Donna Darling Collection – Part 11

Treasure Chest Thursday

By Don Taylor

For this week’s Treasure Chest Tuesday, I’m looking at two clippings from the Donna Darling Collection, both dealing with her playing at the Alhambra Theatre.

Alhambra Clipping – From the Donna Darling Collection

I have cropped, edited, and sized the photos for the web.

Key features:

• The venue is the Alhambra.
• The show is the “Bathing Beauty Revue” featuring Donna Darling and Murray Earle.
• Also on bill
  • Richard Dix in “A Man Must Live”
• Coming attractions include:
  • Gloria Swanson

Analysis

Cinema Treasures indicates there were over 100 theaters named Alhambra in the United States.[i]

Clipping – Alhambra

“A Man Must Live” was released on 19 January 1925.[ii]

A search of Newspapers.Com yielded no articles or advertisements that showed an Alhambra Theatre showing “A Man Must Live” with a bathing beauty revue. However, a search of Genealogy Bank was successful in finding such an article that published on 21 January 1925 in the Milwaukee Journal.[iii] The article mentions speaks at length about the movie, “A Man Must Live” and ends with the following:

            “In addition, there’s the Bathing Beauty revue which may or may not amuse you.”

Milwaukee Alhambra Theatre Logo – 1925

A further search of the Milwaukee Journal found an advertisement of the Milwaukee Alhambra Theatre using the very distinctive logo which was used in the advertisements that Donna had in her collection. (Larger first and last A’s in the logo.)  The January 21^st was a Wednesday and Donna’s scrapbook ad indicates that Gloria Swanson was coming on Saturday, so I believe she probably played at Alhambra 21, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (January 12, 22, and 23, 1925.

Conclusion

January 21-23, 1925 – The Bathing Beauty Revue featuring Donna Darling (Mack Sennett’s Prize Winner) and Murray Earle (From Geo. White’s Scandals) as well as “her 10 bathing beauties from the Hollywood Studios” played at the Alhambra Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Actions

Standard: Research the Milwaukee Alhambra Theatre and write about Donna’s show there.

Sources

[i] Cinema Treasures – Search for theaters named Alhambra https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/united-states?q=Alhambra&status=all NOTE: There is a problem with the search function on Cinema Treasures. When searching “All Theaters” it only searches Open and Closed theaters. It does not include “Demolished” which must be searched separately.

[ii] IMDB “A Man Must Live” (1925) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016073/

[iii] The Milwaukee Journal (Milwaukee, WI) 21 Jan 1925, Page 13, Column 6, A Man Must Live – Via Genealogy Bank.