Joyce Compton News & Notes

The ever-valuable Criterion Channel added some fantastic new films to stream in September—including a curated group of special interest to 1930s Hollywood buffs. Rebels at the Typewriter: Women Screenwriters of the 1930s looks at the contributions of Frances Marion, Anita Loos and many unsung women who wrote a multitude of entertaining and thought-provoking novels and movies of that era. I’ll let the folks at Criterion fill in the details:  The 1930s were a golden age for women writers, who penned some of the most outrageous provocations of the pre-Code era and created memorable, true-to-life female characters for the period’s reigning stars. While writers like renowned humorist Anita Loos (RED-HEADED WOMAN) and two-time Academy Award winner Frances Marion (DINNER AT EIGHT) have been justly celebrated, others like the prolific Jane Murfin (WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD?), best-selling novelist turned screenwriter Viña Delmar (MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW), and pioneering writer-director Wanda T...

Picture it: Hollywood, California, sometime in 1997. I'm a tourist on my first trip to the iconic Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard. Me and my boyfriend take a detour into a little autograph and memorabilia store called STARWORLD. Although they have an impressive array of signed, framed photos on the walls, my eye is drawn to a little box on the floor marked “Clearance.” I crouch down and leaf through the glossy 8 by 10s in the box, seeing a bunch of has-beens, never was-es and forgotten child actors from the ’70s and ’80s. Near the bottom, however, I spy a diamond in the rough—an autograph from my favorite “dumb blonde” of Hollywood’s Golden Era, Joyce Compton. In the photo, she is wearing a chiffon dress with a spray of fake lilacs on the bodice, a lacy negligee partically obscured by sheer layers of gown fabric. Joyce’s curly handwriting matches her blonde hair, and it matched the images I recalled from old movies—cute and bubbly. Priced at seven dollars, it became my first ...