This is the March 4, 1930 issue of Moving Picture Stories.
Actress Evelyn Brent’s photo is on
the front cover, with a list of the movies featured in the magazine. There is a
full-page ad for the movie Peacock Alley, which starred Mae Murray. There is also a one-page feature (with photos) of Greta Garbo’s first “talkie,” Anna
Christie.
The magazine contains 36 pages and measures approximately
8.25 x 11 inches.
Evelyn Brent (born Mary Elizabeth Riggs; October 20, 1895 –
June 4, 1975) was a film and stage actress.
She originally studied to be a teacher. While attending
school in New York, she visited the World Film Studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Two days later, she was working there as an extra, earning $3 per day.
She began her film career working under her own name at a
New Jersey film studio, then made her major debut in the 1915 silent film
production of the Robert W. Service poem The Shooting of Dan McGrew.
As Evelyn Brent, she continued to work in film, developing
into a young woman with sultry looks. After World War I, she went to London for
a vacation and met American playwright Oliver Cromwell, who urged her to accept
an important role in The Ruined Lady, which was presented on the London stage.
She remained in England for four years, performing on stage and in films
produced by British companies, then she moved to Hollywood in 1922.
Her career received a major boost the following year when
she was chosen as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars. Douglas Fairbanks Sr. signed
her but failed to find a story for her; she left his company to join Associated
Authors.
Brent made more than two dozen silent films, including
three for director Josef von Sternberg. One of these was The Last Command
(1928), an epic war drama featuring William Powell for which Emil Jannings won
the first Academy Award for Best Actor. Brent played the film's leading lady.
Later that year, she starred opposite William Powell in her
first sound movie. Brent played major roles in several features, most notably
The Silver Horde and the Paramount Pictures all-star revue Paramount on Parade
(both 1930).
By the early part of the 1930s, she was working in
secondary roles in a variety of films as well as touring with vaudeville shows.
In 1936, she played William Boyd's love interest/femme fatale in Hopalong
Cassidy Returns. However, by 1941, she was no longer in demand by major
studios, and she found work at smaller, low-budget studios.
Evelyn Brent photographed attractively opposite leading men
who were also at advanced ages and later stages in their careers: Jack Holt in
the Columbia serial Holt of the Secret Service, Neil Hamilton in PRC's
production Dangerous Lady, and Lee Tracy in the same studio's The Payoff. In
the early 1940s, she worked in action features for Paramount, produced by
Pine-Thomas Productions. Veteran director William Beaudine cast her in many
productions as well, including Emergency Landing (1941), Bowery Champs (1944),
The Golden Eye (1948), and Again Pioneers (1950). After performing in more than
120 films, she retired from acting in 1950 and worked for a number of years as
an actor's agent.
Among the movies featured is Their Own Desire, a 1929 pre-Code
romantic drama that starred Norma
Shearer, Belle Bennett, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, and Helene Millard.
It was the last MGM film released in the 1920s. Shearer was
nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, but “lost” to herself for The
Divorcee.
Edith Norma Shearer (August 11, 1902 – June 12, 1983) was a
Canadian-American actress who was active in films from 1919 through 1942.
Shearer often played spunky, sexually liberated women. She appeared in
adaptations of works by Noël Coward, Eugene O'Neill, and William Shakespeare,
and was the first five-time Academy Award acting nominee, winning Best Actress
for The Divorcee (1930).
Reviewing Shearer's work, Mick LaSalle called her a
feminist pioneer, or “the exemplar of sophisticated modern womanhood and... the
first American film actress to make it chic and acceptable to be single and not
a virgin on screen.”
On September 29, 1927, Shearer married Irving Thalberg in
what was the Hollywood wedding of the year.
About 3.5 years earlier (April 26, 1924), Louis B. Mayer
Pictures was merged with Metro Pictures and the Samuel Goldwyn Company to form
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Thalberg was made head of production of MGM in 1925, at
the age of 26, helping MGM become the most successful studio in Hollywood.
During his 12 years with MGM, until his premature death at the age of 37, he
produced 400 films, most of which bore his imprint and innovations, including
story conferences with writers, sneak previews to gain early feedback, and
extensive re-shooting of scenes to improve the film. In addition, he introduced
horror films to audiences and coauthored the "Production Code,"
guidelines for morality followed by all studios. During the 1920s and 1930s, he
synthesized and merged the world of stage drama and literary classics with
Hollywood films.
Shearer and Thalberg had two children.