Monthly Archives: April 2016

April 25, 2016 · 11:00 am

Photoplay Dec. 1922 – Nita Naldi

The December 1922 cover girl is Nita Naldi. Naldi had starred in that year’s sensation, Blood and Sand, with Rudolph Valentino.
More of the Valentino effect: the December issue also includes “The Story of Mrs. Valentino”, namely the multi-talented set and costume designer Natacha Rambova. She was quite a mover and shaker in early Hollywood; more on her in a future post.
Here’s a great photo of Nita Naldi from the always excellent Classic Cinema Images blog.

April 18, 2016 · 11:00 am

Cover girls (l.-r., in order of appearance): Madge Bellamy, not one but two Alices–Alice Terry and Alice Brady–and Colleen Moore.
The September, October and November covers are emblazoned with a footer “The National Guide to Pictures.” This banner is short-lived; it’ll be gone by the December issue.

April 11, 2016 · 11:00 am

The June and July covers break with tradition. First, the June cover has a mirror shot instead of the standard portrait shot.
The June issue contains a profile on “The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful” by Adela Rogers St. Johns. The too beautiful girl in question? She’s not on the cover (that’s Mabel Ballin admiring herself) but it’s Barbara LaMarr, who had a banner year in 1922 with starring roles in Arabian Love, Domestic Relations, The Prisoner of Zenda and Trifling Women.
And the July issue has an even more unusual cover–for the first time since the May 1916 issue ( D.W. Griffith), a man is spotlighted on Photoplay’s cover! It’s none other than Rudolph Valentino, in the famous portrait by Tempest Inman.

April 4, 2016 · 11:00 am

Opera singer Geraldine Farrar was an international celebrity so it’s no wonder she was recruited for the cinema.
In 1916 she appeared in Cecil B. DeMille’s Joan the Woman.
It wasn’t only the movie stars who were celebrities; as noted along the top of the cover, the magazine also profiles film director Thomas Ince.
Footage of Farrar as Joan was spliced into Sarah Bernhardt’s 1917 film Mothers of France. Source: Film historian Victoria Duckett’s fascinating 2015 book Seeing Sarah Bernhardt: Performance and Silent Film.