Alice Guy Blache Cinema Pioneer Whitney museum 2009

2009-02-07T21:21:00.000-08:00

Gladys Walton in The Untameable 1923 Herbert Blache

2009-01-08T04:49:00.000-08:00

Gladys Walton in The Untameable 1923 Herbert Blache

the rare silent melodrama The Untameable, billed as "The Most Shocking Film of 1923!"
Long before The Three Faces of Eve, The Untameable tackled the then sensational issue of split personality disorder. Directed by Herbert Blaché

Gladys Walton-Untameable Herbert Blache Bolton

2009-01-08T04:44:00.000-08:00

Gladys Walton-Untameable Herbert Blache Bolton
a
relationship with strong lesbian elements. Miss Walton
portrays this bizarre sadist in a manner shocking to even
the most brazen flapper of 1923.

The Untameable is an astonishing film, and it is safe to
say (at the least) that you have never seen anything else
like it!"

Gladys Walton Herbert Blache

2008-11-03T00:55:00.000-08:00

The Near Lady (1923)
Réalisateur: Herbert Blache

3 décembre 1923 (USA) suite
Gladys Walton ... Nora Schultz
Jerry Gendron ... Basil Van Bibber

The Wild Party (1923)
Réalisateur:
Herbert Blaché
Release Date:22 octobre 1923 (USA)
Gladys Walton ... Leslie Adams
Robert Ellis ... Basil Wingate / Stuart Furth
Freeman Wood ... Jack Cummings
Dorothy Revier ... Blanche Cartwrigh
CONNECTING WITH AL CAPONE
The Untamable, the movie set where Al
Capone met the young actress. Gladys was
just shy of her 20th birthday. Al was 23.
The Untameable (1923)
CONNECTING WITH AL CAPONE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAcc5GY-ORc
The Untamable, the movie set where Al
Capone met the young actress. Gladys was
just shy of her 20th birthday. Al was 23.

Réalisateur:
Herbert Blaché

10 septembre 1923 (USA) suite
Genre:
Drame suite
Plot:
Dr. Copin hypnotizes Joy Fielding, and she develops a split personality. She changes from an innocent, beautiful young lady into a cruel vamp, to the distress of her boyfriend. | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
Hypnotism | Psychological Drama | Split Personality |
A Coup for Gladys Walton suite
Gladys Walton ... Edna Fielding / Joy Fielding
Malcolm McGregor ... Chester Arnold
THE UNTAMEABLE at Echo Park Film Center

At 8pm on Thursday, June 5, the Echo Park Film Center will screen the rare silent melodrama The Untameable, billed as "The Most Shocking Film of 1923!"
Long before The Three Faces of Eve, The Untameable tackled the then sensational issue of split personality disorder. Directed by Herbert Blaché and adapted by Hugh Hoffman from Gelett [...]
THE UNTAMABLE (1923) Herbert Blache
Joy Fielding (Gladys Walton falls victim to the maniacal
medico Dr. Frederick Copin (John Sainpolis) who uses
his hypnotic powers to change her personality. She
becomes a man-hungry nymphette when under his spell
and marries the doctor one day while under hypnosis.
The next day she marries promising architect Chester
Arnold (Malcolm McGregor) with no previous recollection
of marrying Dr. Copin. The doctor falls victim to the
ravenous hound dogs he regularly abused in this low-
budget thriller. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

From the Alternative Film Guide June 2nd, 2008 by Andre
Soares

Tthe Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles screened the
rare silent melodrama The Untameable, billed as "The
Most Shocking Film of 1923!" Long before The Three
Faces of Eve, The Untameable tackled the then
sensational issue of split personality disorder. Directed
by Herbert Blaché and adapted by Hugh Hoffman from
Gelett Burgess‘ novel, the film stars Gladys Walton
(photo) in the dual role of Joy and her sadistic alter-ego
Edna. Also in the cast: Malcolm McGregor, John St. Polis,
and Etta Lee.

As per the press release, "the dual role of Joy/Edna was
Gladys Walton’s most challenging up to that time.

Edna is a whip-toting brute who dresses in leopard skins
and flogs the Oriental maid with whom she lives in a
relationship with strong lesbian elements. Miss Walton
portrays this bizarre sadist in a manner shocking to even
the most brazen flapper of 1923.

The Untameable is an astonishing film, and it is safe to
say (at the least) that you have never seen anything else
like it!"
John Herbel-Walton has a lifetime of rich memories about his late mother, but in one of his earliest, he recalls going on a long vacation with his family to Carmel. He remembers how his older brother used him to distract employees of a small shop so his brother could steal candy and sundries — or, at least attempt to steal, as it turned out. And, John Herbel-Walton remembers how his mother baked cookies and took them, he’d later learn, across the rugged San Francisco Bay to her longtime boyfriend Al Capone, who was living out his last days of sanity (and a 10-year prison term) on Alcatraz.

Walton, who lives in the Movie Colony in Palm Springs, knows it all sounds incredible, but once he starts talking about his mother — silent film siren Gladys Walton — it becomes clear that while myth and history are sometimes intertwined, Ms. Walton’s life was nothing if not eventful.

“My mother was a flapper girl in every sense,” Walton says. “She lived life as a movie star, but also as Capone’s girlfriend and lieutenant.” If Walton’s dreams come true — and if persistence pays, they might — Hollywood will eventually tell the true story of his mother and her dual life of starlet and Mob go-to girl.

While written history has provided little in the way of substantiation to Ms. Walton’s organized crime associations (for romance or business), her film history is carved in celluloid with star turns in nearly 40 films between 1920 and 1928, including her most famous role as Rose O’Grady in Second Hand Rose. It was on the set of The Untameable, Walton’s 1923 film about a woman with a split personality (half vamp, half innocent girl, naturally), that Mr. Walton says his mother first came into the thrall of Al Capone.

“Al was popular with all the actors and actresses,” Walton says, “because he was bootlegging liquor and throwing great parties and providing gambling.”

At the same time, Capone was racking up a list of crimes a bit more nefarious than those of the average Prohibition-era gangster. Murder and mayhem were his calling card. He wasn’t called Scarface for his sunny disposition. But to Gladys Walton, her son says, Capone was a gentleman. “He’s always portrayed as having a foul mouth, but my mother said he never cursed in front of her,” he says. He also adds that Capone lived by a strict code, which meant he never intentionally hurt civilians. “He was considered to be something of a modern-day Robin Hood,” Walton says, noting that Capone opened the first soup kitchens in Chicago during the Depression and also instructed local businesses to give away clothes and food at his expense.

But it was Capone’s penchant for partying that sealed his relationship with Walton — a relationship that found its greatest depth at what is now the ultra-private Two Bunch Palms resort in Desert Hot Springs.

Nestled on a berm that rises above the craggy desert floor, Two Bunch Palms was to be both Capone’s West Coast capital and an exclusive destination for the Hollywood elite. Replete with a brothel, gambling hall, and a cozy stone cottage, it became Walton’s de facto home, her son says, as she managed Capone’s lucrative West Coast bootlegging business and hosted wild, alcohol-fueled parties for the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Marian Davies, Rudolph Valentino, and others. Legend has it that on one particular night, a gunfight erupted inside Capone’s cottage while Gladys Walton slept beside her gangster boyfriend. Capone reportedly shot and killed the would-be assassin and left a large mirror blemished with a bullet hole.

The mirror still hangs in Capone’s cottage and draws considerable interest. “Everyone seems to know the legend,” says Jill Maya, Two Bunch Palms’ marketing and sales director. The cottage is usually booked. In fact, she says, as the story becomes more well known, the cottage has become a hot story among visitors, television producers, and history buffs. “The Travel Channel was just here,” she says and there is talk of a Capone Vacation package, which might include a visible reminder of the resort’s past as a tour guide (Capone’s great-grandson?).

“Al gave my mother many expensive gifts during this time,” John Herbel-Walton says. They include a ring that Walton’s brother now has, but it is the more tangible gift Walton suggests that opens eyes and, he hopes, avenues of interest. “I don’t want to besmirch my mother,” he says, but he intimates that the identity of his birth father fell somewhat into question. “I favor my mother’s looks,” he says, “and we’re not going to do any tests or any of that, but no one can deny that my grandson looks like Capone.”

That line between myth and history gets hazy until you set eyes on 22-year-old Josh Herbel. There’s Capone’s distinctive chin, a familiar darkened cast to the eyes, and the coal black hair. Put him into a gangster suit and a fedora and, well, you have yourself a dead ringer — enough so that a photo of Josh now hangs above the registration desk at Two Bunch Palms. “Eerie, isn’t it?” Maya asks. In a word, yes.

But that’s only the beginning, Walton hopes, noting that his mother was aboard the Oneida the night William Randolph Hearst reportedly shot and killed Thomas Ince, that many years later the Manson Family frequented his mother’s horse ranch in suburban Los Angeles, and that some secrets about his family remain, and he’d rather not delve into them. At Two Bunch Palms, where an underground tunnel runs from Capone’s old cottage to the gambling hall, and where the exclusive nature of the resort persists, it seems those secrets are safe.

Actrice:

1. The Red Shoes (1948) (uncredited) .... Corps de Ballet
... autre titre : Chaussons rouges, Les (Belgium: French title) (France) [fr]

2. The Ape (1928)
3. A Little Girl in a Big City (1925) .... Mary Barry
4. Anything Once (1925)
5. The Sky Raider (1925) .... Marie
6. Easy Money (1925)
7. Enemies of Youth (1925)
8. The Near Lady (1923) .... Nora Schultz
9. The Wild Party (1923) .... Leslie Adams
10. The Untameable (1923) .... Edna Fielding/Joy Fielding
... autre titre : The Two Souled Woman (USA)
... autre titre : The White Cat (USA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAcc5GY-ORc
11. Sawdust (1923) .... Nita Moore
12. Crossed Wires (1923) .... Marcel Murphy
13. The Town Scandal (1923) .... Jean Crosby
14. Gossip (1923) .... Caroline Weatherbee
15. The Love Letter (1923) .... Mary Ann McKee
16. A Dangerous Game (1922) .... Gretchen Ann Peebles
17. The Lavender Bath Lady (1922) .... Mamie Conroy
18. The Girl Who Ran Wild (1922) .... M'liss
19. Top o' the Morning (1922) .... 'Jerry' O'Donnell
20. The Trouper (1922) .... Mamie Judd
21. Second Hand Rose (1922) .... Rose O'Grady
22. The Wise Kid (1922) .... Rosie Cooper
23. The Guttersnipe (1922) .... Mazie O'Day
24. The Room of Death (1921)
25. Playing with Fire (1921/I) .... Enid Gregory
26. High Heels (1921) .... Christine Trevor
27. The Rowdy (1921) .... Kit Purcell
28. Short Skirts (1921) .... Natalie Smith
29. The Man Tamer (1921) .... The lion tamer
30. Desperate Youth (1921) .... Rosemary Merridew
31. All Dolled Up (1921) .... Maggie Quick
... autre titre : The Bobbed Squad
32. Rich Girl, Poor Girl (1921) .... Nora McShane/Beatrice Vanderfleet
33. Risky Business (1920) .... Phillipa
34. Pink Tights (1920) .... Mazie Darton
35. The Secret Gift (1920) .... Winnie
36. La La Lucille (1920) .... Peggy Hughes

37. The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908)

Gladys Walton, the "Glad Girl" was a sheer delight to the Universal audience.
Two Bunch Palm Resort
was the rendezvous of
Gladys Walton and Al
Capone. On their first date
(that lasted a week)
Capone brought Walton to
his "Fortress West" and
dubbed her "The Queen of
Two Bunch Palms".Picture
taken sometime in the late
1920's showing remote
desolation where it is now
surrounded by the city of
Desert Hot Springs,
California. Today the resort
is greatly expanded -
serving affluent and
privileged guests.
Filmography
1. The Red Shoes (1948) (uncredited) .... Corps de Ballet
2. The Ape (1928)
3. A Little Girl in a Big City (1925) .... Mary Barry
4. Anything Once (1925)
5. The Sky Raider (1925) .... Marie
6. Easy Money (1925)
7. Enemies of Youth (1925)
8. The Near Lady (1923) .... Nora Schultz
9. The Wild Party (1923) (also known as Notoriety).... Leslie Adams
10. The Untameable (1923) .... Edna Fielding/Joy Fielding
... aka The Two Souled Woman (USA)
... aka The White Cat (USA)
11. Sawdust (1923) .... Nita Moore
12. Crossed Wires (1923) .... Marcel Murphy
13. The Town Scandal (1923) .... Jean Crosby
14. Gossip (1923) .... Caroline Weatherbee
15. The Love Letter (1923) .... Mary Ann McKee
16. A Dangerous Game (1922) .... Gretchen Ann Peebles
17. The Lavender Bath Lady (1922) .... Mamie Conroy
18. The Girl Who Ran Wild (1922) .... M'liss
19. Top o' the Morning (1922) .... 'Jerry' O'Donnell
20. The Trouper (1922) .... Mamie Judd
21. Second Hand Rose (1922) .... Rose O'Grady
22. The Wise Kid (1922) .... Rosie Cooper
23. The Guttersnipe (1922) .... Mazie O'Day
24. The Room of Death (1921)
25. Playing with Fire (1921/I) .... Enid Gregory
26. High Heels (1921) .... Christine Trevor
27. The Rowdy (1921) .... Kit Purcell
28. Short Skirts (1921) .... Natalie Smith
29. The Man Tamer (1921) .... The lion tamer
30. Desperate Youth (1921) .... Rosemary Merridew
31. All Dolled Up (1921) aka The Bobbed Squad.... Maggie Quick
32. Rich Girl, Poor Girl (1921) .... Nora McShane/Beatrice Vanderfleet
33. Risky Business (1920) .... Phillipa
34. Pink Tights (1920) .... Mazie Darton
35. The Secret Gift (1920) .... Winnie
36. La La Lucille (1920) .... Peggy Hughes
37. The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908)

[Walton plays the role of Edna] "a
whip-toting brute who dresses in
leopard skins and flogs the
Oriental maid with whom she
lives in a relationship with strong
lesbian elements. Miss Walton
portrays this bizarre sadist in a
manner shocking to even the
most brazen flapper of 1923.
A Brief, Bright Star
Tribute created by Dean Gray, August 1, 2008
The First Wizard of Oz
Gladys Walton first performed as an
infant Dorothy, working for the author
of the Wizard of Oz in 1908.

L. Frank Baum wrote the book and
screenplay of The Fairylogue,
appearing as an actor, as well.

It was early science fiction with an
interactive twist. Baum would appear
in a white suit and present his live
actors, slide shows and films as a
live travelogue presentation of his
popular fantasies.

Highlights include Dorothy being
swept to Oz in various ways, such as
with back-projection tornadoes and
storms in a chicken coop. Lack of
financial backing forced the show to
fold after appearing in only two cities,
despite being a critical and
commercial success.
Gladys Walton enjoyed a life of adventure, drama,
comedy, and accomplishment. Her movies were
reviewed by Carl Sandburg, her Broadway shows also
always popular. A romance with Al Capone lead to
adventure in an exotic desert hideaway in Desert Hot
Springs, California and a son, John Walton, was born,
who still lives in the area.

It's estimated that 90% of American silent movies are
lost. Many were junked when talkies arrived. Others
might have been discarded during the silent era in the
belief that nobody would be interested in them;
besides, producers preferred to remake rather than
re-release. Disintegration of nitrate film stock
destroyed many that were stored, including the only
record of a small South American Indian tribe that died
out soon after being filmed.

But there are a few rays of hope. Silent films, or parts
of them, thought lost have been found over the years
here and there: a vault in the Czech Republic, a
forgotten storage room in the Yukon, and a boiler
room in Norway.

Walton's first movies were uncredited comedies for
Sunshine Studios. She was just sixteen years old
when Universal Studios put her under contract! Just
ten months later she was considered a star and her
initial $50 a week quickly became $500 a week at a
time when the ordinary man was only making $45 a
week.

While Priscilla Dean, the Universal Studio's top
female attraction at the time, played more worldly
women, Walton excelled in the same kind of roles that
had made Mary Pickford the screen's foremost
heroine.

Pickford was "Americ's Sweetheart." Walton was "The
Glad Girl" with roles more provocative and sensually
charged.

Walton's films had titles like Pink Tights (1920), Rich
Girl, Poor Girl (1921; she played a dual role), Second
Hand Rose (1922), and The Wild Party (1923).

By 1923, however, Walton's career was already on the
wane. She left films after the obscure The Ape (1928),
in which she shared top billing with another Universal
refugee, Ruth Stonehouse.
A Career & Life-Defining Film
http://www.gladyswalton.com/

Gladys Walton Herbert Blache "The Untameable"

Alice Guy Blache Cinema Pioneer Whitney museum 2009

Gladys Walton in The Untameable 1923 Herbert Blache

Gladys Walton-Untameable Herbert Blache Bolton

Gladys Walton Herbert Blache