Wallace Reid is best known for dying - the first big Hollywood star to die in a scandalous way, passing away from a morphine addiction. He had a legit excuse for getting on it - a nasty accident led to him being given morphine and he became hooked - and couldn't shake it. That ensures this book has a solid, natural narrative because you know you've got a moving ending.
Life had been pretty good and cruisy for Reid until then - his father was a popular playwright whose work is never performed today but who enabled Wally to be raised with money and love; he was a good looking athletic kid whose natural charm and appearance helped him make it as a movie. There's a lack of well known movies on his resume apart from Birth of a Nation (in which Reid has a relatively small role) but appears to have been genuinely popular, and worked with legends such as Lilian Gish, James Cruze, Mae Marsh and Cecil B de Mille. He also wrote and directed.
Then came drugs, which he couldn't shake and which killed him. It's treated movingly and well by Menefee who has done some excellent scholarship on Reid's films. I'm not inspired to seek out any of them to watch (they sound awfully formulaic) but am glad it's done.
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