Cradle of the Deep
The Grand Adventures of Joan Lowell that Were Not Quite True
First published in 1929, Cradle of the Deep was the bestselling book that became a scandal!
In 1923, Joan Lowell was an aspiring writer
and rising silent film star in Hollywood. Young, beautiful, and talented, she
was adored by all. Then she published her autobiography in 1929: a rip-roaring
memoir of a young girl growing up on a schooner with her hearty sea captain
father and a crew of salty sailors and the incredible and death-defying
adventures she had traveling the world.
Except…none of it was true!
Born in 1902 in Berkeley, California as Helen Wagner to a middle-class family. Yes, her father was a Pacific Ocean merchant schooner captain. And yes, he took Joan—and her mother—on a 15-month sailing adventure when she was a girl. After knocking around odd jobs in San Francisco, young Helen moved to Los Angeles to take acting lessons and began her career. Her early notable roles were in pirate movies as either the intrepid heroine or damsel in distress.
She published her “autobiography” which became a runaway best-seller in 1929. But a few months later, the truth was revealed. She had never left the shores of California! Amidst the scandal, Joan remained defiant, telling the Pittsburgh Press in 1930, "Eighty percent of it was true and the rest I colored up. I made some changes to protect people and the rest to make it better reading. That's an author's privilege.”
This edition features archival photos and press clippings and a short biography of Joan Lowell and her infamous book.
Joan Lowell was born in Berkeley on November 23rd, 1902 as Helen Wagner. Her film career began in 1919 at Goldwyn Studios, where she worked as an extra. She can be spotted in Souls for Sale (1923), a delightful comedy-drama about the movie business. After Souls for Sale, Joan appeared in a handful of films, and her career seemed to be going places. In 1925 an uncredited Joan plays a friend of the film’s heroine in Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush. This was Joan Lowell’s last film work for almost a decade. In 1927, she married playwright Thompson Buchanan, but the marriage barely lasted two years. After divorcing Buchanan, she penned her infamous ‘autobiography’, Cradle of the Deep, a Book of the Month club selection that shifted over 100,000 copies.
D. W. Griffith was eager to produce a big screen adaptation of Cradle, but when the truth came out his plans went by the wayside. Joan later sold the film rights to tiny Van Beuren Studios. The result was 1934’s Adventure Girl, an outrageous road-show feature shot on location in Guatemala. Joan narrates and appears on screen as a feisty gal eager to plunge into the jungles of Central America in search of lost cities and forgotten treasures.
Aside from her film career, Joan Lowell worked as a tabloid reporter and continued to write books—including Reporter Gal (1933) and Promised Land (1952). In addition to writing, she ran a large coffee plantation in Brazil from 1936 until her death in 1967.
