When I recently visited the Fullerton Public Library’s website, I read an entry on their “Fullerton’s Female Trailblazers” page about a silent film actress named Sharon Lynn, who was known as La Verne Lindsay when she graduated from Fullerton High School in 1920. In 2016, she would be inducted into the FUHS Wall of Fame. But what I found fascinating was that Sharon Lynn would go on to star in the first “perfected talking picture” to be screened at the Fox Fullerton in 1929 (known at the time as the Mission Court Theatre), which made me interested in learning more about Lynn’s career in old Hollywood and how she made the transition from silent films to talkies.

I headed to the Fullerton Public Library’s Local History Room, where archivist Cheri Pape had a ton of historical documents and photographs of the actress. The daughter of an oil worker who moved around a lot, Lynn, whose formal name was D’Auvergne Lindsay, was born in Weatherford, Texas, in 1901. Her father was later employed with the Standard Oil Company in Brea, and her family settled in La Habra around 1919.

Pape pointed me to a copy of The Pleiades yearbook from 1920, where I learned that Lindsay was a part of many social activities when she attended Fullerton High School. While at FUHS, her friends would call her by the name La Verne Lindsay. She was a song leader, a member of the nominating committee, and had a leading role in the drama class production of John Harley Manners’ comedy The House Next Door (1912). Her class yearbook said that she aspired to be an actress.

Lynn was described by Debora Richey in Fullerton Heritage’s January 2017 newsletter as a “singer, songwriter, and musician” with a “strong, bluesy voice.” After graduating from Fullerton High School, she began her career singing in night clubs, doing some modeling for fashion publications, and working as an extra on various movie productions, appearing in quite a few film shorts. In fact, she made her first credited acting debut (as La Verne Lindsay) in the 1924 six-reeler Curlytop.

In what she thought would be her big break, Lindsay won a scholarship in 1925 to attend the Paramount Pictures School in Astoria, New York. According to Richey, this was a new venture by the movie studio to train young talent for careers in the film industry. Lindsay and two other scholarship winners from Hollywood were expelled after rebelling against the school’s strict disciplinary rules. Because of this, she found herself stranded in New York. Eventually, she was able to get a job as a chorus girl in the Broadway production of Sunny Side Up. Around this time, she decided to change her name to Sharon Lynn and return to California.

Following her success as Leah Cohen in the silent picture Clancy’s Kosher Wedding (1927), she signed a long-term contract with Fox Films in 1928. Lynn was one of the few actresses to successfully make the transition from silent films to talkies, easily passing her Fox Movietone test. The studio had high expectations for her in the late twenties and early thirties. Between films, she starred in stage productions and composed songs. One of Lynn’s most notable songs was “Monte Carlo Moon,” which became a huge hit and was featured in the 1926 film Monte Carlo. She went on to act in a number of silent westerns, most notably The Cherokee Kid (1927), and Son of the Golden West (1928), which marked the debut of western star Tom Mix.

According to Debora Richey, after Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer came out in 1927, there was a high demand for films featuring sound at Fullerton’s Mission Court Theatre. So, on Sunday, February 17th, 1929, when the movie theatre announced the opening of “Perfected Talking Pictures,” local residents were excited. What made the event even more anticipated was the fact that Fullerton’s first talkie, Give and Take, featured Sharon Lynn. She would make regular appearances in different musicals and comedies, including Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 (1929), Speakeasy (1929), The Big Broadcast (1932), and Happy Days (1929), notable for being the first feature film shown in widescreen format.

Besides appearing in the Broadway production of Sunny Side Up, Lynn went on to act in the film version from 1929, co-starring in a sequence which a number of historians consider the first truly cinematic production number on film. According to the New York Times, in Sunny Side Up, Lynn “sang an Eskimo number with an Eskimo chorus.”

In fact, according to the Fullerton Heritage nomination form for the FUHS Wall of Fame, many of the early musicals that Lynn appeared in are considered by cinema historians as “important steps in the developing genre as studios experimented with new ways to present song and dance outside the confines of a stage show.” She eventually appeared on screen with well-known actors and celebrity personalities such as Spencer Tracy, Charles Farrell, Cary Grant, Joel McCrea, Bing Crosby, and Will Rogers.

She’s best known for her role in Laurel and Hardy’s comedic 1937 film, Way Out West, where she acted as a devious foil to the clueless comedians. In one of the most famous scenes from the film, Lynn tickles Laurel to steal a mining deed he has hidden in his jacket.

During the Thirties, Lynn reached her peak as a motion picture star. At this time, any activity she did out in public would be written about. Everything from her exotic bird collection to her fashionable dress sense would be regularly reported on in quite a few of the popular movie magazines, including Variety, Photoplay, and Modern Screen Magazine. In fact, back in 1929, Photoplay selected her as one of the most likely to achieve film success. Many Fullerton residents followed her career closely. She made several local appearances at events, including the Anaheim Valencia Orange Show in May 1928.

By the end of the Thirties, Lynn found it harder to find film parts and retired from cinema. In 1932, she married Benjamin (Barney) Glazer, who won two Academy Awards as a writer. They eloped to Yuma, Arizona, and later settled in the Malibu Movie Colony, a one-mile stretch of beachfront, home to many Hollywood celebrities. After Glazer died in 1956, Lynn married Beverly Hills businessman John R. Sershen. She died in 1963 at the age of 62 of multiple sclerosis, according to the Inglewood Park Cemetery.

Fullerton Heritage nominated Sharon Lynn to be included on the Fullerton Union High School Wall of Fame in October 2015. Nearly a year later, on September 16, 2016, she was inducted, becoming only the twelfth 1920s graduate to make it into the Wall of Fame in the FUHS Administrative Offices.
A number of Lynn’s films and production numbers are available on YouTube, including “Turn on the Heat” and Way Out West. The Fullerton Public Library’s Local History Room also has movie stills, publicity photographs, fan magazine articles, and other information on Lynn. Open Public Access Hours for the FPL Local History Room are Tuesdays through Fridays from 11 am to 1 pm. Please call (714) 738-6342 or use the Ask an Archivist form to contact the Local History Room staff.