Susan Peters in Sign of the Ram (1948)

Born in the troublesome sign of the title, a wheelchair-bound Cornish writer (Susan Peters) will do anything to keep her husband and children for herself, including ruining her daughter's new romance and driving her son's fiancée to suicide. For no obvious reasons, she then ends it all by wheeling off a cliff to certain death. Columbia Pictures presented "The return to the screen of Miss Susan Peters" in Sign of the Ram but sadly failed to give the star-crossed starlet much to do or say. On top of a turgid screenplay, Peters and the rest of the cast had to assume fake English accents in order to make belieable the drama's Cornish setting. It was not, alas, a memorable screen swan song for Miss Peters who probably deserved better.

Dark-haired Susan Peters (1921-1952)earned a 1942 Academy Award nomination for playing Greer Garson's daughter in the World War I soaper Random Harvest and was voted a "Star of Tomorrow" the following year. A graduate of Max Reinhardt's School of Dramatic Art, the former Suzanne Carnahan also scored as Mary Astor's daughter in Young Ideas (1943) but MGM’s careful buildup of her came to a tragic end when she was permanently paralyzed on a 1945 New Year's duck hunting trip with her husband, Richard Quine. She reportedly went to retrieve a rifle when it accidentally discharged. The bullet lodged in her spine and Peters was paralyzed from the waist down. Although her services were retained for several years due to her husband's status as a rising young director, the studio was eventually forced to let her go. To the rescue came Columbia Pictures, who recognized the public’s interest in her plight and cast her as a crippled wife desperately using her handicap to hold on to a husband in The Sign of the Ram (1948). In real life, or so the story goes, Peters actually divorced Quine in order not to become a burden. Hollywood found no further use for the handicapped actress but she continued to perform on stage and even starred in a local Philadelphia television series as a wheelchair-bound attorney. But the effects of the accident lingered, and according to at least one romantic writer, Hollywood's foremost hard-luck girl lost the will to live less than a year later.

Gwili Andre in No Other Woman (RKO 1933)

When I wrote about Gwili Andre for my first book, Strangers in Hollywood (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994) I managed to view both of the lady's starring films for RKO, Roar of the Dragon and Secrets of the French Police (both 1932) but I somehow failed to scare up a copy of her third, and final, appearance under this original contract, No Other Woman. As it turns out, I didn't miss much. Whereas Gwili in her first, leading, roles were obviously RKO's answer to Marlene Dietrich - what with exotic locales and heavy breathing scripts - in this co-starring role she was really more Tala Birell than Marlene Dietrich. And not even good Tala Birell at that. Frankly, Miss Andre (nee Gurli Andresen and hailing from Copenhagen) couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag. That was true in 1933 as well as in 1943 when she made her final film, a Falcon mystery entry that had reunited her with RKO. But here is the big surprise: Gwili Andre, who prior to her brief starring career was publicized as "Amerca's most beautiful model," had a nose job in the meantime. Now this may sound catty - and is frankly meant to be - but Andre's much vaunted beauty leaves something to be desired. That original nose of hers appears in No Other Woman like a seafearing vessel at full sail. Irene Dunne, no shrinking violet herself when it came to a prominent proboscis, should really only have had to worry about Gwili Andre for the sake of plot; in reality she is prettier than Miss Andre and actually possesses a personality. What I am saying here is that No Other Woman ably demonstrates, if nothing else, why "Americas most beautiful model" didn't appear at all on screen between 1933 and 1937.

(Gwili Andre and leading man Charles Bickford in No Other Woman)

Ula Holt was in reality Florence Watson.

I recently received a letter from Joy Jones, granddaughter of erstwhile serial starlet Ula Holt. Ms. Jones asked me to update my rovi all movie guide capsule bio for Ula Holt's husband, Ashton Dearholt with interesting new (to me at least) information. First, here is what I had originally submitted:

"A veteran of Universal melodramas of the mid-1910s, American actor/director/producer Ashton Dearholt later worked mainly outside the studio system. Having learned how to cut corners and save a dollar on a 1923-1924 series of Westerns starring Edmund Cobb, Dearholt would remain a presence in low-budget movie making through the 1930s. Occasionally accepting acting roles as Richard Holt, Dearholt became rather more famous for his long association with author and occasional film producer Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan. The Burroughs-Dearholt relationship certainly had its ups and downs, however. Filming the serial The New Adventures of Tarzan (released 1935) on location in Guatemala, Dearholt fell in love with the leading lady, a local girl he himself had named Ula Holt. When Dearholt returned to Hollywood with Miss Holt in tow, Mrs. Dearholt, silent screen actress Florence Gilbert, was granted a divorce and quickly married longtime family friend Edgar Rice Burroughs! None of this offscreen melodrama seems to have seriously damaged the Burroughs-Dearholt partnership, which also spawned The Drag Net (1936) and Tarzan and the Green Goddess (1937), a re-edited feature version of the old Tarzan series."

And here are Ms. Jones' corrections:

"[Ula Holt] was born here in the States and was [in Guatamala] shooting a movie called Adventure Girl with [documentary filmmaker] Joan Lowell at the time.

"I have also read that she was an olympic swimmer. Although Herman Brix did help her with her swimming and she was a very good swimmer she was not an olympian.

"Her actual name was Florence Eugene Watson. She changed it after she married my grandfather to Jewel Watson Gleason. She passed away in 1982."


I thank Ms. Jones for her valuable information and it is with regret that I am no longer with AMG and therefore unable to make the corrections. The best I can do today is post in this little blog.