- Title: Leading Ladies
- Author: Don Macpherson
- Year Published: 1986/This edition: 1989 (Conran Octopus Limited/Crescent Books)
- Year Purchased: 1990s
- Source: It was a Christmas gift from my Aunt Lauree.
- About: This is a coffee table book, not a scholarly work. The text is nice, but not genre-shattering; it’s the standard drill for this kind of product. The images are from The Kobal Collection, so the writing stands no chance of taking first place, anyway. The whole gang is here, from Theda Bara to Doris Day, Jean Harlow to Jean Seberg, Anna Magnani to Debra Winger, represented by an array of unusually stunning photographs. Since that is the dominant reason for buying a book like this, you’ll walk away happy.
- Motivation: I’ve been fond of old movies since I was a child.
- Times Read: Multiple
- Random Excerpt/Page 22: “By the time she was twenty-five, Colleen Moore was earning a weekly salary of $12,500, a reflection of her value to a studio for whom she was a highly profitable jazz baby. With her bobbed hair, cheeky face and alert eyes, she resembles to modern eyes an uncanny combination of the better remembered Clara Bow and Louise Brooks. But in the 1920s, it was Moore who was the incarnation of the twenties flapper girl.”
- Happiness Scale: 10++
Publicity photo of Colleen Moore for Argentinean Magazine. (Printed in USA) (Photo credit: Wikipedia). Here, in her post-Flapper days.
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea.
Not just a blog, a philosophy
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 
I’m glad you’ve featured a photo of Colleen Moore. 🙂
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I have a framed photo of Colleen Moore hanging in my entry hallway. Not this one, but an image of her sporting her iconic bob.
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I love the bob! It’s timeless and always looks so cute.
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I have a classic flapper bob right now (albeit with the right side shaved). It’s always a go-to look for me, but I am about to get it chopped off next week. I will probably go back to it again next year.
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Wow, even today, her weekly salary is no joke, but in the 20’s? Unbelievable.
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I wouldn’t turn it down! It was a lot of money for anyone to earn back then, to be sure, but she was not the only star of the silent era to earn huge sums. Both Pickford and Fairbanks were earning $10k a week a decade earlier, before starting United Artists.
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