The rise and fall of Mae Murray
Still, her fortune was intact for now, and Prince and Princess Mdivani soon had a son who they named Koran (one wonders what other names they’d thrown out first) and lived at their incredible Playa Del Rey estate in Malibu. They even had oil. But they didn’t count on the Wall Street Crash, and by 1931, Mae had begged her way back into films – sound films now – but five years is a long time in the public imagination, and when Mae staggered onto the screen in Bachelor Apartmentlooking older, mannered and blowsy, few took any notice.
By 1933, she was broke and forced to sell her estate to pay her divorce costs. A woman without gold was no use to a Mdivani. She declared bankruptcy in 1934 and lost custody of her son in 1936. That same year she was arrested for vagrancy in New York when police found her wrapped in an old sable – the final incongruity – and sleeping on a bench in Central Park. Some loyal friends, no doubt possessed of astonishing patience, helped Murray out, and back in LA, she found herself work on the nostalgia circuit, dancing her Merry Widow waltz at various nightclubs, often wearing just a couple of wisps of oyster silk, despite nearing 60.
Her profile was raised slightly following the release of Sunset Boulevard in 1950 (Murray’s famous reaction was: “None of us floozies was THAT nuts!”), and she could often be seen walking through the streets of LA, drag-queen glamorous, with her head tilted skywards, all the better to present a youthful jawline to a disinterested world, and only narrowly avoiding collisions with lampposts and the like.
By the late Fifties she could have passed as Mae West’s skinny and humourless little sister. Then, an aptly titled biography appeared: ‘The Self-Enchanted’. No one bought it (though copies go for a song these days – such is life), and so poor, deluded Mae took herself from coast to coast, by bus, on a self-promoted publicity comeback tour. This touching yet hopeless endeavour came to an end when she was found wandering aimlessly around downtown St Louis muttering about the magnitude of her fame.
She spent her final years in the Hollywood Motion Picture House, a retirement community for the colony (which she been instrumental in establishing in the Twenties), still incredibly gowned and bejewelled, although in paste rather than the carats of her glory days, and instructing folk to “Make way for the Princess Mdivani!” as she swanned about, lost in a permanent reverie where her star still burned blindingly.
“Poor damn crazy dame” one of her nurses was heard to mutter. She died in 1965, leaving only a trunk chock-full of keepsakes. She’d once told a journalist that she and her fellow silent stars were akin to fireflies: “We seemed to be suspended effortlessly in the air, but in reality, our wings were beating very, very fast.” Sadly, this flash of wisdom came too little, too late.
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Category: 1920s and earlier, Vintage news, Vintage Style Icons
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Brilliant article. I am inspired to find out more about the mad Mae Murray now. Please can we have more about icons from the past- men too, like Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino.
Interesting however I question the use of the word “Infamous” with regard to the Follies.
That word denotes something unsavory, does it not? My dictionary defines that word as having a bad reputation, which the Follies did NOT have. In fact, the opposite is true.
There’s a little too much poision in the writer’s writing for me to enjoy this piece, though I do love Mae Murray and how crazy she went (take THAT Lindsey Lohan!) And I take offense to not only the notion that silent stars had talkie myth syndrome, but that their ‘gilded egos’ did em in instead. More like sad sad circumstances when a grouping of people with family histories of alcoholism and mental illness are given lots of money and put in the spotlight (if you look at a lot of their blood descendants you can see just what I mean). Like now.
The 20s were the start but by no means an exception (Florence Lawrence to Marilyn Monroe to again Lohan…same ol same ol.) Someone said they were doing a new bio on Mae…I hope they do!