The Stars of Public Domain

Next up: Carmel Myers in Chinatown After Dark (1931) from the enterprising Action Pictures

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Carmel Myers, silent screen vamp (1899-1980)

Rita La Roy (1901-1993)

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Although seen more often in supporting roles in A movies than poverty row B fare, Rita La Roy was in many aspects a brunette version of Natalie Moorhead. Both were renowned clotheshorses both on and off the screen and both saw their careers decline in the late 1930s.

The following essay first appeared under my byline on the All-Movie Guide database website:

Dark and sultry-looking, Rita La Roy was burlesque queen Taxi Belle Hooper in Josef Von Sternberg's The Blonde Venus (1932) and thus on the receiving end of some of Marlene Dietrich's more stinging barbs. The role should have been a breakthrough but thanks to censorship (even pre-code censorship) most of La Roy's footage ended up on the cutting-room floor and she spent the remainder of her screen career playing catty and sometimes downright vituperative women in potboilers. The daughter, she claimed, of a French actress and a British nobleman, La Roy (born Ina Stuart, but in Idao and not Paris) had been a dress designer and stock company actress prior to making her screen debut in 1929. The Delightful Rogue (1929), opposite matinee idol Rod La Rocque, earned her a contract with RKO and she played a femme fatale in Check and Double Check (1930), an attempt to turn radio's Amos 'n' Andy into viable screen stars and perhaps her most visible film today. "In movies just for the money," as she often stated, La Roy apparently never turned down a role, no matter how miniscule, and her subsequent career was mostly spent playing minor vamps. She retired in 1943 but returned to the screen to play a fashion editor in You're My Everything (1949), a backstage musical from Fox, and perform a bit on early television.

Although always rumored to have been a lesbian, Rita La Roy was nevertheless married twice: 1931-1935 to Ben Hershfeld, her agent; and 1943-? to A.G. "Hank" Foley, "a well-known horse breeder." Since I included Rita in my book "Vixens, Floozies and Molls" in 1999 and submitted the above essay to AMC around 2002, I've learned that the former actress became a sort of 1950s version of Janice Dickinson, running her own modeling agency. By 1960 she had her own local Pasadena, CA television show, the Rita La Roy Show, where she and guests like Mr. Blackwell would discuss fashion and makeup tips. The show aired at 11 am on Saturdays, sandwiched between reruns of Mr. and Mrs. North and I Love Lucy.

In July of 1963 Rita La Roy, “stage, screen and television star and head of the world's largest modeling and charm school,” and Hollywood makeup man Mike Westmore were guest speakers at a seminar organized by the Studio Girl Cosmetics Co. of Glendale, CA. And on June 7, 1969, the Van Nuys News announced that Rita La Roy, “former model agency owner, who is now writing a television series for Latin-American stations,” would be the guest speaker at the “sixth annual Woman of the Year presentation of the Burbank Junior Chamber of Commerce Women's Auxiliary” at the Five Horsemen Inn. She later ran a business engaging women to sell encyclopedias in their spare time.

Check and Double Check (RKO, 1930) PD *

Amos 'n' Andy come to the screen courtesy of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, who recreate their radio characters in a stretched-out feature film version. The two language-mangling cab drivers unwittingly get involved with a case of a stolen deed that if recovered will provide poor Richard Williams (Charles Morton) with the means of marrying upper crusty Jean Blair (Sue Carol). Standing in the way of love conquering all are the Crawfords, Ralph (Ralf Harolde) and Eleanor (Rita La Roy), a tougher than nails pair of schemers. Amos and Andy, however, save the day and are soon back in the good graces of their (uncredited) girlfriends, Madame Queen and Ruby Taylor.

This is truly a matter of “we'll watch this so you don't have to.” To say that Check and Double Check makes for uncomfortable viewing is to state the obvious. Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll were white comedians and what could work on radio – and did, to an astonishing degree, for decades despite the inherent racism of Caucasians assuming “black” accents – was close to outright repulsive when acted out before the cameras. It is that way today and it was that way then, nothing much has changed. Yes, Check and Double Check made money for upstart sound film factory RKO but the embarrassment was enough to leave Amos 'n' Andy to the radio airwaves until actual African American performers could be persuaded to do a television version in the early 1950s. As for the white supporting cast, well, La Roy, Harolde, Carol, Morton and Irene Rich (who certainly should have known better having been a major star in the 1920s) perform their tasks with typical early talkie spirits. That is, slightly over-the-top and somewhat screechy.

The Honor of the Press (Mayfair Pictures Corp., 1932) PD ***Enterprising cub reporter Daniel Greeley (Edward J. Nugent) gets suspicious when a rival newspaperman, Larry Grayson (Reginald Simpson), phones in a news flash about one of the notorious Gold Baron's robberies even before said robbery has taken place. Is newspaper owner Roger Bradley (Bryant Washburn), whose daily Golden Nugget column remains a constant irritation for his city editor (Russell Simpson), actually the Gold Baron himself? And is he in cahoots with Grayson and the paper's gossip columnist, Daisy Tellem? Well, Daniel and his hat check girlfriend, June (Dorothy Gulliver) will soon find out – if they can survive a hail of machine gun bullets!

Gossip columnist Daisy Tellem (tell 'em, get it?) is played by Rita La Roy, of course, who earns top female billing in this Mayfair production despite her role being clearly subordinate to ingenue Dorothy Gulliver. Not to mention the fact that Daisy disappears entirely from the picture in the climactic 20 minutes or so. But before that, and in typical pre-code manner, Daisy has displayed her lovely gams to young Greeley after suggesting that he strike his match on the bottom of her shoe rather than the desk. Greeley gets his thrill and Daisy gets to reveal that she had earlier displayed her legs before both Florenz Ziegfeld and George White, rival Broadway connoisseurs of pulchritude. La Roy also has a typically snooty encounter with Miss Gulliver (“Glad to know you,” she says insincerely when introduced) and her presence is actually sorely missed when she suddenly disappears. Leading man Eddie Nugent is quite good in a breezy Depression era sort of way and the supporting players are all well-known professionals around Poverty Row. Which is where Mayfair Pictures Corporation was located, in the old Charles Ray Studio at 4376 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, a complex that later became Monogram Pictures (The Bowery Boys and Bela Lugosi filmed there,) and is today public television KCET. Mayfair came out of sound technician Ralph M. Like's Action Pictures (Mrs. Like, the lovely and untalented Blanche Mehaffey, appeared in plenty of the films) and existed 1932-1934. The studio's perhaps best remembered film was the mystery The Monster Walks (Action Pictures, 1932).

Rita La Roy at her haughtiest confronted by Rosalind Keith (left) in Columbia's Find the Witness (1937 not PD)

Natalie Moorhead (1901-1992)

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“Natalie Moorhead,” wrote columnist Wick Evans, “gives out the impression of coldness.” And that pretty much explains Miss Moorhead's brief vogue in the very early years of sound films. From Pittsburgh, PA, she had earned some measure of fame on Broadway, slouching her way through something called “The Baby Cyclone,” a not too well remembered George M. Cohan production. But with her marcelled bob, a “Baby Cyclone Bob,” in fact, she made herself famous along the Rialto, or at least noticed enough to have Hollywood come calling. Looking a bit older than her published birth year would suggest, Moorhead slinked through a seemingly endless parade of “other women,” adulterous wives, over-the-hill gangster's molls, and so on and so forth, all of them performed “mid-Atlantic-style” with plenty of “cahnts” and “yooos” for “cannot” and “you.”

(Photo: Natalie Moorhead waving goodbye to author James Watters and photographer Horst in front of her Montecito home)

Moorhead is probably best remembered for playing a murder victim – yet another gold digger – in the first Thin Man feature in 1934, and although her screen time in that rare Grade A whodunit is customarily brief she makes it stand out. And that is Natalie Moorhead's legacy on screen: she always managed to stand out no matter how impoverished the surroundings. There she was, dripping in fur and faux jewelry and with an icy remark to all of sundry, a veritable Depression-era Theda Bara with a fool or two at her feet.

Off-screen, Moorhead was widowed in 1936 when her husband, noted screen director Alan Crosland, was killed in a car accident. She left films in 1940 – or did films leave her? – and two years later married former Chicago parks commissioner Robert J. Dunham. She was left a widow for the second time in 1949 but then in the 1950s she was reintroduced to an old friend, Juan de Garchi Torena, a South American diplomat who had once enjoyed a Hollywood career as Juan Torena. She became Mrs. Torena in 1957 and stayed Mrs. Torena until her death at Montecito, CA, 13 October 1992. As the former screen femme fatale explained to James Watters in 1983: “Our life has been so rich in so many ways that the acting was only part of our happiness.”

Discarded Lovers (Tower, 1932) PD ***
Actress Irma Gladden (Natalie Moorhead) may be beloved by her adoring public but she makes only enemies in her private life. Take her husband, for example, Andre Leighton (Roy D'Arcy), who still carries a torch for his estranged wife but whom she only agrees to kiss when cameras are rolling; not to mention poor Rex Forsythe (Jason Robards), a dialogue director (now there's an early silent screen function!) who may kiss her whenever he pleases but who knows very well than he isn't the only man in her life. And when Mrs. Sibley (Sharon Lynne) comes to warn her rival to keep her manicured paws off Mr. Sibley Irma gleefully substitutes Rex's portrait with one of Sibley (Robert Frazer), just to rub the poor woman's nose in it. If anyone deserves to become a whodunit victim it is Irma Gladden and 25 minutes or so into Discarded Lovers, she is indeed found very much dead in an automobile by her lecherous chauffeur (Jack Trent). But who actually done it?

Top billed Natalie Moorhead got to play what she never became in real life in Discarded Lovers, a movie star. Okay, the movie studio is not exactly Paramount or MGM but Tower Productions, the creation of someone named Joseph Simmonds but mostly run by the ubiquitous Sigmund Neufeld, who would later have a lot of sway with PRC. In fact, Sigmund's prolific brother, PRC regular Sam Newfield, directed his first of literally hundreds of programmers for Tower, albeit it was The Important Witness (33), with vixens Noel Francis and Dorothy Burgess, and not Discarded Lovers, Tower's initial release. The present film was instead helmed by another poverty row mainstay, Fred Newmeyer, a jack-of-all-trades kind of director who served mainly as a traffic cop. He certainly didn't do much for the performances here, which ranged from wildly over-the-top (silent screen villain Roy D'Arcy) to strictly amateur night (Barbara Weeks, whose father, George Weeks, handled the one Tower production not arranged by Neufeld, The Big Bluff [1933]). Natalie Moorhead, though, is fine in her standard femme fatale mood and gets to parade a handsome wardrobe that was no doubt her very own. Orbiting her are stalwarts of the genre, including J. Farrell MacDonald as the police chief and Fred Kelsey as the numbskull sergeant. Nominal leading man Russel Hopton, who actually became a dialogue director in real life, is a bit too phlegmatic for heroics but also never interrupts the flow. Discarded Lovers is certainly not great art but remains a serviceable little pre-code whodunit well worth dialing up on a rainy day.

Gigolettes of Paris (Equitable, 1933) PD **

Naïve Suzanne (Madge Bellamy), who works in aboutique, finds herself installed in a posh apartment by the smooth-talking Alfred Valraine (Theodore von Eltz), but he dumps her when she keeps mentioning marriage and honeymoon. Taking the engagement ring with him, cheapskate Alfred then returns to his wealthy fiancee, Diane (Natalie Moorhead), who soon enough becomes Mrs. Valraine. When Suzanne, who is now a chantoose in a nightclub, spots Diane with what she still considers her ring, she sets a trap for the philandering Valraine that threatens to ruin his otherwise none-too-successful marriage.

(Mr. and Mrs. Verlaine in a rare agreeable mood)

Natalie Moorhead is her icy self in this very low-budget effort from a company calling itself Equitable, and easily steals every scene that she is in. Not too difficult a task, really, considering that Madge Bellamy, fresh from her zombie-fied performance in White Zombie (1932), was arguably Hollywood's worst actress. Or at least high on the list. Theodore von Eltz did slippery very well – and it is too bad that his only memorable screen role was a mere bit, if an important one, in The Big Sleep (1946) – and Gilbert Roland enjoyed a lengthy Hollywood career playing gigolos like his character here. But Gigolettes of Paris is still a tough piece of hokum to plow through today, enlivened all-too briefly by former Wampas Baby Star Molly O'Day as Madge Bellamy's wisecracking friend.

The Forgotten (Invincible, 1933) PD **
The forgotten man of the title is one Papa Strauss (Lee Kohlmar), an immigrant who has made a fortune with a dye manufacturing company. But Papa's two daughters-in-law (Natalie Moorhead and Natalie Kingston) convinces their husbands (Selmer Jackson and Leon Waycoff [Ames]) to put the exasperating old dear in a retirement home. They do the dirty deed while caring daughter Lina (June Clyde) is away but Papa is quickly bored and to amuse himself stars a competing dye company with a formula invented by Lina's chemist boyfriend (William Collier, Jr.) The ungrateful sons and their snooty wives eventually learn that the company's chief competitor is their own father, who obviously still has it in him, and regret their behavior.

(According to the dearl old Imdb, "This film is believed lost. Please check your attic." Well, you really don't have to; just go to archive.com and voila!)

Imagine that your daughter-in-law is Natalie Moorhead! You may as well wish just head for that nursing home right off the bat. Especially if you smoke a stinky pipe when Natalie demands that you switch to a more upscale stogie. Yep, that is all there is to this little misfire from Invincible, the one half of the independent Chesterfield-Invincible combine that filmed their little programmers at Universal. Lee Kohlmar, from Furth, Germany, who had been around in Hollywood for awhile by 1933 and was best known for playing Louis XVI in D.W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm (1921), does his stereotypical Jewish immigrant to near-exhaustion but is still upstaged by another accented old timer, Prague-born Otto Lederer, whose penultimate film this was. Natalie Moorhead, meanwhile, is her usual haughty self but at least she appears to be faithful to stodgy Selmer Jackson, if that is anything to brag about. The other daughter-in-law is Natalie Kingston, who had played Jane in the part-yelling serial Tarzan the Tiger (1929).