Here we have one of the earliest screen "redheads", or at least one of the earliest I have not introduced to you before.
Ella Hall was born on March the 17th, 1896, whilst her mother, Mary Hall, aged just nineteen, was still hoping to become a famous actress. The birth put the dampers on that, a bit, but it did inspire the family to move to Hollywood, which sounds as if it were in the hope that little Ella may have more luck. And she did, appearing on the stage as a very small child. However she did no films until 1910, when she was signed to Biograph Studios. Here she certainly had some work, loads of short one or two reelers, as a fleeting glance, and sometimes more.
In 1915, she moved to Universal Studios, which is the reason she is here, for in 1917 she starred in a movie called "Polly Redhead". This was billed as "The famous Pollyooly stories by Edgar Jepson come to life". I have not been able to find out much about them except that they were first published in the UK, in 1911, by Mills and Boon, which suggests they were romances, but if you look at them online they now seem come under children`s books. Maybe that gentle kind of "romance" is sadly no longer what modern ladies desire.
Ella had rather a stormy time romantically, she loved the high life, which usually means fast living and expensive tastes. For a long time she was on and off with Robert Zigler Leonard, a film maker, whom she had met in 1914 when they both starred in a serial called "The Master Key". He directed it as well as played the lead - and he cast her in several other films, when they were together, you can kind of tell how the relationship was going by the fact that she comes and goes. In 1916, he replaced her in a film called "The Plow Girl", with Mae Murray, but Ella was back in his next film, released in July 1916, which is rather tellingly called "The Love Girl". And in March 1917 he starred Ella in "Polly Redhead"
Then, in June 1917, Universal Studios held a gala, at which Ella Hall turned up on the arm of another Universal Star, Emory Johnson. They had actually starred together in 1916 in a film called "My LIttle Boy", though this sat on the shelf a while and was not released until December 1917. Anyway at some time during the gala they stood up and announced they were getting married . They were indeed married, on September the 6th, 1917, (and, by the way, "The Plow Girl" was released in November 1917), after which she moved into his house with his mother.
In August 1918, Robert Leonard married Mae Murray.
Ella had her first child in January 1919, her second in September 1920, and a third in April 1923. However after that things declined, the couple were frequently in the papers, and not in a good way, and they separated. She actually filed for divorce, citing his mother`s interference, but in 1926 their second son was killed in a road accident and they seem to have got back together, albeit temporarily. She also had another child in 1929, but then they separated again and in 1930 they divorced for good, though they never seem to have stopped fighting..
In 1933 she left the film industry forever and took a job in a dress shop. She remarried in 1934, to a Charles Clow but that was annulled in 1936 because he was actually still legally married to his first wife. There was a rumour that they would make it legal and wed again, but they never did. And she died on September the third, 1981, at the age of eighty-five
This is one of those tiny little poster stamps, printed by Wentz & Co. of New York, and later Berlin, where they were Wentz & Co. G.m.b.H. They made loads of them, featuring cinema stars as well as advertisements for many different companies, but we are no closer to learning much of their story - though they do have an even better connection to cartophily than this stamp, as their name appears on Liggett & Myers "Fairy Tale Stamps", issued with Piedmont Cigarettes.