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| Norah Diamond and "Associates" at Tym's Place |
Norah Diamond was born Eunice Elvira Bloch on March 27, 1899 in
Newark, NJ. Her parents were Martha and Harry Bloch. Harry was an army private
stationed at Fort Dix. When she was six, the Bloch family moved to Fort Lee, NJ.
One day, as a
very young child, Norah wandered on to the set of "Rescued from Eagles"
starring DW Griffith. Looking predatory and starved, she was naturally cast as an
extra, "chick #5." Pretty soon, due to very loose child labor laws, Norah dropped out of school and was under contract with Champion Film Company, making
as many as nine films a day. In 1918, with many important bit roles under her belt (Urchin #3 in "The Perils of Pauline," the consumptive friend of
the "Littlest Key Stone Cop," Pretty Pauper #2 in "Robin
Hood"), she made her move to Hollywood. First though, the future Mrs. Diamond had a husband to get
rid of. When she was 16, Norah Diamond met and married Marvin Diamante, a film cutter with
the Edison Company. Horrified, Norah's parents had that marriage quietly annulled. The union produced one
child, Tiffany Diamante, who was later "donated" to the Edison Company
in a basket left outside the casting office.
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| "Rescued From Eagles" (1905) |
Martha Bloch vowed to chaperone her daughter to her new Hollywood life. By
this time, Martha was a widow, Harry having died of tetanus during WWI. (He stepped on a nail while getting off the boat in Calais.) Unfortunately, Mrs. Bloch never made it to Hollywood. Having never had a formal education,
herself, she got on a boat that she thought was headed to California - she did
not have a strong grasp of geography - and was never heard from again.
Miss Diamond, however, took the train cross country. While on the train, she met, married and divorced fellow would-be actor Walter Alehouse. He would be
the second of her 7 1/2 husbands. The 1/2 was due to having accidentally married
actress Norma Shearer in the Divorcee (1930) when she was a lighting stand-in for
Robert Montgomery during a wedding scene that used an actual priest. The scene
was eventually cut from the film.
While in Hollywood, Norah Diamond continued her torrid pace of constantly
being cast in largely unsuccessful, overlooked or just cheap rip offs of more
successful Hollywood films, including "The Pullman Broad" (1919),
"The Shifty Beard" (1920), and "You Should Change your Husband's
Pants" (1925). By the middle of the 1920s, Norah Diamond was the most averagely paid
"lead actress" in films no one ever cared to see. In the 1930s when
the sound revolution hit, no one wondered if she'd adapt.
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| Norah and "wife" Norma Shearer |
Slowly, as the bit roles died out, Norah was left earning money as a
stunt double (despite a clear lack of any formal training whatsoever) for Sonja Henie (she couldn't skate) and Norma Shearer (her former husband) - Very few people to this day
remember that early Norma Shearer films featured lengthy and vicious fight
sequences. (Irving Thalberg demanded it). However, many of these sequences were
to be later left on the cutting room floor..
During the fall of 1942, in a fit of desperation, Norah Diamond got very
drunk at a party she crashed at the Chateau Marmont and ended up married the next
morning to Louis Costello, the half brother of mobster Frank Costello - not, as she had mistakenly thought, half of the comedy duo Abbot and Costello. The poor
sap, however, was deeply in love with her and bought Norah her first car (the 1941
Cadillac Convertible she currently still drives) and a house in the Hills. Sadly, Louis committed suicide by shooting himself in the back nine times outside the
Flamingo Resort in Las Vegas. With the money he left her (and the ties to
certain associates), Norah Diamond bought in to Tym's Place, becoming a "not so
silent" partner.
Come meet all the Dames, Dicks and Gangsters at...
IRTE NOIR
IRTE NOIR
Friday and Saturday nights at 8 p.m.
May 18 & 19, June 1 & 2
The Producer’s Club
358 W 44th St, New York, NY
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