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Marlene Dietrich was a very popular German actress and singer from the 1920s through the 1950s! She started in German movies in the 1920s, and then got her big break in Josef von Sternberg's "The Blue Angel", which was made in both a German and an English version. That led to a series of wonderful movies with von Sternberg. Some of her other movies include: Destry Rides Again, Shanghai Express, The Scarlet Empress, A Foreign Affair, Morocco (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), Blonde Venus, Touch of Evil, Witness for the Prosecution, and Judgment at Nuremberg AND Carole Lombard was an actress from the 1920s to the 1940s. In her early movies, she mostly had minor supporting roles in comedies, and she was billed as "Carol", but she added the "e" as she became a major star. One of her greatest successes was Twentieth Century, where she played a girl who has never acted, who becomes a great star under the tutelage of Svengali-like John Barrymore. Some of her other movies include: To Be or Not To Be, My Man Godfrey (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), Mr. and Mrs. Smith. In the early 1930s, she married William Powell, but they amicably divorced, and several years later, she had a torrid love affair with Clark Gable, but while they were set to be married, she died tragically in a 1942 plane crash when she was at the height of her career. She was just 33 years old. AND Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Chicago, Illinois in 1899. At 15, she happened to tour a movie studio in Chicago, and asked to appear in a movie, and that gave her the acting "bug". She appeared in minor roles in slapstick movies for Essanay, but in 1916, she was hired by Keystone and then Triangle, and she starred in over 20 movies in 1916 to 1918. In 1919, she signed with Cecil B. DeMille, and starting making elaborate melodramas, rather than the light comedies she had been making. She also began wearing really wild outfits and accessories in her movies (practically costumes!). In 1928, she had one of her best remembered roles, as Sadie Thompson (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), directed by Raoul Walsh from the W. Somerset Maugham (the part would later be played by Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth). In 1929 she had a role in Trespasser (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), and she starting filming Queen Kelly directed by Erich von Stroheim and produced by Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. (the father of the famous Kennedy brothers, with whom she had a long term affair). This was intended to be von Stroheim and Swanson's masterpiece, but they clashed over the way her character was portrayed, and there were massive cost overruns, and von Stroheim was fired, and an alternate ending was filmed, and that altered version had a limited release in Europe only (many years later a reconstructed version of von Stroheim's original vision was created [with still photos in part]). Swanson survived the transition to talking movies, but she could see her career was winding down, and she began acting more on stage, and painting, sculpting, and writing a syndicated column. After 1934, she only made one movie until 1950, when she took the lead role as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film; screenwriter Charles Brackett says the role was intended for Swanson from the start, while director Billy Wilder says they first offered it to virtually every other leading silent actress!). The movie has a marvelous script (of a once famous silent actress having an affair with a much younger man, and dreaming of a "comeback" that will never come), and the casting of Swanson and Holden is perfect, and the additional casting of von Stroheim and DeMille add much to the movie. It is a virtually perfect movie! Swanson had six husbands over her life, marrying the first time on her 17th birthday (to Wallace Beery!) and the last time when she was 77, which lasted until she passed away in 1983. In her day she was as big a star as Hollywood has ever known! AND Lili Damita (born Liliane Marie Madeleine Carre) was an French actress from the 1920s to the 1930s. Some of her movies include: The Bridge of San Luis Rey, A Dream Comes True, The Match King, For Auld Lang Syne, Fighting Caravans, and Frisco Kid. In the late 1920s, she was romantically linked to Gary Cooper, and she was at one time married to director Michael Curtiz and later to actor Errol Flynn! Note that she slowly changed her name when she started acting, and over the years, she was sometimes billed as "Lily Deslys", "Lily Damita" and "Liliane Damita".

Important Added Info: Note that this wonderful still shows Marlene Dietrich and Carole Lombard at the height of their fame standing arm-in-arm, and next to them is super young Errol Flynn with his wife Lili Damita. Since Flynn married Damita in the middle of 1935, and since Captain Blood was not released until the end of 1935, it seems certain this still dates from the latter part of 1935, after he had made Captain Blood, but before it was released, and we don't know if there was some special occasion why these great stars were all together (it almost looks like they just happened to be next to each other and a photographer took their picture). If anyone knows more about this, please e-mail us and we will post it here.

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