(re)Introducing Elva La Treque
Elva La Treque was an American film actress working in Hollywood during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Born and raised in Menominee MI, she was discovered by Joel Goldstein-Farberg of Mitsumount Pictures when she was 19 years old and doing summer stock in New Jersey. The year she signed with Mitsumount she made four films and continued at that pace until 1956 when she was released from her contract with the studio. Ms. La Treque’s oeuvre consisted mainly of film noirs where she inevitably played the femme fatale but her filmography is peppered with lighter fare and musicals.
La Treque’s personal life was as dramatic as her professional roles. She was seen about town with many a luminary and married her frequent co-star Blanc La Roque four times (1945,1948, 1959, and 1960). She and La Rocque bore one daughter but did not raise her. Her life is documented in posters and film stills from her movies and the press clippings from her lifetime.
She is a complete fabrication by me.
In 1993 in New York City, with the help of my friends, I created her. At the time I was thinking about the media’s role in the creation of fame. Being a young artist in New York I knew so many talented people: visual artists, performing artists, musicians. It shocked me how much talent was out there and how many of those people would never be known. It made me sad. It made me mad. I started paying attention to all the actors’ names in the credits of old movies and wondering if they were satisfied just to have the work. Did they think their time would come to be Humphrey Bogart if they just hung around long enough?
Perhaps it came out of frustration of not being able to create that lucky break for my friends and neighbors. Perhaps it was a way of working through some sort of acceptance that it would never happen to me. In any case I started fabricating a whole life for this fictional woman and spent many a night (and a few daylight hours) on the streets of the West Village making her and her films come to life.
Just like those actors in the scrolling credits of old films I had it in my mind that I could get attention for her as well as myself. In 1993 there was no such thing as an influencer. Heck the internet still meant AOL and boing boing boing. No, I had to go about it the old fashioned way with wheat paste and stamped letters to publications signed by Patti de Menthe, La Treque’s press secretary. Just as my talented friends also knew it was tough to get attention for your work in New York, even back then. Ironically my point was disproved by my own lack of impact.
Fast forward to 2025. This past fall while relooking at this body of work I started thinking about the confluence of the internet, smart phones, and social media and how they have changed the landscape for communication and also false information since the time I made this work. My interest in posting the work now is to see the difference in where it sat in the 1990’s and where it sits today. It has been fascinating for me to revisit the work 30 years later. A lot has happened to me personally in that time and that of course changes my relationship to the work. In some respects however it also calls to mind the phrase “The more things change the more they stay the same”.
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