably both.  The family was reportedly well-off and living in a large home in the prominent northern city.  Her father was a colonel in the army (under Diaz), and she had siblings, albeit all them male, that had college educations.  At the age of 13, she was sent by her family to what is now Our Lady Of The Lake University in San Antonio, Texas.  There she learned how to dance, performed for the first time and learned English.  This was cut short when the Mexican Revolution broke out and she was sent to Mexico City, where she worked to support her family in a large department store (her father, was, of course, called back into active military duty).  It was there that she got her professional start, performing in revues there in the early 1920's.  She initially performed under "Villalobos," but that being her paternal name, her father strenuously objected after returning from the war and finding out that his daughter had decided to become a performer.  From that time on, she chose to perform under maternal name of Vélez.  At various dance and performance companies, she became one of the premiere vaudeville performers in Mexico by the mid-1920's.  She sometimes was fired for having such a fiery personality; but then again she had also learned this sort of behavior brought the press around.  Seems to be one of those learning lessons that "there is no such thing as bad press."  Indeed, this paid off--perhaps more than she expected it to--as it wasn't just theaters in Mexico who were paying close attention to her. She had come to the attention of famed stage director Richard Bennett, who invited her to audition in Los Angeles for a play he was staging that needed a Mexican actress (she had be planning to tour in Cuba, but changed her plans when the offer came up).  However by the time she arrived in L.A., the part had been given to another actress.  Not wanting to just flee, she stuck around long enough to met comedian Fanny Brice who took a liking to her and wanted to help promote her career, being particularly impressed with Vélez's dancing (Brice was obviously a person in her short life that Lupe admired and respected highly).  Brice secured for her an actual job in New York City with famed Broadway giant Flo Ziegfeld, but before she left for New York she found herself in film work first.  There is some confusion as to which of the first two films that she appeared in came first--over-whelming evidence points to Sailors, Beware! in 1927, a Hal Roach film starring Laurel and Hardy.  Harry Rapf, of MGM, had reportedly called her personally to screen test for the film. She next appeared in What Women Did For Me  (1927) a silent Charley Chase film.  She next was screen tested for an upcoming Douglas Fairbanks (Sr.) film; he took an immediate shine to her and cast her straight away; that movie was the hit The Gaucho.  He star in the industry was quickly rising, and as a result of this, her next film was the Cecil B. DeMille produced Stand And Deliver, starring Warner Oland.  The first film that had sound in did feature some talking sequences and a musical and singing score--Lady Of The Pavements (1929) an early sound film by D. W. Griffith--did not feature her voice.  Her next two films that featured sound were partial silents in the purest definition of the term.  Studios seeing the rapid on-coming of the sound era discarded many of their actors with accents of any sort, especially accents that clearly came from other countries (though many American colloquial accents didn't fare much better!)--it was just assumed that Velez would not survive the dawn of the talkie.  She proved them spectacularly wrong.  In 1929, they took a gamble on (or what they saw as a gamble) putting her into an early full talkie Tiger Rose.  Her co-stars? Monte Blue & Rin Tin Tin.  The film was a run-away hit and her continuance in the film industry was assured.  The bulk of her film appearances date from the 1930's, when she starred along side of the likes of Jimmy Durante and his complete opposite Ramon Novarro.  She did finally make her Broadway debut in 1932 with Florenz Ziegfeld--it was delayed by years, but when it came, it was a success.  During the mid-1930's she also spent time in England, appearing in at least two films there.  She appeared on and off the stage all during the decade, making her final Broadway appearance in 1938 (the tour of the production did not go well--her fiery temper effectively ended the tour).  That same year, she returned to Mexico to make her first film there.  She was greeted with throngs (thousands, actually) of screaming fans.  The film was a huge hit and she was slated to star in 4 more Mexican films, but instead returned to Hollywood and made a series of films that had elements of Mexican stereo-type in them.  Her personal life was always tumultous and ever increasingly out of control.  She had been linked to several well known actors from the time of her arrival in Hollywood and would go on to have troubled relationships with men that included a high-profile relationship with Gary Cooper to a trouble marriage that had all sorts of terrible stories attached to it, including pet killing.  Things only got worse from there, with her finally ending up in a relationship with a much younger newly arrived Hollywood actor from Austria.  When, at the age of 36, she found that she was pregnant and things apparently blew up between the two of them.  On the 13th of December, she had dinner with two friends, one of whom was Estelle Taylor, afterward consuming 75 Seconal pills with a glass of brandy, leaving behind a two sided suicide note.   She was found dead the next morning by her secretary.  When she was released for burial, she was given a funeral in Los Angeles after the coroner's office concluded that she had meant to do away with herself.  Her body was then shipped to Mexico City and given another funeral and buried in Mexico's famous Panteon Civil de Dolores cemetery. The death caused a great deal of publicity and, in many cases, outrage from various sectors.  Rumors also immediately began to fly as well.  Everything from questioning whether she really meant to kill herself, to the paternity of her child (a real question in the case of Gary Cooper).  The most outrageous was no rumor at all--just a made up story by none other than Kenneth Anger, vulgarly claiming (with not a shade of proof) that she actually drowned in a toilet after stumbling to the bath room to vomit.  Seconal is an extremely fast acting drug, even in small doses--75 pills would be enough to take the life of a 5 foot tall women very, very quickly--especially when mixed with brandy.  Let's hope she has found peace.  

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Born Today October 6: Janet Gaynor

1906-1984

Born Laura Augusta, with either her last name spelled Gainor or Gainer, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, she was nicknamed "Lolly" as a child.  Her father was a theatrical painter and paperhanger; it was he that began to teach her song and dance, as well as acrobatics when she was just a toddler.  When she entered school, she then began to act in school plays.  After her parents divorced and her mother remarried, the family eventually settled in San Francisco. When she graduated from high school there, she began doing stage work in Melbourne, Florida while on winter vacation. Upon her return to San Francisco, the whole family moved to Los Angeles so she could be pursue a career in acting.  She, accompanied by her stepfather, began to present herself at studios there, where she eventually landed a role as an extra in a Hal Roach film.  The film was Cupid's Rustler, the year was 1924.  She continued to get work in roles as extras regularly until 1926, when she began to get small roles that she credited for, the first of which was The Johnstown Flood, a Fox film that she was hired for after Fox offered her a screen test. By 1927, she had blossomed into one of Hollywood's leading ladies.  She played a lead role as "The Wife" in F. W. Murnau's 1927 feature Sunrise, for which she won one of the very earliest Oscars, in the category of Best Actress in a Leading Role--she was the very first winner for this category.  She also won for her role in Street Angel (a partial sound film).  The award, which was presented in the year 1929, combined the work.  Another interesting fact is that she was only 22 years of age at the time; she would remain the youngest actress to win in the category until 1986, when at 21 Marlee Matlin won for Children Of A Lesser God.  Her first full sound film came in 1928 with 4 Devils, which had an alternative silent print, and was also directed by Murnau. By 1929, she had made the transition to speaking roles and even starred in a film with early color sequences (Sunnyside Up).  By the age of 33, she had been making films for almost 20 years and had made up her mind to retire, which she did in 1938.  After this, she worked sporadically, and almost entirely in television.  She found a new profession is painting however, becoming very accomplished in still life depictions of flowers and vegetables.  She finally made her professional stage debut in 1980!  She worked in the theater for 2 years.  In September of 1982, a taxi in which she was a passenger was struck by a van that had run a red light; she was left with several very serious injuries, including 11 broken ribs.  She passed away 2 years later on 14 September; with her long time doctor declaring that her death was brought on by the accident, from which she had never fully recovered.  She is buried in the famous Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  [For anyone that interested in visiting, it is located in the Garden of Legends section, Lot 193)

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Born Today December 1: William Tracy

1917-1967

Born in Pittsburgh, Penn. he was a child actor on the stage; his one and only silent role came as an 8 year, but what a movie it was!  He was the child rat catcher in the extremely famous silent of 1925 The Phantom Of The Opera, starring "the man of thousand faces" Lon Chaney Sr.  He did a stint on Broadway in his late teens and gained attention in 1937.  Well, of course, Hollywood beckoned.  He is probably best known, at least to my mind,  for his role as Sgt. Dorian "Dodo" Doubleday, in a series of late Hal Roach comedies known as Hal Roach's Streamliners, a war time series.  In 1941 he also appeared in two famous director's films:  John Ford's Tobacco Road and Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith (infamously remade with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie).  After the second world war, his star started to wane.  Efforts to revive his career as a character actor fell flat.  He did manage to do quite a bit of television after this that included:  Dragnet and Perry Mason, The one that he is the most famous for, actually starred in, was Terry And The Pirates.  He died of unknown causes on 18 June 1967 at the young age of 49 in Hollywood.  He is buried at Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park, a cemetery with a very strange history.

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Born Today November 21: Jobyna Ralston

1899-1967

Born Jobyna Lancaster Raulston in South Pittsburgh, Tenn., her unusual first name came from her parents naming her after the then very famous stage actress Jobyna Howland, who would go on to have her own successful turn in silent films.  Ralston's mother was a portrait photographer, who from the beginning had plans for her daughter to go into show business; she was literally raised to have some sort of an entertainment career.  She was on the professional stage by the age of 9, and went on to attend acting school  in 1915 in New York City.  Her Broadway debut came at the age of 21, when she began landing dancing chorus roles in musicals and small acting roles in plays.  Famous comedian Max Linder noticed her in one of these productions and persuaded her to go to Hollywood.  She had her film debut in 1919 in the short comedy Starting Out In Life and was credited as "Juliana Ralston."  She did not keep the Juliana part, proudly going back to her famous first name, but she kept the respelling of the last name.  in 1921 she played the "Heroine" in the famously lost first Marx Brothers film Humor Risk.  She then began to work in comedy one reel shorts of Hal Roach, and had a very prolific career throughout the 1920's.  In 1922 she abandoned the live stage altogether.  She starred in her first partial sound film in The Big Hop (1928), which had a mono musical score.  Her first full sound film came in The College Coquette a year later. Her greatest achievement came in 1927 when she had a billed roll in Wings which was the only silent film to technically win a "Best Picture" Oscar in the silent era, starring the likes of Clara Bow and Gary Cooper.  She quit acting in the early 1930's after having a child; she made only two films in that decade.  Her film career was almost entirely confined to the silent era.  During this time she worked with a myriad of Hollywood silent elite talent.  See links below.  She passed away at the age of 67 on 22 January 1967 in Wood Hills, Los Angeles.  Her grave marker states that she was born in 1900; her birth records indicate that 1899 was the correct year.

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Born Today September 15: Fay Wray

1907-2004

No introductions needed here!  Every horror fan knows her as the original "scream queen"--mostly for her turn in King Kong 1933, but she was plenty "screamy" in other films she made around this time as well.  My personal favorite of these is The Mystery Of The Wax Museum starring Lionel Atwill, directed by the great Michael Curtiz, also made in 1933, and up until the late 1960's was considered to be a lost film.  So much is made of her appearances and noise in early talking horror films, that not much attention is paid to her silent career.  Born Vina Fay Wray in Cardston, Alberta, Canada; the family soon relocated to Los Angeles here in the US.  She began as an extra when she was barely into her teens, and was one of the few child actors that seemed to weather the transition to adult actor better than most.  Far from being a silent horror star, she was in a number of short slapsticks early on.  If she can be said to have specialized in any genre in the 1920 it was westerns ironically.  She passed away at the age of 96 on the 8 of August 2004, in New York City.  She is another very famous celebrity interred in the famous Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Her Early Film Work:

Gasoline Love (1923) (short)

Sweet Daddy (1924) (short)

Just A Good Guy (1924) (short)

The Coast Patrol (1925) (the first feature length film she was in.)

Sure-Mike! (1925) (short slapstick)

What Price Goofy? (1925) (short)

Isn't Life Terrible? (1925) (short with Charley Chase & Oliver Hardy)

Thundering Landlords (1925) (short, first featured credit in title cards)

Chasing The Chaser (1925) (short)

Madame Sans Jane (1925) (short written by Hal Roach)

No Father To Guide Him (1925) (short)

Unfriendly Enemies (1925) (short)

Your Own Back Yard (1925) (an Our Gang short)

A Lover's Oath (1925) (partially lost film)

Moonlight And Noses (1925) (partial lost short)

Ben-Hur (1925) (her slave girl appearance in this is still unconfirmed)

WAMPAS Baby Stars Of 1926 (the fist time she is credited with "self")

Our Wild Time (1926) (short)

Don Key (Son Of Burro) 1(926) (short)

The Man In The Saddle (1926)

Don't Shoot (1926)

The Wild Horse Stampede (1926)

The Saddle Tramp (1926)

The Snow Cowpuncher (1926) (short, part of the Mustang Western series)

Lazy Lightning (1926)

Loco Luck (1927) (A Blue Streak Western)

A One Man Game (1927) (A Blue Streak Western)

Spurs And Saddles (1927) (A Blue Streak Western)

A Trip Through The Paramount Studio (1927) (as Herself)

The Legion Of The Condemned (1928) (lost film)

Street Of Sin (1928) (lost film)

The Fist Kiss (1928)

The Wedding March (1928) (an Erich von Stroheim directed film)

The Honeymoon (1928) (another Stroheim film)

The Four Feathers (1929) (early talkie, William Powell and Noah Berry were in this, dialog by Western Electric, soundtrack and sound effects by MovieTone)

Thunderbolt (1929) (two versions circulated, one silent the other in mono, with sound by Western Electric)

Pointed Heels (1929) (early musical, sound by MovieTone, early two strip technicolor, with some parts in black and white)

The Dippy Dentist (1920)

This is a Hal Roach film from 1920.  In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter Joel and Ethan Coen talk about their shared approach to screenwriting, they mention that Hal Roach would employ a person he referred to as a "wildie" to come in and just say random, crazy stuff that he would then use in his films.  Sometimes this was just some drunk guy, but more often than not, it was someone from a lunatic asylum.  This is a good example of film that utilizes the strangeness of a "wildie."