"In 1922, a recent high-school graduate from Berkeley, California, moved to Los Angeles, with the hope of becoming an actress. She called herself Helen Joan Lowell, eventually dropping the Helen and going by Joan. She got work as an extra in "Souls for Sale," a movie about a young woman who tries to become a Hollywood star. The bit part didn't attract much attention but, later that year, a detail from her biography did:"
"The following February, the Los Angeles Times featured Lowell in a story on Hollywood extras. Having grown up alongside an all-male crew, Lowell "never saw another girl until she was 16," she said. Another L.A. paper reported that Lowell had survived shipwrecks and scurvy as a child, and dubbed her "the most fascinating catch of the far-flung movie net in many moons.""
In 1922 a Berkeley high-school graduate moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and adopted the name Joan Lowell. She worked as an extra and claimed she had spent sixteen of her nineteen years aboard her father's four-masted schooner, the Minnie A. Caine. Newspapers amplified her nautical backstory, reporting shipwrecks, scurvy, and that she "never saw another girl until she was 16." That sea persona helped her secure notable film roles and public attention despite limited acting talent. Her reported personal details varied over time, and much of her autobiography proved to be fabricated.
Read at The New Yorker
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