Hello there! Jobyna Ralston here. I was born Jobyna Lancaster Ralston in South Pittsburg, Tennessee in the year 1899. I was named after an entertainer named Jobyna Howland, whom my folks just absolutely adored.
From an early age, my mother prepped me to be in show business. And what a business it was in those days!
I gave my first performance at the age of 9 in Cinderella and attended an acting school in New York when I was around fifteen before dancing chorus and singing in such Broadway productions as "Two Little Girls In Blue." I was 21 years old and soon a nice guy named Max Linder persuaded me to go to Hollywoodland.
I performed in several films of his, as well as a lost comedy called "Humor Risk," a pretty legendary (but for all I know lost and rotted) debut of those darling Marx Brothers.
It wasn't long after that I was playing it up in one reel comedies for a fella by the name of Hal Roach. This was good, because I needed the money to pay for my mother's medical bills.
In nineteen and twenty three, I was named on of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, which was a big to-do back then! It wasn't long after that I starred in "Why Worry" with Harold Lloyd. I starred in six more films with that man over the next five years and what a pair we made!
I met Richard Arlen when I worked on the movie "Wings", which was the first film to ever win an oscar. I got to work along side with Gary Cooper, Buddy Rogers and that bubbly little redheaded Clara Bow. I married that Arlen man (Which was my second marriage, the first was to a childhood friend and it most certainly did not last.) Richard and I had one child, Richard Arlen Jr. and we divorced in 1945. OOO! That man!
I would go on to star in eleven more movies, but wouldn't ya know? Like alot of other ladies of the day, my film career ended after just a few "talkies". I spoke with a lisp and that simply did not please audiences.
I spent the last years of my life suffering from several health problems, among them being several strokes and rheumatism. I died in 1967 after I caught pnuemonia in the Motion Picture Country Home.
-
