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.
Barbara La Marr seemed determined to
live life to the full, to which her five marriages, secret pregnancy (which she
audaciously passed off as an adoption whilst on a publicity tour in Texas,
allowing the press to follow her into an orphanage where her baby had been
secretly planted) and numerous debts attested. Sadly, when this child was still
a baby she was diagnosed with a lung condition which in the mid-1920s was often
fatal, and she was given just two years to live. Battling through her problems
with her health, the press, her husbands, being frequently type-cast, and persistent
legal issues with her manager, she continued to work until she collapsed on set
whilst playing the starring role in The
Girl from Montmarte (1926, Alfred E. Green). This was the film which she
felt would prove she was more than just the ‘vamp’ the press and the Hollywood
publicity machine made her out to be. She died of tuberculosis before the film
was released, at the age of 29, and despite the crowds at her funeral being so
huge that mounted police were in attendance, she is largely forgotten today.
This has not been helped by the fact that so many of her films no longer exist,
in part due to the fire at the Fox storage vault in 1937 which destroyed most of
their pre-1935 film negatives. Early nitrate film is unstable at the best of
times, and if not carefully preserved it will either disintegrate or burst into
flames. Thankfully some have been preserved, and clips of Barbara La Marr can
even be found on YouTube.
Sherri Snyder is an actress who began
performing a one-woman show based on the life of Barbara La Marr, and through
this experience she met with La Marr’s son, who grew up with no memories of his
mother. He encouraged her to write Barbara’s life story, and she was given
access to personal documents which have helped give this excellent book the
depth it needed. Through archival research, as well as talking to family and
friends, Snyder has been able to untangle the myths and lies and find the truth
at the heart of Barbara La Marr’s short but dramatic life. This book provides
much needed insight into the workings of a young Hollywood, but more than that,
it ensures that Barbara La Marr has now been rescued from obscurity and can
rightly be remembered not only for the importance of her film career, but for
her life as a daughter, friend, wife and mother.