THE LOST WORLD PART 2

YESTERDAY’S The Lost World silent movie discussion got us appreciating stop-motion animation and also a dish named Bessie Love, appropriately named portraying the flick’s love interest. Today in Part 2, we continue the fun. 

Some Teasers. Plot complexities make me wonder if I’ll ever pick up the novel; the movie is worth watching. By the way, it has been out of copyright since 1954, with several stages of restoration and a goodly number of video offerings on-line. (Choose one that has music and beware the commercials, including particularly annoying Christi Noem’s ICE threats.)

Google “The Lost World 1925 videos” and take your chances. This and other images from tv screen grabs of The Lost World via TCM.  

Book/Flick Teasers: In the flick, an accompanying  diplodocus ravages London before heading south; in the book it’s a pterodactyl. 

Malone’s Gladys encounters (sans Paula in the book) are similarly portrayed.

Actor Links Galore. Wallace Beery (Professor Challenger) is familiar to SimanaitisSays readers. But Bessie Love (portraying the movie’s Paula White) is the real find.

Bessie Love, born Juanita Horton, 1898–1986, American-British actress, her career spanning seven decades. Image, 1918, by Albert Witzel via Wikipedia.

Juanita was born in Midland, Texas; her mother worked and managed restaurants; her father, a cowboy and bartender. When she was in the eighth grade, they moved to Arizona. Later came New Mexico. Then California, where they settled in Hollywood. Her father became a chiropractor and her mother worked at the Jantzen’s Knitwear and Bathing Suits factory.

Finding a Mentor. “In June 1915,” Wikipedia continues, “while a student at Los Angeles High School, Horton went to the set of a film to meet with actor Tom Mix, who had recommended that she visit him if she wanted to “get into pictures.” [Hmm….] However, when Mix was unavailable, she was advised to meet with pioneering film director D.W. Griffith.”

Her name didn’t work for theater marques, so Juanita Horton became Bessie Love: “Bessie, because any child can pronounce it. And Love, because we want everyone to love her!,” remarked a Griffith associate. 

“In her early career, Wikipedia recounts, “she was likened to Mary Pickford, and was called ‘Our Mary’ by Griffith.”

The Big Time: “Love was an early resident of the Laurel Canyon celebrity enclave, purchasing her first property in 1917, and a second in 1920, a log cabin that had previously operated as a roadhouse and which later became home to musician Frank Zappa,” Wikipedia notes.

Love’s starring role in The Lost World enhanced her career: Wikipedia relates, “In 1929, she appeared in her first feature-length sound film, the musical The Broadway Melody.”

The Broadway Melody was the first sound feature to win an Academy Award for Best Picture.  

“Her performance,” Wikipedia continues, “earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and the success of the film resulted in a five-year contract with MGM and an increase in her weekly salary from $500 to $3000 (equivalent to $55,000 in 2024)—$1000 more than her male co-star Charles King.”

Note, that’s per week, not annually. 

The Star-Studded Hawks/Love Nuptials. On December 27, 1929, Bessie Love married then-stockbroker/later film producer William Hawks. Their wedding was quite the Hollywood spectacular: Among her bridesmaids were Norma Shearer and Mary Astor (the groom’s sister-in-law). Ushers were MGM’s Irving Thalberg (Norma’s husband) and Howard Hawks (the groom’s brother, future director of His Girl Friday, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and scads of other neat flicks).

Wikipedia notes, “The ceremony was attended by such celebrities as Cecil Beaton, Ronald Coleman, Cecil B. De Mille, Hedda Hopper, Laura La Plante, Harold Lloyd, Anita Loos, Ramon Novarro, and William Powell, and it was mobbed by a crowd of 25,000.” 

Bessie and her pal Jocko in The Lost World.

Not bad for a Midland kid with a monkey as best pal. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025