March 30 birthday notes

Today is the birth anniversary of actor Turhan Bey, who was born on this day in 1922. Turhan (his real given name, although Bey was not his actual surname) came to the US in 1940 to escape the Nazis, since his mother was Jewish, He was quickly noticed by talent scouts and appeared with Dominican actress Maria Montez in a bunch of films at Universal showcasing both of their perceived exoticness. Maria had the great quote "When I look at myself, I am so beautiful I scream with joy!". Hollywood didn't work so well for either of them, typecasting both. Montez died tragically young in France, while Bey retired from acting for 40 years before doing some TV work in the 1990s.

Two years ago, I did a post on Anna Q. Nilsson on her birthday. She was a Swedish-born actress who was quite successful in the silent era and one of the many whose careers went south in sound pictures. She's memorable for being one of the "waxworks" in Sunset Boulevard, and played Loretta Young's mother in The Farmer's Daughter. Two years ago, I found a Youtube clip of a 1912 silent film, The Confederate Ironclad. Unfortunately, the clip has been removed because the poster's channel was deleted for copyright violations. I don't know whether there was any music in the video I embedded that was a problem, or whether it was all the other movies.