Unless you're fairly well versed in the world of silent cinema the name Lina Basquette is not likely to sound familiar to you. Even if you are, it's highly likely you many not know of her as she only has a couple of films of significance and even those are generally considered to be small potatoes in the grand scheme of things cinematically speaking. In fact it's almost more common for people to be aware of her deep connections to many of the biggest folks of early film history as well as her rather tumultuous life-s+yle resulting in 9 unsuccessful marriages two of which tragically ended in her being widowed. No, she wasn't a suspected black widow you conspiracy ninny! Still...why a Basterd you say?

Lina Basquette was born Lena Copeland Baskette in San Mateo, California. She started training in dance at an early age and ended up getting a movie contract from Carl Laemmle (yes...that Laemmle) at age 8 when he saw her dancing at the San Francisco World's Fair. She made a number of movies for about 7 years and even managed to garner some lead roles going into the early '20s. She abandoned the movie career for a couple of years when she became involved with The Ziegfield Follies where she changed the spelling of her name and was billed as "America's Prima Ballerina". She was in fact an incredibly good dancer and the legendary Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova attempted to get Lina as her protégée a couple of times, but alas Lina's mother was a dominating force and very much wanted her daughter to become a star. It was a decision that broke poor Lina's heart.

At age 18 Lina fell in love with 38 year-old Sam Warner (y'know...one of them Warner Bros. brothers) and they married. She began working in films again but in two years time her personal troubles would begin with the death of her first husband and the horrific experience of having her daughter taken away from her. She turned to the hard partying life-s+yle of the jazz age to drown out the bad voices and began her series of problematic marriages.

During this highly tumultuous period of Lina's life she made her two most well known films. One was Frank Capra's The Younger Generation (1929), and the other was The Godless Girl (1929) directed by the great Cecil B. Demille. The Godless Girl was to be Demille's last movie for Pathe and his last completely silent film. The Godless Girl was an insanely over the top two-pronged attack of a film On one hand it was based on the life of Queen Silver and the recent trouble in Los Angeles over Atheist groups at high schools clashing with fundamentalists. But the real meat of the film is the remaining 3/4 of the movie after the initial clash results in an accidental death and sends the two ringleaders to an incredibly harsh juvenile detention center. Here the film becomes a rather shocking expose on some very real problems in the system at that time in America's history. Despite the early period of the film, neither side is represented as "right" or "wrong" and in fact things twist a bit as the atheist comes to accept God and the bible thumper slowly rejects the idea of a just God under the extreme and constant nature of his torture.

The film was a terrific failure in United States unfortunately. The Jazz Singer (1927) had already ushered in the sound age and as the movie companies scrambled to meet up with the demand, the idea of an epic silent film just seem out of place and too creaky and quaint for a then modern audience. You would have thought that the subject matter alone for the late '20s would have garnered it some sort of notoriety resulting in some decent business. But alas it was not to be. It was noticed however, but not where anybody expected it to be noticed. It was this attention that resulted in Lina Basquette doing something that perhaps no person has ever done.

The movie may have been a failure in the U.S., but when the film made it overseas it ended up being wildly popular in Austria and Germany. Lina and company began to receive fan letters from high officials from Germany and many ones from Adolph Hitler himself. They spoke of her starring in a great new film industry that they were starting up in good old Deutschland and in 1937 she was invited to a grand party held in her honor which, not really knowing anything about them other than being the heads of state, she decided to attend. Unfortunately she did not properly grasp Hitler's level of attraction towards her and he really attempted to get to know her. Her reaction?

"But he had a terrible body odor; he was flatulent. The man repelled me so much. But he had a sweet smile, and above all he had these strange, penetrating eyes. I do remember thinking, 'Oh, here's another actor - look at the gestures, the way he's using his eyes."

Soon after that is when a highly significant event occurred that Lina chose not to speak of except to close friends for a number of years. After the horrific result of Hitler's rampage across Europe became clear she was embarrassed to even mention it as she didn't want to be associated with the likes of him. What happened? Well...apparently Herr Hitler became a bit too aggressive with his amorous advances towards her and Lina had finally had enough. Then she did it. She did something that oh so many wish they could have done.

Thank you for reading.