Barbara La Marr
American actress and screenwriter (1896-1926)
Barbara La Marr (born Reatha Dale Watson; July 28, 1896 – January 30, 1926) was an American film actress and screenwriter who appeared in twenty-seven films during her career between 1920 and 1926. La Marr was also noted by the media for her beauty, dubbed as the "Girl Who Is Too Beautiful", as well as her tumultuous personal life.
Born in Yakima, Washington, La Marr spent her early life in the Pacific Northwest before relocating with her family to California when she was a teenager. After performing in vaudeville and working as a dancer in New York City, she moved to Los Angeles with her second husband and became a screenwriter for Fox Film Corporation, writing several successful films for the company. La Marr was finally "discovered" by Douglas Fairbanks, who gave her a prominent role in The Nut (1921), then cast her as Milady de Winter in his production of The Three Musketeers (1921). After two further career-boosting films with director Rex Ingram (The Prisoner of Zenda and Trifling Women, both with Ramon Novarro), La Marr signed with Arthur H. Sawyer to make several films for various studios, including The Hero (1923), Souls for Sale (1923), and The Shooting of Dan McGrew (1924), the first and last of which she co-wrote.
During her career, La Marr became known as the pre-eminent vamp of the 1920s; she partied and drank heavily, once remarking to the press that she only slept two hours a night. In 1924, La Marr's health began to falter after a series of crash diets for comeback roles further affected her, leading to her death from pulmonary tuberculosis and nephritis at age 29. She was posthumously honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the film industry.
Early life
Barbara La Marr was born in 1896 as Reatha Dale Watson to William and Rosana "Rose" Watson in Yakima, Washington (La Marr later claimed she was born in Richmond, Virginia).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Barbara La Marr” as american actress and screenwriter (1896-1926). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q437490. VIAF identifies the subject as 13237512. The Library of Congress control number is no93007814. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1896, 1926, 1920 and 1921.
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This entry incorporates text from “Barbara La Marr” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.