Stars of Public Domain: Hal Hackett

For those classic film fans who remembers sprightly Hal Hackett solely for his role as the hep student council chairman in the Andy Hardy comedy Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1947), now in public domain, the following CBS press release from 1957 should be somewhat illuminating:

Accident Leads Hal Hackett
Into Entertainment Field

“Hal Hackett, now playing his first long-running dramatic role as Bob Lyle on CBS Radio's 'Ma Perkins' daytime serial, literally became an entertainer by accident.During World War II, when he was in his third year in pre-medical school at UCLA, he joined the U.S. Army and was assigned to the Division Surgeon's office. Beforethe end of his first month in France he was critically injured under fire and was sent back to Gardner General Hospital in Chicago. Lying in bed, encased in a cast from shoulders to knees waiting for his broken neck and back to mend, he whiled away the time singing. A Special Services officer heard him, learned the young soldier had won, a national music contest, baritone division, just before finishing high school in his native Madison S.D., and had refused three music scholarships, since his heart was set on a medical career. Next thing the avocational singer knew he was broadcasting locally three times a week, star of his own program, called 'A Soldier Sings.' Sophie Tucker heard him, came to the hospital to see him broadcast and asked him to 'guest' on her program. Following that he was signed to sing on the 'Chicago Theater of the Air.' An MGM talent scout saw the handsome young man, and although Hackett at that time was unable to walk, signed him to a contract. After release from the hospital he went to California where, still wearing a brace, he worked for two years. His film credits include Love Laughs at Andy Hardy, Summer Holiday, Under Cover, Campus Honeymoon and Cynthia's Secret.

(photo above: Jenny Lou Law and Hackett promoting the Broadway bound “Lend an Ear”)

Having established his acting ability, Hackett decided to try the stage, and signed with a musical that came east but unfortunately closed in Philadelphia before reaching Broadway. Back on the coast he joined another musical, 'Lend An Ear.' The day he signed the contract to come to New York he was hospitalized and spent nine months curing a rheumatic heart. Immediately after release he hastened to rejoin the show in New York for its last six months on Broadway which was followed by a nine months run in Chicago. There he resigned from the cast in order to enter the University of North Carolina to get a degree in physics. At the University, Al Templeton heard him and brought him back to New York to do a radio show. This led to a tour of night clubs across the country.

On the West coast he signed with the production of 'Kismet,' and again came to New York to enjoy a long and successful run. His voice is heard on the Columbia
Records album of the musical.

During the past summer he appeared in summer stock in 'Picnic,' 'Rainmaker, 'Tender
Trap,' 'Solid Gold Cadillac,' 'Seven Year Itch' and 'Wonderful Town' on the east coast, and in 'Carousel' on the west coast. Now settled in a midtown apartment near the CBS Radio studios, he continues his study of voice, piano and acting. Each day he exercises by swimming at a nearby YMCA or rides in Central Park. Versatile as the young bachelor is, he admits he can't cook.”

Sadly, Hal Hackett died at the young age of 43 in New York, NY, December 4, 1967.

HAROLD PIPER

Recently, I discovered that Hal Hackett was listed under his real name, Harold Piper, in the 1946 Academy Players (actual listing punctured below). According to the 1958 TV-Radio Times, the reason for the name change was his appearance in a bit part in the 1946 MGM release The Show-Off, a comedy starring Red Skelton as a character named "Aubrey Piper." Metro honcho Louis B. Mayer thought that was one Piper to many and demanded the name change. Which suggests that Piper/Hackett's role as a radio technician may originally have been more important. As is, he wasn't credited at all and the whole name confusion thus moot. 

                                       

From my collection: Kenny or Kevin? O'Morrison

Kenny O'Morrison played one of the GIs in the delightful 1947 William Holden-Joan Caulfield comedy Dear Ruth (Holden Caulfield you say? yes, it was a marquee promoting this film that inspired the name of J.D. Salinger's protagonist in his classic “Catcher in the Rye”!), and he actually starred in Footlight Rhythm (1948), the second of Paramount's Musical Parade shorts. O'Morrison took time out in 1949 to explain, in exhaustive detail, to UPI scribe Patricia Clary how cumbersome a name like O'Morrison could been. Explained Miss Clary:

An actor who's been known during his short life by six different names says you folks who are born and remain John Jones are lucky. This man was born Kenny O'Morrison. But nobody believes it. Not even the nurse who made out his birth certificate. 'I'm legally registered,' he said, 'as Kenneth Eugene Morrison. That name was entirely the idea of the recording nurse at the hospital. When my father said ”Kenny O'Morrison,” she thought he was too excited to know what he was telling her." The 'O' before the 'Morrison,' he added, throws more people than just the nurse at the hospital. 'People won't question O'Shea or O'Donnell,' he said, 'but when you say O'Morrison, they think it's your middle initial.' , Kenny, he adds, is not a diminutive for Kenneth. It's a good Irish clan name.

Name Changed

When Kenny was four, the father who named him was killed in World War I. His mother married again and the boy became Kenny Elliot In school, he added, teachers called him Kenneth, even though it wasn't his name. Later his mother married another man named Mandel. Kenny became Kenny Mandel. By the time he got to high school his mother was divorced and had resumed her maiden name of Adams. Kenny became Kent Adams. 'These troubles were nothing,' he says, 'compared to trying to explain to the army why I called myself Kenny O'Morrison when my birth certificate said Kenneth Eugene Morrison.' It took the government five weeks to adjust to the situation. Now he is working in Filmakers' 'Never Fear,' produced and directed by Ida Lupino, under the name of Kevin O'Morrison. 'Richard Conte suggested the name,' he said. 'I hope it's the last one I have.'”

But, alas, when Ida Lupino's drama was released, Kenny O'Morrison had become Kevin O'Morrison, yes, another name, and he remained Kevin for a screen and television career that lasted well into the 1990s and included such more recent comedy hits as Funny Farm (1988) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993). Along the way, the actor had a much publicized and very much un-scripted, brawl in a Chicago hotel lobby with Dewey Martin, a fellow actor with whom he had just appeared in The Golden Gloves Story (1950) which, perhaps not coincidentally, was a movie about prizefighters. The two had been in the Windy City to promote the film but refused to even be on the same train going back to Hollywood. Reeks a bit of publicity stunt, don't you think?

O'Morrison, who in the meantime had penned several television episodes, turned to play writing in the 1970s and his plays are still being performed today. The former actor even has a webpage: http://www.kevin-omorrison.com.

From my collection: Nancy Millard & Cathie Merchant

In 1952, socialite/singer/actress Nancy Millard appeared with Frank Fay, the famed emcee and former husband of Barbara Stanwyck, at Hollywood's swanky Mocambo nightclub. Next time we hear anything from Miss Millard is in 1955 when she reportedly refuses a 7-year contract with Paramount because the studio won't guarantee her an immediate screen role. Well then! The following year, she was mentioned as the socialite who turned writer-producer Polan Banks away from screen star Linda Darnell. So there! But Perhaps Nancy should have accepted that Paramount contract back in '55; her actual movie career was reduced to a walk on in Wake Me When It's Over (1960), a dreary service comedy starring Ernie Kovacks.

Another singer, Cathie Merchant, at least earned a good role as Vincent Price's erstwhile lover turned witch in the Roger Corman classic The Haunted Palace (1963) and she graced both Gunsmoke and The Untouchables. But that was really that for Cathie, who disappears from cast-lists after a couple of Alfred Hitchcock Hours in 1964.

From my collection: More hopefuls of 1961:

According to Hedda Hopper in 1949, Muriel Maddox, of Washington, D.C., was seen about town with writer Sy Bartlett. Muriel was, it appears, what we today call an “army brat,” the daughter of Captain and Mrs. Charles Maddox, and when she made her screen debut opposite Marlon Brando and Theresa Wright in The Men, it was a paper in Oil City, PA, that could proudly call her the “hometown” girl. Actually, when it came down to it, Muriel's role, if you can call it that, is listed in the cast as “woman in street,” i.e. she was an extra. A few other roles followed most notably the Guy Madison vehicle Red Snow (1952), a Cold War exploitation melodrama set in Alaska in which she played a nurse. She began dating another bit player, Bert Arnold, while filming this, her final film, married him and retired. Why she listed herself available for screen work as late as 1961 is anyone's guess. Later in life she became a popular writer of romance novels, some of which are even available today on Kindle. Born in San Diego in 1921 and passed away at Bel Air, CA, April 30, 2010.

Much more prolific on screen than Miss Maddox, Jeanne Manet was originally from France, the daughter of a banker. By 1936 she was squired around Paris by pugilist Jack Doyle and the following she was seen, stateside, on the arm of another boxer, Tommy Farr. She left the latter in the pursuit of cinematic fame but would instead be embroiled in a colorful court case the press would nickname “The Loves of Jack Doyle.” The boxer/troubadour's wife, screen starlet Judith Allen, a Joan Crawford lookalike, sued Mrs. Delphine Dodge Cromwell Baker Godde of the society pages for “alienation of affections” to the hefty tune of $2.000.000. Now stick with me here as this will get complicated. I'll let a syndicated news item explain the further court shenanigans:

“Still on the stage but into the background [is] Elinor Troy who dances seminude in a fish bowl. She apparently got into the scrambled drama by proxy, although her press agent insists she is a good friend of Doyle's and 'they spent a very pleasant evening together.' That Doyle was nighclubbing all hours with the shapely Miss Troy was denied by J.B. [last name unintelligible], who described himself as a friend of Doyle and Mrs. Godde. Waiting for her cue was French actress Jeanne Manet, who arrived in town today, said in Hollywood to have been Doyle's heart interest last year ...”

That claim was immediately dismissed by the next witness, who termed her a “casual acquaintance,” although the two allegedly had cohabited for a while. And on it went. We don't really know the outcome of the suit – and do we really care? – but Judith Allen received her divorce and good for her. Jeanne Manet, meanwhile, found that the movie studios had gone off on her and she didn't really do much in America until after the war when she turned up in the very appropriately titled Slightly French (1949) starring Adele Jergens. That was followed by television exposure until she emerged as one of the title characters in the circus melodrama The Flying Fontaines (1959), which was mainly an excuse for introducing to America a blonde Miss Denmark who was to become Mrs. James Darren, Evy Norlund.

In 1963 Paramount Pictures released Stopover in Hollywood, a 16 minutes short film depicting a young girl visiting various Hollywood landmarks including Grauman's Chinese and, eerily, Forest Lawn cemetery. The girl was played by Lori Lyons, whose main screen credit this would be. She was also in The Phantom Planet (1961), playing a radar operator no less, the year her photo graced this particular edition of the Academy Players guide. But that, it appears, was about it for Lori Lyons, who naturally is mentioned here entirely for the sake of completion. Now at least there is a photo out there of Lori Lyons. So there.

From my collection: Fresh faces of 1961

Here are four young performer who all aspired to Hollywood stardom. None of them really found it, though, but at least they were in there trying.

Michael Barrier appeared on The Rebel, The Untouchables, and, of course, Gunsmoke, as well as such feature films as The Satan Bug (1965). It wasn't much but at least Mr. Barrier, if he is still around, should be able to get an invite to a Star Trek convention having appeared in three episodes in 1967.

Phil Arthur, who Imdb states hailed from Plattsburgh, NY (born 1923) did very early television before appearing in four episodes of the Perry Mason show, all different characters, incidentally. Arnold had done his fair share of stock, including touring opposite legendary Hollywood star Miriam Hopkins with a 1960 version of “Look Homeward, Angel.”

John Edward Gersch, Jr. kindly reveals everything you could possibly wish to know about his late father John Brennan (ne John Edward Gerschefske, born 1933 in Oak Park, IL), who was one of those rowdy title charmers on spring break in the original Where The Boys Are (1964). A former Chicago disc jockey, Brennan, according to junior, parked cars and tended bars in Hollywood prior to landing a contract with MGM in 1959. He later worked for Disney in Florida before retiring to Arizona with his wife, a former Metro secretary. She died tragically after a car accident in 2005 and Brennan, unable to face a future without his wife of 46 killed himself by gunshot in 2007.

Our final hopeful, David Brandon, was in State Fair (1962), you know the one where Pat Boone sings a love song to a pig; and also turned up in the classic Mamie Van Doren blockbuster The Navy vs. the Night Monster (1966). Remember David, Mamie? Probably not. Along with Carol Christensen, David Brandon had won a contract with 20th Century-Fox in 1960 and would be schooled by the studio's drama teacher, famed Method guru Sanford Meisner. Carol and David were selected from a group of 300 hopefuls, 17 of which had earned a screen test.

From my collection: Robert Dane & Roger Cole (1946)

Neither Robert Dane nor Roger Cole did much in Hollywood apart from walk-ons and extra work. But here they both are, Dane (above) playing mostly military personnel and Cole (below) well-dressed men-about-town. Or at least that is what their character designations suggest.

But try to catch either gentleman in any of the pictures listed on the Imdb. Good luck! Of course, like many “names” appearing on these pages, Messrs. Dane and Cole are present here … well, because where else would you find them? 'Nough said. Any additional information on either would be appreciated, of course.

From my collection: Rune Hultman & James Fulwiler

In 1942, Air Gunner Rune H. Hultman of 1232 East 2nd St., Butte, MT, the son of a well-known local restaurateur, was injured in a training flight in New Mexico and he would suffer the after effects for years to come. But not enough to prevent him for playing one of the real life war heroes in 20th Century-Fox's great propaganda piece Winged Victory (1944), the profits of which went to various army courses. (A very young Judy Holliday played opposite him.) Hultman, who prior to his stint in the army had actually studied acting at the famed Pasadena Playhouse including appearances in in house productions of Zane Grey stories, remained in Hollywood for a bit part as Stanley Andrews' son in the 1945 Kirby Grant-Universal oater Code of the Lawless and had a couple of walk-ons before returning to Montana. By 1951, Hultman was living in Swan Lake, MT, the former air gunner now established, married to childhood sweetheart Eunice and living a swank enough existence for the local Montana Standard to announce the comings and goings of guests to the Hultman residence. His final appearance in local papers was not quite so felicitous, though. In August of 1975, he and ten others, including his wife Eunice, were sued by the United States Forest Service and Land Management Bureau for $336,40 on a trespassing charge, the federal government alleging that the defendants were illegally maintaining structures on federal lands. Presumably, said defendants managed to pay this not too demanding fine.

Another 20th Century-Fox contract player around this time was one James Fulwiler, who certainly appears handsome enough to have been a threat to several current leading men. Alas, to quote an old friend in the B-movie biography game, “nothing could be found” about Mr. Fulwiler. I hereby urge anyone who knows anything about this anonymous player to contact this site post-haste. All efforts will be highly appreciated.

Stars of Public Domain: Dorothy Burgess (1905-1961)

Her mother was an actress, Grace Burgess, and her aunt the stage star Fay Bainter, so it was only natural that Los Angeles-born Dorothy Burgess would go on the stage. She did, in the popular “Music Box Revue,” and then understudied and later replaced Helen Hayes on Broadway in “Dancing Mothers.” Hollywood caught her while she was appearing in a Los Angeles production of “The Squall” and she made an indelible impression as Warner Baxter's faithless girl in O. Henry's In Old Arizona (1928). Baxter earned an Academy Award (years before someone named the award “Oscar”) and Burgess was forever saddled with playing rather tawdry sirens. She did that with some success, at least at first – she appeared in 14 films in 1933 alone – but an accident on the set of Universal's Ladies Must Love (1933), about the romantic lives of four gold diggers, left her with a sprained back and, in time, a nervous breakdown. In 1935, she left Hollywood to replace Edith Barrett on Broadway in “Piper Paid,” and when she returned five years later, mostly bit roles came her way. She turned to writing in her spare time – and by the mid 1940s she had quite a bit of spare time – even actually publishing a novel entitled “Say Uncle,” a thriller dealing with, appropriately, vampires. “I worked six hours a day for eight months,” she told the Hollywood Citizen News. “You work on what you write until you think it is perfect, and then you write some more.”

With her husband, a physician, Dorothy Burgess lived for many years in retirement in Palm Springs, CA. In March of 1961 she was brought to Riverside County Hospital with tuberculosis, succumbing to the disease on August 20, 1961.

The Stoker (Allied Pictures, 1932) PD ***

Cuckolded Dick Martin (Monte Blue), who has lost not only his wife but his once-thriving business as well, signs on as a stoker on a steamship bound for South America. There he meets the exotic Margarita (Dorothy Burgess), and although at first they don't get along, it is she who bails him out of jail once he gets in trouble with the law in Nicaragua. As it turns out Margarita is the daughter of a local planter and she soon agrees to marry Dick in the hopes that he may be able to enlist the US marines if the plantation is attacked by bandits. Dick is disgusted when he learns the truth of her machinations but changes his mind after learning that she loves him for himself and not only for who he is. And, sure enough, Dick is indeed able to summon help from the marines when the plantation find itself attacked.

Another early sound femme fatale, Natalie Moorhead (see an earlier post) plays Monte Blue's faithless wife in The Stoker, a true case of type casting. No one in 1932 needed much persuasion that Natalie, or Vera, the name of the cheating wife here, was up to no good. She never was. In contrast, Dorothy Burgess, similarly typecast in those days as a femme fatale, proves to be surprisingly heroic, and in fact ends up with the hero. But at first, of course, Monte Blue's Dick Martin assumes that Margarita is interested in him only for the protection he may provide. Then he learns that she actually loves him and, well, let's just say that a Happy Ending didn't often happen to Miss Burgess but it does here. All of this is trivial as film making goes, even early talkie film making, but director Chester Franklin keeps the plot moving at a clip from boardrooms to steamships to Nicaraguan jungles. Without ever leaving Hollywood.

(Photo: George Walsh and Dorothy Burgess)



Out of Singapore (Goldsmith Prods., 1932) PD ***

Things go very wrong indeed when Captain Carroll (William Moran) hires Woolf Barstow (Noah Beery) and his boatswain Scar Murray (Montagu Love), especially for the good captain himself who is suddenly dying from what Barstow describes as China fever. In reality, Barstow, who is known for sabotaging vessels for money, plans to take over the ship and wreck it for the insurance. But the scheme goes awry with the emergence on the ship of Concha (Dorothy Burgess), a dancer in a Singapore dive that Barstow once spurned and who is now out for revenge. At first resenting the late captain's daughter, Mary (Miriam Seegar), Concha soon enough helps the girl care for her dying father and with the aid of supposedly drunken second mate Steve Trent (George Walsh), Barstow and his crew get their comeuppance when the ship explodes. Also perishing is Concha, who sacrifices herself so that Steve and Mary may live to see another day together.

Also known as “Gangsters of the Sea,” a re-release title, Out of Singapore is really a rollicking good show if, as always, you can accept the low budget and some of the over-the-top performances. Then again, the florid performances is exactly what make movies like Out of Singapore so entertaining today. Noah Beery, for example, never met a piece of scenery he wouldn't chew, and does soe here with abandonment. The same goes for another silent screen blackguard, Montagu Love, as his second-in-command; and Dorothy Burgess, as the soiled hootch dancer adds her secial brand of tawdry glamour to the proceedings. Which have been directed with a sure sense of movement by silent screen serial star Charles Hutchison, who never let something as mundane as dialogue hold him back. Chalk up Out of Singapore as a minor winner. The film was released by poverty row's Ken Goldsmith Productions, by way of William Steiner in New York. Goldsmith issued a total of six potboilers between 1932 and 1934, including Carnival Lady (1933), featuring Wampas Baby Star Boots Mallory.

Stars of Public Domain: Rita La Roy (1901-1993)

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)

Stars of Public Domain: Natalie Moorhead (1898-1992)

“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.



The Stoker (Allied Pictures, 1932) PD ***

In the opening shot of The Stoker, businessman Dick Martin (Monte Blue) lovingly fondles a portrait of his wife, Vera. The face looking back, however, is that of Natalie Moorhead and you just known what poor Dick is in for. And, sure enough, Vera, who wears the pants in the family, and holds the purse strings as well, is off to Paris for a quickie divorce so she can marry Dick's attorney (Richard Tucker). A dejected Dick, who has lost not only his wife but his once-thriving business as well, signs on as a stoker on a steamship bound for South America. There he meets the exotic Margarita (Dorothy Burgess), and although at first they don't get along, it is she who bails him out of jail once he gets in trouble with the law in Nicaragua. As it turns out Margarita is the daughter of a local planter and she soon agrees to marry Dick in the hopes that he may be able to enlist the US marines if the plantation is attacked by bandits. Dick is disgusted when he learns the truth of her machinations but changes his mind after learning that she loves him for himself and not only for who he is. And, sure enough, Dick is indeed able to summon help from the marines when the plantation find itself attacked.



Needless to say, Natalie Moorhead's role here is little more than a cameo but her mere presence helps establishing who and what her character really is. You never had to spell it out: Natalie was trouble, either as a wife or a mistress. The nominal leading lady, Dorothy Burgess, usually played Bad Girls herself, notably the vixenish Tonia Maria in the Academy Award-winning In Old Arizona (1928), and unlike Natalie's her presence in The Stoker keeps the audience guessing. Monte Blue is at all times believable and since The Stoker is based on a Peter B. Kyne original, the story at least has a bit of depth. Director Chester M. Franklin, perhaps best remembered for helming a series of fairy tales cast  entirely with child actors, performs his tasks with customary skill but is somewhat defeated by the film's meagre budget. The Stoker was issued by M.H. "Max" Hoffman, formerly of Tru-Art and mainly a purveyor of Hoot Gibson westerns. But Allied and Hoffman had pretensions and among the 1932 releases where versions of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, with Myrna Loy, and Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," in modern dress and retitled Unholy Love. Yet despite those films, and the popular A Shriek in the Night (1932), with Ginger Rogers, Allied went the way of nearly all the early sound independents and was defunct by 1934.

Love Bound (Peerless Pictures, 1932) PD ***

His family nearly destroyed by a gold digging blackmailer, Dick Randolph (Jack Mulhall) follows the lady, Verna Wilson (Natalie Moorhead), aboard a liner to Europe. Dick's plan is to have the family chauffeur (Dick Alexander) pretend to be an oil millionaire in order to catch Verna in the act, so to speak. Things, however, take an unexpected turn when Verna not only falls in love with Dick, who she assumes is penniless, but breaks up with her latest boyfriend, Juan (Roy D'Arcy), who wants in on the expected windfall. Verna is ready to tell Dick the truth when the couple is interrupted by the former's ex-husband, Jimmy (Lynton Brent), who seeks revenge for having been locked up on her behalf. A fight breaks out and Juan shoots and kills Jimmy. A chagrined Verna agrees to return to New York and clear the Randolph family name.



“I'm always interested in how men acquire their wealth,” purrs Natalie Moorhead to Dick Alexander, whom she is mistakenly believes is a Texas oilman. And that is how we have come to know and love Natalie: as a woman with few, if any, scruples. But this time she does surprise us by actually possessing a conscience and, even more important, a heart. Not that screenwriters James Gilber, George Plympton (of the serials) and Robert F. Hill (who also directed) make any of this the least bit plausible, you understand, and why Natalie should fall so instantly in love with Jack Mulhall remains a mystery. But fall in love she does and that fact allows her to at least attempt to create a multi-faceted character. And that is really all we could possibly expect from a cheap little potboiler like Love Bound. Produced by small-time Peerless Pictures, a New York-based company owned by one Sam Efrus that issued only eight releases 1931-1936, the drama was resurrected in 1949 with the completely misleading title “Murder on the High Seas.”

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).



Curtain at Eight (Majestic Pictures Corp., 1934) PD * (Natalie Moorhead's scene: ***)

All the ladies just love matinee idol Wylie Thornton (Paul Cavanagh), including, believe it or not, a female chimpanzee. But unbeknownst to ingenue Anice Cresmer (Marion Shilling), Thornton's most recent fling, her older sister Lola (Dorothy Mackaill), or heiress Doris Manning (Ruthelma Stevens), who is going to bankroll Wylie's latest play in payment for playing the female lead, the actor's secretary (Natalie Moorhead), is actually his wife. And Mrs. Yhornton is getting mighty tired of playing second fiddle to his career and tells him so in no uncertain terms.The chimp, meanwhile, kisses his portrait while brandishing a pistol (!), Lola warns him to stop seeing her sister, and everyone is shocked when the lights go out and a shot is fired during a birthday celebration. Surprise! When the lights return, the birthday boy, Thornton, is found very much dead. But who done it? Meticulous policeman Jim Hanvey (top-billed C. Aubrey Smith) finally solves the mystery, but not before his dimwitted partner, Gallagher (Sam Hardy), has arrested most of the cast, excluding the chimp, and several suspects have proven to be red herrings by turning up all too dead themselves.



I had a hard time awarding stars for this whodunit which survives in a somewhat truncated form (the American Film Institute lists a running time of 74 minutes while the version viewed only ran to 61). The suicide of one character, for example, appears out of nowhere and we aren't even quite sure whothe killer really was. Could it have been the chimp as Detective C. Aubrey Smith would have everyone believe? Really? Natalie Moorhead, meanwhile, enjoys one of her best scenes in Curtain at Eight when fifteen minutes into the proceedings we learn that she is really Wylie Thornton's wife and not just his secretary. The couple emerges from what has obviously been a sexual encounter, he getting dressed while she is still lounging in a double bed – yes, a double bed! – wearing very little and her hair in a bit of disarray. Another first for Natalie who emerges looking far younger without the tightly marceled bob. And a triumph for the lax pre-code censorship. As Wylie continues to dress, she takes time out to fling insults at him, calling him a “cackling boudoir rooster” and a “flannel-mouthed Romeo.” It is a great scene for both performers and Natalie's mirth as her husband is forced to lie to his latest paramour over the telephone is infectious. Unfortunately, apart from this one scene, the most memorable aspect of Curtain at Eight is that gun-toting chimp

.

Run by veteran poverty row entrepreneur Phil Goldstone, Majestic Pictures Corp. was a small-scale company with aspirations, and aspirations that nearly came to fruition. Curtain at Eight, for example, played an MGM flagship theater in New York City and was renamed “Backstage Mystery” so as not to be confused with Metro's major undertaking of the year, the all-star Dinner at Eight. But Goldstone's real coup – or was it the artistic head of the company, Larry Darmour? – was to hire major genre stars Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill to appear in the still-fondly remembered The Vampire Bat (1932). Majestic also produced a version of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1934), starring, of all people, 1920s flapper Colleen Moore as Hester Prynne, but the less said about that one the better. Like most of the early sound independents Majestic left the field 1934-1935, when double-bills became the norm in the industry, but Darmour went on to produce scores of B-Movies, mostly westerns.

Stars of Public Domain: Sari Maritza(1910-1987)

Heavily publicized by Paramount Pictures in 1932 as that studio's “new” Marlene Dietrich – the original Marlene proving recalcitrant by demanding to work solely with her personal Svengali, Josef von Sternberg – Sari Maritza was in reality nice Dora Patricia Detering Nathan, born in China to a British military officer and his Viennese wife. Stagestruck Patricia did indeed study voice in Vienna, which is where she met British talent coach Vivian Gaye, who became her manager and persuaded her to change her name to the much more exotic Sari Maritza, a moniker hinting of gay operetta and all things Viennese. Unfortunately, Vivian's timing was a bit off. Sound films were rapidly taking over in Europe as well by 1929 and the newly coined Sari Maritza quickly “learned” to speak English “like a native.” “They thought I was a very clever girl,” Patricia Nathan later recalled. They did indeed, as did Charles Chaplin, in Berlin at the same time Sari was making her third motion picture appearance, Ufa's Bomben auf Monte Carlo (released 1932). She was on Chaplin's arm at the London premiere of City Lights (1931) and everybody assumed she would be his leading lady both on and off the screen. That didn't happen and instead she signed with Paramount. By then the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, and Paramount's attempts to turn her into a Continental femme fatale were ludicrous on the face of it and deservedly met with scorn. As a consequence, the homegrown Tallulah Bankhead got all the Dietrich rejects and Maritza instead lampooned herself opposite W.C. Fields in the anarchic International House (1933). Both Sari and costar Erich Von Stroheim admittedly did the dreary WWI drama Crimson Romance (1934), from poverty row upstart Mascot Pictures, solely for the dough, after which Sari Maritza left the screen for good to marry MGM producer Sam Katz. She divorced Katz ten years later and by 1947 was found living in Washington, DC with her second husband, George Clother, “an economics student [!] at Georgetown.” Sari Maritza died in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Sari Maritza's name, and that of Vivian Gaye, resurfaced two years after the former's death, when rumors of a homosexual relationship between early 1930s housemates Cary Grant and Randolph Scott once again did the rounds. According to the gossip mills, they were a gay foursome, the girls, Lesbians of course, bearding for the boys. Reached for a comment, Vivian Gaye dismissed the rumors as completely misinterpreting what was just carefree California living. So there!

Greek Street (US title Latin Lovers; UK, 1930) PD **

Sari Maritza makes her screen debut in this Gaumont-British production as Anna, an orphan singing in an Italian establishment in London. She falls for the owner, Rikki (William Freshman), but he takes great umbrage when she decides to accept an offer from Mansfield Yates (Martin Lewis) to become a star in his upscale establishment. Unfortunately, Yates expects more from Anna than she is ready to give and after having performed two production numbers to great acclaim, she leaves Yates and his high falutin' night spot in favor of returning to her humble beginnings and Rikki.

The only surprising aspect of this early talkie musical is not Sari Maritza's “amazing” way with the English language, which had already been thoroughly debunked, but how fluid  the film moves. Early European talkies are supposed to be even more moribund than their Hollywood counterparts but that is certainly not in evidence here. In fact, the opening sequence, a long dolly shot through a crowded Italian restaurant, the camera occasionally picking out an interesting face or two among the spectators, is as good as anything American cinematographers were doing at the time. There is a second, similar, sequence that demonstrates Percy Strong's ability with a camera, this time following fuddy-duddy Sir George Ascot (Bert Coote, the father of Robert Coote who played the exact same type of characters in Hollywood movies of the 1940s) as he is pushed about by the throng in the very same establishment. Unfortunately, except for the obligatory kaleidoscopic view of chorus girls in action (and, no, Busby Berkeley did not invent the overhead shot of dancers cavorting), the production numbers are static and uninteresting. Especially if Sari Maritza's coloratura gets on your nerves as it did mine. The performances run the gamut from over-the-top (Australian actor William Freshman ladles on an Italian accent with a trowel) to underwhelming (Miss Maritza), but, if nothing else, Greek Street is worthwhile from a historical standpoint.

Virginia Gibson and "I Killed Wild Bill Hickok"

The first impression from watching I Killed Wild Bill Hickok (1956), apart from the overall poverty of the production and its playing fast and loose with history, is that nominal heroine Virginia Gibson is a fine little actress. A better thespian, in fact, than the second female lead, Helen Westcott, who actually plays I. Stanford Jolley's sister here and who once co-starred opposite Gregory Peck in Henry King's classic The Gunfighter (1950). But digging a bit into Miss Gibson's past quickly explains why:

As Virginia Gorski, her real name, she had made her Broadway bow as a soubrette in 1948 in Jerome Robbins' “Look Ma, I'm Dancing” with Nancy Walker and Alice Pearce. The following year she played in a revival of the musical “The Bloomer Girl” at the Muni Opera in her hometown of St. Louis, MO, a show that starred former silent screen actress Mabel Taliaferro; and she later appeared at the same place opposite coloratura Marion Bell in Rudolph Friml's “The Vagabond King.” Seven years later, however, she almost didn't get to co-star on Broadway opposite Ethel Merman and Fernando Lamas in “Happy Hunting.” Because, believe it or not, she was busy filming I Killed Wild Bill Hickok. Can you imagine that? Almost losing out on a plum Broadway role because of one of Johnny Carpenter's feverish B-Western concoctions? “Nobody here in New York knew who I was, and the producers didn't feel justified paying my fare [from Hollywood] to try out,” she told Broadway scribe Earl Wilson. A brief detour home to St. Louis and a fortuitous meeting there with agent Morton Baum changed all that and she went on to earn a “Tony” nomination for her efforts.

Virginia left the hit show to star on television's Your Hit Parade which, I'm sure, paid better in the long run. In promoting the show, television reporter William Glover explained how Virginia went from Gorski, of proud Irish-Polish extraction, to the less colorful Gibson: “apparently a film executive suggested “Gibson” as a stage name. Ginny though he was asking what she wanted to drink and she said yes.” Say what?

I Killed Wild Bill Hickok was one of four poverty-stricken but surprisingly well cast Westerns written and produced by stuntman Johnny Carpenter, who also starred here under the nome-de-cinema of John Forbes. In addition to the Misses Gibson and Westcott, the little sagebrush thriller also featured former teen heartthrob Tom Brown, as, bizarrely, Wild Bill himself, Denver Pyle (who looks really young) and Carpenter's real life brother, “Red.” I Killed Wild Bill Hickok ended Carpenter's career as a B-Western entrepreneur. The less said about the film itself – what with an abundance of silent era stock footage and a plot that adheres to something quite different than the historical fact and doesn't even take place in Deadwood, SD – the better. So that's what I'm gonna do.

From my collection: Kristina Hanson, Elaine Edwards & Lisa Gaye. "Oh, the humanity ...!"

From Encino, CA, and a Pierce Junior College student, raven-haired 19-year-old Kristina Hanson was crowned “Miss Tarzana” in early May of 1958 by a jury that included character star William Bendix, who happened to also serve as “Honorary Mayor” of Tarzana, and television stars Bob Crane and Chuck Connors. The title gave Miss Hanson an entree into the “Miss Universe” contest that year but she failed to qualify. Instead she played the much-imperiled female lead in the Cinemascope cult classic Dinosaurus! (1960), you know the one where Gregg Martell as an unearthed Neanderthal is frightened by the flushing of a toilet. This so-called monster movie was really mostly for kids, and indeed featured one of their very own, an island tyke played by Alan Roberts (1948-2008), a child performer who was all over the place in those years. Kristina Hanson, meanwhile, didn't do much in Hollywood after Dinosaurus! and she later became a grade school teacher.

Equally imperiled, but in standard sized black and white, Elaine Edwards, a former Powers model from Albuquerque, NM, was dragged around by the title creature in The Faceless Man (1958), a Mummy rip-off but set in, of all places, Pompeii, Italy. Yes, that's right, the monster is indeed a 2000-year-old Vesuvius survivor. Except for some second unit work, or stock footage, this particular creature frolics about in what suspiciously looks like the Iverson Movie Ranch and/or Griffith Park, notable location favorites in or around Hollywood itself. Previously, a much younger Miss Edwards, who at the time was married to Ed Kemmer of Space Patrol fame, appeared opposite Rex Allen in a 1952 Republic oater, Old Oklahoma Plains (more about that in a later post) and she was also one of the Three Blondes in His Life (1961), “he” being muscular Jock Mahoney and the two other blondes Greta Thyssen (q.v.) and one Valerie Porter. Edwards operated the “Elaine Edwards Prayer Foundation” in Sun Valley, CA and got into spiritualism.

Best known of our three Horror Heroines Lisa Gaye turns up rather late in her career as Scott Brady's girlfriend in Castle of Evil (1966), a truly cheesy B-flick featuring other “old-timers” such as Hugh Marlowe and Virginia Mayo, who sports a red wig for a change. All of them are called to the reading of a will in a haunted mansion lorded over by a by-the-numbers Mrs. Danvers type played, amusingly, by Shelley Robinson, a character actress destined to become Megan Mullaly's maid Rosario, she of the purple “Members Only” jacket, on the hit television series Will & Grace.

From Denver, CO (born 1935 as Lezlie Gae Griffin), Lisa Gaye was the sister of fellow Hollywood starlets Teala Loring and Debra Paget. When Universal-International in 1954 failed to borrow Miss Paget from Fox, Leslie Gaye, as she was then known, stepped in and earned herself a contract. Today, she is best remembered as the female lead in two seminal rock 'n roll teen flicks, Rock Around the Clock and Shake, Rattle and Rock (both 1956). A born again Christian according to her sister Teala, Lisa Gaye, as funny as that would have been, did not play in Troma Toxic Avenger flicks – that was another Lisa Gaye entirely – but had instead retired to Texas in 1970, a widow with grandchildren.