Hairpins and Dead Ends

By Michael G. Ankerich
 
“I’ve been away so long that nothing matters now. I went home to die, but I wasn’t that fortunate.” Edwina Booth
 
“He who enters Hollywood leaves self—the real self—behind. It is the land of Let’s Pretend, and the hardest acting is done off screen.” Herbert Howe, writer
 
“From the peak of fame to the brink of almost hopeless despair—that’s my story of Hollywood.”
Alice Lake
 
You survived Dangerous Curves ‘atop Hollywood Heels, Michael G. Ankerich’s 2010 book about ill-fated actresses of the silent screen, but are you ready for his companion book, Hairpins and Dead Ends: The Perilous Journeys of 25 Actresses Through Early Hollywood? Hairpins and Dead Ends takes you on a hair-raising rollercoaster ride through a time when Hollywood was surrounded by orange groves, not concrete jungles, and into the intimate lives of 25 beauties, ambitious nobodies who wanted to be somebodies. Several became twinkling stars, while others settled as serial queens, slapstick vamps, bathing beauties, western heroines, and everything in between. While many young hopefuls abandoned their quest for fame and returned home disappointed, here are the stories of women who stayed, often to a bitter and tragic end brought on by drugs, booze, and suicide. Through his meticulous research, that included interviews with relatives of the actresses, Ankerich takes you into the dark side of Tinseltown, a world of dope rings, whorehouses, gin joints, and other gritty hellholes some called home.
 
Lavishly illustrated with over 160 photographs, many from family scrapbooks, Hairpins and Dead Ends uncovers a world that offered passion and imagination, but functioned on illicit love, domineering mothers, desperation, greed, abuse, and discrimination. The screen images of these 25 dazzling beauties were fleeting shadows. Their personal passions and struggles in real life held more drama than any role they clamored to play. These ladies make up the ghosts of Hollywood’s past.