Pepi Lederer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pepi Lederer

Pepi Lederer (born March 18, 1910 in Chicago , † June 11, 1935 in Los Angeles ; born Josephine Rose Lederer ) was an American author and actress .

Life

Pepi Lederer was born Josephine Rose Lederer in Chicago. Her mother, Reine Davies, was the older sister of actress Marion Davies and an actress herself. Her father, George W. Lederer, was a producer and director on Broadway . Pepi had a younger brother, Charles , who became a successful screenwriter.

When Pepi Lederer was two years old, her parents divorced, and her mother later married the actor George Regas . As a child, Lederer was nicknamed "Peppy" because she was always in a good mood. When she was eighteen she changed her real name to "Pepi".

Since she was twelve, Lederer lived with her aunt Marion Davies and her partner, media tycoon William Randolph Hearst , on his farm in San Simeon or on the estate in Beverly Hills . Her mother rarely saw her anymore. In the following years she built up a circle of friends that often met in San Simeon. There she met Louise Brooks in 1928 , with whom she became a close friend. Over the years that followed, Lederer developed a penchant for gluttony and excessive alcohol consumption and began to use cocaine.

Lederer developed a desire to become an actress, and Marion Davies gave her a small role in the 1927 film The Fair Co-ed , which was no longer included in the final cut. In 1928 she played a role in another Marion Davies film, The Cardboard Lover .

In 1929, at her aunt's insistence, Pepi Lederer moved to New York, ostensibly to curb her dissolute lifestyle in Beverly Hills. An abortion was carried out there at the end of March 1930, which probably resulted from the rape of the Lederer, who was heavily drunk at the time, on New Year's Eve. Lederer allegedly couldn't remember the rape or the perpetrator.

In June 1930 Pepi Lederer accompanied her aunt Marion and William Randolph Hearst to England on board the Olympic . She convinced Hearst to give her a job at The Connoisseur and lived mostly in London for five years , where the lesbian Lederer started a relationship with Monica Morris. In the following years she spent some time in Geneva and in the meantime planned to start studying there. During this time she made the acquaintance of some well-known personalities such as Cecil Beaton and Tallulah Bankhead . On April 15, 1935, Pepi Lederer and Monica Morris returned to the United States, where they first stayed in New York for two weeks and then moved to Hearst's Beverly Hills estate.

Because of her now apparent substance abuse, Lederer was admitted to the psychiatric ward of the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles at the urging of her aunt, where she died shortly afterwards in a fall out of the window, intent on suicide.

The memorial service was held at St. Mary of the Angels Church in Hollywood. Pepi Lederer found her final resting place in Marion Davies' private mausoleum in Hollywood Forever Cemetery .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Allan Ellenberger: Pepi Lederer: 'Marion Davies' Niece'. In: http://allanellenberger.com . March 18, 2010, accessed April 3, 2013 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Joan Schenkar: Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde, Oscar's Niece . Da Capo, 2001, ISBN 0-306-81079-4 , pp. 406-410 .
  3. ↑ a b Pilar Baumeister: We write suicide ...: Writer's suicides in four centuries . Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 978-3-631-60458-8 , pp. 115 .
  4. ↑ Leslie Davis: Hollywood's golden age of lesbian 'glam'. In: http://examiner.com . August 27, 2009, accessed April 4, 2013 .
  5. ↑ a b Three autograph letters, signed, from Pepi Lederer to Charles Lederer. In: http://www.pbagalleries.com . Retrieved April 4, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Lederer, Pepi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lederer, Josephine Rose (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author and actress
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago
DATE OF DEATH June 11, 1935
Place of death los Angeles