David Menefee
2011-08-08 21:02:37 UTC
Wally: The True Wallace Reid Story (Foreword by Robert Osborne) is
going into a second printing after the book was nominated for a 2011
Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. Please visit www.bearmanormedia.com or
www.amazon.com, and thank you for your encouragement. I hope you enjoy
reading the book as much as I enjoyed the research and writing. Watch
for my next book, Falling Stars: 10 Who Tried to be a Movie Star,
coming in September 2011.
Wallace Reid still rouses excitement today as Jeff, the blacksmith in
D. W. Griffith’s famous film, The Birth of a Nation. Audiences thrill
to the rip-roaring brawl between Jeff and a band of villainous
renegades. The fight was largely real, and many people saw Wally for
the first time in that immortal film. They said he became “a star
overnight,” but he had appeared in more than a hundred films
before.
In Wally: The True Wallace Reid Story, the truth is fully told for the
first time how he was “born in a trunk” to an actress mother and a
famous playwright father, and how he barely survived the infamous St.
Louis cyclone, when the storm tore that city apart. Wally emerged from
the carnage to grow into a popular student, athlete, and early film
hero. His handsome looks inspired directors to place him in front of
cameras, but his ambitions were to be a writer and director. When
director Cecil B. DeMille picked him to appear opposite opera diva
Geraldine Farrar in her first films, his aspirations became lost in
the dizzying idolatry of worldwide audiences.
Wally’s popularity soared to a height rivaled only by Mary Pickford
and Charlie Chaplin, but his pedestal of fame stood on shaky ground.
Genuine tragedy fell upon Wally and his film crew when their train
derailed in an isolated Sierra Mountain location. His injuries were
treated with morphine, and his family and friends watched helpless as
he became caught unaware in the deathly grip of the drug. Dorothy
Davenport, his wife and a beautiful star in her own right, remained
faithfully by his side, while he wrestled with the demons that
threatened to take his life.
Wally: The True Wallace Reid Story draws from many original sources,
major archives, and his family members to show how he was received in
his time and the importance of his role in the development of motion
pictures. The entertaining and informative book contains an extensive
biographical treatment, a detailed filmography, and more than 200 rare
photographs, posters, advertisements, and lobby cards that capture the
glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Years.
going into a second printing after the book was nominated for a 2011
Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. Please visit www.bearmanormedia.com or
www.amazon.com, and thank you for your encouragement. I hope you enjoy
reading the book as much as I enjoyed the research and writing. Watch
for my next book, Falling Stars: 10 Who Tried to be a Movie Star,
coming in September 2011.
Wallace Reid still rouses excitement today as Jeff, the blacksmith in
D. W. Griffith’s famous film, The Birth of a Nation. Audiences thrill
to the rip-roaring brawl between Jeff and a band of villainous
renegades. The fight was largely real, and many people saw Wally for
the first time in that immortal film. They said he became “a star
overnight,” but he had appeared in more than a hundred films
before.
In Wally: The True Wallace Reid Story, the truth is fully told for the
first time how he was “born in a trunk” to an actress mother and a
famous playwright father, and how he barely survived the infamous St.
Louis cyclone, when the storm tore that city apart. Wally emerged from
the carnage to grow into a popular student, athlete, and early film
hero. His handsome looks inspired directors to place him in front of
cameras, but his ambitions were to be a writer and director. When
director Cecil B. DeMille picked him to appear opposite opera diva
Geraldine Farrar in her first films, his aspirations became lost in
the dizzying idolatry of worldwide audiences.
Wally’s popularity soared to a height rivaled only by Mary Pickford
and Charlie Chaplin, but his pedestal of fame stood on shaky ground.
Genuine tragedy fell upon Wally and his film crew when their train
derailed in an isolated Sierra Mountain location. His injuries were
treated with morphine, and his family and friends watched helpless as
he became caught unaware in the deathly grip of the drug. Dorothy
Davenport, his wife and a beautiful star in her own right, remained
faithfully by his side, while he wrestled with the demons that
threatened to take his life.
Wally: The True Wallace Reid Story draws from many original sources,
major archives, and his family members to show how he was received in
his time and the importance of his role in the development of motion
pictures. The entertaining and informative book contains an extensive
biographical treatment, a detailed filmography, and more than 200 rare
photographs, posters, advertisements, and lobby cards that capture the
glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Years.