She wasn't "born yesterday." Well, actually she was: November 8, 1896.
Popular enough, in her day, to be on a collector card, Marie Prevost is now better known as "MARIE PROVOST" via a Nick Lowe song based on a story in Kenneth Anger's book "Hollywood Babylon."
Nick was intrigued by Anger's assertion that Marie, drunk and down-and-out, had a fatal collapse alone at home and became "the doggie's dinner," chunks of her missing down the throat of her pet.
According to Nick's girlfriend at the time, Lowe spent hours and hours and hours working on his snickery bit of black humor, perfecting the lyrics. Since Nick was known to take a drink, is it a surprise that most of the lyrics are fiction, not fact? After all, the only facts he could go on (this was before the Internet) were the few in Anger's admittedly "gossip" loaded book. Much of what Anger wrote about had an arch, campy tone to it. "It was said..." "we all heard..."
What was the karma here? Well, I hung out with Nick, just the two of us, for an hour, back when he was still on Columbia, and he was complaining about all the jerks coming up to him telling him disgusting anecdotes and offering gruesome song ideas...all because of "Marie Provost," and another song that mentioned a kid cutting off his right arm.
Let's take a look at Nick's lyrics and the facts.
Marie Provost did not look her best
The day the cops bust into her lonely nest
["Marie Prevost" is the right spelling. The cops did not “bust” into her lonely nest. A busboy named William Bogle let himself in, after getting the pass key from apartment manager Henrietta Jenks. Neighbors had complained about Marie’s dog barking. Bogle confirmed for the L.A. Times that he had seen Marie alive and well a few days before ]
In the cheap hotel up
On Hollywood West July 29
[Marie lived in an apartment called The Aftonian and it’s still standing. On Hollywood West? Fanboys and tourists sometimes wander by to see it: 6230 Afton Place, Hollywood, off Vine. The incident happened not in July but in January. The body was found January 25th.]
She'd been lyin' there
For two or three weeks
[Her body was found on a Monday (January 25th, 1937). She was last seen the previous Wednesday when William Bogle did his weekly apartment cleaning. That means she had been dead a few days, not two or three weeks.]
The neighbors said
They never heard a squeak
[The neighbors heard her dog barking, and the coroner said she had died January 23rd, only two days earlier. Prevost was aware of her neighbors disliking her noisy dog, and posted a notice on her door: “Please do not knock on the door more than once. It makes my dog bark. If I am in I will hear you as I am not deaf.”]
For hungry eyes that could not speak
Said even little doggies have got to eat
She was winner
The became the doggie's dinner
[The L.A. Times reported: “Apparently dead two days, her body was found clothed and face down on a folding bed. Whining at the bedside was her pet dachshund, Maxie, and teeth marks on the actress’s body indicated the animal had tugged at his mistress in an attempt to arouse her.”
Nick’s account is based on the gossip book “Hollywood Babylon” sentence: “…her half-eaten corpse was discovered in her seedy apartment on Cahuenga Boulevard. Her dachshund had survived by making mincemeat of his mistress.”]
She never meant that much to me
(But now I see) Oh poor Marie
Marie Provost was a movie queen
Mysterious angel of the silent screen
[There wasn’t anything very mysterious about Marie Prevost. An office worker, her good looks got her a surprise contract with Mack Sennett as one of his “bathing beauties.” She stood around in his film comedies looking cute and pretty, not mysterious.
She eventually quit Sennett to work for Irving Thalberg at Universal, and in a publicity stunt, burned her bathing suit, vowing to star in worthwhile romantic comedies. Which she did. Sort of. “The Married Flapper” was one of those. She became a $1000 week star, and appeared in the non-mysterious “The Beautiful and the Damned” (1923) based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. She then played a housewife in “The Marriage Circle” for directer Ernst Lubitsch. Unlike Theda Bara and some other vamps of the day, Prevost was not promoted as some mysterious creature to be found emoting in exotic movies]
She came out west from New York
But when the talkies came
Mary just couldn't cope
Her public said Mary take a walk
All the way back to New York
[Marie was born in Canada, and never lived in New York. She, her mother and step-father Frank Prevost settled in Los Angeles. The talkies had nothing to do with Marie’s decline. Misfortune dogged her before she "became the doggie's dinner." Insecurity began when she was traumatized by the accidental deaths of her father (1904, while working for the railroad), and in 1926, her mother (car crash). Having two failed marriages didn’t help. Still, she did attain fame and fortune with her film career and made some prestigious films. As her career continued to build, influential people noticed.
After the Lubitsch film she had an affair with Howard Hughes, who starred her in “The Racket” in 1928. Her salary zoomed to $1500 a week. After The Depression hit and the stock market crashed, and she made “The Godless Girl” (1929) for Cecil B. DeMille, her weight ballooned and her fortunes ebbed. A 1930 fire destroyed her opulent home. With no big starring roles coming in, and no insurance, she had to move into a shabby apartment. She was now 34 years old, which wasn't prime for a sexy leading lady. Consider that at that age, even a bombshell like Marilyn Monroe was considered past her prime.
Prevost simply suffered the fate of a lot of beautiful actresses who got older and heavier. She couldn't get sexy roles anymore, and she wasn't quite old enough to play a mother or some businesswoman or society dame. She got a left-handed compliment in a 1930 issue of Motion Picture magazine. A reviewer already considering her a has-been trying to claw her way back into contention, wrote: “When Marie Prevost did that big climbing-the-stairs number in “Ladies of Leisure,” she hoisted about 138 pounds of the cutest ‘comeback’ Hollywood has witnessed in many a day.”
In “Party Girl,” (1930, clip below) Marie is well suited to the part of a prostitute — uh, “party girl,” and as this type of whore isn’t necessarily Grade A, there’s a revealing moment where, in black lingerie, she tries to rub off a bit of her pudge on one of the dubious easy-exercise vibrating machines. A gossip column in Photoplay chortled, “And IS Marie Prevost piling on the pounds!” At least she was finding work, but she was stressed out, probably from having too little to do, and then suddenly a few assignments that may have hinged on her drying out and working herself back into shape.
An article in Picture-Play lumped her in with other actresses who have “collapsed from overwork and spent at least a week in a sanitarium. Betty Compson, Marie Prevost and Laura la Plante are the latest to go to hospital for a rest.”
Two years later in the 1932 Jean Harlow film “Three Wise Girls” she was just one of the wisecrackin’ broads, similar in type to Iris Adrian or Joan Blondell.
To be fair to Nick Lowe, he got the idea that talkies did her in courtesy of Kenneth Anger's book: “Her romantic looks didn’t fit her Bronx honk.” And to be fair to Kenneth Anger, he wrote his book before Marie’s films were more widely available on VHS or DVD and people could hear her voice for themselves.]
Those Quaalude bombs didn't help her sleep
As her nights grew long
And her days grew bleak
It's all downhill
Once you've passed your peak
Mary got ready for that last big sleep
[Prevost had become a chronic alcoholic, but there's no evidence she "got ready" for self-destruction. She wasn’t using pills. Did they even have Quaaludes back then? She was still making films, and hoping to push from bit parts to more substantial roles. An ironic twist to her misery was that in 1935 she appeared in a Mack Sennett-type short called “Keystone Hotel.” She had left Sennett so many years earlier. The short is now revered by slapstick fans for having one of the best and biggest pie-fights this side of Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges. Yeah, one of those pies obliterated Prevost’s face. She was unbilled in her next film, “The Bengal Tiger,” as The New York Times duly noted.
The Times, in their 1936 piece, “Sometimes They Do Come Back,” reported Marie as one of the many still trying to stay in the business: “The siren of Mack Sennett days had been successful with a reducing course and had got herself a job as a contract player. She was put to work almost immediately, in a small part in The Bengal Tiger....Miss Prevost is unbilled in The Bengal Tiger: She has only three lines to say, and those short ones. But she is back at work, skipping arc-light cables and dodging camera dollies on the set once more. ...A few more parts of a few lines each and the studio may find bigger and better things for her to do."
The implication was that 1937 might be a good year for Marie. But she didn't make it past January of 1937.]
The cops came in
And they looked around
Throwing up everywhere over
What they found
[No newspaper reports, and not even Kenneth Anger, suggested cops threw up because they found a corpse. Or a barking dog and some empty liquor bottles. They also found an IOU that Marie wrote to Joan Crawford. Crawford paid for Marie’s funeral. Though Marie had not made a talkie anyone could remember that well, she did earn a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her death was ultimately attributed to alcohol poisoning.]
Ready for some horrors?
Among the many amateurs who’ve taken a stab at Marie Prevost, here’s lispy “Timmybear,” who earns points for mentioning that Marie wasn’t from New York and so…he “corrected” Nick’s lyrics -- into something that doesn’t rhyme:
“They said Marie take a walk. All the way back to ONTARIO.” Good one, Mr. Bear. Oh, and let’s applaud the iconoclast YouTubers who refuse to use decent lighting when they do their one-shot Beaudine videos:
Runners up are The King Prawns, who earn points for having somebody do a hand-held video, rather than just put it on a fucking tripod…and no compensation made for over-peaking vocals. You’ll love the chick on bass who provides the hilarious oohs and ahhs. Also check the clankmeister behind the drums, and some beer-drinker who just happens to position himself on camera behind the vocalist. Somebody actually left a comment: “Good choice of material.” But that may have been referring to the drummer’s white t-shirt; probably 100% cotton.
Lastly, we have the Cliffdivers, led by an earnest Aussie who assures his live audience that this is the true story of a silent film actress who overdosed on quaaludes and got eaten by her dog. No mention made that this is a Nick Lowe song. For some odd reason, these guys, who are the most proficient musicians of the three #meToobers you’re sampling, has the LEAST amount of hits: under 100 as of today's November 9th posting. You’ll note the lead singer sweats very well, while the hefty and older bass player seems unsure of why he’s here, and the drummer acts like took a few pills without being sure what they were.
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