From Wikipedia
Barbara La Marr (July 28, 1896 – January 30, 1926) was an
American stage and film actress, cabaret artist, and screenwriter.
La Marr was known as "The Girl Who Is Too
Beautiful," after a Hearst newspaper feature writer, Adela Rogers St.
Johns, saw a judge sending her home during the police beat in Los Angeles
because she was too beautiful and young to be on her own in the big city.
La Marr was born in 1896 as Reatha Dale Watson to William
Wallace and Rosana "Rose" Watson in Yakima, Washington (La Marr later
claimed she was born in Richmond, Virginia).
After marrying and moving with her second husband to New
York City, La Marr found employment writing screenplays at Fox studios using
the name "Folly Lytell".[2] Her association with filmmakers led to
her returning to Los Angeles and making her film debut in 1920. Over the next
few years she acted frequently in films and was widely publicized as "The
Most Beautiful Girl In The World”. With this, she rapidly shot to stardom.
La Marr made the successful leap from writer to actress in
Douglas Fairbanks' The Nut (1921), appeared in over thirty films, wrote seven
screenplays for United Artists and Fox Film Corporation, and danced in musical
comedies on Broadway. She is also said to have filmed dancing shorts in New
York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, with such diverse partners as Rudolph
Valentino and Clifton Webb.
Among La Marr's films are The Prisoner of Zenda and Trifling
Women, both 1922 releases directed by Rex Ingram. Although her film career flourished,
she also embraced the fast-paced Hollywood nightlife, remarking in an interview
that she slept no more than two hours a night. La Marr also began abusing drugs
and alcohol and reportedly developed a cocaine and heroin habit. Her lifestyle
eventually began to affect her career and she was dropped by M-G-M. La Marr
signed with First National Pictures where she appeared in three films which
proved to be her last.
By 1925, La Marr's drug and alcohol use began to take its
toll. She developed nephritis and tuberculosis. On January 30, 1926, she died
of complications associated with tuberculosis and nephritis at her parents'
home in Altadena, California, at the age of 29. She was interred in a crypt at
Hollywood Cathedral Mausoleum, in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, La Marr
has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1621 Vine Street.
