DELICATE

 

PAT POWERS ATTEMPTED TO LAUNCH PROTOGEE PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE'S MOVIE CAREER

Excerpt page 131:  Joe (Joseph P. Kennedy) could not have picked a better time to make his debut as a movie mogul. The years 1926-1927 were one of the most prosperous periods in Hollywood history; almost every one of the 740 films made each year was a box-office success.  Movie-going had become a worldwide obsession. There were over 50,000 movie theaters around the world, more than a third of them in the United States and Canada.  Annual receipts in North America alone came to more than $120 million.

With Pat Powers, Joe plotted to fold the ailing Producers Distribution Corporation into Associated Exhibitors with the view of merging the fused entity with FBO to make an even bigger company. Joe was on the financial periphery of Pat's efforts to launch Peggy Hopkins Joyce, riding high on the success of his uninhibited and lavishly rich version of The Merry Widow, Erich Von Stroheim declined to take part in furthering of Peggy's screen career. Instead Micky Neilen (who Gloria Swanson had given up on in order to marry Henri de la Falaise) undertook the mission. The result was The Skyrocket, a thinly disguised retelling of Neilan's torrid affair with Gloria Swanson.

Excerpt page 164:  Soon after The Merry Widow was finished, Stroheim agreed to have lunch at the Ambassador with Pat Powers and the canny Irishman's new protégée, Peggy Hopkins Joyce. Powers wanted to launch the former Ziegfeld beauty as a film star. Stoheim, however, was still smarting from his experience with Mae Murray and was in no mood to start another ex- Broadway hoofer;s screen career.  Instead he hypnotized Powers with a project of his own, a double feature to be called The Wedding March and The Honeymoon that he would write, direct, and star in himself, and that would make tons of money for whoever financed it.  As he explained to Pat and Peggy, the appeal of his project was that it could be shown in two parts, tobe screened with an hour's intermission...

Missy here : As was and is often the case, a woman's career depends on being the protégée of a man, some patronage, and if he fails, so does she.

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THE SKYROCKET : PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE IN 1926

This was Peggy Hopkins Joyce's first full length movie, as she had done "shorts" before

 and it was intended to launch her movie star career 

and allow her to be know for an accomplishment

 other than meeting, marrying, and divorcing rich men...

It's a rags to riches to rags again story.

According to author Axel Madsen, on page 131-132 of his book, Mickey Neilan had bought the Edendale studio from a bankrupt Harry Garson and Clara Kimball Young for $300,000, 

refurbished it, and with financing from Pat Powers made a movie about Hollywood, called The Skyrocket. The film was "a thinly disguised retelling of Neilan's torrid affair with Gloria Swanson!

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : SHE PURSUED ACTING WHILE SHE PURSUED MEN

IMDB : PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : MOVIE ROLES 

Here's a YouTube video featuring the 1933 trailer for the movie International House, which also starred the comedian W.C. Fields.  Peggy Hopkins Joyce didn't act in many movies, despite her said career orientation. But note that other actresses played Peggy!  And she was the January 1926 Winner of the Photoplay Award (sponsored by Photoplay Magazine, a fan magazine) for the Best performance - of the month - for her work in the movie The Skyrocket. This was a silent film, as were the 'shorts' she appeared in as early as 1916.

VELVETY

 

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE & CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG : ZIEGFELD FOLLIES SHOWGIRLS WENT INTO ACTING

In this passage from the book by Axel Madsen, a man named Pat Powers, nineteen years older than Joseph P. Kennedy,  who'd started out as a policeman, had become a businessman and had gotten involved in the nickelodeon business, in particular the Edison-Biograph company.  At the time a number of small companies were at war with each other to dominate the movie making business and the movie theater business. 

Excerpt page 99 :  Powers was a loner. He sold out to (Carl) Laemmle and for the next decade was in and out of film investments with a variety of partners. Known as a "bonus shark," he loaned production money at steep interest rates or became a participant in the profits. One partner was Lewis Selznick, the former jewelry dealer from Kiev who had persuaded his sons they were heirs to a kingdom, but who had lately lost his fortune. When he hadn't been able to pay a debt of a mere $3000, Selznick's enemies had forced him into bankruptcy. His sons, Myron and David, vowed vengeance.

Clara Kimball Young adored Powers and believed him to be the most wonderful, clever man in the world. He had lost money, however, by becoming a major stockholder in Equity Pictures. A year later he had invested $120,000 in one movie --- The Miracle Man with Lon Chaney --- and made three million dollars.

Now in his mid-fifties, Pat had become infatuated with the icy blond charms of Peggy Hopkins Joyce. She had distracted Mickey Neilan (who Gloria Swanson had once had a between-marriages affair with) and told (Charlie) Chaplin of her gold-digging days while skinny dipping with him on Catalina. Peggy had added MGM's frail wunderkind, Irving Thalberg, to her list of conquests, wanted Erich von Stroheim to write and direct a film starring his Peggy. Pat was courting the stormy, individualistic Stroheim because in The Merry Widow, MGM's current hit, the director had managed the feat of turning Mae Murray, another ex-Follies hoofer, into a star

Reflating the careers of former chorus girls was not among Joe Kennedy's ambitions in 1924....

Lewis Szelnick's mistress was Clara Kimball Young.

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EMMA MARGUERITE "PEGGY" UPTON BECAME PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE THROUGH MARRIAGES : MICKEY NEILAN WENT FROM PEGGY TO GLORIA

In this passage, the way movie stars, directors, producers, and financiers intertwined in Golden Era Hollywood reminds me that it was once a very small town.

Excerpt page 79  Mickey Neilan swept her (Gloria Swanson) off her feet that summer with his madcap, brilliant, vivacious insouciance and his claim that there were only some 290 days before he was free to marry her. "After Herbert, how could I not love him?" she would ask. "After one afternoon with him, how could I not forget Craney Gartz and every other handsome man who had ever tempted me?  As Mickey waltz me into my first real love affair, it never occurred to me to utter a syllable of protest."

While waiting for his divorce to become final, Mickey lived like a young lord at the Los Angeles Athletic Club next to Charlie Chaplin, who was trying to escape the sensational charges surrounding his divorce from the teenage Mildred Harris.  Mickey's romance with Gloria was particularly torrid and came after his affair with Peggy Hopkins Joyce, a former Ziegfeld Follies girl who distracted him so much from his long and confused  Strangers Banquet that the  cast and crew had to wait two weeks after the starting date before Neilan showed up. The term "gold digger' had been coined in honor of Peggy around 1920.  Born Margaret Upton in Virginia, the bid blonde had arrived in Chicago in 1914, changed her name to Hopkins, and landed her first millionaire husband, Stanley Joyce.  Divorced with a million-dollar settlement, she had, in quick succession, netted four more millionaire husbands. Dressed in stylish mourning outfits, because Henri Letellier, a famous Parisian publisher and man-about-town, had just taken his life on her account, she had cruised into Hollywood with a three-million-dollar bankroll, bent on a movie career.  After Mickey's infatuation with her had cooled, he had introduced her to Chaplin, who used the story of her relationship with Letellier as a basis for A Woman of Paris.

Notes: Herbert Somborn was Gloria Swanson's second husband.  She had an affair with Mickey but decided on marriage to Henri de la Falaise, during which she had her relationship with Joseph P. Kennedy.

A Woman of Paris was Chaplin's movie that came out in 1923

Margaret Upton is an Americanization of her name given a birth : Emma Marguerite Upton

The Author was incorrect that Peggy changed her name to Peggy Hopkins. The name was a result of her second marriage.

in 1910 she married Everett Allen Archibald Jr., a millionaire. But she was only fifteen years old and so the marriage was annulled. (What kind of parents did she have?)

In 1913 she married Sherburne Philbrick Hopkins, a lawyer from a prominent and rich family. She left him to pursue acting and with his approval that she marry James Stanley Joyce.

in 1920, she married James Stanley Joyce.  She married two days after ending her marriage with Hopkins. This was her most famous marriage because of the story that she refused to come to him on their wedding night unless he wrote her a check for half a million dollars first.

During this era in Hollywood, in which Pat Powers, an associate of Joseph P. Kennedy, attempted to move Peggy into an acting career, she then married in 1924 to Count Gosta Gustave Morner, who she said was her first true love. They divorced in 1926.

Peggy had two more husbands in her life, years later. This information was culled from Wikipedia.  I note that her reputation as a "Gold Digger" came because of her many marriages to rich men, but also because she attracted other men who wanted to marry her, but I wonder if it was only that she was beautiful and charming. What about men who go after a woman knowing they may not succeed with her?

Missy.

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PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : THE ORCHID LADY OF STAGE AND SCREEN

 

In the Roaring Twenties Peggy Hopkins Joyce was called

 "The Orchid" or "The Orchid Lady of Stage and Screen: 

Orchids were (and often are) exotic and, when rare, expensive,

 and require special care, 

just as she did.

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : SPENDTHRIFTY GOLD DIGGER : THE GOLD DIGGER AS A COMIC FIGURE : HUNGER MAKES YOU THINK

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE 

 SPENDTHRIFTY GOLD DIGGER

First posted on April 5th 2010

Born Emma Marguerite Upton

1893 – 1957

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE was the most publicized Mistress-Courtesan of the 1920's and 1930's. She was introduced to Florenz Ziegfeld, who owned the famous showgirl venue New Amsterdam Theatre, by a dressmaker to fashionable ladies, Madame Frances, and her career began. She was a heartbreaker and international celebrity, perhaps the first famous to be famous woman of the 20th century. She was known for her spendthrifty ways as well as a steamy sex life. Was Peggy ruthless and sociopathic? Or did she simply decide at a young age that she would do well, beyond her childhood as the daughter of a Norfolk barber?

She had three multimillionaire husbands. And a great number of generous patrons. She came to own one of the largest blue diamonds known to the world in her time.

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : THE GOLD DIGGER AS A COMIC FIGURE

First posted April 6 2010

Excerpt Page 84 :

"Though the gold digger is a comic, not a tragic figure, she is not totally uncomplicated. While men adored these creatures, they were also made slightly uneasy by them. It was appealing to have a glamorous plaything whose favors could be bought for no more than the price of a fashionable apartment, a generous allowance, and a regular supply of steak dinners and expensive jewelry. But in making such a hard-nosed exchange, these women exhibited not only a deep cynicism but also a degree of power, which is one reason men felt a certain anxiety in their presence. Men were also made uncomfortable by females who so flagrantly flouted the social rules designed to keep people in their places. Unlike the courtesans of Europe, who occupied an established an respected niche, the American gold digger was a renegade; there was nothing subtle, or admirable, about her methods - or her goals."

 

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : HUNGER MAKES YOU THINK

First posted April 9 2010

Excerpt Page 43: 

In her memoirs Peggy described her transition from society wife to Broadway showgirl as the ultimate Cinderella story... As she told it, she left home in March on 1915 with a single suitcase full of clothes and headed by train to New York, where she ensconced herself in the Hopkins family suite in the St Regis Hotel off Fifth Avenue... Wearing torn stockings, her last pair of fresh underwear, and a plaid suit that badly needed cleaning, she headed south towards Times Square pondering the ways of the world.

"Hunger certainly makes you think about things," she wrote. "When I was a kid I used to think that it was Love that was the most important thing in Life, then after that experience in Denver I thought it was money, but now I know it is food." - Peggy Hopkins Joyce

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