“I was never one of Mr. Sennett‘s bathing girls like Gloria Swanson, Phyllis Haver, Mary Thurman and the others. I was usually the vamp.” — Julia Faye
Source: Harold Heffernan (1955)
5200 Cabanne Avenue, St. Louis, MO
“As a girl she lived next door to the old Orthwein home on Park Avenue [in St. Louis]. Her father was Cyrus Covell, a coffee and tea merchant, who was one of the promoters of the St. Louis World’s Fair. Her mother was Miss Louise Elliott. After moving from Park Avenue, the Covells bought a home at 5200 Cabanne Avenue and lived there for many years. The father and mother are divorced.” — reporter Harry T. Brundidge (1929)
Miss Faye and her mother went west to visit an aunt several years ago. Like all visitors, they wanted to see a motion picture studio so they pulled strings and obtained a pass to visit the Reliance-Majestic studio, then under control of D.W. Griffith. While in the lobby, Miss Faye heard someone call “Mr. Cabanne,” and she saw a fine looking man pause and turn.
“I walked over to him,” said Miss Faye, “and asked, ‘Are you the Mr. Cabanne that lived next door to me when I was a little girl?'”
“He looked me over for a minute and then said: ‘Bless my heart – it’s little Julie Covell.’
“It was William Christy Cabanne, the director, and he asked if this was our first trip to a studio and when he learned it was, [he] took mother and me onto a set where he was directing, and showed us everything about picture making. I went into that studio out of curiosity and left it determined to get into pictures. I begged mother so hard and so long that she consented to move to California providing Mr. Cabanne thought there was a chance for me in pictures. We saw him again and he said I could start doing extra work any time I cared to. That settled it. We moved to California.”
Source: Harry T. Brundidge (1929)
“I’ve been given gowns and gowns and gowns ever since D.W. Griffith had me model all the costumes for ‘Intolerance.’ I love to wear clothes and I get a distinct reaction from each costume. In fact, for a long time I was doing so many super-dressed society parts in pictures like ‘Saturday Night’ and ‘Why Change Your Wife’ that I had a terrible time to avoid being set down as nothing more than a ‘clothes horse.'” — Julia Faye
Source: Harry T. Brundidge (1929)
Photo: Ruth Harriet Louise
Dynamite (1929). With Charles Bickford.
