Stage, Shorts, and Success (1927–1929)

Adrienne’s difficulty securing real film success would continue well into 1927, with the first known mention of her career that year appearing tardily in late April–the Los Angeles Record published this cute shot of her, though the caption is plagued by characteristic uncertainty:

This author has never seen another mention of Adrienne in regard to the Hal Roach studio, and the story behind this reference is still obscure. Given she has no film credits for 1927, one wonders if this blip can be explained away by the typical hindrance of simple bad luck, or if something else was at play–from the looks of the next couple months, it seems she just put movies on the back burner and got busy with other facets of Filmland. It’s almost disingenuous to chalk every unrealized role up to fate, but these are the setbacks of untangling the stories of forgotten actresses after they’ve passed.

In May, Adrienne was nominated alongside a handful of other pageant alumni to judge the upcoming “Essex-Miss Southern California” beauty parade, advertised as being the “biggest in history”. Held at the Venice Pier ballroom through two days in early July, the winner would walk away with the coveted, novel “Miss Southern California” title. Ironically, the first place prize in this pageant went to similarly named Nadine Dore, a fourteen year old actress-model whose later film roles are often confused with Adrienne’s.

The mega-pageant, in which an apparent 458 girls paraded the streets of Venice, concluded on the evening of the Fourth. The very next morning, casting for the chorus of Oh, Kay!, a new Gershwin musical that had just closed a successful 256-show Broadway run, was held at the Belasco Theater on Hill Street. Established stage actress Elsie Janis had already been picked to succeed Gertrude Lawrence as the titular “Kay”, a bootlegger’s sister, for the Los Angeles run. The production is a reflection of the time period in which it was written, with visuals of seaside Jazz Age opulence and dolled-up flappers accompanying the main themes of Prohibition, scandal, and romance; all tied together with catchy, upbeat Gershwin numbers like “Clap Your Hands” and “Do, Do, Do”.

Oh, Kay! was slated to open the gorgeous new Mayan Theater, a Pre-Columbian inspired work of art built next door to the Belasco with intricate interiors by celebrated Mexican-American artist Francisco Cornejo. Veteran stage choreographer Larry Ceballos was tasked with staging the dances for Oh, Kay! and rounding out its chorus before the premiere on August 15; with such high stakes in regard to staging a fairly new show in a brand new venue, Ceballos stated he intended to form the “finest chorus ever seen in Los Angeles” and “if possible” would opt for girls who had “never before been on the stage”. One of the forty girls chosen was Adrienne.

Rehearsals began promptly in the midst of construction, and as the looming premiere date closed in, became grueling. The chorus had a dozen numbers to learn, and rehearsed long hours in the Shrine Auditorium, with multiple articles mentioning all-day sessions lasting late into the night. Frequent references were made to the sheer speed of production as excitement ramped up; Ceballos sped up the numbers after the girls had perfected them, and ten days before opening, chorus rehearsals were merged with those of the principal characters in light of “rapid progress”.

The long-awaited, glittering premiere attracted mostly positive reviews, including from prominent LA Times critic Edwin Schallert, who reserved special praise not only for the theater’s design but for the dance numbers performed by the chorus, which he referred to as the “one of the cleverest and most attractive here assembled”. Schallert mentions a few of the girls by name, including Adrienne, and hilariously, gets hers wrong–confusing Adrienne with fellow chorine Edith May, Schallert commended clever footwork performed by the “extraordinarily pretty” “Adrienne May”.

Oh, Kay! enjoyed substantial success that buoyed the production through the entirety of its eight-week run at the new Mayan–every performance through the first four weeks was packed to capacity. According to the Los Angeles Record, one of the show’s most loyal fans was venerable MGM director Clarence Brown, who also applauded Larry Ceballos’ choreography and declared there was much “potential screen star material” among the chorines.

The show and its company was not without its setbacks–Oh, Kay! had been booked for a second run at the Lurie Theater (now the Toni Rembe on Geary) in San Francisco at the close of its Los Angeles engagement. At some point during its penultimate performance in Los Angeles on October 7, 1927, leading lady Elsie Janis lost her voice and promptly broke down from exhaustion; her understudy Kathleen Kidd was ushered in to finish the show and take the reins for its finale the next day. It would later emerge that Janis had been stricken with vocal cord paralysis.

Though it seems Janis had earnestly pushed herself through illness to collapse, her sudden departure was not well received by the show’s producers or its company. The resentment helped feed a rumor mill that claimed she faked illness solely to escape traveling to San Francisco–or that her absence from the second leg was simply due to how jealous she was of her understudy’s popularity.

Either way, Elsie Janis was not missed by San Franciscan theatergoers when Oh, Kay! opened at the Lurie Theater on October 10; columnist Idwal Jones of the Examiner went as far as to pan the impersonations she imbued her performances with, implying her entire presence was unwelcome:

“The rest of the troupers came, and nobody complained, much. What did Elsie do in the show? Her mimicries and take-off of Barrymore couldn’t have been much in place anywhere, except as an entre-act divertissement.”

Neither Elsie Janis nor Kathleen Kidd held the distinction of having their portrait published with the Examiner’s official review; that honor went to none other than Adrienne.

Adrienne and the rest of the company remained in San Francisco for twelve days, closing a successful run with two performances on the twenty-second. On the nineteenth, they were recruited for a special evening engagement at the hip Aladdin Studio Tiffin Room, an Asian-themed tea room specializing in plain American fare. The girls danced alongside Chic Sale, among others, who would co-star with Adrienne years later at Warner Brothers. 

Her appearance in Oh, Kay! seemed to have given her a small but greatly needed push, as Adrienne fared a bit better in the film department upon her return to Hollywood. 

In late 1927, imported British film director Tom Terriss was looking to round out the cast of Beyond London’s Lights, a dramatic romance set in the English countryside he intended to film with an all-British cast, as claimed by Film Daily on November 22. The source material was Kitty Carstairs, a 1917 novel by John Joy Bell that makes a pale attempt at addressing classism—it remains fairly obscure over a century later, with one rare contemporary review condemning it as a ‘poor Dickensian imitation’. 

In early December, a distinctly American set of leads was announced for Beyond London’s Lights. Newcomer Gordon Elliott (not yet ‘Wild’, or ‘Bill’) was cast as Kitty Carstairs’ rich fiance, Colin Drummond; suave Lee Shumway as the secondary love interest, John; and Adrienne Doré as the novel’s titular Kitty, a poor postmaster’s daughter whose affluent prospective mother-in-law, Mrs. Drummond (Florence Wix) is hellbent on foiling her son’s cross-class engagement. 

Mrs. Drummond accomplishes this by arranging for Kitty to appear as hired help at a reception attended by pretty, titled Lady Dorothy (Jacqueline Gadsden), whom Mrs. Drummond hopes can tempt Colin away from Kitty. The strange plot seems to work, and Kitty’s humiliation results in her forfeiting the engagement and fleeing to London. 

In one scene, prominently depicted in extant publicity artwork, Adrienne fends off a would-be rapist in the form of Colin’s chauffeur (though the assault is referred to obliquely, as it would in 1928):

According to period publicity releases, Adrienne was picked for Beyond London’s Lights especially on account of her long curls, scarce at the height of the flapper era, as they lent her the needed air of an “English country lass”– said curls were also in the midst of turning noticeably blonder.

In light of her casting, Adrienne was asked her opinion on her 1925 Miss America episode and whether she felt it had anything to do with her burgeoning success. She maintained that the contest had been nothing more than a hindrance:

“It seems a shame to discourage in advance all the girls who are going to win the beauty contests of 1928, but Adrienne Dore, a beauty-contest winner, who is playing her first dramatic role in Beyond London’s Lights, doesn’t attach much importance to the prizes she won in the Atlantic City beauty pageant of 1925. For Adrienne found her first film opportunity months before she heard of the beauty contest. She was given a chance in comedies because she could impersonate a boy cleverly, and it was only after she had seen work at various studios, including seven months under contract at Universal, that she tried for the title Miss Los Angeles. “We thought it would be good publicity,” she said, “but when I actually won and insisted on accepting the chance to compete at Atlantic City it was more than anything an interruption in my screen career.”

The Baltimore Sun, January 1928

Production wrapped in January 1928, and Beyond London’s Lights went into wide release in mid-March. Adrienne’s first leading role wasn’t exactly a plum one; her sympathetic and nuanced dramatic part aside, this low-budget film was released through the middling Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio that would soon be nonexistent following a series of corporate mergers. Beyond London’s Lights attracted mostly so-so reviews which penalized long, boring scenes that made it difficult to pay attention to important plot points. 

Around the same time, Adrienne made two other films in which she wound up uncredited; both were released in February. She was cast in The Valley of Hunted Men (1928), a similarly low-budget Western produced by obscure Poverty Row studio Action Pictures. Unfortunately, like most of Adrienne’s silent output, the film is lost. 

Her other appearance in The Swim Princess (1928) has fared slightly better; half of this precious Carole Lombard two-reeler survives at UCLA. Adrienne, apparently still unable to shake the bathing beauty curse, plays a member of the Sunnydale School Swim Team, which boasts the disorderly Trudy (Carole Lombard) as its captain. Chaos ensues. Despite her promising background in comedy and pageantry, Adrienne wouldn’t go on to be a Sennett mainstay like Carole; The Swim Princess is the only known short she made with his company.

However, Adrienne’s talents found a proper home at Educational Pictures soon after; she made no less than seven shorts for them over the next year, through 1929 (a famously great time to be making silent comedies). Over half of these shorts were one-reelers produced for Jack White’s line of ‘Cameo Comedies’; the other half were two-reelers released under Educational’s higher-end ‘Mermaid Comedies’ banner. 

The first of Adrienne’s Educational shorts to be released was the one-reel Wife Trouble in September 1928.  Its plot concerns the antics surrounding a lingerie model, a prospective customer, and the customer’s jealous wife. She graduated to two-reelers with Hold That Monkey, which followed in November; Adrienne had the female lead opposite forgotten comedians Monte Collins and Kit Guard. While lost, we can glean the details from its synopsis; Adrienne plays a comely ringmaster’s daughter whose beauty inspires two potential suitors (Monte and Kit) to find work at the circus as animal trainers. Their lack of legitimate animal handling experience culminates in standard slapstick turmoil that reviewers found trite.

Pep Up, Smart Steppers, and Time To Expire (all 1929) came next, though only the first title is readily accessible. In the interim, bigger things were happening which would take Adrienne’s attention off shorts; she made a successful transition to sound in support of Clara Bow in the latter’s highly anticipated debut talkie, The Wild Party.

Publicity articles place Adrienne as the first of Clara’s eight ‘whoopee’ girls to be chosen over the winter of 1928-9, specifically on account of her “lovely voice” and “divine figure”. Both are showcased quite prominently in the film—its most memorable sequence involves a conga line of Clara (as Stella)’s pals all done up in glittering, lightning-rod teddies designed by Travis Banton.

Adrienne plays Babs, a coquettish blonde whose refusal to join Stella’s “Hard Boiled Maidens” club doesn’t mean she isn’t ready to go to bat for the girls in the dormitory. In spite of heavy publicity surrounding Clara’s voice and the subsequent box office success that hinged on it, Adrienne’s best role remains trapped in the amber of a rudimentary sound experiment which itself is saved by Dorothy Arzner’s directorial grace and Clara’s ‘it’.

It was reported in January 1929 that Paramount had picked up Adrienne’s option as a result of her work in The Wild Party and bestowed her with a fabled long-term contract. However, she wouldn’t make another picture at the studio until September—in the meanwhile, she returned to Educational over the spring to star in two shorts, Delicious and Refreshing (1929) and Peaceful Alley (1929). 

Only the latter is extant in the form of unrestored nitrate held at UCLA. The former is lost, though a period reviewer in Motion Picture News describes Adrienne’s characterization of a havoc-wreaking dancer as “pretty clever […] she is vivacious and undoubtedly has a flare of comedy.”

Next came Adam’s Eve at Paramount, a fortunately extant two-reel sound short that sees Adrienne in the role of Johnny Arthur’s jealous fiancee. She discovers him in the apartment of two strange women on the night of his bachelor party, which leads to hilarity (and Adrienne steaming at the ears). 

Fall rolled around and Adrienne returned to Paramount for a small role as ‘Kay’ the chorus girl in Pointed Heels with Fay Wray and William Powell, though her character is afforded but one curt line panning a performance by Helen Kane.

Pointed Heels wrapped just about as turmoil began to brew on Wall Street, hitting theaters some two months after the Crash on December 21, 1929–-it attracted favorable reviews, but no further breakthroughs for Adrienne.

Notably at this time, Paramount was in the midst of pouring the bulk of its talent into Paramount on Parade, a mammoth musical revue featuring everyone in the studio’s stable from Bow to Chevalier.

In a 1931 interview with Dan Thomas, Adrienne claimed she had initially been signed for the honor of performing its opening theme song, though after ‘several rehearsals’  it was decided it needed to be sung in a different key, prompting her exit from the film and her subsequent firing. Ironically, the production supervisor on Paramount on Parade was none other than Elsie Janis, the lead in Adrienne’s 1927 theatrical effort, Oh, Kay! 

Adrienne told Thomas it was “the first time in her life” she’d ever been cursed with such luck, starting off the new decade grasping at any job opportunity she could get. 

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