Maetime

In the heady,heedless glory days of cinema, Mae was the name on everyone's lips. Actresses named Mae (and,occasionally,May)came and went,ceaselessly,like the seasons, and for 3 decades they were marquis-dominant.This state of plenty assured variety of characterization.The Maes portrayed vamps,sweethearts,matrons and flappers, painted good-time girls and pale-faced saints.When the kliegs were dimmed for the day,they were limelight seeking gadflies and chaste stay-at-home darlings:there was a Mae for every taste. Headline-grabbers all,they were respected by critics and adored by fans.This legion of like-named stars were cinematic royalty,Goddesses of a charmed realm that, for one actress, held too little magic:she wished to be Queen Bee in a very real sense.That woman was the puzzling,ego-maniacal Mae Murray,the first up in this series.

Mae Murray

The Flapper-era had a louche boldness that seems invigoratingly modern,even through time's nasty 80-year interval.You get the feeling that you could sit down with these women and have a swig of whiskey,swap beauty tips and chat agreeably,even riotously,about art and intellect,men and mores.For all of their appeal,and their sassy cache as the first truly post-modern females,Flappers were very real women living in a time of immense upheaval.The new freedoms that they had were enjoyed on top of the ashes of a dead world;they were the result of the mass disaffection of a tired,war-raped generation,of men and women who had lost too much,far too soon,of a society desperate to put it all behind them as quickly as possible.
As is ever the case when society shifts into its next phase,the 1920's did not burst,whole and wholly uncomplaining,into the world:there were growing pains galore.Women were not all instantly liberated,nor did all wish to be. Men did not collectively cede to the new ways although many accepted the benefits inherent in such a shift.There were still Edwardian,and even Victorian,mores,habits and attitudes at play in ways both profound and cliched.
Mae Murray was an over-the-top, bejeweled, old-school vamp during the transitory period that saw the exotic Theda Bara type eclipsed by modern danger-girls in the mold of Bebe Daniels or Clara Bow.(Cinema Exotica became,in the '20's,the terrain of the boys,when the likes of Rudolph Valentino,Antonio Moreno and Ramon Novarro burned up the screen.)This, along with other acute factors,meant that her sojourn to the peak was short-lived.End-to-end,her career as a film actress lasted 15 years;her time as a star was,although forceful,compressed into the space of a few years in between.
She started her career as that most hoydenish of things, a Ziegfeld girl,which meant that,in later years, dances were woven into her films,whether or not they suited the narrative.The sets dripped with a decadent sumptuousness that was entirely unique to that period, and as far removed from the brightly elegant Art Deco drawing rooms that soon followed.Her characters lived in bizarre splendor,in an entirely fictional universe that was at odds with vibrant,striving reality;the difference is telling.
A few years later,after the Depression had spread her dark wings over the planet,Hollywood faced a similar dilemma:Was it better to mirror reality on celluloid or to hide it behind satin gowns and tuxedos,fast cars and grand pianos? The two paths had their vehement adherents;film from the 1930's is certainly the richer for giving expression to both views.Mae Murray's films had a gingerbread,European-Operetta quality to them that belied the changing nature of her time (indeed, she starred in the famous silent version of "The Merry Widow" opposite the deeply handsome John Gilbert, whose career went considerably beyond playing lover to Garbo).There was dancing, there was debauchery,there was a faux satiety, born of drinking life to the dregs though the cup was ever-flowing.
Always at the center of the reverie was dance-mad Mae herself.She was an attention junkie in a town that is not exactly known for its sit-by-the-fire types. "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" was an unusual looking blonde,with dramatically curly hair;arresting instead of beautiful.Her largest feature,after her coif, was probably her ego.She hungered after the glittering lifestyle as portrayed in her films. To this end, she married Prince David Mdivani (her fourth husband)and left a lucrative career at MGM, convinced that she was worth more.She wasn't, and the sound revolution effectively ended her career.By this time, the landscape of cinema had changed dramatically;the death-knell for her type echoed for awhile, and then died along with her reputation, as she became mired in personal problems and the resultant bad choices.
She lived out the next 30-odd years in mostly horrific poverty and the even more unthinkable obscurity. That one of Silent Cinema's most original divas was arrested for vagrancy on a park bench is immensely sad. That she was unable to trace her path from one point to the other,completely unaware of how her life devolved from grandeur to disavowal, is sadder still.The title of her bravado-fueled autobiography says it all: "The Self-Enchanted".