University Press of Kentucky
464 pages
Published 15 December 2017
ISDN: 978-0-8131-7425-9
REVIEW BY ADRIAN SMITH
Born in 1896, as a teenager Barbara La
Marr, then Reatha Watson, lead something of an adventurous life. Her father
worked in the newspaper business, and the family moved home constantly, almost
inevitably contributing towards the turbulence and seeming inability to settle
down that plagued her life. At the age of sixteen, now living in California,
her elder sister and her husband kidnapped Reatha, causing a minor scandal,
with some accounts stating that Reatha had helped plot the kidnaping herself in
a desire to flee her oppressive parents. Reatha was already an incredibly
luminous and attractive young woman, and she was regularly spotted in the
nightclubs of Los Angeles dancing, drinking, and generally behaving in such a
way that soon brought the wrong kind of attention. For her own protection a
court declared that she was “too beautiful†to be on her own in the city and
was ordered to leave Los Angeles.
This did nothing to assuage her
ambitions however, and she attempted to turn this publicity into a Hollywood
career. Having had stage experience as a child, she appeared as an extra in
several films within the still developing Hollywood studio system. Being
somewhat disappointed by her perceived lack of success, she went on to develop
a career as a dancer, and performed in nightclubs around the country, attracting
men wherever she went, until the strain on her health proved too great and she
headed back home to California. Reatha Watson was incessantly creative and
decided to try her hand as a writer. Her first attempt at a novel found its way
into the right hands, and in 1920 the Fox Film Corporation produced The Mother of His Children (Edward J. Le
Saint), the success of which lead to her becoming a staff writer for Fox.
Aware of the negative publicity
attached to Reatha Watson, it was around this time that she changed her name to
Barbara La Marr, and she was overjoyed to back in Hollywood, even if it was on
the other side of the camera. However, that state of affairs did not last long,
and she was soon invited to screen test and began appearing in small roles again.
Her friendships with A-list stars soon lead to bigger roles, and within just
three years she was playing major roles in The
Three Musketeers (1921, Fred Niblo) alongside Douglas Fairbanks, in The Prisoner of Zenda (1922, Rex Ingram)
with her good friend Ramon Novarro, and in Hollywood satire Souls for Sale (1923, Rupert Hughes),
the cast-list of which reads like a Who’s
Who of the silent era. La Marr often found herself cast as a ‘vamp,’ a Hollywood
type popular in the pre-code films, and as such she was often dressed in
amazing jewelled costumes and over-the-top headwear whilst tempting men to
their fate, often being punished for such licentiousness by the end of the
film. Despite being kind, overly generous and unselfish towards everyone she
knew in her real life, this Hollywood ‘vamp’ image began to follow her wherever
she went, and the Hollywood gossip press loved to tell tales of her somewhat
scandalous personal life, the truth of which is laid out in this meticulously
researched biography by Sherri Snyder.