The Helen Morgan Page

92 years ago today, Lilyan Tashman died.

Tashman was a Broadway staple in the nineteen teens. Statuesque and blonde, she started out as a Ziegfeld showgirl (The Century Girl and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1916 and 1917) before moving on to small parts in Broadway plays, most notably David Belasco’s original production of Avery Hopwood’s The Gold Diggers.

In the early twenties, she transitioned seamlessly into film, first in the east and later in Hollywood. She typically played deliciously hard-boiled gold diggers, especially after sound came in. She won Photoplay Award for “Best Performance of the Month” twice: first for Bulldog Drummond (July 1929) then for Girls About Town (December 1931.)

Tashman had battled cancer for over a year before she stepped onto the set of Frankie and Johnnie in mid-February 1934 as happy homewrecker Nelly Bly. Despite her illness, she soldiered on by sheer will, but even that was not enough. After a week’s work, she took a week off to recuperate. She returned for an additional ten days, wrapping on March 9, 1934.

Twelve days later, she was dead. Her circus of a funeral matched the insanity that marred Valentino’s passing. Ghouls gathered not only to see the body, but mourners Mary Pickford, Bing Crosby and eulogist Eddie Cantor.

Meanwhile, unrelated to her illness, but very much in anticipation of the film Oscar Tschirky of the Waldorf created the Frankie and Johnnie cocktail.

In those heady days of Repeal, the cocktail was a successful novelty, but its popularity lagged after Tashman’s death and Frankie and Johnnie left the public consciousness.

A well oiled studio machine might well have gotten the film out in time to beat the incoming Production Code, but as an independent director/producer, Chester Erskine was afforded no such luxury. The print for Frankie and Johnnie came back from the lab in early July, days too late to get the film into theatres. Two years would pass before the film, heavily edited and with a completely new second act, reached theatres. Tashman was deliberately uncredited in a vain attempt to fool patrons that this was a new production.

So, raise a glass to Lilyan Tashman and catch one of her naughty girl performances on TCM or YouTube while sipping a Frankie and Johnny.