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They Lived Here

By Renée Kaplan | Staff Writer

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The notion of Long Island as home to chic colonies of film actors hardly started with the recent influx to the Hamptons. Way back in 1915, the Vitagraph Co. opened a studio in Bay Shore. And for a while, Norma Talmadge, Fatty Arbuckle and Marie Dressler lived near the studio.

In the '20s, rumor had it that the infant film industry in Astoria would be moving east to Bayside. And so, such luminaries as Gloria Swanson, Talmadge, W.C. Fields and John Barrymore set up an actors' colony in Bayside.

Even during Hollywood's golden age, many film stars resided on the East Coast from time to time. Here's a sampling: Ginger Rogers chose Douglaston; comic Lou Costello and crooner Rudy Vallee lived in Forest Hills; Eddie Bracken, Alice Faye, and June Havoc and sister Gypsy Rose Lee set up housekeeping in Rego Park; Ethel Barrymore spent summers in Atlantic Beach, and Hollywood gruffman Broderick Crawford lived in Freeport.

Great Neck was well represented by celluloid stars Fredric March and his wife, Florence Eldridge, as well as Clifton Webb, Leslie Howard and Ed Wynn.

The seaside town of Long Beach was home in the '20s to ``It Girl'' Clara Bow, and historical records suggest that silent screen star Rudolph Valentino lived there or in Atlantic Beach in the same era. And Marlene Dietrich, known for her unfailing glamor, maintained an unpretentious summer house in Point Lookout.

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