Jetta Goudal

Jetta Goudal

Birth : 1891-07-12, Amsterdam - Noord-Holland - Netherlands

Death : 1985-01-14

History

From Wikipedia Jetta Goudal (July 12, 1891 – January 14, 1985) was a Dutch-born American actress, successful in Hollywood films of the silent film era. Goudal was born as Juliette Henriette Goudeket in 1891, the daughter of Geertruida (née Warradijn; 1866–1920) and Wolf Mozes Goudeket (1860–1942), a wealthy diamond cutter, in Amsterdam. She first appeared on Broadway in 1921, using the stage name Jetta Goudal. After meeting director Sidney Olcott, who encouraged her venture into film acting, she accepted a bit part in his 1922 film production Timothy's Quest. Convinced to move to the West Coast, Goudal appeared in two more Olcott films in the ensuing three years. Goudal's first role in motion pictures came in The Bright Shawl (1923). She quickly earned praise for her film work, especially for her performance in 1925's Salome of the Tenements, a film based on the Anzia Yezierska novel about life in New York's Jewish Lower East Side. Goudal then worked in the Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky co-production of The Spaniard and her growing fame brought her to the attention of producer/director Cecil B. DeMille. Goudal appeared in several highly successful and acclaimed films for DeMille and became one of the top box office draws of the late 1920s. DeMille later claimed that Goudal was so difficult to work with that he eventually fired her and cancelled their contract. Goudal filed a lawsuit for breach of contract against him and DeMille Pictures Corporation. Although DeMille claimed her conduct had caused numerous and costly production delays, in a landmark ruling, Goudal won the suit when DeMille was unwilling to provide his studio's financial records to support his claim of financial losses. Goudal appeared in 1928's The Cardboard Lover, produced by William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies. In 1929, she starred in Lady of the Pavements, directed by D.W. Griffith, and in 1930, Jacques Feyder directed Goudal in her only French language film, a made-in-Hollywood production titled Le Spectre vert. Because of her audaciousness in suing DeMille and her high-profile activisim in the Actors' Equity Association campaign for the theatre and film industry to accept a closed shop, some of the Hollywood studios refused to employ Goudal. In 1932, at age forty-one, she made her last screen appearance in a talkie, co-starring with Will Rogers in the Fox Film Corporation production of Business and Pleasure. In 1930, she married Harold Grieve, an art director and founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. When her film career ended, she joined Grieve in running a successful interior design business. They remained married until her death in 1985 in Los Angeles. She is interred next to her husband in a private room at the Great Mausoleum, Sanctuary of the Angels, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. In recognition of her contribution to the motion picture industry, Jetta Goudal has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6333 Hollywood Blvd.

Profile

Jetta Goudal

Movies

Business and Pleasure
Madame Momora
On a Mediterranean cruise, Earl Tinker, a manufacturer of razor blades, is the target of a femme fatale in the pay of a business rival, and he becomes embroiled in a feud between two Arab tribes.
The Green Specter
Lady Efra
A group of people who knew each other years before discover that members of the group are being killed off one by one by someone who calls himself (or herself) The Green Ghost. The survivors gather at an old mansion to find out who is doing the killing and why, and discover that the murderer is a member of that very group.
Die Lady von der Straße
Diane des Granges
Karl, a German diplomat in Paris, discovers that his fiancee, Diane, has been cheating on him. He tells her that he would rather marry a "girl of the streets" than her. Outraged, Diane decides to grant hi his wish, and enlists the services of a Spanish singer/dancer from a disreputable nightclub to pose as a sophisticated, convent-educated singer, and surreptitiously arranges for her to meet Karl.
The Cardboard Lover
Simone
A ditzy American girl visiting Monte Carlo is hired by a tennis champ to be his "cardboard lover"--to pretend to be in love with him so he can teach his two-timing fiancé a lesson and win her back. What he doesn't realize is that the girl isn't pretending --she actually is in love with him, and she sets out to win him for herself.
The Circus: Premiere
Self
Footage from the premiere of Charlie Chaplin's 1928 film 'The Circus'.
The Forbidden Woman
Zita Gautier
A colonel of the French army in North Africa believes his brother, a sensitive musician, to be in love with the colonel's wife and so arranges for his brother to be drafted into the colonel's own corps. Unknown to either is the fact that the colonel's wife is actually an Arab spy.
White Gold
Dolores Carson
A sheep farmer brings his new wife to his father's ranch and the old man takes an instant dislike to her.
Fighting Love
Donna Vittoria
Her Man o' War
Cherie Schultz
During World War I, an American soldier is captured and taken prisoner by the Germans. However, instead of being placed in a prisoner-of-war camp, he is assigned to the small farm of a young woman and her son to help raise crops to help feed the German army and people.
Paris at Midnight
Delphine
In a Paris boarding house, a mysterious stranger seems to somehow solve the problems and conflicts of the residents, all the while hiding a secret of his own.
The Road to Yesterday
Malena Paulton
Malena's apparent frigidity toward her husband Kenneth is a result of injustice done in an earlier incarnation when he was a knight and she was a gypsy headed for burning at the stake. This becomes evident when their unconscious minds travel back from a train wreck in the American plains to Elizabethan England.
The Coming of Amos
Princess Nadia Ramiroff
An Australian sheep rancher fulfills his promise to his dying mother by visiting his uncle on the French Riviera. He meets and falls in love with a Russian princess who was forced into a bad marriage to save her family from the Communists.
The Spaniard
Dolores Annesley
In England, Don Pedro de Barrego meets Dolores Annesley, and he decides he must have her. Dolores, however, refuses to have anything to do with him. Later, when she visits Spain, she discovers he is a famous bullfighter.
Salome of the Tenements
Sonya Mendel (segment "Salome")
A young East Side Jewish reporter gets into a sticky situation when she finds that her new beau is indicting a banker she owes money to.
Open All Night
Lea
Therese Duverne (Viola Dana) is bored with her even-tempered husband, Edmond (Adolphe Menjou). Isabelle Fevre (Gale Henry) suggests that Edmond go to the bicycle races and stay out all night. Then she takes Therese there and introduces her to manly Petit Mathieu, one of the racers (Maurice B. Flynn). Since he has just quarreled with his sweetheart, Lea (Jetta Goudal), he is glad to have Therese's attention and offers to run away with her after he wins the six-day race. Lea, meanwhile, is spending her time with Edmond. Therese eventually decides she doesn't care for brutes like Mathieu, and Edmond gains a temper and wins his wife back. Lea and Mathieu are reunited, while Isabelle goes back to helping her own alcoholic sweetheart, Igor (Raymond Griffith), break into the movies.
The Green Goddess
Ayah
The Green Goddess is a 1923 American silent adventure film based on the play The Green Goddess by William Archer. Set during the British Raj, it stars George Arliss as the Rajah of Rukh, into whose land arrive three British subjects, played by Alice Joyce, David Powell, and Harry T. Morey.
The Bright Shawl
La Pilar
Charles Abbott is implicated in the death of his friend Escobar, brother to the woman he loves.
Timothy's Quest
Sick Mother
A charming pastoral about two unwanted children finding acceptance and love, Timothys Quest (1922) is a rare, cinematic gem based on a novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin (Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm), who was then known as Americas best loved author of stories about children.