California: 1930s-1940s.
Price: $3,500.00
Hardcover. Oblong folio. Measuring 14" x 10". Screw bound brown leather over stiff paper boards. Contains 61 sepia-toned or black and white gelatin silver photographs measuring between 4" x 6" and 8" x 10", some with captions. Very good album with rubbing, chips and short tears with near fine photographs.
A photo album kept by character actor Weldon Heyburn during the 1930s. Heyburn began his career on Broadway and left for California to work in film between 1931 and 1950, although his drinking hampered his career in the mid-1940s, resulting in his death in 1951. A handsome actor who bore a resemblance to Clark Gable, Heyburn was constantly employed acting in westerns and noir mysteries, usually in secondary or minor roles, although he did appear in a few as a leading man. He was apparently well-known and well-liked in the film fraternity. This album intersperses images of Heyburn’s life at home with his wife with time spent with celebrity friends including at swimming pools and tennis courts. The early pages show Weldon and his soon-to-be third wife, Jane, around their home in California. The album is full of “Hollywood notables” of the time with Heyburn at various events, parties, and people’s homes, many caught in candid moments.
Photos of celebrities include English Actor Evelyn Laye and Frank Lawton playing tennis; Robert Montgomery, Milton Beecher, Elmer Griffen, and Whitney DeRham; and Ann Southern holding a camera, among others. One photo shows Robert Sinclair with the playwright and director Moss Hart who is shown smoking his pipe, Claire Trevor with a drink at a tennis match with her husband Milton Bren, Randolph Scott in a deck chair, and others. Another photo shows Caesar Romero in the stands watching a tennis match, another is of actress Virginia Fields, posing at a tennis court with a young girl. Most of the photos have captions, some with full names, but many are just first names indicating a familiarity and friendship between the more famous stars and Heyburn. Presumably anyone with a pasing knowledge of the stars of the day could identify others.
Two large photos towards the end of the album from May 5, 1936 show Heyburn and Jane at their wedding which included some actors as guests including Wendy Barrie and Nancy Carroll. A professional “candid” style photo of Heyburn taken for a celebrity sightings column “Let’s Go Places,” includes the typed captions, “left to right: among the happy exponents of the rumba at La Conga, we find Weldon Heyburn and Adrienne Ames.” One section of photos titled “horse play clothes and all” shows Heyburn laughing after being thrown in the pool fully dressed, with friends observing from poolside chairs.
An interesting behind the scenes look at celebrity life in the 1930s as recorded by a minor star of the day.
Item #412374
