I've become interested in actress Ona Munson, who was born in Portland. She was Belle Watling in Gone With the Wind, but I became entranced with her after seeing her performance as the mysterious and imperious "casino" (read: brothel) owner Mother Gin Sling in Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture. This is a preposterous character (originally named "Mother Goddam") who wears preposterous and wonderful costumes, but Ona Munson is magnificent in the role. The movie is ridiculous but has style galore, typical von Sternberg wacky excess and mostly implied depravity, it's like a sneakily powerful cocktail that happens to be served in a coconut, with about five different paper parasols. I think it was von Sternberg's last hurrah, an attempt to recapture the lush decadence of his glory years with Dietrich. It was considerably toned down to get by the censors, the opium addiction and prostitution aspects only suggested or alluded to. Gene Tierney is also in it, one of her first roles. And Victor Mature and Walter Huston and Phyllis Brooks are in it too.

Ona Munson is fascinating. She was Alla Nazimova's lover and protege, and later had affairs with Dietrich and with the redoubtable Mercedes de Acosta, when she was living in Paris. Mercedes de Acosta, of course, also had a thing with Dietrich and was in a long-term affair with Greta Garbo and Cecil Beaton. Those Hollywood dykes sure knew how to party. There's a biography of Mercedes de Acosta called That Furious Lesbian, I'd like to read that one, there might be some Ona Munson material in it. De Acosta became a kind of pariah when she wrote a lurid tell-all late in life, outing Garbo and dishing on all sorts of people from the old days. I think she was destitute and needed the cash.

Anyway, Ona Munson never became a star. I'd love to see her in the pre-code Five Star Final, with Edward G. Robinson. She was in some John Wayne pictures too. She was shy and often lonely, and ultimately committed suicide in New York in 1955. I think Portland ought to honor her in some way. She was beautiful and fragile, one of Hollywood's many sad stories. I'd love to know the location of the house she was born in.