Mae Murray: The intriguing photos you won’t see in her biography

One of the best parts about Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips are the photographs that are intermingled throughout the book’s 392 pages.  My publisher, The University of Kentucky Press, was very generous with their allotment.  I started out with about 150 that I felt should be part of the final product.  We negotiated and settled on just under 100.  Just under a hundred images of Mae at her best (portraits, candids, production stills) and of her family and friends.

In this post I share some of the photos that didn’t make the book.  I think they are fascinating and interesting to anyone reading the her biography.  Special thanks goes to Eric T. Rebetti, a loyal Mae Murray collector, for his generosity in providing some of the images in this blog and for the book.

Here we go!

I originally had this one in mind for the cover. It’s one of my favorites.

One of the earliest images I had of Mae. From a 1908 news clipping.

Mae and her first husband William Schwenker

In the 1915 Ziegfeld Follies

In costume for Sweet Kitty Bellairs

Mae in The Dream Girl, her third film.

Fannie Ward, Blanche Sweet, and Mae Murray

Mae Murray, Jack Pickford, and Vivian Martin

Mae Murray in one of her best roles: Mary McGuire in The Delicious Little Devil.

Mae’s passport photo, 1920

In costume for a Halloween party at Hotel Des Artistes

In a scene from The Right to Love (1920).

Mae and Vincent Coleman clowning around on the set of Fascination. The two actors switched roles one afternoon. The story is in the book.

Mae strikes a pose at the studio with one of her automobiles.

From a color screen test.

The screen test can be found here.

Edsel Ford, president of Ford Motor Company, and wife Eleanor visit Mae on the set of Jazzmania (1923).

Mae posing at the Broadway entrance to Grauman’s Metropolitan Theatre in Los Angeles.

The day in July 1926 that Mae (L) injected herself into the crown prince and princess of Sweden’s visit to MGM. Mae and Louis B. Mayer are shown on either side of the royals. The episode is told in detail in Mae Murray: The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips.

Mae fights for custody of her son (1940).

Mae is carried from her apartment after suffering a stroke in 1960. Hollywood thought it had lost its Girl withthe Bee-Stung Lips.

One of the final chapters in Mae’s life came in 1964 when she got off a bus in St. Louis. She thought she had arrived in New York City. She is pictured in St. Louis with a representative from the Salvation Army.

Mae lands in Los Angeles after her sad adventure in St. Louis (1964).

Mae with paramour Guido Orlando in 1939.