Something like 119 years ago today (there is a little discreet confusion over the actual year of her birth), the world was made a little richer with the arrival in it of the baby who grew up to become notorious silent-film vamp Nita Naldi. We catch her here in full flight, relentlessly set on the not unpleasant task of seducing Rudolph Valentino. That she does so in one of the truly epic fur coats in Hollywood history only adds to the glory of the occasion. She reminds me of Quentin Crisp's (or was it Ethan Mordden's?) line about a character played by Marlene Dietrich - "a woman so evil even her daywear is backless." This was what silent drama was all about: impossibly lovely people doing impossibly fraught things. And, here at least, apparently ending up in the Van Cleve Hotel.
Naldi had the briefest of vogues, well under a decade, and after it ended never really found a satisfactory place in the world. She's one of a number of stars - casualties both of sound and of changing tastes, and ranging from self-deluded Mae Murray to the alcoholic, reclusive shell of Mary Pickford - whose fates ended up amalgamated into the protean character who has come to stand, however unfairly, for all silent stars, Miss Norma Desmond.* Naldi's legacy, like that of many others who weren't around to protest about it, was muddied by her inclusion in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon (on the other hand, he also kept her name alive in a way that can't be said for for fellow vamps like Dagmar Godowsky or Jetta Goudal); her story is far more interesting than Anger's caricature.**
I don't know if it has anything to do with April Fool's Day, but the day is remarkable for the number of fascinating ladies who celebrate a birthday. Beyond Naldi, they include Broadway legend Laurette Taylor (the first and greatest Amanda in The Glass Menagerie), West End treasure Cicely Courtneidge (how can one not adore an actress who starred in something called Gay's the Word?), spectacular jazzstress Alberta Hunter (somewhere, I know, her castle's still rocking), fellow silent star Mary Miles Minter (victim of a stage mother who makes Momma Rose look like Mother Goose), mystifying screen favorite Jane Powell, the ever-durable Debbie Reynolds (her book's just out - anyone read it?), and almost-as-mystifying-as-Jane-Powell seventies sensation Ali McGraw. It's quite a crowd, but however fabulous any one of them might be, I doubt that any could wield that coat quite like Nita...
* The GloriaSwansonian creation, not the affable cyber-presence, of course...
** There is a treasure trove of fascinating Naldi reading at her eponymous fansite, which really is good fun and clearly very fond of its subject.