Journalist Adela Rogers St. Johns
once dubbed Lina Basquette "The Screen Tragedy Girl." In retrospect,
Lina's private life bore a similar description. While six of her eight
marriages ended up "I Don'ts" (she was widowed twice), she would also
have to contend with a flurry of legal confrontations, stormy affairs
and suicide attempts. Once she gave a fond farewell to her
entertainment career in the late 1930s, her life literally went to the
dogs.
The full-faced, raven-haired California-born actress was christened
Lena Baskette, the daughter of Frank Baskette, a drug store owner. Lina
trained in dance while very young and at the San Francisco World's Fair
of 1915, the eight-year-old was featured as a baby ballerina for the
Victor Talking Machine Company's exhibition. Movie maker
Carl Laemmle saw her perform and signed her
to a long-term contract with his Universal Pictures company at $50 a
week. Lina headlined her very own short programs, the "Lena Baskette
Featurettes," between 1916-1917, and also garnered young leads in a
number of full-length features including
What Love Can Do (1916),
Shoes (1916),
A Prince for a Day (1917),
The Weaker Vessel (1919) and,
more notably, Der Klub der Unterirdischen (1922).
In 1916, Lena's father died and mother Gladys remarried. Gladys and her
new husband, dance director
Ernest Belcher, had a daughter together
who became Lena's half-sister and future dancing star
Marge Champion. Lena's mother was an avid
stage mother and eventually, with Belcher's help, managed to prod Lena
into the Ziegfeld Follies of 1923. She stayed with the Follies for a
couple of years. Billed third as "America's Prima Ballerina," Lena's
marquee name was changed to the more exotic spelling of "Lina
Basquette." Her act was caught by the legendary Russian ballerina
Anna Pavlova, who offered to take
on Lina as her protégée. Lina's mother nixed the offer, wishing to make
bigger bucks for her daughter with the Follies and other shows,
Texas Guinan's notorious speakeasies
notwithstanding.
At age 18, Lina married 38-year-old Warner Bros. mogul
Sam Warner. Lina greatly influenced
Warner to pursue sound pictures and even encouraged him to star
Al Jolson in
Der Jazzsänger (1927). Sam
died unexpectedly at age 40 of a brain hemorrhage the night before the
film's premiere. This heartbreak jump-started an avalanche of problems
for Lina. She not only became embroiled in a series of legal battles
with her in-laws over her husband's estate, she lost custody of her
daughter Lita in the process. She would not see her daughter for
another 30 years. This crisis led to Lina's first attempt at suicide.
Lina valiantly returned to films and made such silents as
Ranger of the North (1927),
Die Nacht ohne Hoffnung (1928) and
Wheel of Chance (1928), while
scoring two noteworthy roles in
Frank Capra's
Junge Generation (1929)
and Cecil B. DeMille's
Das gottlose Mädchen (1928). In
the latter she played an avowed atheist. This powerful film should have
made Lina a sultry star had it not been released as a silent film right
at the advent of talkies.
Within a very short time Lina married twice more -- a quickie union to
cameraman J. Peverell Marley, and in
1931 the widow (once again) of third husband, actor Ray Hallam, who
suddenly died at the age of 26 after only a few months of wedded bliss.
Lina subsequently started up a highly publicized affair with famed
boxer Jack Dempsey. Their stormy
breakup led to her second suicide try and a rebound marriage to his
personal trainer Theodore Hayes in December of 1931. This fourth
marriage was not valid as it was discovered that Hayes was already
married. The couple remarried in 1933 and had a son, Edward Alvin, in
1934 before divorcing the following year.
At this juncture Lina's private life received more interest from the
public than her films. Her career had down-sized to "B" westerns
opposite such stars as Buck Jones and
Hoot Gibson and a few mellers here and
there. After touring the stages of Australia, New Zealand and various
South African cities in the plays "Private Lives," "Black Limelight"
and "Idiot's Delight" in 1938 and 1939, and after appearing in the
films
Rose of the Rio Grande (1938),
Vier Mann - Ein Schwur (1938)
and A Night for Crime (1943),
she called it quits.
Misfortune, however, continued to follow her. In August of 1943 she
brought up assault and rape charges against a 22-year-old Army GI. The
soldier was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in the brig.
Completely retired, she found emotional solace with her new post-war
profession -- the breeding and handling of Great Danes. In 1949, she
became the owner of Honey Hollow Kennels, a 25 acre estate in Bucks
County, Pennsylvania. There she bred and raised champion dogs for
best-in-shows and also became a respected judge. More marriages came
and fell by the wasteside and at least one of her later unions lost out
to an either/or ultimatum with her Great Danes. Lina also wrote the
non-fiction book "Your Great Dane" in 1972. She moved to Wheeling, West
Virginia, in 1975 and lived there until her death of lymphoma at age 87
on September 30, 1994.
Out of nowhere, the octogenarian grandmother had one last chance to
bask in the limelight when she was touchingly cast as Nada in
Daniel Boyd's independent feature
Paradise Park (1992) playing an
Appalachian trailer park granny who dreams that God is coming and
granting a wish on all its residents. The film also featured country
music stars Porter Wagoner and
Johnny PayCheck. Boyd had met the
actress at a West Virginia film festival.
