Grace Kingsley's Hollywood

One hundred and ten years ago this month, Grace Kingsley mentioned a big event in downtown Los Angeles:

There are a few patriots among the motion-picture people, who proved it by turning out in the preparedness parade yesterday. Charles Clary and William Burness from the Fox company, and Dot Cummings and Ray Meyers are among the best-known of the motion-picture folk who proved their patriotism by taking the twenty-block march. A number of Universalites also marched.

Earlier she reported that the marching Universal Studio stars included J. Warren Kerrigan, Carter de Haven, Herbert Rawlinson, Cleo Madison and Marie Walcamp, as well as all the Spanish American War veterans and even a few Civil War vets.

They joined fellow Southern Californians in a march to support the Federal government’s increased military spending, just in case somebody invaded. Los Angeles Mayor C.E. Sebastian had proclaimed it was for “the demonstration all those who believe that our country’s perpetual security depends largely upon adequate defenses,” and the L.A. Times wrote that they marched “not because they are eager to fight, but rather to show they are ready at any time to do their share in defending their homes and families.” 

Despite strong support for staying out of the war in Europe (including the popularity of Thomas Ince’s film Civilization), people were worried that fighting might come to the United States. The preparedness movement had begun in 1915 with support from former president Theodore Roosevelt and the Army’s Chief of Staff Leonard Wood. They had succeeded in convincing the government to pass the National Defense Act of 1916 in June, which increased the size of the army from 100,000 to 200,000 active-duty members, as well as expanding the National Guard and the Navy. Nobody was talking about it yet, but the movement’s leaders were thinking about more than domestic defense—they assumed that sending American soldiers to Europe was inevitable.

The L.A. City Council began planning their parade at a meeting on May 17^th, but first they had to settle on a date. Initially they wanted to hold it on Saturday June 10^th, but the Merchants and Manufacturers Association objected because it would interfere with their most profitable day of the week. The Association preferred July 4^th. However, business owners in the beach cities objected, because that didn’t want to cut into their lucrative Independence Day business. Not until the first of June did the Council finally chose June 14^th, Flag Day (a Wednesday that year), giving them only two weeks to plan the whole event. They also asked the public for donations to pay for it.

The committee worked quickly. The plan was fairly simple: each marcher would bring his or her own flag (stores ran out of flags a week before the parade and one of the organizers had to place a special order for more from Kansas City), and every available band was asked to join. Everybody was to be on foot, except for the members of the planning committee who would get to ride on horses. The mayor asked employers to give their staff a half-holiday.

Current and former members of the military, civic, and professional groups were to march together in 70 divisions, and each division had a marshal to organize them. For example, Hampton del Ruth of Keystone Studios was the marshal of the Actors and Allied arts division. Before the parade they hoped that 80,000 men, women, and children would march in downtown Los Angeles, or one out of every seven residents.  

The parade started at 1:15 p.m. The L.A. Times was a big booster. Their florid report opened: 

The unconquerable spirit of the great American commonwealth manifested itself yesterday in a vast citizen army, representative of every walk of American life, that marched proudly through the streets of the business section. Rich and poor, men and women, old and young, merged into a great river of red, white, and blue, that rolled triumphantly along, the greatest demonstration of patriotism and loyalty ever witnessed on the Pacific Coast.

69,200 people marched (not quite what they’d hoped for), and 40 bands and drum corps played patriotic tunes. According to the Times, an estimated 200,000 people watched them:

Standing six deep, the spectators presented a solid wall of humanity on each side of Spring Street, Broadway, and First Street as the column passed. Every window along the line of march was crowded with people, while fire escapes of the buildings were alive with occupants.

It lasted a long time: the final marchers disbanded at 5:00 p.m. 

After the event, the planning committee announced that they hadn’t collected enough money to pay for it, and they had to ask for $1300 in donations. The whole parade had cost $3700, including $1000 for transporting military troops, $500 for flags, and $700 for music.

In addition to the parade J.A. Quinn held Preparedness Week at his Empress Theater in downtown L.A. The bill included a nine-reel feature The Battle Cry of Peace (1915) which was re-named Preparedness. It was about the horrors of an invasion and was based on a book, Defenseless America. To publicize it, Quinn used the same successful approach that he did with Damaged Goods (1914), showing a preview to civic and business leaders, clergy and the press to get their support. Kingsley went to it and wrote, “The pictures were most impressive and showed the meagerness of our national defenses, especially those of the West.” An unsigned Times review described it more fully:

“Preparedness shows in graphic detail the defenseless condition of this country at the present time and illustrates what might happen to the American people of the country should be attacked. The shelling and capture of Washington, DC and New York is shown, and with these financial bases in his hands the enemy has a comparatively easy time in dealing with the people as they please. Husbands, fathers, and brothers are torn from their families and the poor, defenseless women are left to endure the orgies of drunken invaders.”

Quinn also had the parade filmed from the theater’s roof and added it to the bill that same night, so people could see what they’d participated in. He was such a clever showman! They had five shows a day, plus special matinees for school children. It was so popular that they had an all-night screening, running the bill continuously from 10:30 am Friday to 2 am on Sunday.

The march had an additional effect: the Times reported that according to recruiting officers, the number of applicants for enlistment to the navy, army, and Marine Corps doubled in the days following the parade. The following year young men wouldn’t have a choice: the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, and a draft registration was held on June 5, 1917.

“All-Night Run for Big Film,” Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1916.

“An Appeal for Contributions,” Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1916.

“Banner Supply is Exhausted,” Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1916.

“Calls All for Great Parade,” Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1916.

“Eighty Thousand to March in Spirit of Preparedness,” Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1916.

“Enormous Crowd Watches Parade,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1916.

“Outdo Men in Demonstration,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1916.

“Parade Films to be Exhibited Tonight,” Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1916.

“Parade Stirs Martial Ardor,” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1916.

“Patriotism in its Big Theme,” Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1916.

“Preparedness Host to March Here Flag Day,” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 1916.

“Show Quick Action,” Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1916.

“Spirit of Americanism Echoed in the Sturdy Tramp of Marching Thousands,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1916.

“Thousands in Line for Preparedness,” Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1916.

“To March for Preparedness,” Los Angeles Times, May 18, 1916.

“Well, What Day Will Suit ‘em?,” Los Angeles Times, May 24, 1916.

One hundred years ago this month, Mary Pickford sent Grace Kingsley a letter from Montecantini, Italy all about her travels with her husband, Douglas Fairbanks:

You would be most happy to see the delightful reception we have met with all through Italy, Naples, Genoa, Florence and Rome, by the Fascisti, artists, and the social world. The demonstration at the station in Rome on our arrival was as enthusiastic as any we have ever had. I was again forced to ride on Douglas’ shoulder, and we were rushed into the post office to escape the amiable but rather too eager mob.

Pickford and Fairbanks had left Los Angeles in late February and arrived in Italy on April 23. The police mistook their fans for rioters, very much like when Pickford and Fairbanks visited England in 1920. The couple departed safely through the back door of the post office.

Douglas Fairbanks loved to travel; Pickford gave her opinion in her 1955 autobiography:

 After our hectic and exhausting honeymoon, traveling with Douglas became an annually observed ritual. Every spring, summer, or the moment, in fact, a new film was finished, trunks were packed and off we went on another world tour.

She didn’t get a say in the plans; she wrote they went “anywhere there were still faces and places Douglas had not seen.” Part of her lack of enthusiasm was because she had “always been a poor eater, whereas Douglas could eat almost anything with relish.” She mostly lived on tea and stale crackers when they were away from home.

In her letter to Kingsley Pickford also described about how her moviegoing experience in Italy was different from the United States:

Annie Rooney had its premiere in Italy during our stay in Rome and was well received, although it was cut down several thousand feet. All pictures are reduced to between five and six reels here, as there are long intermissions between each reel, owing to fire laws and the fact that the picture is run on one machine, a very primitive method. The music is excellent, but the theaters are small.

I haven’t been able to learn if this was true throughout the country. It seems doubtful; they must have had changeover projection with two machines at some theaters, and it hadn’t been that long since Italy was famous for their 12 reel long epics. 

She had more observations on life in Italy in 1926, and the letter became political:

“We have found the most energetic, inspiring spirit in Italy, due, of course, to the influence of Mussolini, and it was noticeable all the way from Naples to Rome. The building activities are unbelievable—smiling and contented faces and busy hands everywhere. Mussolini’s theory is taxation and work for everybody and it seems to have excellent results.”

Benito Mussolini had been appointed Prime Minister in 1922 and had declared himself dictator in 1925. Pickford didn’t mention it in her letter to Kingsley, but the couple met him, traveling back to Rome from Berlin just for the meeting. The visit went well, according to the New York Times:

“I have seen you often in the movies, but I like you better in real life,” Fairbanks said to the Premier. He added that he was enthusiastic and impressed by the progress and modernity of Italy.

Mussolini smilingly answered: “I don’t know whether I like you better in the movies or in real life, but I certainly do both. I admire the movies tremendously, because the action is so precise and rapid, which is one of the finest things in all life.

He presented both stars with autographed photographs, and in addition gave Mary a beautiful rose.

Fairbanks continued to praise the dictator to the NY Times; they interviewed him when they came back to the U.S. in August and he said, “I enjoyed the visit to Italy very much and my talk with Premier Mussolini. He has re-made his country. It was the only country that we were in on the tour where the people seemed to be all busy and where trains, steamboats and other kinds of transportation were operating on full schedule and on time.”

Pickford also said nice things about him to the press. When she came back to Los Angeles in October, she had Kingsley over for tea and told her she seemed star-struck by him, saying “his eyes are full of dancing lights, and he has a beautiful smile and a beautiful voice.”

Their politics were a comparatively minor part of Pickford’s and Fairbanks’ lives, and most of what people wrote about them was about their careers and relationship. Fairbanks’ biographer Tracey Goessel said about the trip:

Fascism was not yet a bad word to the politically naïve…Here was the flip side of fame’s virtues, if, indeed, fame has virtues. Talent and charisma did not necessarily come with wisdom or mature political judgement, yet the opinions of celebrities on matters of governance were sought by an avid press. Mary would harden in her conservatism, praising fascism and Mussolini even into the late 1930’s. Fairbanks gave it far less thought. He was simply drawn, as the proverbial moth, to fame.

Goessel was entirely correct about Pickford’s public pronouncements. While most of her newspaper coverage in the mid-1930’s was about her divorce from Fairbanks (finalized in 1936) and marriage to bandleader Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers in 1937, in 1934 they did cover  her appearance at a celebration of the 15^th anniversary of the founding of Fascist Party held at the Hotel Ambassador in New York City. The Times said her speech brought down the house when she said, “I congratulate you upon having Il Duce. Italy has always produced great men and when she needed one most Mussolini was there. Viva Fascismo! Viva Il Duce!” 

She also had kind words for Hitler; on May 3, 1937 the New York World Telegram quoted her saying, “Adolf Hitler? He seems to be a great fellow, too, for the German people. Things look much better over there.”

After that she changed. She said why and how it happened in her 1955 autobiography, Sunshine and Shadow. She was at a dinner with former actress Carmel Myers and her husband Ralph Blum, who were denouncing Hitler’s Jewish genocide, and Pickford:

unthinking fool that I was, I tried to explain it as a situation that the Jews had partly brought upon themselves. I said something about how wealthy Jews had bought up German properties after World War 1, how I had heard that some American Jews had formed a syndicate to exploit the depression in Germany.

“Mary,” Carmel said simply, “I will make one comment to that. You must never forget that before we are Jewish or gentile, we are all human beings.”

That didn’t just stop Pickford in her tracks, it also made her reflect later:

Because of that intolerant outburst I was so ashamed of myself that I went home that night and got down on my knees. I asked God to forgive me and show me the right path to help these persecuted people.

“Mary,” I said to myself when I rose from my knees, “you’re not a poor Christian; you’re no Christian at all. You still have to prove to yourself that you really believe in Jesus and the things He taught.”

She went on to put her shame to good use. Her book doesn’t say exactly when Carmel Myers set her straight, but on November 17,1938 she gave a speech at the Women’s National Press Club in Washingron, D.C., and she made her new opinion clear, saying: 

I can’t think the whole German people are murderers, thieves, and liars. They’ve got this mad leader. He’s as mad as a March hare, that fellow. If somebody would put him in a hospital for six months, maybe the world would be saved…But what I’d like to know, what poor, unfortunate Jewish person stepped on Hitler’s toes?

She also called for American rearmament, even though it would raise taxes: 

An additional tax at this time would be almost unbearable, but taxation is better than having happen to us what happened to Czechoslovakia. I’d rather do with much less and know that democracy was safe for myself and my family and those who will follow after.

She said she stopped short of wanting to declare war on Germany, saying she only wanted to declare peace. She got an ovation from her audience, which included wives of Cabinet members.

She also worked to make amends closer to home, becoming a member of the board of the Junior Auxiliary of the Jewish Home for the Aged. In October 1939 she held a very successful fundraising tea at Pickfair for them. She continued to support them for over 20 years; Alicia Mayer (Auxilary founder Ida Mayer Cummings’ great granddaughter) wrote about Pickford’s work.

*The two people in the photo who aren’t raising their hands are former newspaper reporters who were certainly better-informed than the rest of them, Roger Larabee Lewis and Jay Theodore Reed. Lewis was a jack-of-all-writing-trades for the Pickford and Fairbanks companies. After graduating from Harvard in 1906, he became a journalist. He was the Petrograd correspondent for the Associated Press during the Russian Revolution, then he wrote for and edited a weekly newspaper based in Russia for the American and British Expeditionary Forces. After he returned to the United States in 1919 he wrote for Colliers Weekly and other magazines, then he went to Hollywood in 1921 to do a series of articles for a national magazine and got hired by Fairbanks and Pickford to both help with publicity (he was quoted as both Jack and Mary Pickford’s spokesman) and work in Fairbanks’ scenario department.

Reed did all kinds of behind the camera work for Fairbanks including production manager, assistant director and scenarist. He’d graduated from the University of Michigan (M.S., 1909) then worked for a drug company in Detroit. He changed careers and became a reporter for the Detroit Free Press. That’s how he met Fairbanks during his third Liberty Loan tour, they became friends and Fairbanks offered him a job in Hollywood. He went on to be the president of the Motion Picture Academy 1933-34, in addition to directing and producing films. I think both Lewis and Reed were smart enough not to pose for a photo pretending to be a fascist. Some people did already know better in the 1920’s.

“15^th Fascist Year is Hailed in Italy,” New York Times, March 24, 1934.

“Duce Dedicates Film Project,” Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1937.

“Doug and Mary to Start for N.Y.,” Film Daily, February 25, 1926, p.4.

“Fairbanks Returns; Greeters Jam Pier,” New York Times, August 26, 1926.

“Film Stars See Mussolini,” New York Times, May 11, 1926.

Tracey Goessel, The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks, Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2016.

“Italy Trip Planned by Mary Pickford,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1934.

Grace Kingsley, “Mary Pickford Finds Russian Pictures Crude Compared to Those of Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, October 10, 1926.

“Mrs. Doug,” Motion Picture Magazine, February 1927, p.58.

“Mussolini Agrees to Receive Doug,” Press Democrat, May 9, 1926.

“’Our Mary’ Plans to Study in Italy,” La Verita/The Truth (Waterbury, CT), April 13, 1934.

“Pickfair Tea to Honor Auxiliary,” Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1939.

Mary Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1955.

Martha Strayer, “Mary Pickford Says ‘Rest Cure for Fuehrer Might Save The World,’” Washington Daily,November 18, 1938.

Eileen Whitfield, Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood, Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1997.

One hundred and ten years ago this month, Grace Kingsley wrote about a new film company:

The expected has happened—a motion picture company organized and controlled by women. The American Woman Film Company is its name, and its finances are backed up almost entirely by wealthy literary society women of this locality, whose avowed intention it is to produce motion pictures of the highest moral and artistic tone.

I’m surprised that Kingsley expected a women-run studio to come along, but I’m less surprised that they felt they need to justify themselves by making movies that would improve the audience. The company’s president was May Whitney Emerson, “a writer of national reputation,” and it was set up to adapt her stories into films (I guess that’s why ‘woman’ was singular, not plural). The vice president was Alice L. McCaldin, who Kingsley called “a prominent society woman of Pasadena;” she described the other investors as “many other local society women of wealth.”

Moving Picture World wrote a longer article about the AWFC, and it sounds like Emerson had feminist goals. She told them that the underlying theme of their films would be a history of the current revolt of women. She said: 

Women have been absolute slaves to the will and standards of men. It is against that and for a single standard of purity that they are fighting…The women of today are struggling for economic independence so that they may dictate who shall be the fathers of the future race. No wife whose husband supports her is free from bondage.”

However, the first project announced wasn’t about women’s economic independence. Instead it was an ambitious ten-reel feature called Saul of Taurus all about the early life and conversion of the Apostle Paul.

The Company’s press agent was busy; there were regular follow-ups about the production in Kingsley’s column. They started shooting on May 10^th. The following day Kingsley ran an item about how hard it was to find period-appropriate shoes—Del Valle said she had to interview 15 different costumers before she found “an old French dealer on Main Street” who even knew who Saul was, and he was making “a pair of cutey shoes all curled up at the toes” for her. On the 17^th Kingsley wrote that “a handsome new studio, equipped with the latest style of stage and apparatus, is being rushed to completion at No. 1339 Gordon Street in Hollywood, to house the American Woman Film Company.” They planned a laboratory to develop and print 1000 feet of film per day, which was “adequate for the needs of the company, since its policy is to produce feature pictures of the highest class and not to rush through the production of releases.” On the 21^st she wrote about Arthur Maude’s misfortune:

It fell to Mr. Maude’s lot to climb up the bare face of a rock with a fifty-foot sheer drop below him. Suddenly he commenced to slip, and he desperately clutched at the thing closest to hand. It happened to be a bush of poison oak.

It took five minutes to rescue him, and he was looking for a remedy for his itchy hands.

Then there was a much worse accident on May 24^th. The L.A. Times reported: 

“A seven-seated van, freighted to the running boards with the players of the American Woman Film Company, stumbled against a half-hidden stone as it roared along a clay trail above Chatsworth Park yesterday afternoon, tottered for a yard as it staggered for footing, then tumbled over the brink, making one complete revolution as it rolled to the bottom of the gully, twenty feet below. Nineteen of the twenty-eight passengers were injured.”

The van, which carried still-costumed extras plus the director and assistant director, was part of a caravan returning from a location shoot, and while “the spot where the accident occurred is particularly lonely, the road unnamed,” other members of the company were there and they rushed to help. Despite his injuries (a dislocated left arm, sprained left hand and a cut over his right eye), director J. Farrell Macdonald took charge. Many victims were pinned underneath the vehicle and the uninjured worked quickly to get them out. The assistant director, “John McDonogh, with one leg broken in two places, was dragged aside, and there he lay for an hour, rolling and smoking cigarettes, unspeaking, but pallid with pain.”

One extra, Mrs. Irmegard Schoonemaker, had the worst of it. The Times report said that the truck axel crushed her chest, and “the fog-filled alleys in the hills gave ghastly echoes to her screams of agony.” However, later the Los Angeles Herald said she had a fractured skull and was near death.

Most of the injured had been gotten out from under the van before the police arrived from 32 miles away. It took about an hour to take everyone away. 

It looks like the company intended to carry on after the accident. Whoever told the Times reporter about the accident mentioned that their “financial backing is unusually secure,” which was an odd thing to include. On May 29^th Kingsley reported that work on Saul would be resuming that day, even though Farrall hadn’t completely recovered; P.C. Hartigan, a cast member, would be the temporarily director. She also said, “all the persons injured in the accident are now reported out of danger.” (I hope that included Mrs. Schoonemaker—I haven’t been able to find any public records about her.) That was the last appearance of the company in her column until June 9th, when Macdonald’s resignation from AWFC and subsequent hiring by Mabel Normand was announced.

That was the last report about Saul of Tarsus; the American Woman Film Company spent more time in court than it did making movies. On June 10, the Los Angeles Herald reported that J.C. Parker, its secretary and general manager, had warrants out for his arrest, but they couldn’t be served because he’d left town without paying many of the actors. They owed them about $8,000 in total. The article said that investors had failed to come up with the money they’d promised. Unsurprisingly, in July Motography reported that the AWFC had filed for bankruptcy. 

“Actress Probably to Die,” Riverside Daily Press, May 25, 1916.

“Heroism Shown by Actors as 23 are Hurt in Auto Crash,” Los Angeles Herald, May 25, 1916.

“Manager of Film Co. Faces Arrest,” Los Angeles Herald, June 10, 1916.

“Many Hurt When Motor Bus Turns Somersault,” Los Angeles Times, May 25, 1916.

G.P. von Harelman and Clarke Irvine, “News of Los Angeles and Vicinity,” Moving Picture World, May 27, 1916, p. 1515.

“Women’s Company in Difficulties,” Motography, July 15, 1916, p. 157.

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley noticed a new trend:

“In all your life put together you probably have never seen so many circuses as you are seeing and are going to see in the movies these days.”

She was right—the number of circus films had doubled to 20 in 1925 and stayed in that neighborhood until 1929, when they went back to around 10 per year, according to the AFI Film Catalog. Kingsley wasn’t particularly happy about that. She visited the set of one in production, Spangles, and used her report to complain about the tropes she was already tired of:

“For one thing, there is no broken-hearted clown! The clowns in this are all clever, snappy clowns, who just do their stuff and step out on their days off like anybody else, without worrying over any particular jane.”

She was looking forward to this one because she was promised loads of laughs (she even saw a bearded lady dancing a funny Charleston during her visit): 

“Spangles has a lot of comedy, contrary to the usual circus story, which is usually full of thrill and drama so that you’d think these circus people never heard a real joke, or that there was never any sunshine in their lives.”

While there weren’t any weepy clowns, unfortunately, the impression she got from the set that day was wrong: Spangles wasn’t funny. It was another love triangle melodrama between Spangles (Marion Nixon), a bareback rider, the circus owner Bowman (Hobart Bosworth), and Dick Radley (Pat O’Malley), a fugitive who is hired as a chariot racer. Bowman is found dead and Radley is suspected, but an abused elephant is revealed as the murderer. Dick and Spangles end up together. 

Kingsley didn’t get the opportunity to be disappointed: Spangles wasn’t shown in Los Angeles. It did screen in New York, and  Film Daily thought it was a “fairly conventional melodrama,” however, its “great array of excellent circus atmosphere makes this particularly attractive for juvenile audiences.” It’s been preserved at UCLA.

Several more memorable circus movies were soon to come, including The Unknown (1927) and Laugh, Clown , Laugh (1928) both with Lon Chaney and The Circus(1928) with Charlie Chaplin. Alas, they were about broken-hearted clowns. Poor Miss Kingsley!

“Spangles,” Film Daily, October 31, 1926.

One hundred and ten years ago this month, Grace Kingsley mentioned a film that addressed the war in Europe while also having box-office success:

Capacity houses all day yesterday marked the beginning of the second week of the big Ince production, Civilization. The wonderful allegory, with its powerful, logical plea for peace, its condemnations of war, regardless of who wins, the audacious yet always reverent presentation of the Savior, the pictures of black, hideous conflict with its horrible devastation, have gripped Los Angeles as has no other screen spectacle for some time.

Wildly popular in 1916, the plot of Civilization sounds extraordinary now. It tells the story of a weapons developer, Count Ferdinand (Howard Hickman), who invents an enemy-destroying submarine for a king (Herschell Mayall). His pacifist fiancée (Enid Markey) convinces him to join her cause, so he sinks the sub in battle, drowning himself. The king’s scientists resurrect him, but his body contains Christ’s soul. Jesus tries to spread his message of peace, so the king condemns him to death. Christ (George Fisher) leaves the Count’s body and materializes to show the king the horrors of war, who then decides to devote his life to peace.

Most critics at the time admired the technical quality of the filmmaking, but several disagreed with Kingsley about how wonderful the allegorical scenes were, most notably her boss, Henry Christeen Warnack. In his review he wrote that he hated that the dead Count was reanimated and Christ came for a chat with the king; he thought it would offend three kinds of people: Christians because it was irreverent, Jews because it was mystical and exaggerated, and nonbelievers because it was absurd and undramatic. He concluded: 

 This violation of good taste and this error in judgement belong to the misconception of the story and the subsequent strain upon scenario construction but have nothing to do with the fastidious direction and the luminous photography of the play. Realizing the vast sum of money and the huge investment of talent and good faith that have been expended in this pretentious film, it is with deep regret that I am compelled to report it as a disappointment. Its many good points do not offset its fundamental error.

Guy Price at the rival Los Angeles Herald didn’t like the allegorical scenes either, but was bored by them, not offended, writing, “while this is a marvelous piece of double exposure, a science that is here shown at its best, the scenes are tediously long and would not suffer if shortened one-half.” Nevertheless, he was so enthusiastic about the film’s politics that he thought they overcame that fault:

It has something more inspiring, more vital, more universal—a plea against that most rapacious, deadly, and ruinous of all sins—war. No human being no matter how gluttonous for bloodshed or personal gain can sit through a performance of Civilization and emerge from the theater in favor of the wholesale slaughtering of his fellow man….Mr. Ince must be given credit for a truly artistic and humanitarian achievement, one that should arouse every right-thinking man, woman and child to rebellion against a crime that has done more to wreck the happiness of the world than all the other evil products of nature combined.

It seems like ticket-buyers had an equal enthusiasm for the movie’s anti-war message, and as Kingsley said, it was a big success. Motion Picture News reported that in the first ten days, every screening in Los Angeles was sold out. It played at the Majestic Theater until June 4^th.

It debuted in New York City just a few days later where the criticism was also mixed. W. Stephen Bush in Moving Picture World said, “As a spectacle Civilization is an undoubled success.” He admired “the early scenes of war, the terrible contrast between the apparent peace of civilization and the grim presence and an art rarely surpasses in film history.” However, he thought there were too many unnecessary and over-long titles, the acting was terrible, and the allegory with the Count and Jesus made for “a confusion of ideas.” 

Wid’s Film Daily agreed, saying “technically it is superb…but at times is rather depressing and consequently figured as entertainment I am afraid that it is a little heavy for an average audience…the story, however, is so decidedly allegorical that this film lacks the human dramatic development of big gripping situations.”

Wid Gunning was wrong about the audience. Bush reported that they “brought forth a storm of applause” at the premier in New York. It made $800,000 in total at the box office, according to Brian Taves. Civilization gave exactly what many Americans wanted in 1916: a reason to stay out of the war in Europe. The upcoming Presidential election, in which the winner Woodrow Wilson ran on a platform of having kept the country out of the war, demonstrated how much they didn’t want to join the fight. 

Ince wanted credit for Wilson’s victory. Right after the votes were counted in November, Motion Picture News quoted an Ince studio representative pointing out that Wilson had endorsed the film and saying, “it is not mere conjecture, but a reasonable probability that this picture operated to influence large numbers of votes in favor of President Wilson.” The notion that Civilization swayed opinion, rather than reflected it, still turns up in articles about it. 

It was no small accomplishment to change public opinion when Congress entered the war on April 6, 1917. It sounds like several things contributed. President Wilson convinced some religious leaders that it would be a war to end all wars, so they were no longer against it. Some anti-war material became illegal. For instance, poor Robert Goldstein was arrested and convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 for including scenes of British war atrocities during the American Revolution in his film The Sprit of ’76 (1917). They were called pro-German.

When sentiments changed, Ince re-cut Civilization. The only version available now is a shortened 1931 re-issue that was restored by The Museum of Modern Art.

W. Stephen Bush, “Civilization,” Moving Picture World, June 17, 1916, p.2056.

“Civilization and the Presidential Election,” Motion Picture News, November 28, 1916, p.3292.

“Civilization Praised by Many Peace Societies,” Motion Picture News, October 28, 1916, p.2707.

Wid Gunning, “Civilization,” Wid’s Film Daily, June 8, 1926, pp.628-9.

J.C. Jessen, “Enthusiasm for Civilization Sweeps Coast,” Motion Picture News, May 20, 1916, p.3043.

Guy Price, ”Civilization Dramatic Plea for Peace,” Los Angeles Herald, April 18, 1916.

Edwin Schallert, “The Problem of the Feature,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1916.

Brian Taves, Thomas Ince: Hollywood’s Independent Pioneer. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2011.

Henry Christeen Warnack, “Drama: Not Daring; Violates Good Taste; Artistic Touch Is Absent in Story of War Picture,” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 1916.

Henry Christeen Warnack, “Drama: Superb Work is Brat,” Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1916.

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley reported, using language that was acceptable at the time, that there might be a new movie star on the horizon: 

Perhaps the first colored person to star in pictures will be Carolynne Snowden, who is no longer to be let to hide her dramatic talents under the dark bushel of a colored revue. Miss Snowden is to step forth and shine in a series of three-reel comedies to be made by an independent company, according to word reaching us today.”

The three-reel comedies didn’t happen, and racism prevented Snowden from becoming a star, but she had a long and successful career in entertainment. Carrie Artemissa Snowden was born on January 16, 1900 in Oakland, California. Her father Frederick was a Pullman porter and her mother Nellie looked after their family. She had two older brothers, Theodore and Tyler, two older sisters, Margurite and Florence, and a younger brother, Wesley. She married Fontaine Malcolm Walker (born in 1898), a construction worker, and their son, named after his father, was born in 1919. In the 1920 census they were living in San Francisco, and she gave her profession as housewife. 

In a 1957 interview she told journalist Stanley Robertson how she got into show business. She said she got her start in San Francisco in 1923 (she said “when I was a school girl,” shaving a few years off her age and leaving out her husband and child) when theatrical producers Fanchon and Marco were looking for a chorus line to dance behind Frisco Nick in Struttin’ Along, a vaudeville revue starring blues singer Mamie Smith. She told Robertson that “I had never studied dance professionally but because mine is sort of a natural talent, a friend suggested I try out.” She got the job.

Struttin’ Along toured the West Coast. She said she impressed the producers and after eight weeks they launched her as a single in the show. 

In 1924 she moved to Los Angeles and soon found work as a nightclub entertainer. In December 1925 she debuted a show called “Black Bird Revue of 1926” at Bert Lyman’s Café Alabam on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. After that, she headlined at the Cotton Club in Culver City. 

Later she said she was smitten by the movie bug and that’s why she wanted to move to LA. She credited Zasu Pitts with discovering her at the club and suggesting her for a part. Snowden was hired to play maids in The Gilded Butterfly (1925) and The First Year (1926).

That’s when the announcement about her contract for three-reel comedies that Kingsley wrote about appeared. Nothing came of it, but the following year she had her most-remembered part in an MGM film about a family of horse breeders and the Kentucky Derby, In Old Kentucky (1927). She played Lily May, another maid, but the role was more than just tidying up in the background: Lincoln Perry (stage name Stepin Fetchit) was hired to play her love interest. It was his first film; now he’s recognized as the first African-American movie star. 

Unfortunately, her roles didn’t improve, but she occasionally had uncredited small parts in big films like The Wedding March (1928) and Showboat (1929). After sound came to film she got to appear as a nightclub performer in several musicals, including Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 and Flying Down to Rio (1933).

She had a glamorous life in Hollywood, according to an interview she did with Floyd J. Calvin in 1927. He said she had a maid, a $6,000 specially built cream sport roadster, and plenty of diamonds and furs. She also enjoyed doll collecting. Unfortunately, a large part of the interview was about how she maintained her figure; it involved drinking grapefruit juice in the morning and not eating sweets. Calvin didn’t mention her husband or son. She divorced Walker at some point, but there aren’t any public records of it until the 1940 census.

Also in 1927 she performed in a Vitaphone short talkie, No. 2109. She sang “Just Another Day” and “St. Louis Blues,” then made a costume change into a white satin suit and did a Charleston. Film Daily reviewed it and didn’t like it: they thought her dance was “outdated” and the instrumentalists (Henry “Tin Can” Allen, Harvey Oliver Brooks, and Thomas Valentine) were “indifferent” and their “hot syncopation fails to click.”

She later explained that the Great Depression made film jobs scarce, but she didn’t give up performing. If you’d like to see her, someone on Reddit has posted 53 seconds of her singing “That’s the Lowdown on the Lowdown” from 1930. During that decade she toured the United States with her dance company. In 1931 reporter Henry Brown caught up with her and wrote in the Chicago Defender that:

 pretty, vivacious Carolynne Snowden is back! She came into the city this week pretty much on the same order as a whirlwind comes into the city, sweeping us off our feet…We have seen her in a dozen or more performances, and each one seems more brilliant than the last. She is captivating and she leaves her audience spellbound.”

She later told Stanley Robertson that in 1934 or so she became a star at Minsky’s burlesque show, where she sang dramatic numbers like “Old Man River.” She was immensely hard-working; in 1937 the Pittsburgh Courier reported that her cabaret revue had been travelling for 50 weeks in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois with only 4 days layoff.

The 1940 Census found her living in Detroit where she was producing nightclub acts. She later told Hue Magazine that she next moved to San Francisco where she spent the war years performing in hospitals, camps, ships, and USO centers. Then she became an Episcopal church worker. However, when she spoke to Hue in 1954 she wanted to return to supper club entertainment. That didn’t work out, and in 1957 she opened a dance school, the Carolynne Snowden Academy, on West Adams Blvd. in Los Angeles. She married a second time, to Manfred Montagu.

In an interview with the L.A. Sentinel in 1982, they mentioned that in the late 1960’s she’d had a stroke that impaired her left side, but they said it didn’t “impede her warm and exuberant zest for life.” At that time she was presenting an exhibition of her collection of over 500 dolls from around the world at the Grant Still Community Arts Center. She died in 1985 and was buried in Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills.

(I haven’t been able to learn much about her children, and some of what appears in public records is confusing. It’s no wonder that the other online biographies leave them out. I think the 1920 census has the wrong age—6—for her son, Fontaine Malcolm; all of his other records say he was born in 1919. In 1930 he was living in San Diego with his aunt Florence and her husband, in 1940 he was living with Snowden in Detroit and working as a porter in a flower store, and in 1950 he was a divorced janitor, back in Detroit after serving in World War 2. 

A Charlotte Snowden, born in 1929, was listed as her daughter in the 1940 census, but there aren’t other records for her. Carolynne Snowden’s obituaries said another daughter, Ester Smith, survived her. Again, there are no other records for Smith, but she might have been a grand-niece—her sister Marguarite married Leland Smith and had four children.)

Henry Brown, “Carolynne Snowden of Films is Back, Red Hair and All,” Chicago Defender, October 24, 1931.

Floyd Calvin, “California Movie Star Doing Broadway: Carolynne Snowden, Slender and Lovely, Is Crazy About Dolls, and, of course, Her Art,” Pittsburgh Courier. October 22, 1927. 

“Carolynne Snowden Has Travelin’ Revue,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 9, 1937.

“Carolynne Snowden,” Wisconsin Enterprise-Blade, October 1, 1927.

“Carolynne Snowden,” Hue Magazine, March 1954.

“Carolynne Snowden Shares Doll Collection,” Los Angeles Sentinel. December 9, 1982.

Henry Jones and Charles Morgan, “Los Angeles, Cal.,” Pittsburgh Courier, December 15, 1923.

“Lyman’s Name and Show,” Variety, December 23, 1925, p. 41.

John McWhorter, “Hollywood Viewed Them as Maids. The Randolph Sisters’ Talent Shone Through.” New York Times, February 5, 2026.

“Reviews of the Latest Sound Short Subjects,” Film Daily, November 11, 1928, p. 7.

Stanley Robertson, “LA Confidential: A Face From Out of the Past, Still Radiating Charm,” Los Angeles Sentinel. March 14, 1957.

One hundred and ten years ago this month, Grace Kingsley alerted the public to a new comedy with an unusual feature:

Those who have followed the startling developments in the art of trick photography are said to have further sensations awaiting them when The No-Good Guy, in which William Collier is starred, is presented to the public at the Majestic tomorrow.

The principal tricks center about the supposed hallucinations of Collier while under the influence of liquor. His bed performs strange feats, and when he reaches for a decanter of liquor, it proves so elusive that he is unable to grasp it, although he gives it a merry chase.

William Collier, a famous stage comedian, played Jimmy, a no-good drunken wastrel whose guardian, a political boss, insists that he settle down and get a job. So he opens a detective agency. To solve a case he infiltrates a band of criminals, and he falls in love with gang member Lucia (Enid Markey) and learns that its leader is his guardian. Jimmy denounces him and makes plans to marry Lucia. Kingsley’s editor Henry Christeen Warnack reviewed it and said, “Collier is excellently suited to his role.”

Other reviewers admired the film’s trick photography. Oscar Cooper in Motion Picture News said it really helped Collier’s performance as a drunk. His description confirmed what Kingsley reported: “This consists of a bed, which dances around the room, eluding the intoxicated young man, or a glass of liquor which jumps from one end of the table to another.” He said the tricks “compare favorably with anything of their kind.” 

It sounds like the tricks were stop motion photography, a painstaking process that involves shooting one frame, then moving an object a tiny bit and shooting another frame. This simulates movement. Because there were roughly 24 frames per second of movie, it requires a lot of patience. However, we can’t be certain what the tricks were because The No-Good Guy is a lost film. 

Reviewers really ought to have mentioned the cameraman responsible for all this work. Luckily the AFI Catalog tracked down the information: he was Joseph Devereux Jennings. He went on to an impressive career of cinematography and special effects photography.

Jennings started his film career as an assistant cameraman for Universal in 1911, and in 1915 he was hired by Thomas Ince as a chief cameraman. Most of his films from that time are also missing, but it seems likely that The No-Good Guy was his first work with special effects. After this, he shot Tom Mix Westerns, crime melodramas, adventure films, and Pauline Frederick melodramas, as well as The Eagle and Cobra (both 1925) with Rudoph Valentino. That year he also worked with his brother Gordon on the dinosaur effects in The Lost World, which once seemed to be his first trick photography. In 1926 he became Buster Keaton’s cinematographer and he shot four of his films.

In the sound era he went to Warner Brothers (his work included The Public Enemy, 1931), then in 1932 he moved to Paramount, where he alternated effects work with regular camera assignments. Highlights of his career included the sea battle in Cleopatra (1934), the war montage in Souls at Sea (1937), and the waterfall sequence on Unconquered (1947). In 1938 he and his department received an Academy Award for Spawn of the North, which featured stunning miniature action of sealing ships among icebergs. Jennings died of bone cancer on March 12, 1952.

The No-Good Guy was notable for another reason. Kingsley reported that it introduced ‘Buster’ Collier, William’s adopted son, to the public. Previously historians thought that his first appearance was later in 1916 in The Bugle Call. It’s a useful reminder that because there’s so many missing films, it’s hard to know when things actually happened first. 

Oscar Cooper, “The No-Good Guy,” Motion Picture News, May 6, 1916, p. 2725.

Louis Reeves Harrison, “Triangle Program,” Moving Picture World, May 6, 1916, p. 983.

Henry Christeen Warnack, “Collier is Capital,” Los Angeles Times, March 19, 1916.

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley mentioned that a group of professionals thought that that grown women shouldn’t be called babies:

The Wampi have been duly kidded out of calling their elected feminine stars by the infantile title of ‘baby stars’ through the efforts of the Wasps, the feminine contingent of publicity writers, who, you remember, threatened to elect a lot of young male players and call them ‘baby sheiks.’

‘Wampi’ was a sort of plural version of WAMPAS, the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers, a group for men who worked in movie publicity that was founded in 1921. Since 1922 they had been naming 13 up-and-coming young actresses as the WAMPAS Baby Stars, which got lots of media coverage (publications were happy for an excuse to print pictures of pretty women). Now WAMPAS is mostly remembered because of this annual stunt: it gets mentioned in biographies of the ones who did go on to have successful careers such as Colleen Moore, Clara Bow, Jean Arthur, Joan Blondell and Ginger Rogers. 

Keeping women out of the professional press agent organization, with its opportunities for networking, education and career improvement, was particularly rotten because there were so many of them. So the ostracized did something about it in October 1924, organizing the Women’s Association of Screen Publicists. They elected Carolyn L. Wagner from Thomas Ince’s studio as the president, Agnes O’Malley from Mack Sennet as the vice-president, Fanchon Royer, an independent publicist, as secretary, and Len Beall from Hal Roach as treasurer.  They met twice a month at the Writers’ Club (the same place that the men met); at their meetings they discussed professional topics, and “enlarged their business and social interests” according to the L.A. Times.

Variety’s initial report shows some of the belittling nonsense they had to put up with. It said “The women screen press agents have become jealous of their male brethren. They could not see why the boys had an organization known as Wampas all to themselves. The girls wanted to go in and could not. They did the next best thing, organizing the Women’s Association of Screen Publicists.”

I think it wasn’t second best for them. In addition to their meetings, they held dinners and ran charitable events, like their 1928 bridge luncheon and fashion show to raise money for the California Clinic for Crippled Children. Mary Pickford was a patron and it was held at her United Artists studio; 1200 people attended.

Their efforts in 1926 to fight against infantilizing women didn’t work; the actresses WAMPAS elected annually from 1922-1934 as ones to watch are still called baby stars in all the film histories and biographies. At least they tried. It’s useful to be reminded that women in the 1920’s didn’t like sexism any more than we would now.

In 1930 the WASPs decided to expand their membership and changed their name to The Screen Women’s Press Club to reflect that. The Hollywood Filmograph reported:

The new organization will include in its membership women writing for the motion picture industry and interests, either as newspaper correspondents or critics, fan magazine writers, personal representatives of either motion picture theater producers, stars or other personalities connected with the motion picture industry, publicists or editors or motion picture publications.

Endings often happen quietly, and I can’t find an announcement of their dissolution but the 1934 Film Daily Yearbook has no listing for them, while earlier editions did. WAMPAS lasted only one year more, disbanding in 1935.

Nowadays I can’t find any professional group for film publicists listed either with Film California or with the Directors’ Guild. The industry has changed: while studios still market movies, most publicity has moved to actors’ individual social media teams. The people who do the work must not feel the need for a guild or union yet. They might consider doing that—professional groups are really useful not just for networking and education, but also not to feel alone with your job troubles.

“Fashion Show by Publicists Great Success,” Los Angeles Times, August 12, 1928.

“Scribes Continue to Meet,” Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1931.

“Personals: Carolyn L. Wagner,” Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1924.

H.B.K. Willis, “Gossip From Screenland,” Screenland, February 1925, p. 69.

“Women Match Men,” Variety, October 29, 1924, p. 23.

“Women Organize Screen Writers’ Press Club,” Hollywood Filmograph, May 3, 1930, p.2.

One hundred and ten years ago this month, Grace Kingsley mentioned yet another beauty contest with a studio contract as a prize:

“Now the thing’s going to be settled, and will be off our minds for good and all. They’re just all being pushed in by main strength, those beautiful motion-picture actors who are featured in the Handsomest Man (note the caps) contest being conducted by Universal…Beautiful Violet Mersereau takes a leap in the dark on behalf of the great cause and offers to propose to the winner. Anyone who has ever seen Violet knows that this is a promise, not a threat.” 

I had no idea there was a studio-run male beauty contest. Universal Studios had just a few months earlier run a contest for women, similar to Handsomest Man. Their publicity chief, H.H. Van Loan, was in charge of this one too, and he ran it in a similar way to the earlier one. However, the women only needed to send in a photo but the men also had to send “facts concerning his mental and physical condition,” according to the Ogden Standard. The gentlemen’s contest was much less elaborate and full of publicity opportunities than the one for the ladies, in which local judges selected a winner from their area and the semi-finalists got a train trip to California with many stops to visit with the press. Instead, three staff members (including cartoonist Rube Goldberg!) from the New York Evening Mail judged all the male entrants; the Standard reported on their process:

“Thousands of photographs were sent in from all over the country. Most of these were cast out in the first elimination. “Pretty boys and wrist watch wearers [this was a gay slur in 1916] were discarded first,” according to one of the judges. This got rid of 3,ooo. The next to go were the posers—the boys with the fierce lady-killing stare that is supposed to subdue anything in skirts. The next batch to reach the waste basket were the one-feature type—the chap with the rosebud mouth but a weak chin, or a pair of attractive lamps and poor hair. This reduced the number several more thousand, and left one hundred regular fellows with good looks and brains combined. The number of pictures finally narrowed down to five. This quintet was telegraphed to send more pictures and further information, and when the final acid test was applied Roy Fernandez was IT.”

Universal announced that Roy Fernandez was their winner at the First Annual Exposition of the Motion Picture Board of Trade* in New York City, on May 13^th.  However, what grabbed the headlines was the bit that Kingsley mentioned about Violet Mersereau: she had told reporters that she’d propose marriage to the winner. She had specific ideas about what she wanted in a husband. She told Pictures and the Picturegoer that he should be “tall, broad-shouldered, with dark eyes and hair streaked with grey on the sides. He must have fine, white, even teeth; an excellent disposition; and a deep, many voice.” He also needed to be brave and return her affection.

She did meet him right before he was presented at the Exposition. Motography reported “Mr. Fernandez and Miss Mersereau were introduced formally to each other at a special dinner on the Strand Theater roof, New York…After the dinner, the much-publicized couple were taken to Madison Square Garden, there to be gazed at by a horde of admirers.” But alas, he wasn’t Mersereau’s ideal husband type; articles said it was because he was blond and she wanted a brown-haired man, so she called off the proposal. You don’t possibly think that this wasn’t authentic and was merely done for the press?

Leroy C. Fernandez was born January 16, 1889 in Connecticut. The 1910 census said he was a bank bookkeeper living in Fairfield with his parents, Joseph and Ella Fernandez, and his older sister Lilly. His dad was a master mechanic who owned his own business. Later articles said he was a Yale graduate and he played hockey there. Before the contest he had posed for famous magazine illustrators Howard Chandler Christy and Harrison Fisher.

Reports occasionally appeared in the press about what happened to Fernandez after he won the contest. Unfortunately, his acting career wasn’t a success. Motography said in May that he was to begin a one-year contract at the Universal’s Eastern Studios in Fort Lee in an Edith Roberts film directed by George Ridgewell, but it doesn’t seem to have been completed. 

In August he was in Los Angeles, where he’d been challenged to a skating race by Jack Livingston at the Bristol Ice Palace (nobody followed up with the winner), and he regularly attended the Yale Alumni Club and was organizing a football team there, according to the local newspapers.

In September, Motography reported that he would to be introduced to the screen in Idle Wives, a Bluebird feature written by Lois Weber that would be starring Mary MacLaren. This film did get made, but he didn’t appear in the credits and the AFI Catalog says “his participation in the film is undetermined.”

However, an issue of The Billboard published on that same day mentioned he was on his way to New York, having completed his three-month contract with Universal. 

He next turned up in the trades in March 1917, when Moving Picture World said he was in Los Angeles where he was going to be Enid Bennett’s new leading man in a Thomas Ince production. The film was called Happiness and it was directed by Reginald Baker, but Fernandez wasn’t in the credits.

Then the United States joined the World War, and he enlisted in June 1917 according to Moving Picture World. They mentioned that was studying telegraphy at the Fort McHenry hospital. His military record says that he finished his service in December 1918.

After that he didn’t stop trying to be an actor. He entered another contest, the 1920 Fame and Fortune contest conducted by Brewster Publications fan magazines, which was open to men and women. He didn’t win this one, but Exhibitors’ Hearld said he was on the honor roll. 

In 1921 he did get in a film credit, for playing star Constant Binney’s love interest in Such a Little Queen. Kingsley reviewed it and thought it was “full of delightful whimsy and quaint charm,” but she didn’t mention Fernandez.

That didn’t lead to more film roles, and he decided to try the stage. In 1923 he was one of the ‘singing boys’ of The Magic Ring on Broadway. He was also mentioned as part of the 1926-7 cast of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

After the show closed in March, he became despondent. He died by suicide on June 22, 1927, taking poison in the Hotel Luxor in Manhattan, according to the New Britain Herald. One article called “Neglected Actor Draws Curtain” in the Milwaukee Leader said he ended his life because he was tired, and the stage and motion picture world had ‘gone back on’ him. He was buried in Fairfield Connecticut with military honors, because he served during the war.

Fernandez’s sad story shows how much better off the winner of the women’s contest was. Ruth Purcell tried working in the movies for a bit, got disgusted, torched her bridges with a scathing interview in the Washington Times and went back to her steady stenography job at the American Federation of Labor until her retirement. Dreams of stardom can certainly cause a lot of misery.

* The exposition of the Motion Picture Board of Trade sounds like it was a heckeva party, according to Motion Picture News. Held in Madison Square Garden and open to the public, it included movie premiers, star appearances, and orchestras playing music for dancing, plus the usual industry convention business: producers sold their wares to exhibitors in booths and they held meetings to discuss industry concerns, like projection. It ran for nine days and one hundred thousand people attended. MPN said “there was never a dull moment.”

“Camera Clicks,” Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1916.

“Challenge to Skate Accepted,” Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1916.

“Fernandez at McHenry Hospital,” Moving Picture World, June 1, 1918, p. 1319.

“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Actor Commits Suicide,” New Britain Herald, June 23, 1927.

“Greenroom Jottings,” Motion Picture Magazine, April 1916, p. 136.

“The Handsomest Man in America and Star Considered Proposing to Him,” Ogden Standard, June 24, 1916.

J.C. Jessen, “In and Out of West Coast Studios,” Motion Picture News, March 3, 1917, p. 1382.

Grace Kingsley, “Flashes,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1921.

“The Magic Ring,” The Billboard, October 13, 1923, p. 10.

“Military Funeral,” New Britain Herald, June 24, 1927.

“Neglected Actor Draws Curtain,” Milwaukee Leader, June 23, 1927.

“New Ince Leading Man, Moving Picture World, March 3, 1917, p. 1564.

“One Hundred Thousand at Board of Trade Exposition,” Motion Picture News, May 27, 1916, p. 3219.

“Pacific Coast Notes,” Motography, September 16, 1916, p. 681.

Guy Price, “Coast Picture News,” Variety, September 29, 1916, p. 21.

Guy Price, “Fables of the Foyer,” Los Angeles Herald, August 22, 1916.

“Returns to New York,” The Billboard, September 16, 1916, p. 54.

“Travelogue,” The Screamer, February 17, 1917, p.3.

“Two Girls from South Win Fame and Beauty Contest,” Exhibitors’ Herald, December 4, 1920, p. 49.

“Universal’s Handsomest Man,” Motography, August 5, 1916, p. 348

“Wanted—The Handsomest Man,” Pictures and the Picturegoer, March 11, 1916, p. 549.

“Winner of ‘Handsome Man’ Contest Will Not Marry Violet Mersereau,” Motion Picture News, June 10, 1916, p. 3590.

“Winner’s a Blonde,” Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1916.

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley reported on a rare career advancement in a movie studio:

“This good old feminist movement was given an upward boost yesterday when Dorothy Howell, formerly secretary to Harry Cohn, vice-president of the Columbia Pictures Corporation, was appointed assistant general production manager of that company. Prior to her connection with Columbia, Miss Howell served as secretary to Irving Thalberg, when he was at Universal, and later she was with B.P. Schulberg.”

Kingsley didn’t mention that Howell had another qualification for the job: she’d been successfully selling screenplays since 1924. However, no matter how much experience they had, in 1926 women rarely got the opportunity to make decisions about what films were being made and Kingsley wasn’t the only one to particularly mention her gender. The Los Angeles Examiner said she’d be “one of the few women executives in motion pictures.” Moving Picture World reported why she’d been promoted: “Mr. Cohn believes that there should be a feminine touch and voice in production matters.” Variety agreed, saying that Cohn “believes that women are very practical from the production angle. He has made a daring departure from tradition and appointed Dorothy Howell, his secretary, assistant production manager for the organization.”

Unfortunately, her new job didn’t last long. In September, Motion Picture News still called her the assistant production manager when they said she’d written the screenplay for Obey the Law, but that was the last mention of her executive title, and nobody reported on why it didn’t work out. She quietly returned to writing, and in December Film Daily reported that she had signed a five-year contract as a scenarist with Columbia (which was probably a much better job than being the volatile Harry Cohn’s secretary).

Dorothy Howell had a writing credit on over 60 dramas and comedies, and, as a member of the script department, probably contributed to countless more. Because she worked for Columbia, a “poverty row” studio, her movies were low budget and featured minor stars, and they aren’t often remembered now.

Dorothy Howell was born to Elmer and Caroline Lorenz Howell in Chicago Illinois on May 10,1899. Her father was a railroad foreman and her mother kept house. She had an older brother, Raymond. The family moved to Elgin (35 miles northwest of Chicago) and she graduated from Elgin High School, where she acted in plays, belonged to the glee club, and did lots of committee work. In 1920 she was working as a secretary for a publishing company and still in Elgin. She moved to Hollywood in the early 1920’s and was hired as Irving Thalberg’s secretary at Universal. Later she became independent producer B.P. Schulberg’s secretary. In 1924 she went to work as Harry Cohn’s secretary at Columbia, where she spent the rest of her career.

She retired from the movie business in the early 1930s when she married someone who might very well be a character in an upcoming Steven Spielberg movie: Mendel Silberberg. He was born on November 22, 1886 in Los Angeles. He co-founded a major (and still active) law firm in 1908 with Shepard Mitchell when he graduated from law school. In their early decades they specialized in entertainment law, and they were West Coast counsel to Columbia as well as RKO and MGM. Considering how much Silberberg was quoted in the newspapers after the infamous death of Jean Harlow’s husband Paul Bern, it’s fair to say that he was a studio fixer. He was active in the Republican party, and he advised Richard Nixon. He was also a member of the Beverly Hills city council and the planning commission. But none of that is what he is mostly remembered for.

Mendel Silberberg co-founded, with Leon Lewis and Joseph Roos, the Jewish Community Relations Committee in 1933, which helped organize anti-Nazi spies who infiltrated the pro-Nazi German-American Bund, the Ku Klux Klan and the fascist Silver Shirts in California. The Committee helped undercover volunteers find jobs within the organizations and helped pay their expenses, then turned over their spy reports to military intelligence and the FBI, which led to convictions of Nazis in the United States. Silberberg served as its chairman for many years. Their story was told in the book Hitler in Los Angeles (2017) by Steven J. Ross, in the Rachel Maddow podcast Ultra, and in the upcoming Spielberg film based on it. It’s a shame Dorothy Howell never wrote that screenplay–it’s terrific story.

The Silberbergs had two daughters, Doria and Susan, and they had a comfortable life in Beverly Hills; according to the 1940 census, they employed a live-in butler, cook and governess. During the war Dorothy Silberberg did volunteer work with the National Council of Jewish Women. In 1952 she made a brief return to the movie business, producing Quest for a Lost City for Sol Lesser, about Dana and Ginger Lamb’s search for a lost Mayan city. Mendel Silberberg died on June 28, 1965, and Dorothy on June 8, 1971.

“Asks Annulment of Marriage to Star,” Evening Express, July 22, 1926.

“Columbia’s Obey the Law to Star Bert Lytell,” Motion Picture News, September 4, 1926, p. 830a.

“Dorothy Howell Gets Columbia Executive Post,” Los Angeles Examiner, February 28, 1926.

Cecile Hallingby, “Hollywood Women Learn of War Needs,” Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1940.

“Civic Leader Silberberg Dies at 78,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1965.

“Miss Dorothy Howell Assistant Prod. Manager,” Moving Picture World, April 3, 1926, p. 326.

“Quick Rise to Fame,” Colusa Herald, August 2, 1927.

“Signs Dorothy Howell,” Film Daily, December 29, 1926, p. 2.

“Woman As Ass’t Prod. Mgr. in Coast Studio,” Variety, March 3, 1926, p. 25.