Everything about Laura La Plante totally explained
Laura La Plante (born
Laura La Plant on
November 1,
1904 in
St. Louis, Missouri; died
October 14,
1996 in
Woodland Hills, California) was an
American film actress who achieved her greatest success in
silent movies.
Early acting career
La Plante made her acting debut at the age of 15, and in
1923 was named as one of the years
WAMPAS Baby Stars. During the
1920s she appeared in more than sixty films. Among her early film appearances were
Big Town Round-Up (
1921), with cowboy star
Tom Mix, and the
serials Perils of the Yukon (
1922) and
Around the World in Eighteen Days (
1923).
The majority of her films (for example from
1921 to
1930) were made for
Universal Pictures. During this period she was the studio's most popular star, "an accomplishment duplicated only by
Deanna Durbin years later." Her best remembered film is arguably the silent classic
The Cat and the Canary (
1927), although she also achieved acclaim for
Skinner's Dress Suit (
1926), with
Reginald Denny, the part-talkie
The Love Trap (
1929), directed by
William Wyler, and the 1929 part-talkie film version of
Show Boat (1929), adapted from the novel of the same name by
Edna Ferber.
Although this last film was an adaptation of the novel, and not of the famous musical play that the novel was based on, some songs from the play were tossed into the film as box-office insurance. La Plante, however, didn't actually sing in the movie; her singing was dubbed by Eva Olivetti, one of the first instances in which this was done in a motion picture. Quite unusual for its day, a scene of La Plante in
Show Boat was broadcast on early British
television..
Transition to "talking films"
The advent of 'talkies' effectively shortened her career. Only in her mid-twenties, La Plante proved to be a quite natural and appealing presence in early talkies but the huge wave of new stars in those years overshadowed her. She made her last appearances for Universal in the
Technicolor musical extravaganza
King of Jazz (1930).
For a while she free-lanced, appearing in
God's Gift to Women (
Warner Bros.,
1931), directed by
Michael Curtiz and co-starring
Frank Fay, and
Arizona (
Columbia,1931), co-starring a young
John Wayne.
Later career
La Plante subsequently went to
England where she appeared in several "
quota quickies", including
Man of the Moment (
1935), with
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. La Plante was briefly considered to replace
Myrna Loy in the
Thin Man series when Loy thought about leaving, but Loy stayed as "Nora Charles", and La Plante's career never rebounded.
She retired from the screen in 1935, making only two later films, 1957's
Spring Reunion being her last. Her younger sister, actress
Violet La Plante, never achieved her sister Laura's level of fame, but, like Laura, was herself named as a "WAMPAS Baby Star", with her "WAMPAS" title coming in 1925. In the mid-1950s, Laura La Plante made a guest appearance (as herself) on
Groucho Marx's quiz show
You Bet Your Life. She died in
Woodland Hills, California from
Alzheimer's disease at the age of 91.
Partial filmography
Footnotes
Further Information
Get more info on 'Laura La Plante'.
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