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F.W. Murnau's Tabu, the 1931 F.W. Murnau & Robert Flaherty tropical island romantic adventure pseudo-documentary ("Forbidden love in the South Seas"; "A Dramatic Romance of the South Seas by F.W. Murnau and Robert J. Flaherty"; written by F.W. Murnau, Robert J. Flaherty, and an uncredited Edgar Ulmer) starring Anne Chevalier (billed as "Reri"), Matahi, Hitu, Bill Bambridge, and Jean. Note that this movie is one of the more unusual collaborations ever in movies! Great director F.W. Murnau journeyed to a tropical island with master documentary maker Robert Flaherty, and they made this rather strange fiction pseudo-documentary (the year before, these two great men had collaborated on a South Pole documentary, "With Byrd at the South Pole"). Sadly, Murnau was killed in a car crash in California just before this movie premiered, and the world was robbed of an amazing talent, and he was just 42 years old! Note that the IMDb gives the title of this movie as "Tabu: A Story of the South Seas", but we know it was definitely released in the U.S. as "F.W. Murnau's Tabu", because that is written on the herald from the U.S. world premiere! Finally, note that the star of the movie, Anne Chevalier, was born as "Anna Irma Ruahrei Chevalier" in Tahiti in 1912. Her father was a Frenchman and her mother was a Tahitian native, and she was one of seven children (her father also had at least five other children with other Tahitian women!). She was known as "Reri" as a child, and at 16, she went to Broadway (her mother said "Go, there will be one less mouth to feed"!), and she appeared in a Broadway show as a Tahitian native. F.W. Murnau saw her and cast her as the lead in this movie. She returned to Tahiti after a few years in Hollywood (her last movie was "Hurricane"), and she lived the rest of her life there, passing away in 1977.

Important Added Info: Note that this still has been personally autographed (signed) by Mary M. Spaulding. It was hard to find any information on this person, but we found a credit for her on a 1950 movie, and we would think she surely had some involvement on this movie, given that she wrote a long inscription across the center of the still. A knowledgeable collector tells us that she was a Cuban journalist (her birth name was Maria Cristina Melero Escudero) who in 1952 was appointed President of the Executive Commission for the Cinematographic Industry. Our consignor is a longtime dealer who acquired this signed item among many other purchases in his inventory, and he does not have a certificate of authenticity, but we believe the signature to likely be authentic.

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