Lost Silent Film The Big Noise Vint. 1928 Lobby Card Alice White Chester Conklin

Description

ITEM: This is a vintage and original First National Pictures lobby card advertising the 1928 lost silent comedy film
The Big Noise
. Walrus-mustachioed Chester Conklin plays the scheming father of flapper Alice White. The pair are pictured here in a scene from the film.
Small posters on card stock (usually 11" x 14" in a horizontal format), lobby cards were generally produced in sets of eight, intended for display in a theatre's foyer or lobby. A lobby set typically consists of one Title Card (a lobby card of special design usually depicting all key stars, listing credits, and intended to represent the entire film rather than a single scene) and seven Scene Cards (each depicting a scene from the movie). Lobby cards are no longer used in theatres today.
Lobby card measures 14" x 11".
Guaranteed to be 100% vintage and original from Grapefruit Moon Gallery.
More about Alice White:
Alice White was born Alva Violet White on August 24, 1904 in Paterson, New Jersey, the daughter of Audley White and Marian Alexander. Her father abandoned the family and her mother, a former chorus girl, died in 1915. She was raised by her grandparents in New Jersey. Alice attended an all-girls school in Connecticut and went to Roanoke College in Virginia. When she was a teenager the family moved to California where she attended Hollywood high school.
She started working as a secretary but lost several jobs for being too "sexy". Eventually Alice was hired by Charlie Chaplin to be a script girl. He encouraged her to try acting and she made her film debut as an extra in The Thief Of Bagdad. She was offered a contract at First National and starred in the 1927 drama The Sea Tiger. The studio told Alice she needed to lose weight. Then she was given starring roles in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Show Girl. Alice had a bubbly onscreen personality and was often compared to Clara Bow. Her short blonde hair and flapper style would become her trademark. Audiences fell in love with Alice but critics were rarely impressed with her acting. It was rumored her singing voice was dubbed. She had serious romances with aviator Dick Grace and actor Donald Keith. In 1931, she took a break from making movies. The studio claimed she was unhappy with her salary and had become difficult to work with.
She became involved in a love triangle with British-born actor John Warburton and producer Sy Bartlett. She accused Warburton of beating her so badly she needed reconstructive surgery on her nose. Warburton told the press that White and Bartlett hired two thugs to disfigure him. A grand jury refused to indict but the bad publicity hurt her reputation. She married Bartlett in 1933 and tried to make a comeback. Unfortunately she could only get minor roles in films like Gift of Gab (1934). In 1936, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for two months. The following year her marriage ended. She married screenwriter John Roberts in 1941 but they divorced eight years later. In court she said he "threw things and wasn't very nice". The couple spent years fighting over alimony. Her last film role was in Flamingo Road (1949).
For many years she lived with musician William Hinshaw. With her movie star days behind her she went back to work as a secretary. In 1957, she fell off a ladder and landed on a pair of scissors. The accident left her blinded for several months. When she recovered she was offered a role on an episode of The Ann Sothern Show (1958). This was her final acting appearance. As she grew older, she stayed out of the spotlight but continued to answer fan mail she received from around the world. She died on February 19, 1983 after suffering a stroke. She had no children and left no immediate survivors.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Elizabeth Ann
More about Chester Conklin:
A former Barnum circus clown, pint-sized Chester Conklin entered movies at Mack Sennett's Keystone studios in 1913. Sporting a huge mustache to hide his youthful appearance, Conklin was usually cast as "A. Walrus." Legend has it that Conklin helped Keystone novice Charlie Chaplin put together his famous Tramp costume; true or not, it is a fact that Chaplin kept Conklin on year-round payroll for his later productions Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940). After leaving Keystone, Conklin remained a popular comedian at the Fox and Sunshine Studios. In the late 1920s, he was teamed with W.C. Fields for a brief series of feature films at Paramount Pictures. In talkies, Conklin mostly appeared in bits in features and supporting parts in 2-reelers; he also showed up in such nostalgic retrospectives as Hollywood Cavalcade (1939) and The Perils of Pauline (1947). At his lowest professional ebb, in the 1950s, Conklin made ends meet as a department-store Santa. In and out of the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in the 1960s, Conklin fell in love with another patient, 65-year-old June Gunther. The two eloped (she was Chester's fourth wife) and settled in a modest bungalow in Van Nuys. Chester Conklin showed up in a handful of films in the 1960s; his last appearance, playing a character appropriately named Chester, was in 1966's A Big Hand for the Little Lady.
AllMovie Biography By Hal Erickson