Customer Reviews

The Talmadge Girls

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A nice overview of silent screen heroines Norma and Constance Talmadge, plus their left-in-the-shadows sister Natalie and Mama Peg. Features first-hand accounts, for the most part, by Talmadge pal Anita Loos... however, most of the juicy details seem to have been left out. Still, a nice glimpse of Hollywood in the 20s. Great moments, like an account of Christmas with the Talmadge family, c.1920, when Constance and Natalie decorated the tree with suppositories and other assorted drug-store items, brought the store clerk home with them, played dumb when Peg threw a fit about both the ornaments and said clerk, and finished off the holiday with a bash complete with the clerk getting the thrill of his life when he was afforded the opportunity to help Mabel Normand change her stockings.

A few of Loos' accounts (Peg's history, Connie's scrape with career disaster when she was nearly caught in a raid on a Los Angeles gay bar) have been called into question by biographers since the publication of "The Talmadge Girls," but until the definitive biography of this fascinating screen family is written, this one will have to do.

This biography of the Talmadge sisters is an interesting albeit biased read from Anita Loos, a close friend of the Talmadge girls during their Hollywood reign. Biased isn't always a bad thing, however. Being that Ms. Loos was a close friend of the family's she was able to see Norma, Constance, Natalie (the less famous and less pretty youngest sister) and Peg, the family matriarch, on both a friendly and professional level. It seems a shame that Norma and Constance ("Dutch" to her friends) Talmadge are no longer viewed as Hollywood greats when their popularity was so high during the early days of cinema-Norma as the dramatic actress, Constance as the screwball flapper. Ms. Loos provides a nice view of Hollywood during those days and instills a certain intimacy and charm to the Talmadge story. The pictures are wonderful and a rarity-including both "official" Hollywood shots and pictures from personal archives. Norma and Constance were both beautiful and are forever captured in full 20's and 30's glory by these photographs.

Loos' book is incredibly biased and almost worthless as a biography of her two "friends", Constance and Norma Talmadge, but as far as giving the reader a sense of what the equally famous author might be like as a person, it is worth the read. Loos tries to be light and frothy, a ditzy female who simply can't be expected to make sure everything she blithers out is factual, but she refers to salaries and money amounts from fifty plus years ago (to her at the time) so often it blows her cover. Loos damns with faint praise (numerous "friends") and alternates between praising and mocking at the expense of the deceased (at that time) people she is writing about (Buster Keaton, Constance Talmadge). Loos repeatedly praises Norma's physical beauty but takes repeated digs at Norma's acting ability (some sly, some not so sly) and almost embarassingly praises Norma's husband Joe Schenck as the ideal husband throughout the book, fawning on him in text, repeatedly taking digs at Norma for not being grateful such a man ever deigned to marry her and having the gall to actually divorce such a stupendous catch. I came away with the feeling Loos must have been throwing herself at Schenck like crazy at some point in time only he failed to catch her and chose Norma instead. The way Loos discusses the Talmadge sisters' final years is just so broad as to be completely untrustworthy. I get the feeling they had dropped her as a two-faced friend a long time before. She repeadedly refers to Norma and a druggie, never citing any reliable first hand evidence nor backing it up with research, but is somewhat kinder to Constance, just describing her as an alcholic, but again in such a way I did not trust her version of events. Her caustic remarks about sister Natalie Talmadge's looks, acting ability, and marriage (to Buster Keaton) are consistently nasty throughout the book. This made me want to read more about Natalie and learn what she was really like; hopefully she gets a fairer treatment in some other biographical book out there somewhere. I also noted that while appearing to be a "tell-all" the book actually tells nothing. Its all common knowledge stuff or Loos biased and fluffy (read insubstantial) opinions. I suspect the actual human beings were a lot more interestingly flawed than Loos makes them out to be. The Talmadge girls deserve a better biographical tribute than this. I would love to read it.