Anita Page, Louise Platt

Who died on this date:

On September 6, 2008, actress Anita Page died. She was born on August 4, 1910 in Flushing, Queens, New York. She reached stardom in the last years of the silent era. Page's first film was the 1928 comedy Telling the World.. Her performances in her second film, Our Dancing Daughters (1928) opposite Joan Crawford, and The Broadway Melody (1929) were her greatest successes of the period, and her popularity allowed her to make a smooth transition into talking pictures. During the early 1930s she was one of Hollywood’s busiest actresses. When her contract expired in 1933, she surprised Hollywood by announcing her retirement at the age of 23. She made one more movie, Hitch Hike to Heaven, in 1936, and then left the screen, virtually disappearing from Hollywood circles for sixty years. In a 2004 interview with author Scott Feinberg, she claimed that her refusal to meet demands for sexual favors by MGM head of production Irving Thalberg, supported by studio chief Louis B. Mayer, is what truly ended her career. She said that Mayer colluded with the other studio bosses to ban her and other uncooperative actresses from finding work. Page returned to the screen in 1996 after sixty years retirement and appeared in several low budget horror films, several of which appeared to have been uncompleted or not released. Page died on September 6, 2008 at her Los Angeles home and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in San Diego.

On September 6, 2003, actress Louise Platt died. She was born on August 3, 1915 in Stamford, Connecticut.  She is perhaps best remembered for her role as the pregnant officer's wife in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939).  A Broadway star, she came to Hollywood in 1938 and returned to the stage in 1942 after the dissolution of her marriage to theatre director Jed Harris. She worked with Rex Harrison in Anne of the Thousand Days on Broadway in 1948 and in the 1950s played a variety of roles on television. She died on September 6, 2003 in Greenport, New York. The disposition of her cremated remains is unknown.