Mae Murray The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips

Michael G. Ankerich, Kevin Brownlow

eBook - 2013

This story of a silent-film star’s rise and fall offers “a lesson about those heady days of early Hollywood and the transience of fame” (Library Journal). Renowned for her classic beauty and charismatic presence, Mae Murray rocketed to stardom as a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies, moving across the country to star in her first film, To Have and to Hold, in 1916. An instant hit with audiences, Murray soon became one of the most famous names in Tinseltown. But Murray’s moment in the spotlight was fleeting. The introduction of talkies, a string of failed marriages, a serious career blunder, and a number of bitter legal battles left the former star in a state of poverty and mental instability that she would never overcome. In this ...intriguing biography, Michael G. Ankerich traces Murray’s career from the footlights of Broadway to the klieg lights of Hollywood, recounting... more