This is a c. 1920's large silver gelatin fiber-based, double-weight photograph of Agnes Ayres (see bio below) by James Abbe (see bio below). Edges are deckled. Measures 13.25" x 10.375". Slight surface soiling. See photos for condition.
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** In no manner am I representing the sale of a digital image of the item or selling the rights to the image (copyright) to the buyer. The sale is for the physical object only and is original, not being newly reproduced. **
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Agnes Ayres (born Agnes Henkel; April 4, 1896 – December 25, 1940) was an American actress who rose to fame during the silent film era. She was known for her role as Lady Diana Mayo in The Sheik opposite Rudolph Valentino.
Career
Ayres began her career in 1914 when she was noticed by an Essanay Studios staff director and cast as an extra in a crowd scene. After moving to Manhattan, New York City with her mother to pursue a career in acting, Ayres was spotted by actress Alice Joyce. Joyce noticed the physical resemblance the two shared which eventually led to Ayres being cast in Richard the Brazen (1917), as Joyce's character's sister. Ayres' career began to gain momentum when Paramount Pictures founder Jesse Lasky began to take an interest in her. Lasky gave her a starring role in the Civil War drama Held by the Enemy (1920), and also lobbied for parts for her in several Cecil B. DeMille productions. During this period Ayres began a romance with Lasky.
In 1921, Ayres shot to stardom when she was cast as Lady Diana Mayo, an English heiress, opposite "Latin lover" Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik. Ayres later reprised her role as Lady Diana in the 1926 sequel The Son of the Sheik. Following the release of The Sheik, she went on to have major roles in many other films including The Affairs of Anatol (1921) starring Wallace Reid, Forbidden Fruit (1921), and Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923).
By 1923, Ayres' career began to wane following the end of her relationship with Jesse Lasky. She married Mexican diplomat S. Manuel Reachi in 1924. The couple had a daughter, before divorcing in 1927.
Ayres lost her fortune and real estate holdings in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. That same year, she also appeared in her last major role in The Donovan Affair, starring Jack Holt. To earn money, she left acting and played the vaudeville circuit. She returned to acting in 1936, confident that she could make a comeback — but, unable to secure starring roles, and somewhat overweight, Ayres appeared in mostly uncredited bit parts and finally retired from acting for good in 1937.
Later years and death
After her retirement, Ayres became despondent and was eventually committed to a sanatorium. In 1939, she also lost custody of her daughter to Reachi.
She died from a cerebral hemorrhage on December 25, 1940, at her home in Hollywood, California, at the age of 48; she had been ill for several weeks. She is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. In 1960, Ayres was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star at 6504 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to the film industry.
Her daughter Maria Reachi had a small part in the movie East Side, West Side (1949).
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James Edward Abbe (July 17, 1883 – November 11, 1973) was an American photographer.
Background
James Edward Abbe was born in 1883 in Alfred, Maine. His career as an international photographer was first boosted by the Washington Post, which commissioned him to travel and take photographs of a 16-day voyage with the American battleship fleet to England and France in 1910. Many years later he traveled throughout Europe as a young photojournalist in the late 1920s and early 1930s recording the unstable power struggles of the early 20th century. However, he first made a name for himself photographing theatre stars of the New York stage and subsequently movie stars in New York, Hollywood, Paris, and London throughout the 1920s and 1930s. His unusual technique of working outside the studio set him apart from other photographers of the period. To make money, Abbe sold his photographs to magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, which brought his subjects greater fame.
Famous images
Abbe's most celebrated portraits include his rare double portraits of silent film stars Rudolph Valentino and his wife Natasha Rambova, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, as well as dancers including the Dolly Sisters and Anna Pavlova, all taken in the 1920s. Reflecting the changing fashions in magazines content, Abbe became one of the first photojournalist to submit his work in photo-essays to major publications, including The London Magazine, Vu and the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. He also took photographs during the Spanish Civil War and the Nazis' rise in Germany.
"His life would make a good movie," his daughter Tilly said. In the 1920s and '30s Abbe photographed politicians, stage and film stars—Hitler and Mussolini, Charlie Chaplin and Josephine Baker—and scored the biggest coup of his career when he finagled his way into the Kremlin and, according to Miss Tilly, "tricked" Stalin into posing for him. The result: a rare snapshot of the Soviet dictator smiling. His portrait of Joseph Stalin was famously used to stop rumors that the Soviet leader was dead.
"He called his photography 'a ticket' to the world," Tilly says. "It was partly because of him that I became a dancer. In fact, I'm named after a dancer he photographed, Tilly Losch. He loved ballet, and his favorite subject to photograph was Anna Pavlova. I knew how much he loved dancers, and of course it was very important to me to please my father."
Personal life
Abbe was married four times and had eight surviving children. He first married in 1905 to Eloise Turner who died in November 1907. His second marriage was to Phyllis Edwards, a teacher from Richmond Virginia, whom he married in 1909 and by whom he had three children Elizabeth (Beth) born 1910, Phyllis, born 1911 and James.
This son, from his second marriage, James Abbe Jr was born in 1912; he also became a photographer and later an antiques dealer and worked in the 1940s Harper's Bazaar. The marriage ended when James Abbe travelled to Italy in 1922 with a former Ziegfeld dancer Polly Platt, (née Mary Ann Shorrock) who was part of the company filming Ronald Colman and Lillian Gish in The White Sister (1923) on location in Rome and Naples for which Abbe took stills and advised on special photography. After filming was completed Abbe settled in Paris where his new wife Polly gave birth to the first of three children, Patience Shorrock Abbe on 22 July 1924, followed by Richard W. Abbe (1926-2000) and then John Abbe (born 1927).
In the late 1930s, Abbe's third marriage to the former Ziegfeld dancer Polly Shorrock ended in divorce. After the failure of this marriage, he married Irene Caby, the mother of ballet dancer and dance teacher Tilly (Matilda) and Malinda (Linda) Abbe.
According to a 2006 interview with his daughter, Tilly Abbe, he was married three times before he met her mother, Irene, and abandoned his third wife and three children to marry Irene. Tilly was born when her father was 56 years old, which would have been about 1939.
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