Alma Rubens Biography

Alma Rubens (February 19, 1897 " January 22, 1931) was an American film actress and stage performer.

Rubens began her career in the mid 1910s. She quickly rose to stardom in 1916 after appearing opposite Douglas Fairbanks in The Half Breed. For the remainder of the decade, she appeared in supporting roles in comedies and drama. In the 1920s, Rubens developed a drug addiction which eventually ended her career. She died of pneumonia shortly after being arrested on narcotics charge in January 1931.

Early life

She was born Alma Genevieve Reubens to John B. and Theresa (née Hayes) Rueben in San Francisco, California. Her father was of French descent and her mother was of Irish heritage. She had an older sister, Hazel. She was raised in the Roman Catholic faith and attended Sacred Heart Convent in San Francisco. Some biographies erroneously state that her birth name was Genevieve Driscoll. The name was in fact a pseudonym that she later used in a non-professional capacity, as Genevieve was her middle name and Driscoll was her maternal grandmother's maiden name.

Career

Her first stage opportunity came when a chorus girl in a musical comedy theater troupe became ill. Rubens was chosen to take her place and joined the troupe as a regular performer. There she met Franklyn Farnum who was also a member. He later convinced Rubens to leave the troupe and try her hand at film acting.

Her breakthrough performance was in 1916 in the movie Reggie Mixes In. She made six more films in that same year. In 1917 she starred in The Firefly of Tough Luck, which was a big success. She gained fame when she became Douglas Fairbanks's leading lady in The Half Breed (1916), and supported Fairbanks and Bessie Love in the cocaine comedy The Mystery of the Leaping Fish later that same year. In 1918, Alma announced that she was changing the spelling of her last name of Rueben to "Rubens" because it caused too much confusion in the movie industry and in publications. She later told Photoplay magazine, "As a matter of fact my name is not the same [spelling] as the painter's. It's either Reubens or Ruebens-I forget which. I never could spell it. Couldn't remember where the 'e' came. So I let it go Rubens."

In 1920, she completed The World and His Wife, opposite Montague Love which further solidified her popularity. In 1924, she starred in The Price She Paid and Cytherea. Around this time, Rubens developed an addiction to morphine. As a result, she temporarily retired from the screen in 1926.

Drug abuse and career decline

Rubens' drug addiction worsened when she returned to California in 1928. In a serialized autobiography that was published in newspapers in 1931, Rubens admitted that she became an addict after a New York physician administered morphine during an illness. A few months later, she was prescribed morphine tablets for another ailment. Rubens confessed she was taking them for every real or imaginary illness. As a result of her drug addiction, Ruben's career ended almost as quickly as it began. One of her final roles was as Julie in the 1929 part-talkie film version of Show Boat"?her next-to-last film and one of her few sound films. The sound track for the portion in which she spoke, however, has apparently been lost.

William Randolph Hearst, who had produced several of her earlier films, helped support her at Marion Davies's request. But because of her addiction, she was in and out of mental institutions. In February 1929, Rubens' addiction became publicly known when she attempted to stab a physician who was taking her to a sanitarium for treatment. She was ordered to undergo treatment at the Spadra facility shortly thereafter. She later made an escape despite being under the watch of four nurses and two male guards. She was then admitted to a sanatorium in Pasadena but left after ten days. On May 15, 1929, her husband and mother had her committed to Patton State Hospital for treatment after she resumed her drug habit.

Rubens was released from the Patton State Hospital in December 1929. She made her first public appearance since her release on January 30, 1930 in role in a play produced at the Writer's Club in Hollywood. Her performance was well-liked by the audience and she received eight curtain calls. After the show, Rubens gave an interview to the United Press stating that she was cured of her addiction. During the interview, she said that she began injecting narcotics after suffering from a "minor aliment" in 1923. She also described her descent into drug abuse and her experiences at the sanatoriums. Rubens then traveled to New York and announced a theatrical and screen comeback. She made an appearance on stage with her husband while there, but returned to Los Angeles the same month. She was there less than two weeks when she was arrested by Federal officers in San Diego, California, on a narcotics charge. Rubens claimed she was a victim of a frame-up, and physicians attested to her statements that she was not taking drugs. She was later released on bail, and appeared for a preliminary hearing the second week of January 1931.

Personal life

Rubens married three times. Her first marriage was to actor Franklyn Farnum, nearly twenty years her senior, in June 1918. The couple were married secretly and separated about two months later. According to Rubens' divorce petition, Farnum physically abused her and once dislocated her jaw. Their divorce was finalized in December 1919. In November 1923, she married Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman, an author and film producer. The marriage was brief and a suit for divorce was filed in January 1925.

During the next two years, she made several films for the Fox Film Corporation. When her contract expired, she went to Europe with actor Ricardo Cortez and married him in February 1926. At the time of her death, Rubens was suing Cortez for divorce. Cortez claimed he had not been notified of his wife's death, and later remarked that he had not seen her for several months and was unaware that she was seriously ill.

Death

Shortly after her release from jail, Rubens contracted a cold that quickly developed into pneumonia. She fell into a coma at the Los Angeles home of her friend, Dr. Charles J. Pflueger. She died on January 22, 1931 at the age of 33 having never regained consciousness. A funeral service was held on January 24 at the Little Church of the Flowers at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale. Her body was then shipped to Fresno where a second service was held at the Christian Science Church on January 26. She was interred in Ararat Massis Armenian Cemetery in Fresno.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Alma Rubens has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6409 Hollywood Blvd.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1915	Banzai	Mirami - Daughter of a Samurai	Short film
1914	Narcotic Spectre		Short film
1914	The Gangsters and the Girl	Molly	Short film
1915	The Birth of a Nation	Belle of 1861	Uncredited
1915	The Lorelei Madonna	Alma - the Lorelei Madonna	Short film Credited as Alma Ruben
1915	Peer Gynt	Bit Role	Uncredited
1915	A Woman's Wiles	Lucile Bergere - a Parisian Model	Credited as Alma Ruben
1916	Reggie Mixes In	Lemona Reighley
1916	The Mystery of the Leaping Fish	Gang Leader's Female Accomplice	Short film Uncredited
1916	The Half-Breed	Teresa
1916	Judith of the Cumberlands		Alternative title: The Moonshine Menace
1916	Intolerance	Girl at the Marriage Market	Uncredited
1916	The Children Pay	Editha, their stepmother
1916	The Americano	Juana de Castalar
1917	Truthful Tolliver	Grace Burton
1917	A Woman's Awakening	Cousin Kate	Credited as Alma Rueben
1917	An Old Fashioned Young Man
1917	Master of His Home	Millicent Drake	Credited as Alma Ruben
1917	The Cold Deck	Coralie
1917	The Firefly of Tough Luck	Firefly
1917	The Regenerates	Catherine Ten Eyck	Credited as Alma Reuben
1917	The Gown of Destiny	Natalie Drew
1918	I Love You	Felice
1918	The Answer	Lorraine Van Allen
1918	The Love Brokers	Charlotte Carter
1918	Madame Sphinx	Celeste
1918	The Painted Lily	Mary Fanjoy
1918	False Ambition	Judith/Zariska
1918	The Ghost Flower	Giulia
1919	Restless Souls	Marion Gregory
1919	Diane of the Green Van	Diane Westfall
1919	A Man's Country	Kate Carewe
1920	Humoresque	Gina Berg (formerly Minnie Ginsberg)
1920	The World and His Wife	Teodora
1920	Thoughtless Women	Annie Marnet
1922	Find the Woman	Sophie Carey
1922	The Valley of Silent Men	Marette Radison
1923	Enemies of Women	Alicia
1923	Under the Red Robe	Renee de Cocheforet
1924	Week End Husbands	Barbara Belden
1924	The Rejected Woman	Diane Du Prez
1924	Cytherea	Savina Grove
1924	The Price She Paid	Mildred Gower
1924	Gerald Cranston's Lady	Hermione, Lady Gerald Cranston
1924	Is Love Everything?	Virginia Carter
1925	The Dancers	Maxine
1925	She Wolves	Germaine D'Artois
1925	A Woman's Faith	Nerée Caron
1925	Fine Clothes	Paula
1925	The Winding Stair	Marguerite
1925	East Lynne	Lady Isabel
1926	The Gilded Butterfly	Linda Haverhill
1926	Siberia	Sonia Vronsky
1926	Marriage License?	Wanda Heriot
1927	One Increasing Purpose		Uncredited
1927	Heart of Salome	Helene
1928	The Masks of the Devil	Countess Zellner
1929	Show Boat	Minnie
1929	She Goes to War	Rosie