Precious Hollywood History of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Historic Landmark La Venta Inn By Sherri Snyder Biographer, Actress, Model
Precious Hollywood History of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Historic Landmark La Venta Inn
By Sherri Snyder- Biographer, Actress, Model
"One good picture will reestablish me," declared silent screen actress Barbara La Marr before beginning her final film, The Girl from Montmartre (1926), the summer of 1925.
The twenty-nine-year-old former stock theater actress, dancer, vaudevillian, and screenwriter had ascended to international film stardom rapidly, appearing in nearly thirty films in five years, seducing audiences as a sultry vamp.
Then her world went to pieces. A string of well-publicized scandals, two box office failures, and the replacement of vamps by flappers as filmdom's reigning heroines derailed her career. A self-acknowledged broken spirit, alcoholism, late nights in clubs, and drastic dieting undermined her frail health. Exhibiting signs of incipient pulmonary tuberculosis, she was urged by her doctor to abandon her career and rest to perhaps prevent a full-blown infection.
Barbara instead commenced work on The Girl from Montmartre, desperate for a comeback and believing the film to be her last chance. Previously denied a say in the roles she played, she had informed her producers she was finished playing superficial vamps and selected The Girl from Montmartre, a meaningful tale of an authentic character, herself. Barbara stars in the film as a onetime notorious dancer fearful that the discovery of her past will prevent her marriage to her gentlemanly lover (played by Lewis Stone). Filming took place at United Studios in Los Angeles and thirty miles southwest at La Venta Inn, a Spanish villa atop hills overlooking the Pacific on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
An early 1930s postcard featuring La Venta Inn, built in 1923. A popular five-star restaurant and getaway for the rich and famous throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and today an event and wedding venue, the inn depicted a villa on the Spanish island of Majorca in the silent film The Girl from Montmartre.
Barbara La Marr and Lewis Stone on location at La Venta Inn filming The Girl from Montmartre.
As filming continued throughout September and into October, Barbara, steadily weakening, masked the degree of her illness with a valiant front. One of the film's extras later recalled Barbara's congenial, considerate treatment of the entire production crew. Unwilling to let down those who were counting on her, Barbara declined offers to suspend filming until she recuperated. Director Alfred ("Al") Green recounted that, after she fainted at the conclusion of filming a strenuous dancing sequence, she insisted on continuing her remaining scenes, despite being badly bruised. To Perc Westmore, her makeup artist, she vowed she would make herself stay alive to finish the film.
Barbara, pictured with her father, William Watson (her real name was Reatha Watson), during filming of The Girl from Montmartre. Unable to persuade her to stop working, her father watched over her on the set.
In early October, Barbara's time ran out. While filming a scene, she again collapsed. She was carried unconscious from the set, past her weeping cast and crew members, and did not return. With help from a double, Barbara's final shots and the film were soon completed.
Before passing away at age twenty-nine on January 30, 1926, from tuberculosis and nephritis, Barbara expressed her wish to be remembered by The Girl from Montmartre. Her producers, however, fearful of the public's tendency to shun deceased stars' films in the 1920s, struck her name from all billing when the film was released on January 31, instead promoting Lewis Stone. Barbara's fans nonetheless thronged theaters to view the film, breaking box office records. Barbara's name was promptly reinstated in the film's advertising.
It is anticipated that The Girl from Montmartre, currently held in archives, will someday be shown at film festivals and on Turner Classic Movies.
Though The Girl from Montmartre had its detractors, audiences and many critics were enthralled by Barbara. Some critics saluted her for transcending her vamp typecasting. The New York Graphic asserted that the film shows her in her true nature: "a generous, impulsive, whole-souled and loving girl." The Los Angeles Times believed her to be "her old flaming self---vital and compelling, despite her evident illness." The Brooklyn Daily Eagle deemed her performance "a last graceful gesture of adieu to a million filmgoers."
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* Title image (circa 1924) and book: Barbara La Marr, dubbed "the girl who was too beautiful" after juvenile authorities ordered her back to her parents' home in El Centro, California, at age seventeen in 1914 on the grounds that she was too beautiful to remain in Los Angeles unsupervised.
Los Angeles-based actress and writer Sherri Snyder is the author of Barbara La Marr: The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful for Hollywood, published by the University Press of Kentucky (https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813174259/barbara-la-marr/#.WZxfec-pUdm) and also available on Amazon and elsewhere; she regularly portrays Barbara in a one-woman performance piece she wrote for the Pasadena Playhouse and Pasadena Museum of History production, Channeling Hollywood; and she maintains the tribute website, www.barbaralamarr.net.