Silent Film Star Madge Bellamy Vintage 20s Edwin Bower Hesser Glamour Photograph
Item History & Price
ITEM: This is a glamorous, 1920s, vintage and original photograph of silent film actress Madge Bellamy. Photographed by Edwin Bower Hesser, this is a dreamy, soft focus portrait of the star. This photo comes from Bellamy's personal archive and was stored in a close friend's collection since the star's death in 1990.
Delicately pretty, Madge Bellamy was a charming silent screen heroine popular in the 1920s in mostly light fare. Bellamy's most important film is arguably the landmark J...ohn Ford Western, The Iron Horse (1924). She continued on into the early days of the sound period (probably her best remembered feature from this period is the 1932 haunting low-budget horror film, White Zombie), but her status quickly waned.
Photograph measures 8" x 10" on a semi-gloss, double weight paper stock with the photographer's ink stamp on verso.
Guaranteed to be 100% vintage and original from Grapefruit Moon Gallery.
More about Madge Bellamy:
Madge was born as Margaret Philpott in Texas. She got her start in theater working with a stock company in Denver. Put under a personal contract by a Broadway producer, Madge got her big break when she replaced Helen Hayes in the Broadway play "Dear Brutus". Her success as a stage actress led to her being signed by Fox Pictures. After appearing in a number of movies in the early 20's, Madge was best remembered for her performances in 'Lorna Doone (1922)' and 'The Iron Horse (1924)'. A strong will contrasted the screen image of innocence and led to disagreements over roles by the late 20's. Madge had been cast in a number of movies each year and was in Fox's first dialogue feature 'Mother Knows Best (1928)'. But her refusal to work in the film 'The Trial of Mary Dugan', which was bought expressly for her, led to her contract with Fox being terminated. It would be 3 years until she returned to the screen in the cult favorite 'White Zombie (1932)' with Bela Lugosi, but her career was not going anywhere as Madge was just one of those old silent stars. For the next few years, she appeared in a small number of low budget films and by 1936 her film career was over. In 1943, she would again appear in the headlines when she shot her lover, millionaire A. Stanford Murphy after he jilted her to marry another woman. She did marry two other men, Carlos Bellamy, whose last name she kept, and then to Logan F. Metcalf. Both marriages ended in divorce. She has no children.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana
More about Edwin Bower Hesser:
Hesser belonged to the generation of photographers who saw the marriage of image and performance as the future of the art. Born in New Jersey and apprenticed in photography in New York City, Hesser became smitten with the potentials of the art form.
Prior to World War I he toured northeastern theaters with J. Townsend Russell in a series of "picture readings" illustrating Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. Townsend recited the poems accompanied by a string orchestra while illustrative photographs were projected on the screen. In 1913, Hesser introduced Roald Admundsen, the first man to reach the south pole, to New York audiences, presenting motion pictures to illustrate the trek. On February 3, 1915, using family money, he incorporated the Hesser Motion Picture Corporation with a capitalization of $50, 000. Later in the year, he was in Atlanta opening the Hesser School For Motion Picture Acting.
With America's entry into World War I, Hesser joined the U. S. Army Signal corps with the rank of Captain and oversaw land photography. While in the service a scenario composed by Hesser, "The Freedom of the World, " was made in 1918 into a semi-documentary feature film by Goldwyn. After the armistice, Hesser decommissioned, set up a photographic studio in Manhattan employing as his assistant a talented Italian, Nino Vayana, to oversee production. He was drawn to the world of movies and worked as a contract photographer for numbers of silent stars based in New York, particularly Norma Talmadge, Irene Castle, and Marion Davies. A fire in 1922 destroyed his production facilities and his stock of early negatives. He began to make regular trips to the West Coast for photographic sessions with Hollywood stars, and finally moved his base of operations to there.
By 1923 he realized that the real money in photography lay in periodical publication, not in the service of film publicity offices or stage PR men. He saw particular opportunity in the subject which the 1920s stage explored with great daring, but the screen, even in pre-code days, could not pursue: female undress. Throughout the late 1920s, he published Edwin Bower Hesser's Arts Monthly, and other titles, exploiting the association betweens art and nudity, and sold it to an anonymous readership of "art students." The magazine published work by Alfred Cheney Johnston, John De Mirjian, George DeBarron, and Strand Studio.
Hesser's exploration of the netherworld of publishing brought him in contact with the Hollywood underworld. In 1928 he was arrested for suspicion of narcotics peddling, battery, and impersonating a police officer in connection with the death of starlet Helen St. Clair Evans, who was murdered by her husband Arthur. He was released, but the Depression shut down Hesser's successful exercise in niche publishing.
Fortunately for Hesser, his experiments with color photographic processes and his experience with mass reproduction of imagery made him attractive in the eyes of the New York Times, who hired him as a technician. Later in the decade he returned to California. Hesser continued to practice photography until the late 1940s placing occasional pieces with magazines. His photographic archive is stored in the special collections department of UCLA library. David S. Shields/ALS
Specialty: Hesser was one of the few portraitist who regularly depicted sitters head on. His penchant for back-lighting so that hair seem lined with light, gave certain of his 1920s sitters a halo or aura. Hesser's plein air nudes of showgirls in natural light became the academic standard for art photographers in the 1920s, while his portraits of movie actresses and stage stars were greatly influential images of glamour from 1925 to 1930. Also an expert at landscape photography, Hesser combined these two skills--often photographing nudes in parks and glades.
Possessed of an inquiring and entrepreneurial mind, he developed and patented a color process, "Hessecolor, " that intrigued mass circulation publishers during the 1930s, but did not prevail in the marketplace.
Biography By: Dr. David S. Shields, McClintock Professor, University of South Carolina, Photography & the American Stage the Visual Culture of American Theater 1865-1965
Delicately pretty, Madge Bellamy was a charming silent screen heroine popular in the 1920s in mostly light fare. Bellamy's most important film is arguably the landmark J...ohn Ford Western, The Iron Horse (1924). She continued on into the early days of the sound period (probably her best remembered feature from this period is the 1932 haunting low-budget horror film, White Zombie), but her status quickly waned.
Photograph measures 8" x 10" on a semi-gloss, double weight paper stock with the photographer's ink stamp on verso.
Guaranteed to be 100% vintage and original from Grapefruit Moon Gallery.
More about Madge Bellamy:
Madge was born as Margaret Philpott in Texas. She got her start in theater working with a stock company in Denver. Put under a personal contract by a Broadway producer, Madge got her big break when she replaced Helen Hayes in the Broadway play "Dear Brutus". Her success as a stage actress led to her being signed by Fox Pictures. After appearing in a number of movies in the early 20's, Madge was best remembered for her performances in 'Lorna Doone (1922)' and 'The Iron Horse (1924)'. A strong will contrasted the screen image of innocence and led to disagreements over roles by the late 20's. Madge had been cast in a number of movies each year and was in Fox's first dialogue feature 'Mother Knows Best (1928)'. But her refusal to work in the film 'The Trial of Mary Dugan', which was bought expressly for her, led to her contract with Fox being terminated. It would be 3 years until she returned to the screen in the cult favorite 'White Zombie (1932)' with Bela Lugosi, but her career was not going anywhere as Madge was just one of those old silent stars. For the next few years, she appeared in a small number of low budget films and by 1936 her film career was over. In 1943, she would again appear in the headlines when she shot her lover, millionaire A. Stanford Murphy after he jilted her to marry another woman. She did marry two other men, Carlos Bellamy, whose last name she kept, and then to Logan F. Metcalf. Both marriages ended in divorce. She has no children.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana
More about Edwin Bower Hesser:
Hesser belonged to the generation of photographers who saw the marriage of image and performance as the future of the art. Born in New Jersey and apprenticed in photography in New York City, Hesser became smitten with the potentials of the art form.
Prior to World War I he toured northeastern theaters with J. Townsend Russell in a series of "picture readings" illustrating Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. Townsend recited the poems accompanied by a string orchestra while illustrative photographs were projected on the screen. In 1913, Hesser introduced Roald Admundsen, the first man to reach the south pole, to New York audiences, presenting motion pictures to illustrate the trek. On February 3, 1915, using family money, he incorporated the Hesser Motion Picture Corporation with a capitalization of $50, 000. Later in the year, he was in Atlanta opening the Hesser School For Motion Picture Acting.
With America's entry into World War I, Hesser joined the U. S. Army Signal corps with the rank of Captain and oversaw land photography. While in the service a scenario composed by Hesser, "The Freedom of the World, " was made in 1918 into a semi-documentary feature film by Goldwyn. After the armistice, Hesser decommissioned, set up a photographic studio in Manhattan employing as his assistant a talented Italian, Nino Vayana, to oversee production. He was drawn to the world of movies and worked as a contract photographer for numbers of silent stars based in New York, particularly Norma Talmadge, Irene Castle, and Marion Davies. A fire in 1922 destroyed his production facilities and his stock of early negatives. He began to make regular trips to the West Coast for photographic sessions with Hollywood stars, and finally moved his base of operations to there.
By 1923 he realized that the real money in photography lay in periodical publication, not in the service of film publicity offices or stage PR men. He saw particular opportunity in the subject which the 1920s stage explored with great daring, but the screen, even in pre-code days, could not pursue: female undress. Throughout the late 1920s, he published Edwin Bower Hesser's Arts Monthly, and other titles, exploiting the association betweens art and nudity, and sold it to an anonymous readership of "art students." The magazine published work by Alfred Cheney Johnston, John De Mirjian, George DeBarron, and Strand Studio.
Hesser's exploration of the netherworld of publishing brought him in contact with the Hollywood underworld. In 1928 he was arrested for suspicion of narcotics peddling, battery, and impersonating a police officer in connection with the death of starlet Helen St. Clair Evans, who was murdered by her husband Arthur. He was released, but the Depression shut down Hesser's successful exercise in niche publishing.
Fortunately for Hesser, his experiments with color photographic processes and his experience with mass reproduction of imagery made him attractive in the eyes of the New York Times, who hired him as a technician. Later in the decade he returned to California. Hesser continued to practice photography until the late 1940s placing occasional pieces with magazines. His photographic archive is stored in the special collections department of UCLA library. David S. Shields/ALS
Specialty: Hesser was one of the few portraitist who regularly depicted sitters head on. His penchant for back-lighting so that hair seem lined with light, gave certain of his 1920s sitters a halo or aura. Hesser's plein air nudes of showgirls in natural light became the academic standard for art photographers in the 1920s, while his portraits of movie actresses and stage stars were greatly influential images of glamour from 1925 to 1930. Also an expert at landscape photography, Hesser combined these two skills--often photographing nudes in parks and glades.
Possessed of an inquiring and entrepreneurial mind, he developed and patented a color process, "Hessecolor, " that intrigued mass circulation publishers during the 1930s, but did not prevail in the marketplace.
Biography By: Dr. David S. Shields, McClintock Professor, University of South Carolina, Photography & the American Stage the Visual Culture of American Theater 1865-1965
