1927: Syracuse actress briefly fools all of Hollywood

Updated Jan 18; Posted Jan 21, 10:00 AM

Syracuse actress Alma Jeanne Williams could not find steady acting work in Hollywood, so she dyed her hair blonde and became Sonia Karlov, with Danish/Russian origins. (Copyright 2006 Heritage Microfilm, Inc. and Newspaperarchive.com)

By Johnathan Croyle | jcroyle@syracuse.com

For a moment in 1927, a young woman from Syracuse had all of Hollywood, including one of its most famous filmmakers, Cecil B. DeMille, completely fooled.

But only for a moment.

Alma Jeanne Williams was born in Syracuse on July 12, 1908. She took dance lessons as a child and dreamed of a career on the stage.

In 1923, while attending Central High School, her friends mailed her photo to the editors of the Syracuse Herald for the newspaper’s annual Miss Syracuse contest. Being only 15 years old, she was too young to enter.

A year later, they tried again. This time she won.

“It was Alma Jeanne, the high school girl, who stood on the Wieting Opera stage that summer night, dressed in a ruffled organdie gown, her light brown hair curled in tight ringlets all over her head, her arms full of roses, to be presented for the first time as Miss Syracuse,” the Syracuse Herald remembered.

With brown hair, this is how Alma Jeanne Williams looked before becoming Sonia Karlov. Syracuse Journal Dec. 6 1927

Being Miss Syracuse earned her a place in the 1924 Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. At 16, she was the youngest of the 100 contestants.

Despite her young age, she wowed the judges and the press. She was a “sensation” at the Rolling Chair parade and was a guest of honor at the American Beauty Ball on the Million Dollar Pier.

She was focused on doing bigger things.

“Of course, what I would really like would be to get into the movies,” she was heard saying repeatedly during her week at the pageant.

Although she did not win the contest, she created enough buzz about herself that she was asked to join the Ziegfeld’s Follies in New York City. She left Syracuse, just months before she was due to graduate high school in January 1925.

Alma Jeanne Williams, representing Syracuse, was the youngest participant at the 1924 Miss America Pageant. Copyright 2005 Heritage Microfilm, Inc. and Newspaperarchive.com

She continued to perform with the Ziegfeld’s into 1926, but her attentions were still on Hollywood and appearing in movies.

In October 1926, she secretly married George Williams, the son of the publisher of the News-Banner newspaper in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was considered one of New York City’s biggest “playboys.”

She moved to Los Angeles, but nothing went right.

The only acting jobs she could find were as an extra. She appeared in the 1926 film “Collegians” and “The Private Life of Helen of Troy” in 1927.

But she could not find steady acting work and was reduced to performing a “perilous high-dive” act because she needed the money.

Her brief marriage ended in divorce and a serious automobile accident landed her in a hospital for six weeks.

While convalescing, she debated whether she had a future in movies or if returning to New York and to the “Follies” was not a better option.

She decided to stick it out, only with a completely new persona.

Sonia Karlov

She dyed her hair blonde, adopted her mother’s maiden name of “Sonia Karlov,” and created a new backstory for herself, in which she was the daughter of a Danish mother and a Russian father. She perfected an accent and gave herself a romantic European background, spending her young life in Berlin, Paris and Vienna. Some media accounts said she billed herself as a “European countess.”

She hired a new agent and convinced him that she was an up-and-coming European star, looking to make in big in Hollywood.

Her hoax worked.

“Hollywood bowed at the feet of Sonia Karlov,” a wire story said in December 1927. “She was society’s toast. She was invited everywhere. Handsome leading men, directors and producers were taken in by her charm and quaint ‘Danish’ accent.”

Soon the same executives who had no interest in hiring Alma Williams of Syracuse, were clamoring for the services of the exotic Sonia Karlov.

Her new agent arranged for a film test at the studio of Cecil B. DeMille, considered to be a founding father of American cinema. DeMille saw the test and fell for her charms and personality.

She was signed to a five-year contract and chosen to have the lead role in DeMille’s latest film “The Godless Girl.”

But the stress of living a new life began to take its toll.

“It had been fun at first, when there was nothing at stake.” Photoplay magazine said in 1928. “Now it was becoming more nerve-racking, for always was the fear that her employee would learn, and the contract would go up the chimney.”

When everyone learned the truth, it was in the cruelest way possible.

When Karlov was introduced at a Saturday luncheon as DeMille’s newest star, Lina Basquette, an actress and former Ziegfeld Follies dancer, shouted “Her name is Jeanne Williams and I knew her in the Follies!”

With her secret out, Karlov decided to come clean and personally apologized to DeMille, claiming she had resorted to the ruse because she was at the point of starving.

The story here takes a turn into fiction. It seems DeMille, Karlov and the media agreed to a lie which made everyone feel good.

After coming clean to DeMille, newspaper articles reported that the director praised her ingenuity, daring and acting skill, allegedly saying:

“That’s all right. You fooled my staff and you fooled me. You even put one over on all of Hollywood. If you’re a good enough actress to do that, you are good enough for my pictures.”

But, in reality, she was finished in Hollywood.

“If there was anything that DeMille couldn’t stand,” Scott Eyman wrote in his biography of the director, “Empire of Dreams,” “it was a deceitful actor. Williams was banished.”

This two-page profile of Sonia Karlov appeared in the Syracuse Herald on Feb. 5, 1928. By that time, Hollywood had banished her after her hoax was discovered, but the "feel-good" narrative was continued. Copyright 2006 Heritage Microfilm, Inc. and Newspaperarchive.com

Basquette of all people was given the role in “The Godless Girl.”

(The movie, about the romance between an atheist young woman and the male head of a Christian youth organization, was a bomb at the box office, except for in the Soviet Union after censors removed the young woman’s religious conversion at the end.)

Ironically, newspapers reported that Karlov was dropped from the film because it called for an “American girl,” and Karlov was “too continental.”

There were even stories published that blamed Karlov’s disappearance from the scene on her fake accent, which, they said, she had learned so well that she could no longer speak like an American, damaging her appeal as “talkies” took off.

Eventually, the truth seeped out.

A 1934 Syracuse Herald article claimed Karlov had been “released from her contract but received some financial compensation.” In 1940, the Syracuse Journal said she was “blacklisted.”

Her IMDb page lists just one film she appeared in after 1928. She played Lulu Bellew in 1929’s “Lucky in Love.”

She returned to New York City and appeared in a series of plays on Broadway, including “Hilda Cassidy” and “Sisters of the Chorus.”

In 1935, she retired from the stage after she married Australian-American artist Henry Clive. The marriage lasted just five years, during which she turned to writing her own plays and movie scripts.

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