Silent film star Anita Page died 6 September 2008 at her home in Los Angeles, California. Born Anita Pomares on 4 August 1910 in Flushing, New York City, she made her film debut as an extra in 1925’s A Kiss for Cinderella. While working under contract to MGM, she became a star. With the arrival of the “talkies,” she, like many other silent film stars, tried to make the transition. Her first talkie was 1929’s The Broadway Melody, which won the Academy Award for best picture (the first talkie to win that title).
Upon the expiration of her contract, in 1933, she abruptly retired, at the age of 23 (though she did make one more appearance, in a British film called Hitch Hike to Heaven, in 1936. She launched her second film career in 1996, appearing in several genre films, including Frankenstein Rising (currently in post-production). Her other genre appearances include: The Crawling Brain (2002), Witchcraft XI: Sisters in Blood (2000), Creaturealm: From the Dead (1998), and Hollywood Mortuary (1998).
In 1934, she married Nacio Herb Brown, the composer whose “You Were Meant for Me” became Page’s signature song. They divorced the following year. In 1937, she married Herschel A. House (who died in 1991). They had two daughters, Linda and Sandra (Sandra predeceased her).