Mary Brian (1906-2002)

"The Sweetest Girl in Pictures," Mary Brian is today best known for two public domain titles, The Front Page (1931) and the British release The Amazing Adventure (1935).

Photo: Mary Brian and the author in Studio City 1994.

Sari Maritza (1910-1987)

Heavily publicized by Paramount Pictures in 1932 as that studio's “new” Marlene Dietrich – the original Marlene proving recalcitrant by demanding to work solely with her personal Svengali, Josef von Sternberg – Sari Maritza was in reality nice Dora Patricia Detering Nathan, born in China to a British military officer and his Viennese wife. Stagestruck Patricia did indeed study voice in Vienna, which is where she met British talent coach Vivian Gaye, who became her manager and persuaded her to change her name to the much more exotic Sari Maritza, a moniker hinting of gay operetta and all things Viennese. Unfortunately, Vivian's timing was a bit off. Sound films were rapidly taking over in Europe as well by 1929 and the newly coined Sari Maritza quickly “learned” to speak English “like a native.” “They thought I was a very clever girl,” Patricia Nathan later recalled. They did indeed, as did Charles Chaplin, in Berlin at the same time Sari was making her third motion picture appearance, Ufa's Bomben auf Monte Carlo (released 1932). She was on Chaplin's arm at the London premiere of City Lights (1931) and everybody assumed she would be his leading lady both on and off the screen. That didn't happen and instead she signed with Paramount. By then the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, and Paramount's attempts to turn her into a Continental femme fatale were ludicrous on the face of it and deservedly met with scorn. As a consequence, the homegrown Tallulah Bankhead got all the Dietrich rejects and Maritza instead lampooned herself opposite W.C. Fields in the anarchic International House (1933). Both Sari and costar Erich Von Stroheim admittedly did the dreary WWI drama Crimson Romance (1934), from poverty row upstart Mascot Pictures, solely for the dough, after which Sari Maritza left the screen for good to marry MGM producer Sam Katz. She divorced Katz ten years later and by 1947 was found living in Washington, DC with her second husband, George Clother, “an economics student [!] at Georgetown.” Sari Maritza died in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Sari Maritza's name, and that of Vivian Gaye, resurfaced two years after the former's death, when rumors of a homosexual relationship between early 1930s housemates Cary Grant and Randolph Scott once again did the rounds. According to the gossip mills, they were a gay foursome, the girls, Lesbians of course, bearding for the boys. Reached for a comment, Vivian Gaye dismissed the rumors as completely misinterpreting what was just carefree California living. So there!

Greek Street (US title Latin Lovers; UK, 1930) PD **

Sari Maritza makes her screen debut in this Gaumont-British production as Anna, an orphan singing in an Italian establishment in London. She falls for the owner, Rikki (William Freshman), but he takes great umbrage when she decides to accept an offer from Mansfield Yates (Martin Lewis) to become a star in his upscale establishment. Unfortunately, Yates expects more from Anna than she is ready to give and after having performed two production numbers to great acclaim, she leaves Yates and his high falutin' night spot in favor of returning to her humble beginnings and Rikki.

The only surprising aspect of this early talkie musical is not Sari Maritza's “amazing” way with the English language, which had already been thoroughly debunked, but how fluid  the film moves. Early European talkies are supposed to be even more moribund than their Hollywood counterparts but that is certainly not in evidence here. In fact, the opening sequence, a long dolly shot through a crowded Italian restaurant, the camera occasionally picking out an interesting face or two among the spectators, is as good as anything American cinematographers were doing at the time. There is a second, similar, sequence that demonstrates Percy Strong's ability with a camera, this time following fuddy-duddy Sir George Ascot (Bert Coote, the father of Robert Coote who played the exact same type of characters in Hollywood movies of the 1940s) as he is pushed about by the throng in the very same establishment. Unfortunately, except for the obligatory kaleidoscopic view of chorus girls in action (and, no, Busby Berkeley did not invent the overhead shot of dancers cavorting), the production numbers are static and uninteresting. Especially if Sari Maritza's coloratura gets on your nerves as it did mine. The performances run the gamut from over-the-top (Australian actor William Freshman ladles on an Italian accent with a trowel) to underwhelming (Miss Maritza), but, if nothing else, Greek Street is worthwhile from a historical standpoint.

Fifi D'Orsay (1904-1983)

The former Yvonne Lussier, of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Fifi D'Orsay had been trained as a typist but came to New York in the wake of Anna Held and Irene Bordoni, the original “Ooh la la” type musical comedy performers. She never reached Held and Bordoni's fame on the Great White Way – in fact, she didn't reach Broadway until the age of 66 when she became one of the old gals in “Follies” – but joined the chorus line in the “Greenwich Village Follies.” Broadway humorist turned movie star Will Rogers brought her to Hollywood and she joined him as his foil in both They Had to See Paris (1929) and Young As You Feel (1931). The Girl from Calgary was a rare starring role and, as we shall see, depended entirely too much on her slight talents – but she was really better in support. She filmed less frequently after 1935 but “Follies,” of course, gave her a nostalgic sheen and she did television until the early 1970s, after which she retired to New Hope, PA. Known as the “French Bombshell,” D'Orsay actually never left North America and when she won a trip to Paris appearing on Ralph Edwards' This Is Your Life, she exchanged the ticket for cash.

The Girl from Calgary (Monogram, 1932) PD **
A couple of New York impresarios, Larry and Monte (Paul Kelly and Eddie Featherstone), persuade Calgary chantoos Fifi Follette (Fifi D'Orsay) and her roommate Maizie (Astrid Allwyn) to accompany them to New York, where Larry assures them jobs on Broadway. Fifi quickly wins a beauty contest in Atlantic City and soon her charm and talent have won over not only Broadway producer Earl Darrell (Edwin Maxwell) but his rich backer, Bill Webster (Robert Warwick). That's pretty much all there is to this story, except that Webster attempts to win Fifi away from Larry, who has fallen in love with her. Larry pretends that he is fine with Fifi selling herself to Webster, but of course isn't and tries to win her back.

How about this for make-believe: Fifi D'Orsay, who is perhaps cute but certainly no raving beauty, wins a major contest in Atlantic City (take a wild guess as to which one!) As a singer, she is adequate at best, but wins the starring role in a big Broadway musical (and haven't we seen that wildly applauding first night crowd a million times before?), performing no less than three solo numbers wearing a bunch of feathers on her head and a short skirt that combined do nothing for her figure. No wonder that the much prettier Astrid Allwyn, who suffers a severe case of lower billing, goes green with envy. (Allwyn made a career of playing jealous girls, notably in Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939]). Perhaps I am being too hard on Fifi D'Orsay – and considering her later success I may actually be – but she really is the whole show here and that is just too tall an order.

Walking in and out of the various theatrical front offices visited by Fifi and her impresario in The Girl from Calgary are several interesting starlets, including Geraldine Dvorak (1904-1985) who, aside from playing one of Bela Lugosi's vampire brides in Dracula (1931), was Greta Garbo's stand-in at MGM; and Kathryn Sergava (1910-2005),a former ballerina from Russian Georgia who, very briefly, was Warner Bros.' answer to Garbo herself. It was poor Miss Sergava who in 2003 was pronounced prematurely dead by a New York columnist causing a truly memorable headline: “Dead Wrong!” And then there is Geneva Mitchell (1908-1949; photo left), a stunning beauty who had come to Hollywood in 1929 with quite a pedigree as a “Ziegfeld Follies” show girl (the 1920 “Midnight Frolic” and the 1921 “Follies”). Yet here she is in a silent bit but showing her shapely legs and making yet another unfair comparison to the rather dumpy Miss D'Orsay. Mitchell later earned a contract with Columbia, a minor step up, I suppose, but her films remained solidly in the B category. Today, she is remembered only for the three shorts she made with the Stooges: Pop Goes the Easel, Hoi Polloi, and Restless Knights (all 1935). Sadly, she died too young from an undisclosed illness.