Happy birthday Greta Garbo (September 18, 1905 - April 15, 1990)
“If a unicorn had suddenly appeared in the late afternoon light of this ugly, ordinary garden, I could have been neither more surprised nor more amazed by the beauty of this exotic creature…she pervaded a scent of new-mown hay, and of freshly-washed children.”
~Cecil Beaton, describing his first meeting with Garbo
Happy birthday Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji (September 10, 1872 - April 2, 1933)
Maharaja Jam Sahib of Nawangar, the first Indian test cricketer and the first Indian sports celebrity, Prince Ranjitsinhji is widely regarded as one of the greatest cricketers to have ever lived.
“When he batted, a strange light was seen for the first time on English fields, a light of the East. The leg-glance was Ranji’s own stroke. He is today a legend. We can feel the spell yet, we can go back in our minds to hot days in an England of forgotten peace and plenty, during which Ranji did not so much bat for us as enchant us in a way all of his own so that when at last he got out, we were as though suddenly awakened from a dream.” (Cricket writer Neville Cardus)
A popular member of the English cricket team, Ranjitsinhji appeared in two short documentaries filmed in Australia in 1897: Prince Ranjitsinhji Practising Batting at the Nets and Prince Ranjitsinhji and Hayward Batting at the Wickets. The first of these still survives today. Details and images can be found here.
Happy birthday Johnny Mack Brown (September 1, 1904 - November 14, 1970)
(How can you not feel at least a little bit happier looking at that face? Aww!)
Happy birthday Richard Arlen (September 1, 1899 - March 28, 1976)
Happy birthday Betty Blythe (September 1, 1893 - April 7, 1972)
“A director is the only man besides your husband who can tell you how much of your clothes to take off.”
Happy birthday Beatrice Prentice (September 1, 1884 - May 30, 1977)
Beatrice Prentice was a successful stage actress on Broadway, beginning around 1910. In 1916 she appeared in the movie Nearly a King alongside another famed actor of the stage, John Barrymore, in one of his first ever appearances on film. The movie is now presumed lost, even though some asshole posted an idiotic review on IMDb.
Beatrice married silent film star and handsome guy Harrison Ford in 1909, and they remained married until his death in 1957. She lived another 20 years, dying at the age of 92 as a result of pneumonia and being goddamn 92.
Happy birthday Flora Parker DeHaven (September 1, 1883 - September 9, 1950)
Flora Parker DeHaven was born in New Jersey and began appearing on Broadway in the early 1900s, with roles in several musical comedies including The Girl and the Wizard and The Queen of the Moulin Rouge. In the mid-1910s she made the move to movies, appearing in over 50 productions in just eight years (1915-1923).
Flora was often billed as “Mrs. Carter DeHaven,” emphasizing her connection with her actor/director/writer husband, whom she married (and divorced) twice. During their two marriages they had three children together, including the glorious Gloria DeHaven, who went on to have her own film career and recently celebrated her 87th birthday. Gloria played her mother in the 1950 movie Three Little Words with Fred Astaire.
Fritzi Scheff ( August 30, 1879 - April 8, 1954)
Fritzi Scheff was a popular opera, vaudeville, and stage performer, debuting in a role with the Frankfurt Opera when she was just eight years old. She went on to have an extremely successful career in opera, performing in such venues as the Royal Opera in Munich, the Metropolitan Opera, and Covent Garden, where she gave a command performance for Queen Victoria. She was known as “The Little Devil of Grand Opera.”
Around the turn of the century she made the move to comic opera and vaudeville, and in 1908 a critic claimed “There is no other singer on the American stage today who ranks with her in the field of comic opera.” Her popularity was such that in 1915 she starred in the silent film Pretty Mrs. Smith where she played - yep! - pretty Mrs. Drucilla Smith, a role she had popularized on Broadway.
Happy birthday, Fritzi Scheff!
Happy birthday Madge Bellamy (June 30, 1899 - January 24, 1990), shown here facing off with director Tom Ince
“…though she did not consider herself a beauty, Penhryn Stanlaws, the artist (and later film director), considered Madge to be the most beautiful young girl he had ever seen.
‘If I am beautiful,’ she said, ‘it was just due to the fact that I thought myself into being beautiful.’
This engrossment with beauty did not sit too well with directors who hoped for more human behavior before the cameras. And that is how she won the reputation of being hard to handle.
‘You were the hardest dame to handle in all Hollywood,’ Harry Carr told her. ‘Either you were crying or the director was crying most of the time’ (Screen Secrets, May 1929, p. 99).
‘It was a matter of upbringing,’ Madge explained. ‘It is very hard for a girl brought up in the South, as I had been, to be so ordered, to be told to stand up while they looked her over like a horse.’
She admitted, too, that she found it hard to let herself go. She was always self-conscious. Yet she screened, as Tom Ince put it, ‘like a million dollars.’”
Image and excerpt from A Darling of the Twenties, intro written by Kevin Brownlow.
Happy birthday Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 - August 23, 1926)
“Down with Decatur; up with Elinor Glyn. Hollywood is the national school of masculinity. Rudy, the beautiful gardener’s boy, is the prototype of the American male.
Hell’s bells. Oh, sugar.”
~Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1926
Loretta Young (January 6, 1913 - August 12, 2000) and Nils Asther meet-cute in Laugh, Clown, Laugh, 1928
Though she was only around 15 years old at the time this film came out, Loretta Young had already appeared in around ten silent movies and had spent what must have been two very educational years living with tempestuous silent star Mae Murray (from ages 3-5).
In Laugh, Clown, Laugh, she plays Lon Chaney’s adopted daughter with whom he finds himself falling in love. In this scene, we discover she’s appealing to others as well…
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Happy Birthday Anna May Wong (January 3, 1905 - February 2, 1961)
“The first time I saw Anna May on film, I was very moved to see her, a strong Asian woman, moving across an American movie screen. She was a true pioneer. The look in her eyes, her distinctive style, were all very inspiring to me. I loved the way she turned all the dragon-lady cliches on their heads. She was limited in her roles, but she transcended them. I like to think that all of us have a dragon lady inside us - she represents our power to be ourselves.”
~Vivienne Tam, China Chic
