THE CABINET CARD GALLERY

This vintage real photo postcard features silent film star Jacqueline Logan (1904-1983). Logan had auburn hair and green eyes. She was considered to be very beautiful. Logan was a “WAMPAS Baby Star” of 1922. The Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers sponsored the WAMPAS promotional campaign. Each year between 1922 and 1934 the promotion honored 13-15 young actresses who were predicted to be on the cusp of movie stardom. Other honorees besides Logan included Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Fay Wray, and Ginger Rogers. Jacqueline Logan was born in Corsicana, Texas and grew up in Nebraska. She worked briefly as a journalist in Scottsbluff, Nebraska and than went to Colorado Springs for health issues. She took a journalism course there and than moved to Chicago where she found a job dancing in a stage production. She had told her family she was going to Chicago to attend college. She then went of New York City with a theater troupe. While in New York, she received a small part in the Broadway musical “Florodora (1920). She was noticed by Flo Ziegfeld who hired her as a dancer. She also was selected to model in photographs by Alfred Cheney Johnston. By 1921, she began appearing in films. Her first role was in “The Perfect Crime”. Also featured in the film was Carole Lombard, who at the time, was a child actress. Cecile B. DeMille selected Logan to play Mary Magdalene in the film “King of Kings” (1927). The movie broke audience attendance records. With the advent of  “talkies”, Logan had less success. However, she did appear in “Show of Shows” (1929) in which she was a member of an all-star cast. Next, she went to England to do stage work. She received many good reviews. She was then hired by British International Pictures to write and direct films. She was successful in her writing and directing. When she returned to Hollywood she found that studios were not interested in hiring her for behind the camera work. Their resistance was likely predominately due to not wanting a female to direct films. Back in America, she appeared in several Broadway shows including “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Two Strange Women”. In 1934, after her marriage to an industrialist, she retired from films. The IMDB web site reports that Logan has 61 film credits between 1921 and 1931. The Internet Broadway Database lists 3 Broadway play credits for the actress between 1920 and 1935. In her later years, Logan became a conservative political activist and member of the John Birch Society. This real photo portrait postcard was produced in France. It was part of a series (no. 197) called “Les Vedettes de Cinema (Stars of the Cinema)”. The photograph was taken at the Alfred Noyer studio (AN) in Paris. The actual photographer may have been Witze. The postcard includes an advertisement for Fox Film, indicating Logan’s affiliation with the studio at the time of the photograph.  The second photograph of Miss Logan is a press photo from 1928. Judging by the title of the text on the reverse (see below), this image appeared in a newsreel. Jacquline Logan had made the news because she had committed bigamy. Apparently she married Larry Winston before her divorce from Ralph Gillespie had become finalized. It appears she was too impatient to wait for the ink to dry on her divorce decree.