Peggy Hopkins Joyce

Active - 1926 - 1933  |   Born - May 26, 1893   |   Died - Jun 12, 1957   |   Genres - Drama, Comedy, Romance

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Biography by AllMovie

Famous mainly for being famous -- and for marrying and divorcing (or merely dating) a dizzying array of millionaires -- blonde-bobbed Peggy Hopkins Joyce (born Marguerite Upton) had been in the Follies and Earl Carroll's Vanities when the famous illustrator James Montgomery Flagg directed her in a series of short subjects in the 1910s. She would descend on Hollywood at intervals in the 1910s, 1920s, and early '30s but managed mainly to prove that she was no actress. Her most notorious film appearance was also her last, playing an internationally famous gold digger in International House (1933), a hodgepodge Paramount comedy in which she earned top billing over the likes of George Burns, Gracie Allen, and W. C. Fields. The latter supplied the film's biggest laugh and most notorious moment in a scene that has to be seen to be believed, but which included the suggestive discussion of the whereabouts of a cat. Her life an endless series of tabloid headlines, Peggy Hopkins Joyce is believed to have been the inspiration for the character of the mercenary Lorelei Lee in Anita Loos' twice-filmed Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. One of her contemporaries perhaps best summed up her appeal; said nightclub hostess Texas Guinan: "Peggy Hopkins Joyce should not be buried like other folks, or cremated, or anything like that, but just be put into Tiffany's window to sparkle forever."