The Talmadge Girls

This biography of the Talmadge sisters is an interesting albeit biased read from Anita Loos, a close friend of the Talmadge girls during their Hollywood reign. Biased isn't always a bad thing, however. Being that Ms. Loos was a close friend of the family's she was able to see Norma, Constance, Natalie (the less famous and less pretty youngest sister) and Peg, the family matriarch, on both a friendly and professional level. It seems a shame that Norma and Constance ("Dutch" to her friends) Talmadge are no longer viewed as Hollywood greats when their popularity was so high during the early days of cinema-Norma as the dramatic actress, Constance as the screwball flapper. Ms. Loos provides a nice view of Hollywood during those days and instills a certain intimacy and charm to the Talmadge story. The pictures are wonderful and a rarity-including both "official" Hollywood shots and pictures from personal archives. Norma and Constance were both beautiful and are forever captured in full 20's and 30's glory by these photographs.

A nice overview of silent screen heroines Norma and Constance Talmadge, plus their left-in-the-shadows sister Natalie and Mama Peg. Features first-hand accounts, for the most part, by Talmadge pal Anita Loos... however, most of the juicy details seem to have been left out. Still, a nice glimpse of Hollywood in the 20s. Great moments, like an account of Christmas with the Talmadge family, c.1920, when Constance and Natalie decorated the tree with suppositories and other assorted drug-store items, brought the store clerk home with them, played dumb when Peg threw a fit about both the ornaments and said clerk, and finished off the holiday with a bash complete with the clerk getting the thrill of his life when he was afforded the opportunity to help Mabel Normand change her stockings.A few of Loos' accounts (Peg's history, Connie's scrape with career disaster when she was nearly caught in a raid on a Los Angeles gay bar) have been called into question by biographers since the publication of "The Talmadge Girls," but until the definitive biography of this fascinating screen family is written, this one will have to do.