Silent Actress DNA Unholy Resurrection

Above: Some of the DNA you can buy online.

Not sure if this is a joke, or art, or a real company, but The Bone Trade is apparently collecting bits and pieces of the remains of legendary Silent Movie Actresses so that you can buy their DNA (which-excuse me, belongs/belonged only to them, right?), and clone a Jean Harlow or Lupe Velez for your own uses. Marlene Dietrich's hair probably isn't too hard to come by, more impressive is what appears to be Theda Bara's eyelash, but who kept a bit of cloth stained by Evelyn Brent's blood? And how does one get permission to exhume and then remove various bone fragments from Barbara Lamarr? If this company is going around and A) Obviously not getting permission from the actual deceased people to remove/collect parts of their remains, and B) Not getting permission from their descendents to do so, aren't laws being broken? There's something creepy about keeping human remains in your home, but even more so about pulling a "Pygmalion/Frankenstein" (Frankensteinmalion?) to bring your ideal dead actress back to life.

I am interested in recreating the physical body of a given historical person, but clearly there is no method to resurrect a specific personality, talent, or the cultural environment the person grew up in-which hopefully would be a large part of their appeal. Do we really want a Greta Garbo with a California accent and no acting ability? Well, I'm sure some people (guys?) would, but I wouldn't. In addition, several of these ladies had issues: a pregnant Lupe Velez took an overdose of Secanol, Mary Astor attempted suicide with sleeping pills several times, Alice White was dogged by sex scandals, and most bizzarely, Olive Thomas:

While doing film preparations mixed with a vacation in Paris, France, she and her husband went out for a night of entertainment at the famous bistros in the Montparnasse Quarter. Returning to their room in the Hotel Ritz at around 3:00 in the morning, an apparent drunken Olive Thomas Pickford accidentally ingested a large dose of mercury biochloride which had been prescribed for her husband's ongoing venereal disease. She was taken to the American Hospital in the Paris suburb of Neuilly, where her husband and former in-law Owen Moore stayed by her side until she succumbed to the poison a few days later. A police investigation followed and her death was ruled accidental.

Perhaps not the best specimens to revive?

Collection and veneration of human remains has a long history in western culture-but the aim was more to have a memento of a holy person than to say "Hey, let's clone some St. Francis of Assisi's!" This is probably due to the aformentioned impossibility of cloning metaphysical traits rather than physical ones. After all, who'd want to clone a dusty old saint when you could clone a hottie like Louise Brooks?

The trade in Corporeal Memorabilia aka the "Bone Trade" is a quiet but popular hobby.


(via Metafilter)