Blanche Frederici Movies
Also known as Blanche Friderici, this Brooklyn-born actress was generally cast in severe, baleful roles: governesses, matrons, society doyennes and such. Beginning her screen career in 1922, she hit her stride at Paramount in the early 1930s. Her larger roles include one of the three omnipresent maiden aunts in Lubitsch's Love Me Tonight and Madame Si-Si in Madame Butterfly (both 1932). She was also a regular in Paramount's Zane Grey western series, usually as the cast-off wife or mistress of perennial villain Noah Beery. One of Blanche Frederici's last roles was as the wife of motel-court manager Zeke in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (released posthumously in 1934). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1928
Having grown up under the thumbs of her two maiden aunts, 17-year-old Joan Hastings (Marceline Day) has never had a boyfriend. This seems due to change when Joan meets handsome garage mechanic Bill (Rex Lease), but their budding romance is squashed by the overbearing aunties. Fed up with being treated like a hothouse orchid, Joan runs off to San Francisco, where she becomes a successful model with the help of wealthy Curtis Barstow (Owen Moore). Joan assumes that Barstow's interest in her is entirely platonic, but he proves otherwise when he gets her alone in his mountain cabin. Fortunately, faithful Bill happens to be strolling by at just the right moment to rescue Joan from her would-be seducer. This sublimely predictable yarn was based on a serialized magazine story by Hazel Livingston. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marceline Day, Rex Lease, (more)
- 1928
The present unavailability of 1928's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is especially frustrating for those who'd like to compare this first version of the classic Anita Loos comic novel to the 1953 Marilyn Monroe-Jane Russell remake. The blonde in question is Miss Lorelei Lee, a dumb-like-a-fox golddigger on the prowl for a rich husband. With her best friend Dorothy Shaw (Alice White), Lorelei takes a trip to Gay Paree, where among other adventures she gets mixed up with roguish old millionaire Sir Francis Beekman (Mack Swain). Eventually she finds that true love doesn't come with a price tag, or does it? Ford Sterling and Holmes Herbert co-star as Lorelei and Dorothy's middle-aged swains. Lorelei herself is played by Ruth Taylor, a onetime Mack Sennett bathing beauty who retired from films upon her marriage to a Manhattan stockbroker (life imitates art!) Incidentally, Taylor was the mother of humorist Buck Henry. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ruth Taylor, Alice White, (more)
