Vintage original 7.5 x 9.5 in. US double-weight matte photograph of motion picture stars JANE NOVAK AND EVA NOVAK c.1920's.
The popular blonde sisters are depicted seated back-to-back and wearing similarly-styled dressed and hairstyles. As indicated in the upper left corner, this photograph was taken by the acclaimed Hollywood photographer, Walter Seely. It was used for publicity purposes at the time in either a newspaper or magazine and features handwriting on the verso. It is in fine+ condition.
*"As a fetching, shapely silent screen co-star, EVA NOVAK would be best known for her early work as cowboy Tom Mix's love interest in ten of his popular westerns. Although she sparked a number of florid dramas and light comedies with other top actors of the day, in retrospect it was with Mix with whom she would be memorably partnered. Born on Valentine's Day in St. Louis, Missouri in 1898, Barbara Eva Novak was one of a bevy of beauties who was able to parlay her wholesome good looks into a career. The daughter of Joseph, an immigrant from Bohemia, and Barbara Novak, Eva began as a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty and first began in comedy for L-KO Company with the shorts Roped Into Scandal (1917) and Hearts and Flour (1917).
Two years later she advanced to full length features and was partnered with Tom Mix in such westerns as The Speed Maniac (1919), The Feud (1919), The Daredevil (1920), Desert Love (1920), The Rough Diamond (1921), Trailin' (1921), Sky High (1922) and Chasing the Moon (1922). She also appeared opposite cowboy icon William S. Hart in a couple of his rugged oaters, and was occasionally allowed more versatility in a series of enjoyable comedies and dramas.
It was cowboy star Mix who taught the agile Novak how to perform her own stunts in those western adventures and she proved quite good at it until 1921, when she married William Reed (1894-1944), an assistant director and stuntman of his own, who insisted she stop the dangerous tricks. Come the advent of sound, Eva's popularity faded, finishing out her career in Australia with her husband. She returned occasionally to film and sometime TV but nearly always in minor, unbilled character parts until the late 1960s when she retired altogether.
A soulful, fragile-looking blonde beauty, silent screen star JANE NOVAK was born in St. Louis, Missouri on January 12, 1896, and supposedly began her film career at age 17 when a director took to a photo of the young girl on the makeup table of her own aunt, the film star Anne Schaefer. From 1913 Jane appeared in a host of short films from the Vitagraph Company, a few of her earliest being Anne of the Trails (1913), At the Sign of the Lost Angel (1913) and Sacrifice (1913) all of which starred her Aunt Anne. Jane almost immediately moved into female leads and second leads with such films as Deception (1913) and Any Port in a Storm (1913).
She continued to make Vitagraph shorts during the years 1914 and 1915, including a couple of comedies vehicles for Harold Lloyd -- Willie's Haircut (1914) and Just Nuts (1915) -- before gradually moving into feature films. At Universal she appeared opposite Harry Carey in the serial Graft (1915) and with actor/director Hobart Bosworth in The Iron Hand (1916).
Elsewhere, she, like her equally successful younger sister/actress, Eva Novak, got a handle on the western genre with her delicate looks slightly belying a vitality for the outdoors. Jane appeared opposite William S. Hart, who directed many of his own productions, in The Tiger Man (1918), Selfish Yates (1918), The Money Corral (1919), Wagon Tracks (1919), and Three Word Brand (1921). At one point she was Hart's fiancée after divorcing actor Frank Newburg, but it ended and their professional relationship ended as well. The actress also appeared alongside her sister's favorite co-star, Tom Mix, in Treat 'Em Rough (1919).
Throughout the productive 1920s, Jane's high-caliber male co-stars included Charles Ray, Sessue Hayakawa, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery, Tom Moore, House Peters, John Bowers, Buck Jones, Kenneth Harlan, Earle Williams, James Rennie, John Harron, and even Lightning the Dog. Sisters Jane and Eva did appear on screen together in The Man Life Passed By (1923). Two of Jane's finest performances came in melodrama -- Thelma (1922) and The Lullaby (1924).
Jane made a fortune in late 1920s real estate and film production but lost it all following the 1929 stock market crash. In 1974, Harper & Row published her cookbook entitled "Treasury of Chicken Cookery". Sister Eva died at age 90 of pneumonia at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Woodland Hills, California in 1988. Jane followed her two years later (of a stroke), about a month after her 94th birthday also at the Woodland Hills Hospital."
*(source: IMDb)
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