Barbara La Marr

At 29 years old, Barbara La Marr has this physical status:

Barbara La Marr (born Reatha Dale Watson; July 28, 1896 – January 30, 1926) was an American film actress and screenwriter who appeared in 27 films during her career, ranging from 1920 to 1926.

La Marr's beauty, nicknamed "Girl Who Is Too Beautiful," as well as her turbulent personal life, were also praised by the media. La Marr, a born in Yakima, Washington, spent her youth in the Pacific Northwest before relocating with her family and her family to California as an adolescent.

She went to Los Angeles with her second husband and became a Fox Film screenplay writer, directing several hit films for the company after being in vaindeville and performing as a dancer in New York City.

She was eventually discovered by Douglas Fairbanks (1921), who gave her a prominent role in The Nut (1921), but her role in The Three Musketeers (1921) was played by Milady de Winter.

La Marr co-wrote two further films with director Rex Ingram (his version of The Prisoner of Zenda and the Gothic drama Trifling Women), as well as Ramon Novarro's The Born of You (1923), and The Shooting of Dan McGrew (1924), the first and last of which she co-wrote. La Marr's career made her name as the pre-eminent vaping of the 1920s; she partied and drank heavily, once boasting to the world that she only slept two hours a night.

Her health began to decline in 1924 after a series of poor diets for comeback roles had exacerbated her lifestyle, resulting in her death from pulmonary tuberculosis and nephritis at the age of 29.

She was inducted on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the film industry.

Early life

Barbara La Marr was born in 1896 in Yakima, Washington, as Reatha Dale Watson to William and Rosana "Rose" Watson. (La Marr later claimed she was born in Richmond, Virginia). Her father, a newspaper editor, and her mother, a native of Corvallis, Oregon, had one son, Henry, and a daughter, Violet, from a previous marriage. During 1884, La Marr's parents had wedlock and had a son named William Watson, Jr., who was born in June 1886, ten years before she was born. La Marr was of German and English descent through her mother.

The elder Watson performed under the stage name Billy Devore in the 1920s, becoming a vaudeville comedian. During La Marr's formative years, the Watsons lived in various Washington and Oregon locations. By 1900, she was living with her father, William, her half-sister Violet Ross, and Violet's husband Arvel Ross. La Marr made her acting debut as Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin's Tacoma stage performance in 1904.

By 1910, La Marr and her parents were living in Fresno, California. The family lived in Los Angeles some time after 1911, and Lamarr worked at a department store. La Marr has appeared in burlesque shows as well. Elizabeth Ake, her half-sister, now known as Violet Ake, joined her 16-year-old sister on a three-day bicycle excursion in January 1913. Boxley is a boxley. They travelled to Santa Barbara, but La Marr felt that they were not going to let her return home after a few days. After finding that warrants were issued for their arrests, accusing them of kidnapping, Ake and Boxley eventually released La Marr to Los Angeles. Several newspapers covered this story, and La Marr even testified against her sister, but the trial was eventually dismissed. During the next few years, La Marr's name appeared in newspaper headlines on a daily basis. In November 1914, she returned from Arizona to California, claiming she was the newly widowed wife of a rancher named Jack Lytell and that they had reportedly married in Mexico. She also stated that she loathed the name Reatha and preferred to be identified by the childhood nickname "Beth."

Personal life

Although the official count is normally set at five, La Marr has officially been married just four times. There is no evidence to back up her suspicion of her alleged first husband, Jack Lytelle, who she said she encountered when visiting friends in Yuma, Arizona, in 1914. Lytelle became enamored with her one day riding in a motorcycle while he was riding his horseback, according to La Marr. The couple reportedly married the day after meeting, but Lytelle, it was reported, died of pneumonia only three weeks into the marriage, leaving only a surname for Mrs. Lytelle to inherit.

On June 2, 1914, La Marr's first official registered marriage was to a Max Lawrence, who later revealed himself to be a former soldier of fortune named Lawrence Converse. He was already married with children when he married La Marr under a different name and was arrested the next day for bigamy. Converse died of a blood clot in his brain three days later on June 5.

La Marr married Philip Ainsworth, a well-known dancer, on October 13, 1916. Although Ainsworth's son was detained at San Quentin State Prison for passing bad checks, the couple divorced in 1917. In 1918, she married Ben Deely, who was also a dancer, for the third time. Deely, who was over twice her age, was an alcoholic and a gambler, which resulted in the couple's divorce in April 1921. La Marr married actor Jack Dougherty in May 1923, before his divorce from Deely was finalized. Despite divorced a year later, the couple remained legally married until her death.

Marvin Carville La Marr was born on July 29, 1922, some years after La Marr's death. The boy's father's name has never been revealed. During her final illness, La Marr trusted her son's care for her son to her close friend, actress Zasu Pitts, and Pitts' husband, film executive Tom Gallery. Pitts and Gallery accepted the child after La Marr's death; renamed Donald Michael "Sonny" Gallery, Don Gallery's Don Gallery died in 2014.

During the latter part of her career, La Marr partied long hours and received little sleep, often combining this activity with bingeing alcohol at times of high levels; she once told an interviewer, "I cheat nature." I never sleep more than two hours a day. I have better things to do. During the last two years of her life, La Marr went on several extreme crash diets to shed weight. In addition to her drinking and lack of sleep. La Marr was said to have ingested a tapeworm head in a pill at one point to help her lose weight.

La Marr's health had dramatically deteriorated as a result of pulmonary tuberculosis by late 1925. The Girl from Montmartre, La Marr, collapsed on the set and fell into a coma while filming her final film. In mid-December, she was diagnosed with nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys, as a result of her already tubercular condition. La Marr was bedridden through Christmas, and by late December, she reportedly weighed less than 80 pounds (36 kg).

According to several historians and writers, La Marr was addicted to morphine and opium, which may have caused her leg pains and may have contributed to her health problems. These allegations were untru and erroneously reported in Sherri Snyder's 2017 biography of La Marr. According to a frequently quoted rumors, La Marr was arrested in Los Angeles for morphine use; however, Snyder claims that this allegations was mistakenly linked to La Marr when it had in fact been actress Alma Rubens, who had been arrested in January 1931, five years after La Marr's death. "It's inconceivable that during our close friendship I would not have known if she were a junkie," Ben Finney, a close friend of La Marr, denied allegations of opioid use, adding, "She did well enough with booze."

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Career

After marrying and moving in with her third husband, vaudevillian Ben Deely, La Marr, who had aspirations of being a writer, found work at Fox Film Corporation under the name Folly Lyell. During her time at the studios, she created several scenarios for studio shorts at Fox and United Artists, some of which she based on her personal experience. Barbara La Marr Deely appeared on The Mother of His Children, The Rose of Nome, Flame of Youth, The Little Grey Mouse, and The Land of Jazz, among other 1920 films.

La Marr continued to write short screenplays for the studio and entertained herself by performing in various cities around the country, including New York City, Chicago, New Orleans, and San Francisco's 1915 World's Fair. Rudolph Valentino and Clifton Webb were among La Marr's dance partners, and her dance routines attracted publisher William Randolph Hearst's notice, who featured her and a dance partner in a series of articles published in the San Francisco Examiner around 1914.

La Marr was approached by Mary Pickford, who reportedly embraced her and said, "You are too beautiful to be behind a camera." Film enthusiasts should be able to enjoy your vibrant magnetism. La Marr's friendship with filmmakers culminated in her return to Los Angeles and making her film debut in 1920 in Harriet and Piper. Despite being a supporting role, the film attracted her audience. With her support role in The Nut (1921), playing a femme fatale, La Marr made the quick transition from writer to actress. She was recruited by Douglas Fairbanks later this year to appear in The Three Musketeers' substantial portion of Milady de Winter.

La Marr appeared regularly in films and became known as "The Girl Who Is Too Beautiful" after a judge told her she was "too pretty and young" in Los Angeles during a police beating. This publicity did a lot to advance her career. The Prisoner of Zenda and Trifling Women are two of La Marr's films, both 1922 productions directed by Rex Ingram. Although her film career flourished, she loved the fast-paced Hollywood nightlife, remarking in an interview that she slept no more than two hours a night.

La Marr appeared in the comedy The Brass Bottle, portraying the queen's role, as well as Poor Men's Wives. She appeared in a New York Times review for her "capable" appearance in the Fred Niblo-directed comedy Strangers of the Night. She appeared in The Eternal City (1923), which featured a cameo appearance by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, in the lead role with Bert Lytell and Lionel Barrymore.

During Thy Name Is Woman's filming, production manager Irving Thalberg made regular visits to La Marr's sobriety to ensure that the actor's alcoholism was not interfering with the film. La Marr's first starring, above-the-title role appeared in the drama Sandra, which was shot in New York City in August 1924. La Marr had appeared as a co-writer on the film, which was aimed at a woman with a split personality disorder. The film received scathing critiques upon its debut.

My Husband's Wives, La Marr's last screenplay, was released by Fox in 1924, shortly after the release of Sandra And finally after the completion of what turned out to be her last three films: The Heart of a Siren (a critical triumph, but also posthumously released), and The Girl from Montmartre (a critical triumph, but not immediately released). As the studio wrapped production without her having a double shooter, La Marr collapsed on location and into a coma when shooting The Girl from Montmartre in early October 1925.

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