From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Martha Sleeper (June 24, 1910 – March 25, 1983) was a film actress of the 1920s–1930s and, later, a Broadway stage actress.
She studied dancing for five years with Russian ballet master, Louis H.
Chalif, at his New York dancing studio.
Her first public exhibitions were at Carnegie Hall at his class exhibitions.
Sleeper's film career began in 1923 and continued until 1945.
Her first screen appearance, at the age of 13, was in The Mailman (1923), an independent production.
After appearing in several kiddie comedies at the Christie studio she was signed by the Hal Roach studio for the Our Gang" series but she quickly outgrew that role.
From 1925-27 she appeared in comedies playing opposite the studio's most popular male stars.
She left the Roach studio in late 1927 and moved to the FBO studio where she starred in six silent features during 1928–29.
With the coming of sound she was signed by MGM and placed in their training program.
From 1930 to 1936 she played supporting roles in many melodramas her role typically that of a well-bred somewhat snobbish society woman who ends up losing her man to the film's leading lady.
Frustrated by the types of roles she was being offered, Martha began playing onstage in and about Los Angeles, at one point drawing raves as Eliza Doolittle in a performance of Pygmalion in 1932.
After appearing in some low budget melodramas for the poverty row Monogram studio Martha and her husband, actor Hardie Albright, left Hollywood for New York in 1936 where Martha began a long run in both on- and off-Broadway plays.
In 1945, as a favor to director Leo McCarey, Martha played the role of Patsy's mother in The Bells of St.
Mary's.
It was her last screen role.
Jimmy Durante is jungle movie star Schnarzan the Conqueror, but the public is tiring of his fake lions. When Baron Munchausen comes to town with real man-eating lions, Durante throws him a big Hollywood star-studded party so that he might use the lions in his next movie. But, his film rival sneaks into the party to buy the lions before Durante.
Medical intern Robert Morley is distraught after his wife dies in childbirth. He's resentful of his new son and wants nothing to do with him. He leaves the child with his aunt and uncle and heads off to Europe to pursue his medical studies. Morley returns to his hometown six years later, now a successful doctor and engaged to be married to a beautiful socialite. He also feels differently about the boy and attempts to gain custody from his aunt and uncle.
A glamorous film star rebels against the studio, her pushy press agent and a family of hangers-on.
Gertie Waxted knows how notorious gangster Jim Crelliman runs his rackets, because she's long been under the hoodlum's thumb. She's secretly helping lawyer Jackson Durant in a snoop job aimed at pinning a murder on the thug. Her life will be in peril when that secret gets out.
While on trial for her life, a young woman recalls her tough upbringing and her involvement with the men who brought her to this current state of affairs.
Tony, the son of Italian immigrants, works in a smoky steel mill in Gary, Indiana. He wins a company scholarship which will enable him to attend Yale college. Over the four years of his college career he learns about football, love, and class prejudice.
Peter Brooks is a hard-working, hard-up college student whose dislike of women attending college weakens under the amorous advances of spoiled socialite coed Joan Madison.
A taxi dancer with a jealous husband finds herself falling for a wealthy client.
Women from various backgrounds volunteer as nurses in France at the outbreak of World War I.
A socialite masquerades as a notorious femme fatale to win back her straying husband during a costume party aboard a doomed dirigible.
Jerry, Connie, and Franky are small-town girls seeking wealthy husbands in New York City. But, while Connie and Franky are reckless with their affections — one bedding a married man and the other marrying a scoundrel — Jerry is determined to remain practical. As she mothers her wounded, heartbroken friends, she stalwartly but foolishly resists the advances of the good-hearted and affluent Tony Jardine.
Two rich capitalists want to marry their children, but they don't like the idea at all. She tries to run away, and meets him at the station. They fall in love, unbeknownst to their real identities, and decide each on their own that they have to wreck their parents plan. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.