...Francesca Bahrle?

Today I was working through a seemingly endless pile of photos and magazines to update my Luise Rainer website when I came across a copy of the July 1937 edition of Picturegoer magazine. As is usually the case, after I'd transcribed the Rainer piece for the site I got embroiled in the rest of the magazine. It's fascinating reading gossip and news about stars that are no longer in the public consciousness; it brings home the fleetingness of fame. In their regular All the Gossip section there's a brief mention of a forthcoming picture to be filmed in London:

People who complain that we are never shown London on the screen may be interested to hear that i the new film which Lawrence Huntington is directing at the Highbury studios a girl chases a crook all round the Metropolis, particuarly the West End; finally he gets on a train at Waterloo and is run to earth at Kingston.

Francesca Bahrle (a new one on me, I'm afraid) is the girl, and the cast also includes Anthony Ireland, Paul Neville, and Frank Birch.

It's called Twin Faces.

Francesa Bahrle was a new one on me, too, and a quick Google search didn't enlighten me. Francesca has only five films listed on her IMDb page: Servants All (a short made in 1936), The Bank Messenger Mystery (also 1936), the aforementioned Twin Faces (1937), an uncredited part in What A Man! (1937) and Flying Fifty-Five (1939).

All of these films are British productions, possibly quota quickies, made in London studios (Twin Faces was a Paramount production in the UK). The Bank Messenger Mystery (1936) is notable as an early production from Hammer Films before their bankruptcy and subsequent resurrection in 1938. There's scant information available on the other films, nor why Francesca disappeared so sharply after two lead roles. She did, however, make it into Carreras' popular Glamour Girls of Stage and Films cigarette card series from where this image is taken:

So, that's all I have.... whatever happened to Francesca Bahrle?

...Alan Perl (update)

So, when I started this blog a few week's ago I made my second post explaining why it was so-called and set out my first task, to locate Alan Perl.

Shortly afterwards I did find an address for a namesake, and of the right age and a letter has been sent... but no news yet.

What did happen that was rather strange was that after a few years of searching it just so happened that the day I decided to start this blog was also the day that a rare publicity shot of Alan Perl in The Toy Wife appeared on Ebay. What are the chances? Duly purchased I share it here now. It's the only photo I can find of Alan Perl anywhere online:

"THE WITCHES'LL GET YOU IF YOU DON'T WATCH OUT"...Four-year-old Alan Perl, who appears as the son of Luise Rainer and Melvyn Douglas in M-G-M's "The Toy Wife," hides behind a teddy bear that growls when you squeeze it. Theresa Harris, as the negro maid, has just threatened dire things.

[MGM publicity still, 1937]

...'Baby' Priscilla Moran?

Last week it was Anna May Wong's birthday.The Chinese star of stage and screen was born on 3rd January 1905, so to acknowledge this anniversary I watched one of her earliest films, The Toll of the Sea. A version of Madame Butterfly, it was made when Wong was 17 years old and she plays the young Lotus Flower, who finds Allen Carver (Kenneth Harlan) washed up on the rocks near her home; a gift from the sea, she falls in love with him and they embark on a passionate affair. Sadly, when he decides to return to the US her abandons his new love to renew is acquaintance with his American sweetheart. He later returns to visit Lotus Flower to tell her that he cannot be her lover and that she must forget him. Unbeknownst to him, his affair with Lotus produced a son. In a heartwrenching scene Lotus Flower tells Carver's American wife that the boy is his and hands him over to her for safekeeping. Her life now empty, Lotus Flower returns to the sea...

The film still stands up today and is particularly moving in the scenes with Lotus and Carver's son, played by a four year old Priscilla Moran. It also has an important place in cinema history being the first colour feature made in Hollywood, and only the second in the world to be filmed in Technicolor. The number of actors still living who appeared in silent film is diminishing year on year, and there are some lists available online for those known to still be with us. Baby Moran doesn't appear on many lists, but there's a possibility that she is still alive so my second post in this intermittent blog is all about her.

According to her IMDb page she had an eventful childhood. The Toll of the Sea was her first film and she went on to appear in a number of silents in the 1920s. Her second film, Daddies, was directed by William A. Seiter and she also appeared in films by William Beaudine and Edward Sloman amongst others.There then seems to be a break before her return, in talkies, as a 20 year old extra in a number of uncredited parts. I'm not fully convinced by this and it may be that this 'Priscilla Moran' is not the same. There is an interesting, anonymous, IMDb biography which makes uneasy reading with an infant Priscilla seemingly passed from pillar to post (including at one time being the ward of Jackie Coogan's family), or traded with investors, before finally settling with her aunt and grandmother. But this is where the trail goes cold.

Priscilla was born in 1917, so she would be 96 years old today.

Whatever happened to 'Baby' Priscilla Moran?

...Alan Perl?

The person that really got me started on this blog was Alan Perl.

Who?

Exactly.

As a Luise Rainer obsessive I recently tried to find out if any of her MGM co-stars were still living, or had she outlived them all. Whilst there's a chance that there may be some of the Ziegfeld girls from The Great Ziegfeld still (high) kicking, the likelihood of tracking them down, especially as most were not credited for the film, was zero to very little. There was, however, one person who made a film at MGM with Luise that may still be alive: Alan Perl.

Alan played Luise's son Georgie in The Toy Wife (1938), MGM's jump onto the Gone With The Wind bandwagon, with Luise as a European-Southern belle stealing the hearts of two beaus and getting herself into hot water with her steadfast sister (played by Barbara O'Neil). The film is charming, but doesn't have the quality of Luise's previous Oscar winners. 

This is Alan Perl's only credit. He was only four years old at the time so he would be in his late 70s today. I have been unable to find any further information about him, so....

Whatever happened to Alan Perl?

Whatever happened to....?

I've always been fascinated by the transience of fame and, in this age of information overload, with every factoid seemingly at your fingertips, I'm especially keen on the curious disappearances of those who were once seen by millions (or at least thousands) on cinema and television screens. These actors and actresses who had a fleeting brush with fame but have since slipped between the dusty pages of reference books and the all-encompassing reach of the internet search engine.

My first such curiosity was Luise Rainer, the two-time Oscar winner whom I discovered as late as 1998 when she appeared at the Academy Awards. I was, at that time, unaware of her career and her astonishing life so I went online... and discovered nothing. My life changed that day. I started to research and 15 years later I now run www.luiserainer.net and have a collection of material related to her life and work that cannot be found anywhere else online. Luise is no longer an obscurity, but there are thousands of others who have vanished from the public eye, whose contribution to the history of film amounts to nothing more than a credit or two on the IMDb. I want to find these people.

There are only a handful of 'rules' I have set myself, a small set of criteria for each person I include here. Firstly, they must have at least one film credit. Secondly, they must have really disappeared. I don't have time to be asking 'where are they now?' of 1980s child stars who are still working in straight-to-DVD terrors, or ex-actors who have their own website, or those with diaries full of appearances at conventions. I'm talking about those who have no trace, whose results from a cursory Google search is just an ever decreasing list of websites feeding off their IMDb page. Secondly, there must be a chance they are still alive. I don't want to waste our time chasing ghosts. I may, from time to time, add a celebratory post for those who still merit a Tweet or a blogpost from admiring film fans despite not having worked in decades, the Mary Carlisles and Carla Laemmles of the world, but, in the main I shall be concentrating on those who have really gone off the radar

I would be honestly and genuinely grateful for any advice, insight and news about those whom I choose to pursue. Please do leave comments if you have any information to add to any post (the contents of which, by the very nature of the subjects, may be scant, to say the least).

And so the trail begins....