Valeska Surratt

Valeska Suratt
from The Girl with the Whooping Cough Broadway play 1910.
Born	June 28, 1882(1882-06-28) Owensville, Indiana, USA
Died	July 2, 1962 (aged 80) Washington, D.C., USA
Occupation	Actor, Comedian, Vaudeville performer
Spouse(s)	Billy Gould (married circa 1905, divorced prior to 1911) Fletcher Norton (1911 - 1941)

Valeska Suratt (sometimes spelled Valeska Surratt) (June 28, 1882 – July 2, 1962) was an American vaudeville, stage beauty and silent film actress.

Early life

Born in Owensville, Indiana, she moved with her family to Terre Haute when she was four years old.

In 1913 Suratt became noted for the New York Casino musical success, The Kiss Waltz. Suratt was known as The Vampire Woman of the silent screen.

Stage Career

An actress and singer, Suratt appeared in a few Broadway plays, mostly musicals: The Belle of Mayfair (1906), Hip! Hip! Hooray! 1907 (1907), The Girl With The Whooping Cough (1910, the French farce was closed due to charges of indecency), The Red Rose (1911) and Spice of 1922 (1922).

A famous pose of Suratt from The Red Rose had her left breast exposed with her hand and a rose placed over the left nipple.

Motion Picture Career

Suratt made her film debut in The Soul of Broadway (1915). The same year she made The Immigrant followed by The Straight Way (1916), Jealousy (1916), The Victim (1916), The New York Peacock (1916), and She (1917).

During her early years on Broadway Valeska was noted for the high fashion clothes she wore on stage. Among the items which were most commented about was an $11,000 cinderella cloak. She was sometimes called Empress of Fashions. Her name became synonymous worldwide for brilliant gowns. She possibly was another model for the famous Gibson Girl sketchings. In the Fox Film drama, The Soul of Broadway, Suratt wore more than 150 gowns. None of Suratt's films have survived but still photos taken on sets during productions have survived.

Private Life

Surratt married twice and had no children. Her husbands were:

• William J. Flannery (1869-1950), aka Billy Gould, a vaudeville comedian known for his minstrel roles. She reportedly married him circa 1904 and later divorced.
• Fletcher Norton (1877-1941), an actor, whom she married in 1911.

Decorated by fashion designer Paul Poiret's Atelier Martine decorating division, the interior of Suratt's New York City apartment was done almost entirely in purple, including the cushions, furniture, carpet, and window hangings. Her ceiling was red and the paneling was both red and black. From the purple room one passed between a crouching lion sphinx and her crouching mate in white marble into Suratt's bedchamber. Inside there was black carpeting, draperies, wall paper, telephone cord, and door. There was a black man and woman of Indian feature in controversial squares of white in the design of the wallpaper.^{[citation needed]}

She was a member of the Bahá'í Faith.^[1]

Death

Valeska Suratt died in a nursing home in Washington, D.C. in 1962. She was 80 years old.

References

1. ^ http://www.h-net.org/~bahai/diglib/books/A-E/C/Chanler/FGTD.htm From Gaslight to Dawn an autobiography by Julie Chanler. New York: New History Foundation, 1956. pp 152-153.

• "Startling Secrets of the World's Most Famous Self-Made Beauty." Cedar Rapids Republican. June 16, 1912, Page 13.
• "Valeska Suratt Thursday." Fort Wayne Journal. July 29, 1917, Page 37.
• "A Journey Through Queen of Night's Apartment." Oakland Tribune. April 5, 1914, Page 10.
• "The Kiss-Waltz." Racine Journal-News. February 5, 1913, Page 10.
• "Star In The Soul of Broadway." Wichita Falls Daily Times. Page 16.

External links

• Valeska Surratt at the Internet Movie Database
• Valeska Surratt Genealogy Page
• Valeska Suratt photographs and text
• amateur film of 1937 Fox Film storage building fire where presumably all the negatives for Suratts films were destroyed along with rival Bara's films as well as early starring vehicles of John Gilbert
• 1916 portrait of Valeska Surratt by Benjamin Strauss and Homer Peyton