Sally Long on AllMovie

Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld was rumored to have insured Sally Long for 100,000 dollars against her falling in love and leaving his Follies. A publicity stunt no doubt, but she certainly was beautiful, in a dark, exotic way, and said to have been the inspiration for the song "I Wonder What's Become of Sally." Well, wonder no more. In the end, Sally Long did leave the Follies, first for Eddie Cantor's Kid Boots, then, inevitably, Hollywood, where she made her screen debut opposite veteran comic Lloyd Hamilton. After decorating a series of potboilers, Long was voted a 1926 WAMPAS Baby Star. Unfortunately, that year's selection was a veritable harvest of rising talent and Long seemed rather lost in such heady company as Joan Crawford, Janet Gaynor, Dolores Del Rio, Fay Wray, and Mary Astor, and most of her screen assignments remained low-grade comedies and Westerns. There was an especially atrocious serial along the way, King of the Jungle (1927), and she was an heiress involved with a lumberjack in The Thrill Seekers (1927). Variety dismissed the latter as a "quagmire of palpable dramatic impossibilities" and she wisely retired to marry composer Jean Schwartz.