“I started out playing bad ladies, they called them vamps in those days.” — Carmel Myers
Source: Kevin Thomas (1975)
“Why, Mr. Goldfish, if my career depends on hiding the fact that I was born a Jew, I’d rather not have one.” — Carmel Myers‘ response to Samuel Goldwyn (real name Goldfish) after he suggested that she change her name because it sounded “too Jewish.”
Source: Kevin Thomas (1975)
The Wife He Bought (1918)
A Broadway Scandal (1918), a lost film.
“When I had been working in D.W. Griffith’s pictures for only six months I was made a star by Universal. I would not do that again if I could try once more. I was too young and inexperienced to justify stardom and a more gradual rise would have been better for me.” – Carmel Myers
Slave of Desire (1923)
“They made me too much of a type. Always Italian, Russian – odd characters. I couldn’t act well enough to put them over – and they wouldn’t let me dress up. I knew I could win my way back if they’d let me resort to fine feathers to help ‘carry’ me….I’ve been sort of a demi-vamp – a female sinful but subtle; human, not overexaggerated, as the sirens usually are.” — Carmel Myers in 1924.
“The only thing that really counts is your work, your ambition to get to the top. There’s too much silly nonsense about our acting and our lives anyway; it creates a false illusion. I can’t be something I’m not; I won’t try to be. I’m going to make something of this Carmel Myers person that is me, or I’ll quit.” – Carmel Myers in 1924.
“Surely I belong to a more subtle school than that of Theda Bara! We don’t vamp any longer. We allure. For a while I thought that ‘siren’ might be a substitute, but that, too, has a cheap sound.” –Carmel Myers
Source: W. Adolphe Roberts (1925)
Photo: Ruth Harriet Louise (1925)
With director Fred Niblo on the set of Ben-Hur (1925)
“You can’t hope to get away with a heaving-breasted, long-looking vampire today, unless you just play one and spring nimbly to something different. But you can do any number of parts wherein you are a woman with a hiatus in her life, if you ultimately do something noble. Should a woman who has missed her way end by sacrificing herself, the public will forgive her better than the ninety and nine straight-marching ladies.” — Carmel Myers
Source: Alice L. Tildseley (1926)
The following is a poem F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to Carmel Myers and her attorney husband, Ralph Blum, in 1937. Fitzgerald was apparently inspired after attending a Hollywood party.
Lines on reading though an autograph album
Carmel and Ralph – (Four grand guys) –
Paid plenty soup for these sweet lies poured
plenty gin to make this collection
Cut plenty coke to win this “affection”
Lots of these “darlings,” lots of these “dears”
Foamed from the tops of costly beers
How many men who shook hands like fishes
Winked when they set down tese [sic] lovely wishes?
Minds clearly vacant – thoughts quite alarming
Charming – CHARMING – OH SO CHARMING!
Watch these – see their elbows bend,
Fill ‘em up again and they call you friend.
There’s just one who is writing here
Thanks your a lucky lad and lass
(hey, gal, please fill up that glass)
Pages sad with remembered dead
Who have drunk your wine and broken your bread
Sign right here, boys, please don’t shove
“Sweetest people” love – Love – LOVE
But they couldn’t very well all be liars
So there must be something about these Myers
Oh! What a jaux pas! Sure am dumb
What was that name now? Bloom or Blum?
