Barbara Weeks

At age 17, Barbara Weeks had gone from Melrose High to the brink of becoming a major Hollywood star. But behind the glamorous photos lay a misery that led her to walk away from show business and never look back.

Weeks’ parents divorced shortly after her birth, and she was raised by her mother, Ida. Their circumstances were so straitened that it has proven impossible to identify her childhood home; they apparently moved quite a bit. Barbara attended the Roosevelt School, but from an early age, Ida made performance rather than academics the center of Barbara’s life, pinning the family’s hopes on a future acting career.

At age 13, Ida took Barbara to New York City to audition for Ziegfeld’s Follies. She scored a part. Barbara’s life for the next few years involved stints performing on Broadway with time off spent back in Melrose. In 1930, on Ziegfeld’s recommendation, she was cast in her first Hollywood film, and moved to Los Angeles.

In 1931 she signed a major contract with Samuel Goldwyn and was cast opposite Eddie Cantor in “Palmy Days,” one of the biggest hits of that year. You can see her in the clip linked below. It is probably the first film with sound of a Melrose person.

Her publicist reported her dating Clark Gable and Gary Cooper and spending weekends at Hearst Castle. The truth was not so pleasant. She kept a brutal work schedule, making twelve movies a year.  When she refused Goldwyn’s sexual advances, he sold her contract to Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures, who likewise propositioned her. When she demurred, he punished her by giving her parts in low-profile Westerns.

In 1938, Weeks married and left show business, much to the fury of her mother. She later told an interviewer “I was tired of Hollywood. It was never my answer to a happy life.”

The happy life she chose was so quiet that “Variety” mistakenly published an obituary for her in 1954. Years later she was tracked down by fans, who found her living as a retired landlady in Las Vegas. “What’s all the fuss about?” she asked them, “I am no longer the siren you seek.”

Barbara Weeks died in 2003, a week shy of her 90th birthday.