Anita Page was an American film actress who reached stardom in the final years of the silent film era. Page became a highly popular young star, reportedly receiving the most fan mail of anyone on the MGM lot. She was referred to as "a blond, blue-eyed Latin" and "the girl with the most beautiful face in Hollywood" in the 1920s. She retired from acting in 1936. Page married her second husband the following year with whom she had two children. Page returned to acting sixty years later in 1996, and appeared in four films in the 2000s. She died in September 2008 at the age of 98.
Early life
Anita Evelyn Pomares was born to Marino Leo, Sr. and Maude Evelyn Pomares. She had one brother, Marino Jr., who later worked for her as a gym instructor while her mother worked as her secretary and her father as her chauffeur. Page's paternal grandfather Marino was from Spain, and had worked as a consul in El Salvador; her grandmother Anna Muñoz was of Spanish descent from Spain. She was of maternal Yankee and French descent.
Page entered films with the help of friend, actress Betty Bronson. A photo of Page was spotted by a man who handled Bronson's fan mail who was also interested in representing actors. With the encouragement of her mother, Page telephoned the man who arranged a meeting for her with a casting director at Paramount Studios. After doing a screen test for Paramount, she became among the first residents of the Chateau Marmont. There, she met actress Joan Crawford, who facilitated a screen test at MGM. Page was offered contracts by both studios, and selected MGM, "because they were so good for female actresses. If you ask me, MGM was the studio." Page's first film for MGM was the 1928 comedy-drama Telling the World, opposite William Haines. Her performance in her second MGM film, Our Dancing Daughters opposite Joan Crawford was a tremendous success and it inspired two similar films in which they also co-starred Our Modern Maidens and Our Blushing Brides. "I used to say that we're going to be 'The Galloping Grandmothers' at the rate we're going with these pictures," she said in 1993. The Broadway Melody opposite Bessie Love was one of her greatest successes, and it won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Page had no trouble transitioning to talking pictures, but she wasn't thrilled that they basically did away with silent films. "In my opinion, silents were much better than talkies. One thing you had was mood music, which you could have playing throughout your scene to inspire you. My favorite song was 'My Heart at Thy Sweet Voice' from Samson and Delilah. I never seemed to tire of it. The trouble with talkies was, they let you have the music, but they'd stop it when you had to talk and it was always a letdown for me." She was the leading lady to Lon Chaney, Buster Keaton, Robert Montgomery, and Clark Gable and during the early 1930s, she was one of Hollywood's busiest actresses. She was involved briefly with Gable romantically during that time. At the height of her popularity, she was receiving more fan mail than any other female star, with the exception of Greta Garbo, and received several marriage proposals from Benito Mussolini in the mail.
Retirement
When her contract expired in 1933, she surprised Hollywood by announcing her retirement at the age of 23. She made one more movie, Hitch Hike to Heaven, in 1936, and then left the screen, virtually disappearing from Hollywood circles for sixty years. In a 2004 interview with author Scott Feinberg, she claimed that her refusal to meet demands for sexual favors by MGM head of production Irving Thalberg, supported by studio chief Louis B. Mayer, is what truly ended her career. She said that Mayer colluded with the other studio bosses to ban her and other uncooperative actresses from finding work. She married composer Nacio Herb Brown in 1934, but the marriage was annulled a year later because Brown's previous divorce had not been finalized at the time they were married. She married Lieutenant Hershel A. House, a Navy pilot, on January 9, 1937 in Yuma, Arizona, and they moved to Coronado, California, and lived there until his death in 1991. They had two daughters, Linda and Sandra. Page was a Democrat who supported the campaign of Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential election. Page was a Roman Catholic.
Return to acting
Page returned to the screen in 1996 after sixty years retirement and appeared in several low budget horror films. Film veteran Margaret O'Brien appeared in two of them. During this period, she moved in with her co-star and occasional director, Randal Malone at his Van Nuys home.
Later years and death
Page relished her status as "last star of the silents" and frequently gave interviews and appeared in documentaries about the era. Ill health prevented her from making public appearances in her final years. Page died in her sleep on September 6, 2008 at her Los Angeles home, at the age of 98. She is buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in San Diego. At the time of her death in September 2008, she was among the last to have acted as an adult in silent films to live into the 21st century. She was also the last living attendee of the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929.
