Alma Rubens, Silent Snowbird: Her Complete 1930 Memoir, with a New Biography and Filmography

by Gary Don Rhodes (Editor), Alexander Webb (Editor)

Dark-eyed and distant Alma Rubens was one of the first female stars of the early feature film industry in the 1910s. She was a major star by 1920, but before the decade was over her screen career was marked and marred by cocaine abuse. She died in 1931 at age 33--a Hollywood beauty, a casualty of Hollywood "snow," yet much more. As an actress she was versatile, demonstrating a talent that was ahead of its time with her gentle and subtle expressions. This book contains Rubens's autobiography, a text titled This Bright World Again that was serialized in newspapers in 1931. Ghost-written or not or somewhere in between, this long forgotten document deals with Rubens's addiction and despair. In addition, a new biography of Rubens takes the reader from her birth in San Francisco through an impoverished upbringing, three short-lived marriages, and her career in pictures for Triangle Film, Cosmopolitan, Fox and other production companies. The story of her film career mingles with a tale of desperate drug addiction that led to hospital stays, violence and deception. A filmography lists her credits from 1913 to 1929.

Genres: Biography, Memoir, Media Tie In

240 pages, Paperback

First published July 5, 2006

Reviews

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Alma Rubens, Silent Snowbird by Alma Rubens for the Out of the Past Classic Film Blog - 2016 Summer Reading Classic Film Book Challenge. Since reading Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon as a kid, the name Alma Rubens has always intrigued me. I’ve often wondered how a sensitive beautiful woman could get mixed up as she did and fall down the rabbit hole. Not knowing until recently, that she wrote her memoirs shortly before she died, I dived in hoping to have some questions answered. How did she get hooked and did she try to shake it? Is she worth remembering? Is there more to her than her sensational death?

The book is a book within a book. Rubens’ memoir is in between a new biography by Gary D. Rhodes and Alexander Webb, and a thorough filmography. The biography is relatively short. An odd point, and wholly unnecessary, was to the extent to which Rhodes and Webb went to to define what “Silent Snowbird” meant. I guess they thought we’d think it was a song or she was a Canadian traveling south for the winter. Who knows? Anyway, the biography basically fills in background details missing from the memoir, but you don’t realize this until after you get past the memoir and have time to reflect. To be honest, immediately after finishing the memoir, I felt traumatized and completely forgot about the biography.

In hindsight, Rubens’ was a brave woman to have serialized her story for the newspapers. If she hadn’t passed away shortly after completing them, I wonder if history would’ve thought the same. She starts her story with her childhood in San Francisco and her journey into films. Early in her career she had an operation for a “woman’s issue”, sorry but she gives no more detail than this, and was prescribed morphine for the pain. She quickly became hooked and a functional addict. Her husband Ricardo Cortez discovered her addiction shortly after they married and became distant with her, so she used more. to the point of tipping over the edge and ending up in a sanitarium for a cure. After her release, she stayed clean for a number of months then relapsed in New York. At this point, her story gets brutally honest. They say relapse is often worse than the initial addiction and this is true with Rubens. While maintaining she kicked morphine, she fell in with cocaine and heroin, then gave back into morphine, and doing all three at “tea” or “cocktail” parties.

In her memoir, she tells of her great strength and determination against anything untowardly put upon her, except the drugs. Her attitude with them was that she was the victim and was powerless against them. She maintains that she was a romantic at heart, just wanting love and understanding with her husband’s help. She got neither from Cortez. Her “party” stories are remarkable, to the point where you wonder how she could remember exact details afterward, but they are nonetheless sensational. She doesn’t give the names of her fellow party goers, but gives enough info that contemporary readers could probably have easily identified them. Sadly, this book as fascinating as it is, doesn’t help to dispel her tragedy from our minds, it just cements it further and as a result, her career is completely diminished.

[Kristin Myrtle · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is really 2 books. one is alma rubens drug-addled diary, and that is the best one as well. her own writing does not talk too much about her days as an early silent film star, but it is a sometimes harrowing look into what it was like to be a coke-head (or a snowbird) in the 20's and 30's. a really interesting read!

[Laini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning. Really shows the depths of drug addiction in its unglamorized form. Think of everything she had, and everything she lost purely in the pursuit of drugs.

Very enlightening for those of us who didn't know a lot of the details.

[Ashley Redgrave · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was always a fan of the silent star Alma Rubens. I was delighted to find out that she had written a biography that was serialised in newspapers before compiled into a book. Her life was intriguing to say the least! A witty and lovable woman and a well deserved star in the silent pictures. Would happily read again