The lives of Hollywood stars are frequently tragic and messy tales of absent fathers, cruelly ambitious mothers, and madly dysfunctional families.

Mexican-American actress, Lupe Velez (July 18, 1908 – December 13, 1944) “The Mexican Spitfire” was a beautiful, passionate, emotionally unstable woman best known for a series of 1930’s B movies in which she plays a delightfully scatter-brained character who speaks broken English mixed with streams of rapid fire Spanish.

Her first feature-length film was in the Douglas Fairbanks blockbuster, The Gaucho (1927), where she plays a high spirited Spanish dancing girl. Velez performed in a further eighteen films before settling into comedy—she had a Carol Lombard vibe, a  flair for screwball situations, but her accent limited her appeal—most notably in the seven “Mexican Spitfire” series of films (1939-1943).

Lupe Velez and Douglas Fairbanks in The Gaucho, 1927.

In private life, Velez carried on a number of highly publicized Hollywood romances. Gary Cooper had an affair with the dark beauty as did the great director—and ladies man—Victor Fleming.

In a 1929 interview with Motion Picture World, Velez said:

“And Victor Fleming! I like him because he is a devil with womens… But I am more than a devil than he is. That is why I never fall in love with him.”

In another interview, Velez said of herself:

“I have flirt with the whole film colony. Why not? I am not serious. What harm is a little flirting? No I do not kiss many mens. But when I kiss them, they stay kissed!”

Lupe’s casual demeanor was a carefully constructed image serving to conceal a troubled and vulnerable personality—possibly bi-polar—a young woman almost continually in the grip of a turbulent and painful love life.

In 1933 she married Olympic athlete turned Hollywood Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller. They fought loudly and drunkenly, frequently in nightclubs and restaurants, hurling insults, drinks and punches at each other. The marriage lasted five years. They  divorced in 1938.

Velez’s father, an army officer, was so humiliated by his daughter’s chosen profession that he refused to let her use his last name, Vallalobos. Velez was her mother’s maiden name.

Lupe Velez and Gary Cooper in Wolf Song, 1929.

Esther Ralston, (here’s my three part series about Ralston) a Hollywood star for a few brief years during the silent era, at one point earning as much as $8,000 a week, gives a remarkable insight into Velez’s difficult life in Raltson’s obscure but invaluable autobiography, Some Day We’ll Laugh.

Not too many months later, Gary [Cooper] had transferred his affections [from Clara Bow] to the Mexican bombshell, Lupe Velez. Lupe came to my brand new star dressing room one day to tell me about it. Then she launched into an impassioned recital of the troubles she was having with her mother.

“No matter what I do for her,” she wailed, “I cannot satisfy her.”

“I can’t see what your mother can find to complain about, Lupe,” I tried to comfort her. “You’ve given her a house, a mink coat, clothes, diamond bracelets, everything. What in Heaven’s name is she fussing about?”

“My mother, she say to me,” Lupe explained, “For nine months I carry you in my body. You owe me RENT!”

Velez, in the mid 1940’s, had an affair with a young actor named Harald Maresch, and became pregnant. Unwilling to marry her, Maresch demanded that Velez get an abortion, (Hollywood abortions will be the subject for a future and tragic post here at BH) but Lupe was a faithful Catholic and flatly refused.

The actress, with a weakness for liquor and drugs, spiraled into a clinical depression. Increasingly isolated, the fragile young woman felt unable to bear the shame of giving birth to an illegitimate child.

Velez sat down and composed a note:

To Harald, may God forgive you and forgive me too but I prefer to take my life away and our baby’s before I bring him with shame or killing him. Lupe

Lupe Velez took an overdose of Seconal and died in her bed—not with her head in the toilet as the ugly myth contends—on December 13, 1944.

She was 36 years old.

Here’s an absolutely heartbreaking clip from The Mexican Spitfire’s Blessed Event, 1943.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

To read Part II, please click here.

Broke, with her second marriage in shambles and blacklisted by studio boss L.B. Mayer—Esther wouldn’t trade amorous favors for movie roles—Esther Ralston flees to New York in 1939 to find work and rebuild her shattered career.

Esther, in her slim but resonant 1985 memoir, Some Day We’ll Laugh, tells us that she was forced to leave her daughter Mary behind in California with her mother.

Working in Summer Stock and radio, Esther meets a young entertainment columnist named Ted Lloyd.  Everywhere she plays, Ted is in the audience. With characteristic understatement Esther notes that Lloyd “seemed to follow me.”

Clearly, Esther has an admirer. Not surprising in that Esther Ralston, dubbed The American Venus, was a famous Hollywood beauty. One would hope that coming on the heels of two ex-husbands who were not only unreliable, but also somewhat homicidal, Esther would steer clear of another hasty romantic entanglement, but —

— Alas, soon enough Lloyd is escorting Esther around town. They appear arm in arm in the fashionable Stork Club, Toot Shorr’s, Jack Dempsey’s and Lindy’s.

Esther writes:

During these weeks, Ted kept telling me how much he loved me and pleading with me to marry him. I explained that I was trying to recover from a sad divorce and was not interested in ever marrying again.

Okay. Good for Esther. She’s using her common sense under the juggernaut of her latest suitor’s attentions.

Esther and Scary Husband #3

But Lloyd is not just aggressive, he’s coldly manipulative and he zeroes in on Esther’s vulnerable core—her eight-year old daughter Mary.

Ted took a trip to California and got in touch with my family. He took them all to dinner, bought Mary a doll, and tried to talk her into persuading me to marry him so she could come and be with her mother.

This is seriously creepy, and it should have unmasked Lloyd as morally deficient. Esther, once discovering this ethical breach, should have reacted with fury. But Mary’s pathetic letters—“I miss you, Mommy. Please can’t I come to you?”—breaks Esther’s will and she surrenders to Lloyd.

In a final and serious talk with Ted Lloyd, I told him I wasn’t in love with him, I’d been too hurt and disillusioned by my previous marriages, but if he still wanted me, I would marry him and do my best to make him happy. We were married at the Pickwick Arms in Greenwich, Connecticut, on August 6^th 1939.

Homicidal husband #3, Ted Lloyd.

Esther, Ted and Mary move into a modest house in Little Neck. Esther’s dream—the American Dream—of a life of simple domesticity seems to be falling into place. But finances are something of a problem. Lloyd, a lowly columnist and sometimes PR guy, is not pulling in that much money.

And so, in September of 1939, on Esther’s thirty-eighth birthday, when Darryl F. Zanuck calls to offer Esther a role in the prestigious Alice Faye vehicle, Tin Pan Alley, Esther immediately agrees to play the famous singer Nora Bayes.

In Hollywood a week later, Esther is working with a solid cast including Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Jack Oakie, and John Payne.

A few years earlier, Esther notes, she met Nora Bayes on the Paramount lot and Bayes offered some words—deeply prophetic—that Esther never forgot:

“You’re young now, Esther. What I say may not mean much to you now, but someday you’ll remember what I tell you. Someday, everything you think, everything you do, will be in your face. Remember that.”

As she’s wrapping up work in Tin Pan Alley, Esther is offered a supporting role in Universal’s San Francisco Docks.

Acutely aware of her role as mother and wife, Esther calls Ted to ask his permission to stay another few weeks in California. Reluctantly, Ted agrees, but makes Esther promise that this will be her last motion picture.

Esther abides by her agreement.

Alice Faye, left, and Esther Ralston on the set of Tin Pan Alley, 1939.

In 1942 Ted loses his job as a columnist. Esther, always the optimist, encourages Ted to produce his own radio shows. He moves ahead with her suggestion and proves successful, saving money by hiring Esther to play multiple roles on his radio plays.

Two more children are born, Judy in 1942, and Ted Jr., in 1943. At last, Esther seems to be, enjoying her life as mother and wife. They buy a bigger house in Great Neck and Esther wears a mink coat when they go sailing on their new ship.

Esther Meets Dorian Gray

But the routine of cooking, house cleaning and laundering leaves Esther exhausted by nightfall.  Ted frequently calls from New York urging Esther to get dressed and join him for an important cocktail party or theater event. But, pleads Esther, she can’t leave the kids.

Inevitably, Ted starts coming home late. He becomes cold and inattentive. Finally, Esther discovers that Ted is having an affair with, yup, his secretary.

Let’s review:

Husband #1, George Webb, gambler.

Husband #2, Bill Morgan, alcoholic.

Husband #3, Ted Lloyd, adulterer.

But something else gnaws at Esther. Something even more disturbing and elemental than the awful cliché of her husband’s infidelity. She looks in the mirror and sees signs of encroaching middle age. But Ted—like Dorian Gray—seems eternally young.

Esther confronts him:

Ted was so quiet, I became alarmed. “You did tell the truth about your age when you wrote on our marriage license that you were the same age as I, didn’t you?” Ted never answered me.

A cold chill ran through me, and then I said quietly, “Teddy, tell me the truth. How old are you?” Then Ted told me he was twelve years younger than I.

“Why? Why did you lie to me?” I gasped, choking back the tears.

“Because I knew you wouldn’t have married me if you had known,” he said.

Nora Bayes prophetic advice kicks in with ferocity:

In the months to follow, I found myself studying my face, my figure, looking for lines, grey hairs, and so on. I became so conscious of the difference in our ages that I became depressed and miserably unhappy. Ted’s frequent sarcasm and slighting remarks that had never bothered me before became red flags to my ego.

An emotional scorched earth policy seems to envelope the marriage. In 1950, while Esther visits her mother in California, Mary, now a lively teenager, urgently writes: “Daddy has a woman sleeping with him in your bed!”

Esther immediately returns to New York. In a scene we have viewed in countless movies, Ted packs his bags and walks out on his wife and children.  He withholds all financial support. Once again, Esther alone is responsible for her children.

I tried to carry on without my husband, but soon found that we were not only running short of food but the telephone and lights were about to be turned off because of non-payment of bills. I was frantic. I called the Welfare Department and told them my husband had abandoned my children and me and what my plight was. They contacted Ted at his office and he was furious that I had called Welfare, but he came by the next day with a bag of groceries.

A week later, Ted calls and invites Esther out to dinner. Hopeful, Esther imagines an attempt at reconciliation. But Ted is strangely silent and Esther, confused and sad, asks Ted to drive her home:

We were both silent as we neared our house, but when he drove right by it and turned down a dark, little-traveled road, I was suddenly frightened. His face was set and ugly-looking and I said to him, “Ted, take me home at once! I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but if you don’t take me back at once, I’m getting out of this car!”

When he didn’t answer me, but kept driving, I opened the car door and jumped out, and began walking back down the road. I heard him drive a bit further, then turning his car around, he gunned the motor and, with headlights blazing, drove straight at me. I screamed and jumped into the ditch, then stood staring in shock as Ted stopped the car and, putting his head down on the steering wheel, began to sob.

Esther ponders the strange trajectory of her life:

What was there about me, I grieved, that made me fail in three marriages? Why had each of my three husbands wanted to kill me?

Esther, American Patriot

Sadly, Esther’s memoir breaks off at this point in her life, 1950.

What did this resilient woman do next?

Esther continued with her radio work. She managed the boy’s department at B. Altman’s in Manhasset, Long Island. She was lured to television for a role in The Verdict is Yours, and then a steady role as Helen Lee in the 1962 soap opera Our Five Daughters.  Esther was a consultant and decorator for The Lighting Studio, in Glen Falls, and then in 1978 she returned to Los Angeles where she found work in numerous television commercials.

Her son Ted, a 1970 article in The Troy Record informs us, was a captain in the U.S. Air Force.

In 1992, film historian and biographer Eve Golden interviewed Esther and etched a vivid portrait of a lively and generous woman with not an ounce of bitterness or self-pity.

“I have fifteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. They’re all over the world, so I can’t see them now, but I write to them and talk to them… I have had a very long and brilliant life. I’ve been very, very grateful…”

It’s hard to evaluate Esther Ralston’s Hollywood career. So many of her films have been lost. But what we do have reveals a luminous presence whose understated and subtle performances are among the most skillful of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Esther Ralston in Old Ironsides, 1926.

In almost every interview I’ve read with Esther, she cites Old Ironsides, 1926 as her favorite movie. It’s an adventure film, and also the story of the U.S.S. Constitution, known as Old Ironsides. Said Esther to silent film historian Anthony Slide, who maintained a friendship with Esther and edited her memoir:

“My favorite is Old Ironsides… My people came over on the Mayflower, and they fought in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and the World War and Vietnam. I think because Old Ironsides is history—American history—that meant more to me than any of the other pictures.”

Esther’s pride in her American roots, her unabashed patriotism seems a fitting tribute for this Hollywood star.

Esther Ralston never again married.

The American Venus passed away on January 14, 1994, in her 92^nd year.

Esther Ralston’s filmography.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

To read Part I of this series, please click here.

Blessed with a lovely, melodic voice, it’s something of a puzzle why Paramount dropped Esther Ralston’s option in 1929. Esther was a rising star who, between 1924 and 1929, starred or co-starred in twenty-five films. She would seem a natural for talkies.

But the mystery is soon cleared up as Esther explains:

Since I had only a year to go on my Paramount contract, the studio sent me a new contract with a talkie clause to sign. Knowing I had been brought up in the theater before going into pictures, George decided I should ask for a hundred thousand dollars to sign this talkie clause. He sent me alone to talk to Mr. Lasky and Mr. Zukor. They were courteous as always, but explained that the new talkie panic had them worried and they didn’t feel they should have to increase my salary until they were sure I would be adequate in talkies.

Once again, the destructive Svengali-Trilby relationship asserts itself as the guiding principle of Esther and George.

Unlike so many other stars who grew tired and cynical under the pressures of the frantic pace of production, Esther genuinely delighted in the hard work and was, by all accounts, well liked by everyone.

Well, almost everyone.

In her modest but hugely revealing memoir, Some Day We’ll Laugh, and years later in conversation with silent film historian, Anthony Slide, Esther vents about an unpleasant breach, professional and personal, with director Dorothy Arzner.

Publicity photo of Esther Ralston for Ten Modern Commandments, the film in which director Dorothy Arzner sexually harassed the young star.

Open about her homosexuality, director Dorothy Arzner, during production of Fashions for Women and Ten Modern Commandments, 1927, is in the habit of dragging Esther into her lap and groping her breasts.

Esther rejects Arzner’s crude advances and Arzner takes revenge by browbeating Esther, making her perform take after take of a single scene. Ironic, because Esther was known as One-Take Ralston.

Furious, Esther storms into Adolf Zukor’s office and announces that she will never again work with Arzner.

Esther Wants a Baby

Broke, with Hollywood re-gearing for the new era of talkies, George proposes that Esther go on the road with a vaudeville act. It is notable that George himself never once considers going to work. No, the structure of their dysfunctional relationship dictates Esther as breadwinner and George as, um, parasite.

Like the veteran trouper she is, Esther puts together an act billed as the “Golden Girl of the Silver Screen… in Person.”

Esther opens in 1929 at the Orpheum in Los Angeles. Playing to enthusiastic audiences, the tour moves to Chicago and then The Palace in New York. A month later, playing three shows a day, four on Saturday and Sunday, Esther is worn down, depressed.

Although it was a thrill to see people lined up for a block and a half waiting to get into the theater to see my act, I just wanted to go home to have a baby. George kept urging me to be patient, saying that having a baby might make me lose my American Venus figure, that I was still young and there would be plenty of time to start a family.

A crude manipulator, George threatens to commit suicide if Esther insists on abandoning the tour. Torn by her desire to start a family, and her husband’s control over her life and career, Esther sinks into silence and starts to lose weight. Alarmed at seeing his meal ticket in meltdown, George makes an appointment for Esther with a “Park Avenue specialist.”

I was thoroughly examined and, after I had dressed, I came out to the office where the specialist was talking with George. They both stared at me so solemnly that I was frightened. “What is it?” I almost screamed. “Why are you looking at me like that. Is something wrong with me?”

“Better sit down, my dear,” the doctor said quietly, then he told me the bad news. Evidently, my strenuous acrobatic dancing, my high kicks and so forth, had left me with one ovary completely damaged and the other only halfway intact. “I’m sorry, Miss Ralston, but I’m afraid you can never have children. I’m so sorry.” He said.

I was numb with shock. It just couldn’t be true. All I wanted out of life was to have children. Who cared about a career? What price being a movie star, here today gone tomorrow? No babies? Not ever? I wanted to die.

What is going on here?

I presented Esther’s narrative to a close friend, a distinguished physician. He pointed out that female athletes, and dancers—usually ballerinas—through endless training, rehearsals, and extreme diets, frequently lose their menstrual cycles, which leads to temporary infertility.

But Esther does not present as that kind of dancer or dieter. No, it seems that Esther was the victim of a cruel manipulation designed to keep her on the road and insure a cash flow.

I’m fairly certain that George Webb greased the palm of the Park Avenue specialist to offer the heart-breaking diagnosis thereby breaking down Esther’s defenses and making her even more dependent on her husband.

Esther agrees to finish the tour.

The Case of Lena Smith, 1929, directed by Josef von Sternberg. Released just as sound was coming in, this film, according to Esther, was her very best work. No copies are known to exist. Lena Smith is one of the most sought after lost films of the silent era.

Esther might be gullible, and she is most certainly uninformed about female biology, but she has true grit and faith in G-d.

Raised an Episcopalian, Esther confesses that for years she has been an earnest student of Christian Science. Convinced that G-d wants her to have a child, Esther summons a Christian Science Practitioner for prayer sessions.

In the days before antibiotics, when the most ordinary infection could result in death, scores of the Hollywood colony flocked to Christian Science. The great director King Vidor was one of the most visible adherents.

A few months later, her vaudeville tour ended, back in Hollywood, Louis B. Mayer offers Esther a long-term contract worth $100,000.

Esther turns it down, explaining that she is, yes, pregnant.

With all due respect to Christian Science, I still believe that George Webb and the Park Avenue specialist conspired the false diagnosis to keep Esther working.

Esther and the Miraculous Turtle Cream

Meanwhile, George discovers a “scientist” who has invented a miraculous “turtle cosmetic cream” guaranteed to make women look years younger. In 1930, using the money Esther earned on her vaudeville tour, George opens “Esther’s in Hollywood” a spa on Yucca Street in Los Angeles.

In 1931 Esther gives birth to a daughter, Mary Esther, and Ralston looks forward to a quiet life in her mansion as a mother and wife.

But business and money management at “Esther’s in Hollywood” is not what it should be—big shock—and George arranges for another grueling vaudeville tour.

Playing to sold-out audiences, Esther is invited to England to deliver a Command Performance at the Palladium, the largest theater in the world.

Rather than be separated from her child, Esther hires a Nanny to help care for baby Mary on the tour.

Esther and the anti-Semites

Checking into the Mayfair hotel in London, Esther discovers that Eddie Kay, her musical conductor and arranger, and his wife Tessie are not registered.

“Why not?” I said. “All my company are to be registered here at this hotel. “But Madame,” answered the clerk, “I’m sorry, but we couldn’t register Mr. Kay. He is a Jew.”

“Restricted” hotels were an accepted part of the social landscape in Europe and America all through the 1950’s.

Esther immediately checks out of the Mayfair and rents a luxurious apartment directly across from the Marble Arch where Eddie, Tessie and Esther’s entire staff stay for the duration of the London tour.

Esther does not deliver a tedious lecture about fighting injustice and prejudice. She doesn’t make any grand claims for her righteousness. She does the right thing, and moves on with her story.

Admirable.

Esther is exhausted and homesick, for America, for her lovely mansion, and the golden California sunshine. But George books weeks of further engagements in Scotland and Wales.

We had been almost a year in England by now and I began to fret with homesickness. We had received a cable from our receptionist at “Esther’s in Hollywood” requesting an immediate five thousand dollars for new hair dryers. It seemed to me that our salon was beginning to cost more than it was bringing in.

I complained to George that it just didn’t seem fair that his mother, Mrs. Frey, his nephew Mac, and his youngest daughter, Marion should all be living in our “castle,” enjoying the California sunshine, swimming in my beloved pool, being waited on by Sing [the cook] while my baby and I were so far from home and I had to work so hard for every penny.

So badly has George mismanaged Esther’s finances that on February 27, 1933, Esther’s mansion and all its contents are put up for auction. Esther does not provide details of George’s financial mismanagement, but between bad investments, various swindles, and George’s degenerate gambling we can well imagine how another fortune is lost.

Esther makes a list of each creditor and accepts every job that Hollywood has to offer. Dollar by dollar, Esther pays off her considerable debts.

Quarreling all the time, George and Esther are bound in a loveless, dysfunctional marriage.

Esther Gets on the Very Bad Side of L.B. Mayer

Thirty-one years old, Esther is no longer the devastatingly beautiful ingénue who lit up the screen in the silent era. But Louis B. Mayer, the most powerful studio head in Hollywood, is still anxious to bring her to MGM.

He offers her $750.00 a week, a steep decline from the days when she was pulling in $2,500 a week, but Esther is more than grateful to sign the contract.

But there’s a catch. And it’s classic Hollywood.

L.B. Mayer has a massive schoolboy crush on Esther, and when she realizes that the powerful mogul expects, um, favors in return for roles, Esther spurns Mayer’s advances.

When I arrived at the studio the next morning, I was told to go at once to Mr. Mayer’s office. He wanted to see me.

“Good morning,” I said cheerfully as I entered his office.

Mr. Mayer glared at me and, shaking his finger at me furiously, he shouted, “Think you’re pretty smart, eh? Think you fooled me? Let me tell you, I can have any woman on this lot — Joan Crawford and…”

I stood up indignantly and interrupted his tirade. “Perhaps you can — any woman but Esther Ralston.”

“Just who do you think you are?” he sputtered.

“I thought, Mr. Mayer, I was hired as an actress, but evidently you had other plans for me.’

Getting up from his chair, Mayer paced up and down the room, shouting, “You sing your psalms, young lady, and see where you get! I’ll blackball you in every studio in Hollywood, and what’s more you’ll get nothing here!”

Mayer makes good on his promise. MGM sells Esther’s contract to Universal for a group of less than stellar projects which do nothing for her career, and as everyone knows if you’re not on an upward trajectory in Hollywood, you’re probably in a downward spiral.

Esther Ralston and Joan Crawford in Sadie McKee.

Esther’s one MGM film during that period is the Joan Crawford vehicle, Sadie McKee, 1934.

It is director Clarence Brown—Garbo’s frequent helmer—who insists on casting Ralston as the theatrical femme fatale, Dolly Merrick.

Esther’s part is small, but she sparkles in every scene. Even as a slinky tramp, Esther brings warmth to the character that keeps you off-balance. You want to hate this vaudeville villainess, yet at the same time there is the urge to melt into her arms.

Here’s a brief clip of Esther Ralston singing I Looked In Your Eyes with Gene Raymond. As you can see, Esther is magnetic, with a richly-toned voice. As Dolly Merrick, Esther plays a vaudeville femme fatale who steals Barry from good girl Crawford. Sadie McKee is not one of Crawford’s better known vehicles, but it happens to be one of my favorites. And Esther Ralston’s presence is one of the reasons this film has such appeal for yours truly.

–

In March of 1934, Esther finally sues for divorce from George Webb. True to form, Webb counter-sues, demanding $75.00 a week in alimony. The judge denies Webb’s claim and hands Esther full custody of their child Mary Esther.

Esther Rebuilds Her Life—Sorta

At last free from George Webb, a liar, a gambler, and swindler, Esther is free to rebuild her life and career, and hopefully choose her next relationship through the prism of hard earned experience.

However, the day after her divorce—the very next day—at a Hollywood party in Brentwood, Esther clamps eyes on Ted Morgan, a smooth crooner with a pleasing baritone.

Chatting intimately, Esther learns that Morgan’s wife has just run off with another man.

Reflects Esther:

I guess the fact that we were both unhappy victims of divorce brought us closer together, for I brought him home to Mama’s the next day for dinner.

In the meantime, Esther comes to the conclusion that though she can always earn money, she can’t seem to hold on to it. Thus, Esther engages a high-profile money manager who claims that his clients are a who’s who of Hollywood talent. Confident that, at last, she has found financial salvation, Esther turns over her entire savings to her new money manager. He puts Esther on a weekly allowance and —

— and if your stomach is churning as you read this, well, you have guessed correctly.

The money manager blows town, conning Esther out of all her money.

For those keeping a scorecard, this makes three fortunes Esther has earned and lost.

Esther Ralston is once again broke, adrift in a cocoon of bafflement and betrayal.

It is under these circumstances in June 1935—betrayed by a man she trusted, and forced to drastically downsize—that Esther accepts Morgan’s marriage proposal.

Admits Esther:

During these months, Will Morgan and I were seeing each other constantly and though it seemed that he was drinking an awful lot, I refused to see the danger signals. We were so in love.

Esther with Bill Morgan husband #2.

Really, at this point in the narrative I ‘m slapping my forehead like a Dexedrine fueled lab monkey.

Esther, baby, what are you thinking?

Of course, Morgan can’t buy a job in Hollywood and so he convinces the pliable Esther to combine their talents.

The Ralston-Morgan Vaudeville Act goes on a mildly successful tour across the U.S. No doubt, if it was just Esther head-lining, the box office would have been better.

Forced to leave daughter Mary behind, the pain of their separation is almost more than Esther can bear. And so when Esther’s agent tells her that she has several film offers back in Hollywood, Esther cancels the tour and hurries home.

Resenting Esther’s success, Morgan climbs into a bottle—a case of bottles.

One day, on location for The Girl From Mandalay, Morgan, a sloppy drunk, staggers on the set and disrupts production:

After this final humiliation, I took Mary and went to stay with Mama. I told Bill I’d had it with his drinking and I was leaving him for good. A few nights later, I drove back to our apartment in North Hollywood to pick up my belongings. I parked the car in front and as I got out, saw Bill waiting for me. He was drunk again, and as I turned to go back to the car, he grabbed me by the throat and tried to drag me to the apartment door, yelling, “You aren’t going to leave me, I’ll kill you first.”

Okay, kids, pull out your trusty scorecard: check off two husbands who have threatened murder.

Esther’s life, her dreadful choices in love, is like a Kabuki performance where movement and emotion are ritualized. Esther and the men in her life play their assigned roles to grim perfection.

Esther and Bill are divorced in 1938. Again, Esther is almost penniless and the sole support of her daughter.

What to do?

Esther drives cross-country to New York seeking work in radio and summer stock.

The American Venus is determined to get a fresh start.

But on her very first day in New York, in an agent’s office, Esther meets a young, well-connected show biz columnist who immediately sets his sights on Ralston.

Coming soon, Part III, and yup, husband # 3 also wants to murder Esther.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

They called her: The American Venus.

She lived in a Hollywood mansion with a staff of servants. Her chauffeur drove a limited edition limousine. But she ended her days in an upscale trailer park in Ventura, California.

One of the enduring mysteries—for yours truly—are the scores of Hollywood starlets, innocent young women, who are attracted to bad men: drunks, gamblers, liars, tinsel town sociopaths.

Esther Ralston is a prime example of an early Hollywood star who showed great promise as an actress—she played drama and comedy with equal craft—but three ill-considered marriages effectively derailed Ralston’s career and drained away her considerable fortune.

Esther On the Road

Esther spent her childhood as a member of The Seven Ralston’s, an entertainment troupe made up of her four brothers and her parents. It was a hardscrabble, gypsy life, traveling across rural America performing in carnivals, town halls, revival tents, high school gymnasiums, colleges, even insane asylums, anywhere there was an audience.

In her tender and revealing autobiography, Some Day We’ll Laugh, Esther remembers:

As children, my four brothers and I never knew what it was like to have enough to eat or to be sure where we would sleep that night. In this modern world of disposable diapers, detergents, and specialized medicine, I often wonder what mama used for diapers and how she washed them, or us, in theater dressing rooms or railroad station waiting rooms.

Quite often, when there was no money for railroad fare, a kind station master would persuade the brakeman of a freight train which was stopping by for water, to allow us to ride to our next destination in the caboose. This was high adventure for us kids.

Billed as “Baby Esther, America’s Youngest Juliet,” Esther performed Shakespeare at the tender age of six.

The Ralston Family, 1917, from left to right: Esther, Howard, Bradford, Carleton, Mama, Clarence, and Papa.

In spite of poverty, hunger and the uncertainty of where the next job and buck would come, Esther’s memories of her childhood are, for the most part, bathed in the warm glow of nostalgia. Being poor was a minor annoyance when placed against the overwhelming security of a close, loving family.

But then, as now, human monsters preyed on innocent children.

In the Summer of 1911, in West Virginia, alone in a shabby rural hotel room, a traveling salesman promised seven-year old Esther a “surprise” if she would visit his room:

Esther was uncertain but remembered that her mother cautioned never to be rude to their public.

… he grabbed me and threw me backward across the bed, trying to pin me down by my arms. Terror-stricken as I was, the training in boxing, wrestling and gymnastics I’d had from my father since I was two stood me in good stead now. I was scratching, biting, kicking and squirming like a wildcat and the startled young man was no match for me; freeing myself from his clutches, I beat him to the door, raced down the hall and out of the hotel.

Esther sobbed out her story to her family and her father, in cold fury, ran back to the hotel to deal with the child molester, but the traveling salesman had already fled.

Esther in Hollywood

In 1917 the family moved to California in order to escape the infantile paralysis scare. Esther, growing into an American beauty, attended Glendale high school. Soon, Esther was picking up work as a movie extra and in 1920 she signed a three-month contract with Charlie Chaplin Studios to play an angel in The Kid, 1921. Unfortunately, her footage ended up on the cutting room floor.

In 1922, Esther appeared with the great Lon Chaney in Oliver Twist. The veteran actor mentored Esther on set, advising her to relax between scenes or she would rapidly burn out due to her nervous enthusiasm. Playing opposite Chaney, a huge movie star, proved a valuable boost to her career.

A few months later, on the set of a western, Phantom Fortune, 1923, Esther met actor George Webb, a reliable character actor well known for playing heavies.

Esther recalls:

I was immediately attracted to Mr. Webb, and he to me.  He often drove me home in his fine car. This was much better than hitch-hiking.

One late afternoon, when we had finished work earlier than usual, Mr. Webb invited me to have dinner with him at the Hollywood Athletic Club, where he was living. I had had very little experience eating in a fine restaurant and I was enthralled but very conscious of “minding my manners.”  When Mr. Webb, ordering a lovely dinner, asked me, “Would you like to have a fruit cocktail?” I answered with dignity, “Oh, no thank you. I don’t drink.”

Raised on the road with few creature comforts, often eating out of tin cans and having absolutely no experience in polite society, we sense this young woman’s excitement and excruciating self-consciousness as she fumbles for the right fork and tries desperately to impress the seemingly sophisticated and worldly George Webb.

George Webb, Esther’s first husband.

Esther in Love

Women are attracted to powerful men and Esther, a stunning if insecure ingénue, perceived Webb as a Hollywood player, a well known actor who seemed to know everybody in the business.

But of course, there were warning signs that Webb was a leaky vessel:

As the picture progressed, so did our friendship. To me, Mr. Webb was the epitome of elegance and sophistication and one of the best actors in Hollywood.  But George was an inveterate gambler. He’d bet on whether it was going to rain the next day. Sometimes he would drive me to the beach after work and I would watch him in adoring silence while he spent hours playing the local pinball machine.

Reading this paragraph, I wanted to travel back in time, sit down with Esther and explain that this guy is big trouble, certainly not marriage material.

Soon, George Webb confessed to Esther—they were in love and so it was truth time—that his real name was George Webb Frey and he was still married, but separated from his wife and waiting for a divorce.

Esther’s family was appalled at this romance. Esther was twenty-one years old. Webb was old enough to be her father.

The close-knit Ralston family demanded that Esther stop seeing Webb, but Esther, gripped by romantic illusions, stubbornly defied her brothers and parents.

After the preview for “Phantom Justice,” on a dark side street where Webb’s car was parked, Esther heard the sounds of shouts, blows and scuffling:

I jumped out of the car and ran around back in time to see Clarence [brother] holding George by his arms while Howard [brother] beat him unmercifully.

Screaming for help, and yelling, “You cowards, two against one!” I grabbed Howard by the hair and clung with my legs around him while nearby doors opened, lights went on and the police arrived.

We were all driven down to the police station in Los Angeles, where the two boys were booked for “Disturbing the Peace and Assault.” George, his eyes blackened and his nose dripping blood, managed to give me a dime to call his lawyer, and then I was left alone in the waiting room.

“How am I going to get home?” I sobbed to the policeman behind the desk. “I don’t have any carfare.”

“Too bad you didn’t think of that, girlie, before you got mixed up with a married man,” smirked the policeman.

Waves of shame and humiliation washed over me and I buried my face in my hands and wept.

Already an action-filled evening, it only gets worse as Esther accepts a ride home from a reporter who was hanging around the station.

In the car, Esther pours out her heart to the sympathetic journalist, who promptly makes a crude pass at her. Horrified, Esther jumps out of the car at the next red light and runs all the way home, where she throws herself at her mother’s feet:

“Oh Mama, Mama, why would you let them do that to me. Why would you betray me. Why… why?”

Mama coldly pushed me away and stood up, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.”

Ouch.

Financially independent due to her film work, Esther packs a bag and moves into her own apartment.

And then, another great role comes along. Esther is cast as Mrs. Darling in Peter Pan, 1924. At first, Esther is horrified at playing the part of a mother. After all, she’s a rising star, a beautiful ingénue, hardly the mother type, but director Herbert Brenon explains that he wants to cast Mrs. Darling as every child sees his mother—as a young girl.

Peter Pan, 1921, Esther Ralston, left, plays Mrs. Darling. Mary Brian is her daughter Wendy. Esther was just four years older than Mary.

After the success of “Peter Pan,” Esther’s star rises in Hollywood and she is offered more roles. George Webb, a classic manipulator, gives up acting in order to “manage” Esther’s career. He shrewdly reads her scripts and coaches Esther on her acting technique. Esther writes that sessions with Webb often reduced her to tears, but she freely admits that she emerged a far more skilled actress.

Esther in Marriage

More sinister, Webb has Esther alter her contract at Paramount so that her weekly paychecks are paid to George Webb, “for services rendered.”

Esther does not have a checkbook, not even her own bank account.

One day Esther asks George for a dollar—yup, one single American dollar—to keep in her purse in case she wants to buy something. Webb smoothly assures Esther that whenever she needs money she only has to ask. “I’m going to make sure, sweetheart, that you will never be poor again.”

In a screenplay this is called a foreshadowing moment.

Far from stupid, Esther Ralston comes across as hopelessly naïve and trusting. Separated from her family, Esther Ralston substituted George Webb as her primary emotional support. Webb became lover, father, mother and brother to the fragile young woman who found herself abruptly thrust into the confusing world of Hollywood stardom.

At this point in Esther’s narrative, I was gnawing my handkerchief in alarm. Here was a good and decent woman surrendering control of her professional and financial affairs to a stone cold sociopath.

Webb uses Esther’s hard earned money to purchase a diamond ring. Nothing like buying your own engagement ring, right ladies?

Predictably, Webb invests Esther’s money and in a sure-fire real estate deal that conjures the Marx Bros. in “Coconuts:”

While I was filming Trouble with Wives, George invested in four lots in Eagle Lake, California; total price $200.00. When we visited Eagle Lake some time later to look at our beautiful property, we discovered that all four lots were under water—IN the lake, not beside it, as the real estate salesman had assured us. It wasn’t the last time “Gambler George” was to be swindled.

In 1925, Esther and Webb are finally wed and the surprises keep coming: Esther discovers that she is now stepmother to Webb’s children. Esther takes it in stride, she loves the children and adores being a mother.

By this time, Esther is under an exclusive seven-year contract to Paramount. Esther is cast by the legendary Florenz Ziegfeld—a man who knows something about beautiful women—to play the lead role in The American Venus, 1926, a film about the Miss America contest in Atlantic City.

Years later, reports Anthony Slide in Silent Players, Esther Ralston read a biography of Louise Brooks that describes Brook’s performance as eclipsing Esther’s work. Ralston commented: “Hell, I didn’t even know she was in the film!”

Esther in Close-Up

Almost every page of Ralston’s modest volume contains a telling anecdote about her career and the people with whom she worked. Her recollections are razor-sharp and invariably shed a welcome light on early Hollywood.

On the set of Victor Fleming’s The Blind Goddess, 1926 Esther was having trouble conjuring tears for an important scene:

…Mr. Fleming ordered the cameraman to set up for a big close-up of me crying for my dead father I couldn’t squeeze a tear.

Mr. Fleming was getting disgusted with me and I felt miserable. Just then the lovely and marvelous actress, Louise Dressler, came over and knelt beside me and, taking my hand in hers, she said quietly, “Esther dear, my beloved mother is in the Hollywood hospital, dying of cancer. They just phoned me and said if I could get right over there, I’d be able to see her once more before she dies.  I can’t leave until we do this scene.” Before she finished talking to me, I was sobbing like a child. Mr. Fleming signaled the cameraman to “get her close-up… quick!” It turned out to be one of the best scenes in the picture, but I couldn’t stop crying for an hour afterward. Later that day, I found out that Miss Dressler’s mother had passed on an hour after she reached the hospital.

After shooting Old Ironsides, 1926, Esther’s favorite film, she has another talk with George Webb about money:

“I know you handle all our money,” I complained. “I’m grateful for that, as you know I don’t know anything about business, but I never have even a quarter in my purse. Suppose I’m stuck somewhere where you can’t get to me and I can’t get home? I can’t even buy an ice cream cone without asking you for money.”

Webb magnanimously agrees to give Esther an allowance of ten dollars a week.

Esther comments:

I knew my salary was twenty-five hundred a week, but I was so glad to get an allowance, I stopped complaining.

George continues showering Esther with extravagant gifts—he’s generous with her money.

By 1927, Esther was enjoying a high standard of living. Here, she’s posing with her limited edition Lincoln Town Car. Esther did not know how to drive.

On Christmas Eve of 1927:

…George gave me a gorgeous diamond bracelet with a square-cut emerald in the center, and a new Lincoln Town Car which had just won first prize at the auto show in Chicago. Only two of these town cars  were ever built, mine and the one Sue Carol bought. I reveled in at last reaching stardom and riding in the back of this elegant green car with its rabbit-fur lap robe, crystal rose vase, and phone to my chauffeur.

Esther in Peril

Esther Ralston has reached the upper level of Hollywood stardom, but there is an abyss of danger and darkness in the starlet’s life:

In February, George and I drove to the Grand Canyon on our vacation. While we were crossing the lonely desert up to the canyon, George suddenly stopped the car and turned to me.

“I’m sorry, Honey,” he told me, “But … I brought you up here to kill you.”

I stared at him in horror. There wasn’t a house, a tree, or another car for miles in any direction. “You mean,” I faltered, “because of my life insurance?”

George gazed at my startled face for a moment and then patted my knee. “Honey,” he said, as he started up the car, “I was only kidding.”

Esther deadpans:

I didn’t think this was funny at all.

Does Esther take the hint that she’s married to a sociopath, does she walk out on him and serve him with divorce papers?

Sadly, the answer is no.

Esther Crashes and So Does America

George fast-talks a group of Hollywood stars into investing in a sure fire gold mine in Arizona. Big surprise, the mine turns out to have been “salted” and vast amounts of money are lost.

George buys a mansion, 2212 Hollyridge Drive, befitting a Hollywood star. There is a swimming pool and a staff of servants. George and Esther go on a spending spree furnishing the home with valuable antiques.

And then comes the stock market crash of 1929:

About three-thirty one morning I awoke to find myself alone in bed. I saw there was light in George’s office den, so I got up and went out to see him. He was slumped over his desk, his head on his arms, and he was sobbing. I rushed over to him and put my arms around him.

“What is it, darling,” I whispered. “Why are you crying?”

He sat up and stared at me and then blurted out, “Oh, my God honey, don’t hate me. I’ve lost all your money! I bought stock on margin, four-hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars, and it’s all gone down the drain.”

Esther is pretty darn upbeat for a woman whose fortune has just been stolen and lost by a husband who has already admitted to homicidal tendencies.

Let’s be clear: Esther now moves from simple naivete to an entirely other level.

All together, let’s spell, e-n-a-b-l-e-r.

“Oh my poor darling,” I cried. “Can’t you save any of it? I know, my jewelry!” I ran to my dressing table and collected all the beautiful diamond jewelry I owned and dumped it on his desk.

“There,” I said. “Take these, they’re certainly worth something. I don’t need any jewelry. Besides, we’ve still got my contract.”

George looked at me sadly and said, “Honey, that jewelry is only a drop in the bucket. And besides, I didn’t want to tell you, but Paramount didn’t take up your option.”

Indeed, sound has arrived and there is panic in Hollywood with the studios undermining and destroying scores of careers.

Coming soon, Part II: Here comes husband #2, and guess what, he too wants to murder Esther.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech