Silent film actress Esther Ralston was absolutely stunning as well as gifted. She was a major silent film star but her film career diminished overnight. The studios said that she wanted Paramount Studios to up her price on her contract to $100,000 when talkies came in, which they refused to do. But in her autobiography Some Day We'll Laugh, she wrote that her career was sabotaged by Louis B. Mayer when she refused to sleep with him at the height of her contract talks with the studio. Although she earned her fortune from investments, she lost it all in the stock market crash of 1929. Forced to find work, she was occasionally made TV appearances in the 1950s and early 1960s but in later years she had to work as department store salesperson and talent agent.