Bebe Daniels~ Old Vintage Hollywood

Bebe Daniels was a popular silent film actress who had starred opposite Harold Lloyd, and later been further promoted by Cecil B. DeMille. She was young, talented, charming and loved to drive her Marmon automobile as fast as possible. She was doing just that in the spring of 1921, flogging the Marmon past 55 mph on a lonely road through south Santa Ana. In the car were her mother and Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight-boxing champion whom Daniels was dating. They were headed for San Diego. She was pulled over by a pair of motorcycle policemen and cited. At the behest of her lawyers, she requested a trial by jury, believing her star power would win her a favorable verdict. Her lawyers pleaded for mercy for “this poor little girl who has been subjected to so much.” Instead, Judge John Belshazzar Cox, a genuine eccentric and a lover of the spotlight, who was apparently delighted with a courtroom packed with press and Hollywood hangers-on, sentenced her with a flourish to 10 days in the Orange County Jail. Daniels was nonplused. “I suppose if you live in a small town you get like that,” she reportedly said after the sentencing. “I bet 56 miles per hour sounds awfully fast if you’ve never driven anything faster than a plow.” What followed became early Orange County legend. Almost immediately after Daniels checked in (there’s no other term for it) to her jail cell, movers from a local furniture store arrived to furnish it with rich carpeting, chintz curtains and a bedroom suite with bedding to match the curtains. Local florists sent vases of fresh-cut flowers daily. The best Santa Ana restaurants and hotels competed with each other to deliver specially prepared meals directly to her cell, where she constantly received friends and visitors from Hollywood, including Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. Her mother was also allowed to stay with her in the cell. And at night Abe Lyman and his Coconut Grove Orchestra set up beneath her barred window and serenaded her with the “Rose Room Tango,” a specialty number she had once danced with Rudolph Valentino. It wasn’t until her cell door was finally shut at the end of each day that she realized (as she later wrote) “how awful it was to be locked in a cell.” Bebe Daniels was granted a day off for good behavior, and when she emerged from jail, glamorously dressed, she was met by none other than Judge Cox, who presented her with a bouquet of flowers. She solemnly announced that she had learned her lesson, and immediately left for Hollywood, where she went straight to work on a new film, which was released that fall. It was called The Speed Girl. ”

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