Informative Caption comes sweeping in from ninety-some years ago to let us know that “actresses Anita Page, Joan Crawford (1904 – 1977) and Dorothy Sebastian (1903 – 1957) take a break from the silent film ‘Our Dancing Daughters’, directed by Harry Beaumont. The three women co-starred in two follow-up films, ‘Our Modern Maidens’ and ‘Our Blushing Brides’.” As if this were an ACTUAL break and not a very carefully orchestrated break in artfully mussed button-down shirts — nice try, publicists! No one actually naps like this with their coworkers!
Informative Caption also misses that Anita Page died in 2008, at 98 years old, and she sounds like a corker; she retired at 23 when she (a) was denied a raise and (b) Irving Thalberg tried to get her on the casting couch. Sixty years down the road, she came out of retirement to star in some horror movies, whether for money or for fun, I do not know. Regardless, her obituary in the Telegraph is AMAZING; apparently Mussolini kept trying to get her to marry him, and Joan here was so jealous of her popularity that she burned a bunch of her mail (!!) (Joan, that’s a federal crime. Calm down.).
Dorothy Sebastian, the other slice of bread in this Joan Crawford sandwich, has a mildly interesting Wiki — no dictators romanced her, but she did have a dramatic fight about a hotel bill, and starred in a movie called Spite Marriage, the title of which I admire for its directness. (You probably won’t be surprised to hear that said spite marriage turned…to love.)
