Rose Hobart enjoyed an extensive theatrical career in the 1920s, became a Hollywood leading lady in 1930, and had a second film career as a character player in the late 1930s and 1940s.Born into a family of musicians, she recalls childhood summers in Woodstock, NY, the beginnings of her theatrical career in Chautauqua, and an early and misunderstood friendship with the great Broadway star Eva Le Gallienne, which led to her appearing opposite Noel Coward in
The Vortex
and starring in the original stage production of
Death Takes a Holiday.
In 1930, she made her Hollywood screen debut in Frand Borzage's production of
Liliom.
Rouben Mamoulian selected her to co-star opposite Fredric March in his legendary 1932
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Unhappy in Los Angeles, Miss Hobart returned to New York, but after various misadventures, came back to the screen as a character actress in such films as
Tower of London
(1939) with Basil Rathbone and
Susan and God
(1940) with Joan Crawford. During World War II, she toured with the USO in the Aleutians, a difficult but also amusing period. The autobiography is peppered with famous names from Broadway to Hollywood, but it is also a highly personal work, in which Miss Hobart unabashedly discusses her three marriages and her failures. She ends her story with the grim reality of being blacklisted.Rose Hobart is perhaps the only Hollywood star to be immortalized in a modern work of art, an avant-garde short by filmmaker and artist Joseph Cornell, named in her honor and based on footage from the 1931 film
East of Borneo.
Readers of her autobiography will be as mesmerized by Rose Hobart as was Joseph Cornell more than fifty years ago.