Random Post of the Day: Wallace Reid
Mar. 1st, 2006 06:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieUnless you are a hard-core silent movie fan, you probably have never heard of Wallace Reid, who died in 1922 but was until that time, one of the biggest movie stars of the era (Reid's influence was such that, after appearing in a film without the stiff, detachable collar that most men wore with their shirts at the time, he single-handedly put the collar companies out of business overnight.) I saw him in CB De Mille's hilarious, zany marriage comedy The Affairs of Anatol, thought he was delightful, and was interested to find out more.
Today he is most famous for being the first great scandal to rock Hollywood. Apparently, when Reid was injured on a film shoot, the studio didn't want to stop working and so they sent a doctor to inject him with morphine, so he could work through pain (and keep on working through his gruelling schedule). He became instantly addicted. And then the studio kept supplying him with more, so he'd keep on working. That was before there was any treatment for addiction and even though Reid (who by all accounts, before the morphine, was a well-adjusted, happily married, and close to his family guy) checked himself into a sanatorium, he was so weakened he died at the grand old age of 31, in the arms of his wife who was devastated (she never remarried). Very dramatic, angsty and movie-like but probably much less fun in RL.
Actually, Dorothy Davenport (Reid's wife and a silent actress/director) became rather a social causes crusader afterwards, and pressured the studio into making a movie about drug addiction, a hugely taboo topic at the time. Her most well-known movie is a feminist The Red Kimono, which she directed, and which I've seen a few years ago. It's an excellent look at pressures on women in a society which expects them to keep on being virtuous without enabling them to get a job or do anything with their lives, and where emphasis on 'chastity' and 'honor' is shown to be meaningless.
Anyway, another picture of Wallace Reid:
Today he is most famous for being the first great scandal to rock Hollywood. Apparently, when Reid was injured on a film shoot, the studio didn't want to stop working and so they sent a doctor to inject him with morphine, so he could work through pain (and keep on working through his gruelling schedule). He became instantly addicted. And then the studio kept supplying him with more, so he'd keep on working. That was before there was any treatment for addiction and even though Reid (who by all accounts, before the morphine, was a well-adjusted, happily married, and close to his family guy) checked himself into a sanatorium, he was so weakened he died at the grand old age of 31, in the arms of his wife who was devastated (she never remarried). Very dramatic, angsty and movie-like but probably much less fun in RL.
Actually, Dorothy Davenport (Reid's wife and a silent actress/director) became rather a social causes crusader afterwards, and pressured the studio into making a movie about drug addiction, a hugely taboo topic at the time. Her most well-known movie is a feminist The Red Kimono, which she directed, and which I've seen a few years ago. It's an excellent look at pressures on women in a society which expects them to keep on being virtuous without enabling them to get a job or do anything with their lives, and where emphasis on 'chastity' and 'honor' is shown to be meaningless.
Anyway, another picture of Wallace Reid:
