Academy Founders 15

N.B. The member numbers follow The Internet Movie Database's list order announcing the Academy in January 1927. 

15. Sid Grauman (1879-1950) of the Producers Branch, at a typical ceremony at his Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Here, (Richard) Red Skelton (1913-1997) signs the pavement with his wife Edna in 1942.

In his day, Sid Grauman was as famous as any of the stars whose films showed in his Los Angeles theaters: the Chinese, the Egyptian, the Million Dollar, and the Metropolitan.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre particularly captured people's imaginations: built on land that had once belonged to Francis X. Bushman, it opened in May 1927 with Cecil B. DeMille's THE KING OF KINGS. (Jeanie MacPherson, #29, was the film’s screenwriter; the cast was a Who's Who of 1920s' Hollywood,)

In 1949, the Academy awarded Grauman an honorary Oscar as a "Master showman, [one] who raised the standard of exhibition of motion pictures."

Hollywood at play

Conrad Nagel’s yacht TIBURON was a prominent feature in his personal publicity. Here he is with his wife Ruth, their daughter Ruth, Beverly Bayne (the former wife of silent star Francis X. Bushman, and a star in her own right), and Leatrice Joy (John Gilbert's ex-wife, and ditto), in August 1927.

“The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips”

A publicity photo of Mae Murray (Marie Adelaide Koenig, 1885-1965) by Ruth Harriet Louise (Ruth Goldstein, 1903-1940), MGM’s chief portrait photographer 1925-30

Mae Murray appeared in the 1908 ZIEGFELD FOLLIES as a member of the chorus (“Brinkley Girl” and a member of the “Bowery Group”); by 1915 she was (probably) a featured star in the “Blue Follies.” 

With Francis X. Bushman (1883-1966) in THE MASKED BRIDE

Her career in Hollywood has eclipsed her Broadway period, since she became internationally famous as a film star, “The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips.” Her glamour was intense, although, in retrospect, sadly brief — after a lengthy period of apprenticeship (she made her Broadway début in 1906 in Lew M. Fields’s ABOUT TOWN; her first film was TO HAVE AND TO HOLD in 1916), she reached the apex of fame with THE MERRY WIDOW and THE MASKED BRIDE (both 1925).

Her 1926 marriage to (Prince) David Mdivani (1904-1984) proved ruinous. One of the “Marrying Mdivanis” — the second M was silent — he was only notionally a prince; it is fairer to say he was an Olympic-class gigolo, one of several siblings who specialized in marrying for money and fame. 

Mae Murray’s later life was a sad one — her hard-won diva laurels provided no cushion for a series of hard knocks.