The Many Loves & Affairs Of Alice White

A Pensive Alice White In “Show Girl” -1928

Once again we feature a forgotten movie star of the silent and early sound era – Alice White seen here in pensive mood in Show Girl (1928).

Born Alva White August 25, 1904 in Paterson, NJ, Alice was first in the employ of director Tom Forman as a script girl. Alice moved on to be an assistant  to director Josef Von Sternberg. Later she worked for Charlie Chaplin.  It was Chaplin who saw potential in Alice and suggested she try performing before the camera.

Alice got her first role as an extra in The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and her career was off and running. Three years later Alice won the starring role in The Sea Tiger (1927).

Imdb.com says Alice was five foot three, but contemporary accounts say Alice White was just five feet tall and weighed 98 pounds. Regardless, the diminutive Alice dyed her hair from its natural reddish brown color to platinum blonde to avoid comparisons with Clara Bow.

Alice made a string of top flight movies in the late 1920s including the original and now lost silent film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928). Alice did not play the Lorelei Lee role later made famous by Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 musical version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Instead Alice played Lorelei’s best friend, brunette Dorothy Shaw,

Alice made the transition to talkies without any voice issues. Movie fans loved Alice; the critics did not.

Here is a short clip from 1933 featuring James Cagney in Picture Snatcher (1934)

Alice White On Relationships

Alice also had a reputation off screen that rivaled Clara Bow’s as a woman about town.  A conversation with Alice about relationships in The Film Weekly with columnist Helen Louise Walker in 1930 was very frank about how women should be more in control of a relationship.

In the article Helen Walker made the following astute observations about Alice White.

Alice White is in some ways one of the most interesting people in pictures. For one thing, she is one of the most outstanding examples of the success of sheer personality in the industry. Alice is not beautiful. She is careless about her appearance. She has never shown any outstanding talent in any direction. The best that you can say of her accomplishments, for the most part, is that they are “adequate.” Yet she has risen from telephone operator and script girl to be one of our most prominent stars. And deservedly.

She is frank and casual in discussing her affairs. What she resents more than anything else she has encountered, I think, is the freedom men enjoy in matters of the heart as compared with the restrictions they try to place on women.

“Women,” Alice says, hotly, “should try to change the way men treat women! Men can do anything they want to do, and get away with it. They know we can’t stop them. They know we’ll put up with it and take them back and forgive them. They won’t do that for us!

“What happens when a man and a girl who have been in love quarrel and separate? This is what happens. The girl mopes and broods and thinks she has a broken heart and that it will never heal.

“The man goes right straight out and finds himself another girl as fast as he can.

Alice’s feeling about what a woman should do in the same situation was more of a twenty-first century attitude as quid pro quo.

“The best cure for a broken heart is another affair. As quickly as possible. If you can manage it. The trouble is that women are so romantic. They like to brood on their broken hearts. They actually like their tragedies.’

Alice then provides some timeless advice about relationships. “And then there is  – habit. You know. That business of learning to depend on someone, of getting used to him. It’s terrible when anybody gets to be a habit with you. It isn’t really that you think he is the only person in the world . It isn’t actually you believe you will never fall in love again. it’s just that you’ve had him around so long, you just can’t accustom yourself to being without him.”

Regarding her philosophy with men, specifically her boyfriend, screenwriter – producer Sy Bartlett, Alice said,

“He’s always telling me I’m just a little kid and need someone to take care of me. He thinks he decides things for me.  He even thinks he bosses me around. And I let him.

“I look at him like this —.” Alice makes her famous pout. ” And then I do exactly what I want to do.  But I don’t tell him so. That’s one thing you have to do with men – let them think they are having their own way.”

No Shortage Of Men Or Affairs

Bob Moak’s  follow-up article for the March 1, 1930 Film Weekly was “How Love Reformed “Hectic” Alice White.” The article describes Alice White’s many sexual conquests and how she followed her own advice jumping from relationship to relationship until finding true love with Sy Bartlett.

The article lists just some of Alice White’s many affairs. There was film director Tom Foeman; movie star John Gilbert; director Victor Fleming; stage and screen actor Leslie Fenton; aviator Dick Grace, and film extra Jimmie O’Neill.

A Turning Point – 1933

In 1933 Alice White and Sy Bartlett broke up.  Bartlett soon took up with Boots Mallory. White began an torrid affair with British actor John Warburton.

It did not end well.

After a Beverly Hills party, Warburton beat Alice in her home until she was “frightfully disfigured.’ Her eyes were swollen so much she she could not see. Warburton dragged her outside the house and then struck her again without warning.  He then sat on her and grabbed her by the hair.  The beating was so bad Alice said “It’s a wonder I didn’t  die.” Alice ended up needing a plastic surgeon to fix her nose.

Outraged about the savage attack upon his former love, Sy Bartlett conferred with Alice White to plot revenge.

Bartlett allegedly hired two movie extras Russell B. Brown and Martin Block  to beat and disfigure Warburton.

Under the pretense of robbing Warburton, Brown and Block beat Warburton up on September 16. The police were able to track down the perpetrators. Brown and Block confessed that they were paid $50 and the promise of more film work for pummeling Warburton at Bartlett’s, request. Alice White and Sy Bartlett were brought in by the police for questioning on October 3. The pair vigorously denied hiring the actors to beat Warburton.

The case went to trial, and both Brown and Block were acquitted by a jury on November 21.

Two weeks later Sy Bartlett and Alice White were married on December 3. The pair divorced less than five years later on February 17, 1938.

Alice White married actor – writer Jack Roberts August 24, 1940. The union ended in divorce April 14, 1949. It was a very unhappy marriage and the pair fought for years over alimony payments and wife swapping allegations.

But it was after the Warburton scandal that Alice White’s career took a nosedive. Alice’s roles became second tier. For an actress who had made over 30 films in just a six year period, Alice White made only a dozen more films after1934. Her final film appearance was in Flamingo Road (1949).

“I never look back,” Alice said in a 1958 interview. “The past is the past. I never saved a clipping when I was a star.”

Alice White died in Hollywood on February 19, 1983 at the age of 79 after suffering a stroke  She left no survivors.