Background
Viña Delmar was born Alvina Croter on January 29, 1903 in New York City, the daughter of Ike ("Charlie Hoey") and Jennie A. Guerin Croter.
Viña Delmar was born Alvina Croter on January 29, 1903 in New York City, the daughter of Ike ("Charlie Hoey") and Jennie A. Guerin Croter.
Her grandfather, Simon Croter, was a tailor and merchant in New York City"s Lower East Side. Her grandfather was a German-speaking Polish Jew from the city of Dobrzyn. Her parents were known as "the team of Hoey and Lee".
According to one obituary, Delmar was a "young woman wrote a series of novels that scandalized the country, making them not only best-sellers but giving her entree to Hollywood".
Her first major work was a 1928 novel titled Bad Girl, a cautionary tale about premarital sex and pregnancy, which was adapted for both stage and screen. The book was the fifth best-selling work for that year.
Bad Girl was considered so scandalous at first that it was initially banned in Boston. In 1929, she published Loose Ladies, a series of fictional portraits of modern American city women, and the novel Kept Woman.
Delmar was married to Albert Otto Zimmerman who changed his name in July 1929 to Eugene Delmar.
They resided in Scarsdale, New York from 1928 until their home was sold in 1940. The couple had one son, Gray, who was born in 1924 and killed in an automobile racing accident in 1966. Viña Delmar died January 19, 1990 in Los Angeles, California.