Sister Act

The emergence of the 'talkies' in the late 1920s put a sudden end to the careers of some of the silent screen's greatest actors.

Unfortunately the volatility of celluloid means many of the works of these early stars have returned to the dust from which they came.

But in the case of acting sisters Norma and Constance Talmadge, their legacy lives in a more concrete way - streets in the Hollywood filmmaking district and in Talmadge Estate in San Diego.

While their names are forgotten amongst the handful of silent stars most people recognise today - Buster Keaton, Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow - the Talmadge sisters were the very model of the Hollywood fairytale.

Born to poverty in New York and abandoned by their alcoholic father in Christmas at the turn of the 20th century, the indefatigable Talmadge women (including mother Peggy and youngest sister Natalie) made their own way in the world.

Norma and Constance got their start as models and then made their break into films.

Norma with her brooding looks became the family's dramatic actress while blonde, fun loving Constance proved to be a dab hand at comedy.

Not content to just be making pictures, Peggy pushed her daughters towards production thanks to Norma's opportune relationship with filmmaker Joseph M. Schenck:

At a party, Norma met Broadway and film producer Joseph M. Schenck, a wealthy exhibitor who wanted to produce his own films. Immediately taken by Norma both personally and professionally, Schenck proposed marriage and a production studio. Two months later on October 20, 1916 they were married. Norma called her much older husband “ Daddy”...

...Schenck soon had a stable of stars operating in his studio in New York, with the Norma Talmadge Film Corporation making dramas on the ground floor, the Constance Talmadge Film Corporation making sophisticated comedies on the second floor, and the Comic unit with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle on the top floor, with Natalie Talmadge acting as secretary and taking occasional small roles in her sisters' films. Arbuckle brought in his nephew Al St. John and vaudeville star Buster Keaton. When Scheck decided it was financially advantageous to rent Arbuckle to Paramount for feature films, Keaton took over the comedy unit and soon married Natalie, bringing him more thoroughly into the Talmadge family fold, at least for a time.

While the girls were the envy of 1920s women all over the world, mamma made sure that the money they made was spent wisely in the real estate market.

Sure enough, as talkies emerged and thick Bronx accents were as inpenetrable as exotic Swiss accents, the Talmadge sisters were forced to retire from the screen.

Indeed the character Lina Lamont, the beautiful actress with the atrocious voice in Singing in the Rain was modelled on Norma.