Always claiming to have been born in Malmö, Sweden, Greta Granstedt actually hailed from Scandia, KS, the daughter of Swedish immigrants. She was raised in the town of Mountain View, CA, however, which is where she wed the first of a total of 7 (seven!) husbands, and where she was accused of shooting down and critically wounding a would-be boyfriend who had taken another girl to a church social. According to later press reports, Greta, 14 at the time, was found not guilty of premeditated shooting but a San Jose judge decreed that “she must leave Mountain View, the town of her birth [sic], and never come back" This story reached the papers around the time Miss Granstedt had entered films and was about to take her third husband, one Ramon Ramos. The notice also reminded the reader that Greta's mother, Mrs. Stauffer Granstedt, had been among the 78 persons drowned in the 1929 sinking of the San Juan off the Southern California coast, the Granstedts having been en route to visit their daughter in Hollywood. No wonder she was called Hollywood's “Tragedy Girl.”
In contrast to her tumultuous personal life, Greta Granstedt's screen career was really rather anticlimactic. She can be seen today in the 1932 Mascot serial The Devil Horse, which is in public domain (see my other blog, “Meanwhile … Back at the Ranch"), and is perhaps even better known as the second female lead in the early anti-Nazi thriller Beast of Berlin (1939). Back in the early 1930s, though, she appeared in quite a few contemporary crime films and is actually quite good in the well-remembered Street Scene (1930). In between film assignments and marrying the dizzying amount of times, she appeared on stage in a variety of roles, both on Broadway and with touring companies. Her final screen appearance came in the odd genre film The Return of Dracula (1958), in which she played a California hausfrau haunted by the title vampire (Francis Lederer). According to gossip maven Hedda Hopper, Greta survived a bout with throat cancer in the 1960s and later relocated to Canada, where she raised Appaloosa horses. She died in Los Angeles October 7, 1987. According to a press notice in April of 1959, Greta was one of the mourners at the Hollywood funeral of Dorothy Sebastian, her erstwhile leading lady in They Never Come Back.
After learning that his mother had just passed away, boxer Jimmy Nolan (Regis Toomey) not only loses his fight but permanently injures his arm. To support himself and his younger sister Mary (Greta Granstedt), Jimmy takes a job as a bouncer at Jerry Filmore's (Earle Foxe) Club Royale where he begins a romance with headliner Adele (Dorothy Sebastian). The latter's brother, Ralph (Edward Woods), the box office manager, pockets $500 and Filmore blames Jimmy who takes the rap. Ralph, who has fallen in love with Mary, confesses to his sister that he framed Jimmy on Filmore's orders and the two pairs of siblings, including Jimmy out on good behavior, set a trap for the villainous nightclub owner.
Produced at Ralph M. Like's Tec-Art Studios on Sunset Blvd. (today's KCET) by Artclass Pictures, a minor concern operated by the very minor Weiss Bros., Adolph, Max and Louis, They Never Come Back remains one of those typical early talkie melodramas where everybody talk really fast and say things like “glad to know you” and “I oughta ...” (Well, the latter cliché is actually not in the film, but you get the drift). Like so many of these long-forgotten little thrillers, this one seems to have caught 'em on the way up and down. “Up” included Regis Toomey, a sort of low budget Jimmy Cagney or Lee Tracy type, Greta Granstedt and Eddie Woods; and “down,” silent screen personalities Dorothy Sebastian (Mrs. William “Hopalong” Boyd at the time), Gertrude Astor and Earle Foxe. The latter was actually better known for his private academy for young boys, the Black-Foxe Military Institute, which was frequented by a host of show business children. They Never Come Back may not be great movie-making but is is an interesting glimpse of the depth of the Depression and includes a cameo by turn-of-the-century prize-fighting legend Jim J. Jeffries as the fight referee in the opening boxing match. Greta Granstedt as Jimmy's sister is actually a bit of a revelation for anyone who has only seen her in The Devil Horse. She is quite a fine little actress and seems very much a reflection of her time. No wonder she played so many working class girls in those early years of sound, when studios actually, at least some of the time, would attempt to reflect the real life struggles fought amongst ordinary Joes outside the gates of Hollywood studios. Artclass, meanwhile, which had begun production back in 1929, folded later in 1932 although the brothers Weiss continued to issue bottom of the barrel product well into the decade and beyond.
No comments:
Post a Comment