Lina Basquette

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Lina Basquette
Born Lena Copeland Baskette
April 19, 1907(1907-04-19)
San Mateo, California
Died September 30, 1994 (aged 87)
Wheeling, West Virginia
Occupation Film actress

Lina Basquette (April 19, 1907 – September 30, 1994) was an American actress.

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[edit] Dancer

Born Lena Copeland Baskette in San Mateo, California. Her father's name was Frank and her mother's maiden name was Gladys Rosenberg. Lena danced in the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City before she began making movies.

[edit] Silent Movie Actress

Miss Basquette started working in motion pictures around age 9 in 1916. Her first appearance came in What Can Love Do. In 1929 Miss Basquette made The Godless Girl with Cecil B. DeMille and The Younger Generation, directed by Frank Capra. In the former she played Judith, leader of a high school atheist society. Her character forces members to renounce The Bible while placing a hand on the head of a live monkey. In the climactic scene Lena's eyebrows and eyelashes were singed. Director DeMille insisted on realism in filming a last shot of the reformatory going up in flames. The actress's eyelashes grew back but her eyebrows did not.

[edit] Brief Marriage To Film Mogul

She married Sam Warner of Warner Brothers nine years later. Warner is considered The Father of Talking Pictures. She was a mother at nineteen and a widow at 20. Sam died of a brain abscess complicated by pneumonia.

Basquette attempted suicide in 1930, following a custody battle with Warner's brothers. In the litigation she lost custody of her daughter, Lita, to her husband's brothers. Lena did not see her daughter again for more than thirty years.

The actress obtained $40,000 from a life insurance policy, a car, and $85 a week from one of Warner's trust funds.

[edit] Romance With Boxing Legend

Her autobiography, Lina: Demille's Godless Girl (1990), recounts the actress' tempestuous affair with former world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey. The relationship came after Lina's discovery that her current husband, Theodore Hayes, was a bigamist. Hayes was Dempsey's former trainer and Lina's manager in theatrical affairs. On September 10, 1932 the actress was granted a Mexican divorce from Hayes, 43. The divorce was given on a plea of desertion for more than six months in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico]]. Hayes and Basquette were married on October 31, 1931.

[edit] Notorious Friendship

She knew Adolf Hitler personally. Her film career was less interesting than her personal relationships. Later in life Basquette traveled, giving talks about director DeMille, her career which endured for 75 years, and her seven marriages.

[edit] Dog Breeder

Miss Basquette was a breeder of the Great Dane for more than twenty years. Her kennel, Honey Hollow, was located just outside of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She admitted that one of her marriages broke up because of her passion for breeding dogs. One of her husbands gave her an ultimatum, It's either me or the dogs. She said she had not seen the man since! She preferred Great Danes to other dogs because they're the type of dog you only have to feed and clean periodically, and then leave them to roam.

[edit] Film Comeback

In 1991 Lina was cast as Nada in filmmaker Danny Boyd's Paradise Park. She played a grandmother who dreamed God is coming to grant a wish to residents of an Appalachian trailer park. The film features country music stars Porter Wagoner, as the governor of West Virginia, and Johnny Paycheck. Boyd was a communications professor at West Virginia State University. He met the actress at a Charleston, West Virginia film festival.

Lina Basquette died in Wheeling, West Virginia of cancer.

Lina Basquette was a half-sister of Marge Champion. In 1928 she was named one of thirteen WAMPAS Baby Stars.

[edit] Quotes

  • Hitler's favorite actress,[citation needed] she said of him: "Maybe if I hadn't been so fastidious I could have changed history, but, oh, that body odor of his!"[citation needed]

[edit] Filmography as Lina Basquette

[edit] Filmography as Lena Basquette

[edit] References

  • Chicago Daily Herald, 1920s silent film star returns to movies with Paradise Park, Thursday, October 3, 1991, Section 5, Page 8.
  • Levittown, Pennsylvania Bucks County Courier Times, Accent! on pets, March 16, 1975, Page 82.
  • Zanesville, Ohio Signal, Lina Basquette Is Divorced From Business Agent, September 11, 1932, Page 1.

[edit] External links

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