Vintage Italian postcard. Cinema-Illustrazione, 19, series 11. Charles Farrell and Elissa Landi in Body and Soul (Alfred Santell, 1931), a film about WWI Royal AIr Force pilots.
Good-looking American actor Charles Farrell (1900-1990) was a Hollywood matinée idol of the Jazz Age and Depression era. He seems now forgotten, but between 1927 and 1934, he was very popular thanks to his teaming with Janet Gaynor in 12 screen romances, including 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), and Lucky Star (1929). He retired from films in the early 1940s, but TV audiences of the 1950s would see him as Gale Storm's widower dad in the popular television series My Little Margie (1952-1955).
Italian born actress and writer Elissa Landi (1904–1948) was rumored to be a descendant of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. During the 1920s she appeared in British, French, and German films before traveling to the United States. In Hollywood, she became a popular star of the 1930s.