A New York Times article from March 14, 2010 says that Talmadge "is misremembered, having inspired two unfair caricatures that have lived on in a pair of popular films. In Singin' in the Rain (1952), she is parodied as Lina Lamont ... More malignantly, Billy Wilder used Norma Talmadge as the obvious if unacknowledged source of Norma Desmond, the grotesque, predatory silent movie queen of his 1950 film Sunset Boulevard."
However, neither of these identifications is in the mainstream of critical opinion. Nearly all other writers regard both Norma Desmond and Lina Lamont as fictional composite characters, each mirroring some aspects of various faded silent stars but neither of them primarily a disguised portrait of anyone in particular. Lina Lamont bears little resemblance to Talmadge's personality either on or off the screen, and unlike the delusional Desmond, Talmadge was not stuck in the past and had left her stardom behind her with considerable relief.
