Grace Kingsley's Hollywood

Things To Come: April 1924

Chaplin’s reproduction of the rugged camp really did clutter the base of some precipitous cliffs!

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley reported on a movie that lots of people were looking forward to:

“Charlie Chaplin is a busy man these days. The High Sierras, Mt. Summit* to be exact, is the scene of his labors. Here the comedian is reproducing in comic version the famous Alaskan gold rush of other days. Even Chilkoot Pass has been reproduced. And the rugged camp of the pioneers is there, cluttering the base of the precipitous cliffs. A pathway, cut through the snow 2300 feet long, rising up to the top of Mt. Summit, passes up a narrow defile through the rocks, and was only made possible by snowdrifts banked against the mountain side.

The camp was erected and the pass cut through in less than one week. Special agents of the Southern Pacific Railroad mobilized an army of 1000 men and by special trains to the pass, also a special train of dining cars was brought from Oakland for the feeding of these modern sourdoughs.

Chaplin himself, in the role of director-general, was here, there, and everywhere, giving instructions, leading the men, and on occasions, mixing with the mob in scenes, spurring them on. It was one of the most successfully handled mobs ever assembled before a movie camera, according to reports, and many spectacular scenes were filmed.

It seems that thrills are to mingle with the comedy and scenes of terrific realism, depicting the hardships endured by the pioneer gold seekers who surmounted the mountains which blocked their pathway in that mad rush for gold.

Kingsley also mentioned that that Chaplin was to play a sourdough and the film would be competed in the fall. Filmgoers had already been waiting for quite a while; his most recent feature film was The Kid in 1921, but he had starred in three shorts since then, most recently The Pilgrim in 1923. He had also directed the drama A Woman of Paris (1923) in which he made a brief appearance. Still, for an audience that had been accustomed to seeing him in as many as 13 shorts a year, this was a long time.

They would have to wait even longer, partly due to Chaplin’s perfectionism but also due to what his biographer David Robinson called the distraction of domestic tribulations: he had an affair with his 16-year-old leading lady, Lita Grey, and she got pregnant, so he married her and replaced her in the film with Georgia Hale. They winded up not using most of the footage they shot on location and instead made the majority of the film on sets in his Hollywood studio.

A year later, in April 1925, Kingsley was able to report on the movie’s progress. She ran into Chaplin at the Montmartre night club in Hollywood and he said he was just finishing up his new film, which he was going to call either The Gold Rush or The Lucky Strike. He told her:

Well of course I can’t name my stories at once, because usually we don’t really get the story jelled until the last two months. That’s what happened with this one. Some people think if we name it Lucky Strike the fans might get it mixed with the cigarettes. So we don’t know. Anyhow, I’m a bit superstitious about using the word ‘lucky.’

We really think we have every sort of appeal in our picture. I think it will have historic value, for one thing, the Chilikoot Pass stuff is thrilling. We really underwent a lot of hardships making those scenes, for we were in fear of an avalanche every minute.

The real Chilikoot Pass in Alaska, 1898. It is the highest point on the Chilikoot Trail between Dyea, Alaska and Bennett Lake, British Columbia. During the Klondike gold rush, workers cut 1500 steps into the ice and charged people to use them. Now the land is administered by the U.S. and Canadian national park services.

Even Chaplin felt the need to emphasize the realism of his movies as other filmmakers did, which now seems extraordinary. Kingsley also mentioned another touch of authenticity: he looked shaggy because he’d been cutting his own hair, as his character would have needed to do.

Chaplin really was almost finished. He did decide to call it The Gold Rush, and it had its world premier two months later at Grauman’s Egyptian in Hollywood on June 26^th. As usual, Kingsley didn’t get to review the film; her boss did. Now it’s called a masterpiece, but at the time Edwin Schallert wasn’t entirely sold on it. He wrote, “to say that the picture has the concentrated charm of one of his two-reelers would perhaps be rash.” He thought the narrative was rambling and the comedy and pathos weren’t woven together, making it episodic: “there are moments that are delicious, but there are others that are inclined to be a trifle forced.” However, the audience at the premier “evidenced an immensely enthusiastic appreciation for the film.”

Every star didn’t attend, but among the audience was Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, Marion Davies, Buster Keaton, Constance and Norma Talmadge, William Fox, and Cecil B. DeMille.

Kingsley did get to go to Samuel Goldwyn’s premier party for the movie, and she reported on it in her new series, Stella the Star-Gazer, named for her fictional companion to Hollywood parties. ‘Stella’ had the time of her life; she said that she never wanted to go to another party again because “I’m sure there will never be another picture so good as The Gold Rush—and this party is just too glorious.” She reported that Mary Pickford wore an especially becoming evening gown and Douglas Fairbanks was so happy that the audience loved the film that he was “shaking hands delightedly with everybody.” As co-owners of the studio that was releasing it, United Artists, they must have been relieved that it looked like a hit.

The Gold Rush was a huge success. It played at the Egyptian Theater until November 1^st, and only left because Sid Grauman had a previous commitment to open King Vidor’s The Big Parade there—the box office was still strong. So while it took much longer than the average film to make, it made more money. It has lasted much longer too–it still gets screened, and it was added to the Library of Congresses National Film Registry in 1992.

This month Kingsley saw a movie that was much less of a durable masterpiece, but it featured an early supporting role for an actress who is still famous. She said, “Poisoned Paradise isn’t very much poisoned; it is just a mild little dose of bromide.” Set in Monte Carlo (and she’d already had enough of that place), its theme was “the only way to beat the game is not to play it.”

Even thought it was “commonplace claptrap all belonging to the serial age in picturedom,” she found a bright spot: “the sweet ingenue who goes to live in the house of the artist, yet without sin” was played by “Clara Bow, that marvelous child, is a joy every moment. She is much more than the ingenue; she is human, and her vivid little face holds you every second.” Even though this was only her ninth film, she already stood out from the other actors, even in a small part.

Other reviewers singled out her performance in Poisoned Paradise. Film Daily mentioned that she was the “most interesting cast member,” and Henriette Slone in Exhibitors’ Trade Review wrote:

Nothing but the highest praise can be accorded Clara Bow, who is not only extremely comely and winsome but remarkably convincing. Her performance both when she is at the heights of exaltation, and when she is cast into the depths of despair, is nothing short of inspired. There is every reason to suppose that she will become a great favorite in a short time.

Clara Bow in 1922, when she won the Fame and Fortune Contest. The magazine that sponsored it said that after five screen tests, the judges felt “she has a genuine spark of divine fire…she screens perfectly.”

Slone was right. Clara Bow had won the Fame and Fortune Contest sponsored by Motion Picture Magazine in 1922 and she had appeared in small roles in films made in New York since then. Two years later she came to Hollywood, and in 1926 she became a star with her leading role in The Plastic Age. People still admire her work in It(1927) and Wings (1927). You can learn more about her at this profile from the Guardian.

* The name of the mountain, Mt. Summit, was corrected in later publicity to Mt. Lincoln. Now the area is known as the Sugar Bowl. It’s near Truckee, California, close to the Nevada border.

Grace Kingsley, “At the Gold Rush Party,” Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1925.

Grace Kingsley, “Flashes: Chaplin Finishing,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1925.

“The New Star,” Motion Picture Magazine, January 1922, p.55.

“One More Week for Gold Rush,” Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1925.

“Poisoned Paradise,” Film Daily, March 2, 1924, p. 9.

Edwin Schallert, “Epic Comedy on the Screen,” Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1925.

Henriette Slone, “Thrills Aplenty in Monte Carlo Story,” Exhibitors’ Trade Review, March 15, 1924, p. 27.

Reversing a Bad Decision: March 1924

One hundred years ago this month. Grace Kingsley had noticed a dreadful trend: fewer theaters in Los Angeles had been showing comedy shorts before feature films, replacing them with higher-brow offerings. However, exhibitors had recently started to bring them back to their bills. Therefore, the companies headed by Mack Sennett, Hal Roach and Jack White were all busier than ever, and the Christie organization even had plans to increase their output; they had “gradually been enlarging our organization to take care of this increased production” according to Charles H. Christie, general manager.

She was able to tell her readers that “those who have been worrying for fear there will be a dearth of short comedies this year from the Christie organization may now go about their business reassured,” and they could look forward to plenty of two-reelers starring Neal Burns, Bobby Vernon, Jimmy Adams, Dorothy Devore, Priscilla Bonner and Walter Hiers. She was only half-joking–a comedy fan like herself would have been very happy to hear this news. I wrote about the Christie Company earlier.

I was surprised to read that leaving comedies off of bills had even been a trend. Who doesn’t like them? So I did unscientific survey of the newspaper ads and ‘coming attractions’ articles in the Times for the first three months of 1924 and found out that she was right (I should have never doubted her!). At first glance it looked like the chief villain was none other than Sid Grauman. However, in July 1923 Grauman had announced plans to sell his three downtown theaters (the Rialto, the Million Dollar, and the Metropolitan) to Paramount Studios. He planned to remain in charge of them for six months. So this ghastly decision was the new management’s fault.

What, no comedy? Grauman still ran the Egyptian, but there was new management at the Rialto and Million Dollar. I donät know why they didn’t his name off of the two theaters in the ad for January 6, 1924

In the first week of January, none of the three movie palaces that Paramount controlled had comedy shorts on their bills. Instead they had two live acts: the Rialto featured a set with baritone George Dewey Washington along with Big Brother and the Metropolitan had the Three Little Maids dance act to accompany Woman to Woman. Meanwhile, at the Million Dollar, Norma Talmadge’s Ashes of Vengeance was such a strong draw (and long movie—120 minutes) that nothing else of the program was mentioned. The two theaters Grauman did still manage had live prologues: at the Egyptian “A Night in Pharaoh’s Palace” (100 artists on the stage!) playing with The Ten Commandments, and at the Criterion “The Bells of Notre Dame” appeared with The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

These five theaters weren’t the only ones contributing to this distressing trend; the competition at Lowe’s State Theater was running a ballet before Flaming Youth. Additionally, just like the Million Dollar, some of the smaller (under 1000 seat) theaters like the Alhambra, Talley’s Broadway, and Miller’s only listed the features they were running and didn’t mention if there was anything else on the bill.

Clune’s Broadway knew that a Stan Laurel short brought in the patrons.

However, three of the theaters in town did feature comedy shorts: Hal Roach’s Dippity-Do-Dad played with Flaming Passion at the California, Harry Langdon’s Picking Peaches appeared with The Virginian at the Mission and Stan Laurel in The Soilers could be found with Defying Destiny at Clune’s Broadway. However, that wasn’t nearly enough: a hard-working journalist like Kingsley needed her laughs!

In February, Lowe’s State helped keep comedy alive with. a Lloyd Hamilton short in addition to a Fanchon & Marco prologue.

The drought continued in the first week of February, with funny two-reelers starring Lloyd Hamilton, Will Rogers, and Bull Montana livening up the bills at only three theaters again. Four of the other big theaters had prologues and the fifth, the Metropolitan, featured “juvenile soloist” Anna Chang. The smaller theaters still only mentioned the features they were playing.

In March, Grauman’s name was still in the advertising even though he no longer owned them. Happily, the management had brought two-reelers back

By the first week of March, Kingsley noticed that the situation had improved. She wrote, “not all the solemn trash of the melodramas, not all the high-brow music, can take the place of the laugh lurers, according to local exhibitors who are slowly coming back to the placing of comedies on their bills.” It wasn’t “exhibitors,” it was just the one–the new management at Grauman’s former theaters had come to their senses. They added two-reel comedies back onto their bills, along with live shows. At his Metropolitan, they ran Mack Sennett’s The Hollywood Kid along with a prologue called “Carnival Night in Venice” before the William S. Hart film Singer Jim McKee. At the Rialto they had another Sennett, One Spooky Night, with a musical program before Under the Red Robe. Meanwhile, at the Million Dollar, Clyde Cook in The Broncho Express played alongside a prologue called “The Wolves of Montmartre,” to go with Gloria Swanson’s Paris-set The Humming Bird.

However, Grauman himself didn’t mess with the successful bills at the two theaters he still managed—the comedy-free programs with The Ten Commandments (in its fifteenth week!) and Scarmouche (sixth week) stayed the same.

Low prices were the important selling point at smaller, second-run theaters.

The Lowe’s State theater also brought back comedy, presenting a Mermaid Comedy along with a Fanchon and Marco prologue called “Society” before Colleen Moore’s Painted People. Meanwhile, the California continued not to run prologues and played an Our Gang short called Back Stage along with Douglas Maclean in The Yankee Consul. The Broadway, the Mission, and the smaller theaters still only mentioned their feature films.

It’s remarkable just how much entertainment the audience got in a night at the movies then. Short comedies stayed on most movie bills until the rise of double features in the 1930’s; Educational Films, Vitagraph and Hal Roach stopped making them in 1938 but Columbia and RKO continued producing them until the 1950’s.

Grace Kingsley really needed some funny two-reelers to help her get through the dire dramas she was sitting through this month. When she reviewed Lilies of the Field (a divorce melodrama) she wrote:

I’m beginning to think that we Americans are supreme comedy makers and rotten drama producers, at least on the screen. Our drama is timid, self-conscious, superficial. It seems to be always about the same old stuff, with neither depth nor sincerity, but with writers and directors trying to blind audiences with a wealth of detail, a complication of extraneous issues.

Being a film critic could really be a drag. Later in the month, Kingsley found another way to get through a turkey when she went to see Women Who Give: listening to Winifred Westover Hart snark about it. In her review Kingsley summed up the plot: “as soon as you see that fishing village, you know there are going to be a drowned only-son-of-a-widow, a wronged girl, and a terrific storm at sea,” then reported on what Hart exclaimed during the movie, like “Why did they let these cod play so big a part? They haven’t any experience! Let the poor fish stay in the ocean and do their stuff!” The actress also suggested taking Mother’s Seasick Pills, to deal with the mal-de-mer caused by so many tippy storm scenes in the ocean.

They made their own fun. I was happy to learn that after her dreadful marriage to William S. Hart, Winifred Westover Hart’s life wasn’t endless misery. She still got to go to the movies and complain about the bad bits.

Many thanks to Paul R. Spitzzeri at the Homestead Blog, who wrote about the Grauman Theater Magazine. I had no idea that Grauman had divested himself of his downtown theaters, and I would have made an embarassing mistake if I hadn’t read his post!

“Grauman Gives Options on Theaters to Paramount,” Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1923.

‘He-man Helling:’ February 1924

Ernest Torrence. She had a warning for leading men: “once Ernie Torrence grabs the baby from under the horse’s heels and cries over it…the handsome leading man had better beat it to the Town Hall and form a union to get back the heavy heroing.”

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley noticed another trend in the movies that annoyed her: leading men weren’t getting to commit enough violence:

Where is the strong and handsome chap who used to kill the main villain and a couple of sub-villains before breakfast? We look for him in vain. It’s pretty soft for the handsome hero, these days! For all he has to do is stand around all duded up and marry the gell.

All his conflict is mental. It doesn’t disturb a wave of his marcel. You know he is suffering because the subtitles tell you so, and you see him in a close-up every few minutes staring straight ahead of him, as though he was trying to remember what it was he promised to bring home to the mater from the 5-and-10-cent store. All his courage is moral courage. He can look Nita Naldi straight in the eye-or anywhere-and let her know that he is not for such as she. Yes, he’s 100 per cent pure.

Lon Chaney as the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Kingsley pointed out: “the better he is, the worse he looks.”

Happily for her, violence hadn’t been eliminated, it had just been shifted and supporting actors like Ernest Torrence and Lon Chaney got to be tough: “For out-and-out bravery and he-man helling, the character man is now the big biff boy. Rugged and mature he is, this cinema crime crusher.” That doesn’t seem so terrible, especially for the actor who got to have meatier parts. She said: “he seldom marries the girl; he doesn’t get rich. What does he get? Well, around $1500 a week.” So even though they didn’t get top billing, she thought they were happy enough.

While this wasn’t the full-blown crisis of masculinity trend that seems to come up every few years in pop culture, Kingsley still preferred the good old days:

Bill Hart was the come-on he-hero of the screen. Bill used to put the sin in cinema in the first three reels, and then yank the raw out of wrong in the last two. When Bill stopped shooting and began working his jaws with emotion, you always knew he was going to reform, and you went to sleep if you wanted to.

Douglas Fairbanks and Milton Sills. Neither one was a “dolled-up he-baby” of the sort of leading man Kingsley was complaining about.

Every now and then she wrote a trend piece—the many pages of the Sunday edition didn’t fill themselves, after all. Some trends stuck around, like when she noticed actresses displaying more skin in An Epidemic of Epidermis. However, this one did not and he-man leading men were not really in danger of disappearing forever. Some of 1924’s top grossing films included Thief of Bagdad with Douglas Fairbanks and The Sea Hawk with Milton Sills; both of their characters did plenty of fighting. This kind of article is the bread-and-butter of film writing. A modern well-prepared pundit could look at Kingsley’s work for ideas when the next inevitable change comes, say when Marvel movies featuring the more muscle-bound superheroes start earning less money.

In *Young Ideas* Laura LaPlante played the sole support of a family of malingerers, who is rescued from them when her employer gets her quarantined and they all have to get jobs of their own.

This month Kingsley included a much more rare kind of news item for her: she told how a cameraman solved a technical problem:

The blondes needn’t worry so much about the photographing of their eyes any more. A means has been discovered for turning blue eyes dark on the screen. The discovery is all in honor of Laura LaPlante, who is a great little actress, say Universal people, but whose blue eyes just couldn’t be made to behave. Jack Rose, cameraman for Robert Hill, turned the trick.

Rose attached a ray screen [filter] of delicately tinted yellowish orange hue to the lens of his camera, which produced the desired effect. Miss LaPlante’s blue eyes photographed dark and her blond hair still photographed light.”

Here’s an approximate version of how blue eyes looked with orthochromatic film. It’s from an excellent April First post from Michael Gebert on Nitraiteville called “Stars Hurt by the Switch From Orthochomatic to Panchromatic.”

This was a problem when photographing all blue-eyed actors, because the orthochromatic film stock they were using at the time distorted colors. Blue barely showed up at all on it. Early cinematographers found ways to work around that with filters, as Rose did, or with a large piece of black cloth that framed the lens. Invented by James Wong Howe, the black reflected off blue eyes and darkened their appearance on film.

While Jackson Rose did come up with many solutions to cinematography problems (as well as compiling the first nine editions of the American Society of Cinematographers Handbook), this wasn’t one of them. ‘Ray screens’ aka filters had been used in still and moving picture photography for many years. Still, it was nice to see his name in the paper and I think he deserves to be remembered more (of course I do, I wrote a short biography of him).

C.H. Claudy, “Orthochromatic Photography,” Better Photos, April 1913, p.75-6.

William Hood, “Ray Screens Used in Multiples,” Camera Craft, April 1917, pp. 143-149.

Richard N. Reynolds, “The Common Sense of the Ray Screen,” Amateur Photographer’s Weekly, September 13, 1912, pp. 193-4.

‘A new world of loveliness’: January 1924

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley announced another technical innovation in a film that was in production:

It looks as though natural color photography were coming into its own at last, at any rate so far as the Lasky Studio is concerned. Following the success and the loud acclaim of the color scenes in Cecil B. De Mille’s production of The Ten Commandments, the beauty of which seems to open a new world of loveliness to the cinema, and which scenes were made according to a new color process, the Lasky people announced yesterday the production of a whole new feature to be made in colors.

For the first time the brilliant colorings of the desert will be filmed, for the picture is to be the visualization of Zane Grey’s Wanderer of the Wasteland, and is to be made in Death Valley, with Irvin Willat directing.

Only a few frames of the film survive. Jack Holt played Adam Larey.

In late February Kingsley mentioned that the Wanderer company came back to Los Angeles after five weeks of camping out in the desert. It didn’t take terribly long for the movie to be ready for a critic’s preview in New York City on May 26th. It was a big success. Herbert K. Cruikshank in Exhibitors’ Herald wrote:

In the history of motion-picture production Wanderer of the Wasteland stands alone. Another great forward stride has been made toward perfection. One of the most critical, difficult and hard-boiled audiences ever was assembled at midnight to view this film. As the first few feet were projected, there was an audible intake of breath, then a spontaneous burst of applause that continued at brief intervals throughout the showing and culminated in a demonstration of enthusiasm at the final fade-out.

Why? The Wanderer would have been a fine picture if it had been projected in the usual black, white and gray, but when desert mountain and stream are portrayed in all the splendid grandeur of their natural colors the resulting beaty is actually overwhelming. That’s the answer. The picture is ‘Technicolored’…This masterpiece is a magnificent work of sheer artistry.

As two-color Technicolor decomposes it turns orange.

Robert E. Welsh in Moving Picture World was similarly effusive, both about the color process and the film overall:

We have for once an example of a story big enough and human enough to rise above the color, and at the same time, a story that gave the color every opportunity to be seen at its best….Able direction has given us the atmosphere of the overpowering desert, the sufferings of its victims, in an admirable manner natural color completes the task with convincing realism. A midnight audience at the Rialto last week spent an hour and a half in successive “oh’s” and “ah’s”!

He concluded that every foot of the photography was “a gem of pictorial beauty.”

Photoplay magazine was less impressed by the story, calling it “more or less indifferent.” However, “the Technicolor process catches the remarkable natural colorings of the arid American desert in a way that is, at times, breath taking in its beauty.” So while what we can see of it now suffers in comparison to three-strip Technicolor, to people in 1924 it looked terrific.

Wanderer opened in Los Angeles on June 14^th at the 3,600-seat Grauman’s Metropolitan and only played for one week. It had another one-week run at the 878-seat Alhambra in July. The L.A. Times didn’t review it. However, on the day of its premier, the paper ran Grace Kingsley’s interview with director Irvin Willat about the problems color brought to filmmaking. He said:

Locations had to be picked for their color values. There could not be too many brilliant reds, nor too many brilliant greens. The soft tones of the desert itself were admirably fitted to the Technicolor process, but in smaller things great care had to be exercised. In one scene a red apple was needed. In black and white photography any apple would have sufficed, but for our picture the company had to send all the way to Yuma for a bright red apple.

Among the reasons Willat was hired to direct was that his brother, C.A. Willat, was Technicolor’s studio manager. Kingsley wrote about him in 1920.

There’s so much material about the history of Technicolor online that I don’t need to repeat it here. A good place to start is on the well-illustrated Wide Screen Museum site.

Fred E. Basten, Glorious Technicolor:The Movies’ Magic Rainbow. South Brunswick: Barnes, 1980, pp. 29–36.

Herbert K. Cruikshank, “Box Office Reviews,” Exhibitors’ Herald, May 31, 1924, p. 19.

Richard W. Haines, Technicolor Movies, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1993.

Grace Kingsley, “Color Brings Difficulties,” Los Angeles Times, June 15, 1924.

Grace Kingsley, “Flashes,” Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1924.

Grace Kingsley, “Flashes,” Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1924.

“Technicolor Building Here,” Los Angeles Times, June 22, 1924.

“Wanderer of the Wasteland,” Photoplay, August 1924, p. 49.

“Wanderer of the Wasteland Takes N.Y. by Storm,” Moving Picture World, July 19, 1924, p. 204.

Robert E. Welsh, “Wanderer of the Wasteland,” Moving Picture World, May 31, 1924, p. 492.

A Scene-Stealing ‘Fish’: December 1923

*The Galloping Fish* told the story of a vaudevillian with a diving act (Louise Fazenda) and her trained seal Bubbles. She and her boyfriend George (Ford Sterling) get mixed up as a fake fiancée and valet with a rich man (Sidney Chaplin), his real fiancée (Lucille Ricksen) and his uncle (Chester Conklin). Wackiness ensues. After a flood in which Bubbles saves them all from rooftops, order gets restored.

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley heard about the travails of being an actress:

“Say,” declared Louise Fazenda to me the other day, as we sat on the edge of the set where they were making The Galloping Fish, out at the Ince studios, “every time I get a call nowadays, I expect to support a horse or double for a trained ant-eater!”

Fazenda often worked with animals. Here she is in *The Kitchen Lady* (1918).

So much Hollywood glamour! They went on to have a nice gossipy chat about her co-stars, and Fazenda spilled the tea on one from Fish in particular:

But Ethel the alligator! There’s the animal I had no use for…If there is anything calculated to make a person jumpy, it is having a large, husky alligator, whose dinner time is due any minute, fix you with his cold, calculating eye—an eye that may light up at any minute with enthusiasm for your contours. Nobody wants to be referred to as ‘the alligator’s tenderloin!’

That sounds utterly reasonable. She mentioned that Ethel got loose for a few days, and the cast and crew had to avoid visiting the river. Making comedies in the early days of the movies required so much grit. A few days later, Kingsley reported that even at the studio, Fazenda got to display her fortitude: one day she dropped a bottle on her foot, puncturing her instep, but after first aid “the comedienne, who laughed it off, resumed her work within half an hour or so.” Kingsley had great sympathy for comedians; she remarked. “As for the comedies, they are extra hazardous. When one is a perfect scream, you can bet somebody broke a leg.”

During her interview, Fazenda had much nicer things to say about one of her other animal co-stars, when she talked about Freddie, called Bubbles in the film:

“He’s a dear seal,” explained Louise, “nipped me once or twice, but didn’t mean a thing by it…Bubbles didn’t think so much of the desert. He seemed to say ‘What’s the idea?’ I like a place where I can flip a mean flapper!”

She had a point: seals don’t belong in Yuma, Arizona, with an average temperature in the eighties and nineties when they were shooting in October and November. Other outlets reported on what Fazenda had to do to get along with him. Camera said that while she dotes on Freddie, “the bond of sympathy has been strengthened since Louise never omits keeping herself well smeared with fish.” They said it was inspirational to him. An L.A. Times article contradicted that, saying that she supplied him with his favorite fish, which makes more sense. Nevertheless, making comedies was hard, unenviable work!

Before the fish solution, it seems that they hadn’t been getting along so well. In November, Kingsley had reported that Fazenda a different attitude towards the bites she’d gotten: “He is too fresh for anything. He has nipped me a couple of times and I have told him distinctly that if he doesn’t look out—well, I need a new fur coat this winter, and seals aren’t such hard animals to train!”

Biting animals weren’t the only difficulty on this shoot; even though Fazenda said it cheerfully, she mentioned other troubles:

There were plenty of bathrooms, and this was a comfort as, when it wasn’t rainy, it was hot and dusty, and on returning home at night we had fairly to blast the soil off ourselves. My hands and face cracked till I looked like the alligator.

Even with all the discomfort, she concluded, “but after all, who would miss a location trip? It is certainly something to talk about in the long winter evenings.” She was a good sport.

Fazenda wrote more details about the shoot in a letter to Myrtle Gebhart from the Yuma location published in Picture Play Magazine, beginning with “Myrtle, you never saw so much dirt in your life.” She wrote about how they coped with another problem: boredom. One of her human co-stars, Truly Shattuck, had the foresight to bring along a lot of hankies that need to be hem-stitched, so they had something to do while waiting—it kept them good-humored. Oh, and she almost drowned in the flood scene. Yikes!

She told Gebhart about how Freddie’s trainer tried “to sort of compensate him for the dreadful experiences he is undergoing on this location trip” sent to Santa Barbara for another seal to keep him company. She wrote:

“We all have hopes that love will stir his bachelor heart. When I last saw him he was flapping around in front of her juggling a ball on his nose—which may be one way of winning a wife.”

The end results of all this hardship and hard work were pretty good, but alas for Miss Fazenda, like many other past and future animal stars, Freddie stole the show. The Galloping Fish opened in Manhattan in mid-April 1924 and Helen Klumph, the L.A. Times’ New York correspondent, said “the seal who plays the title role has the naivete of an ingenue star combined with sleek, debonair charm of a Lew Cody. And his emotional facility!” She enjoyed the whole movie and said, “the delicious humor of The Galloping Fish is more than anyone has a right to expect.”

Exhibitors’ Herald also admired his performance too, saying “Freddie the seal was a real surprise as a motion picture actor and the way he ambled in and out of cabs, ran up and down stairs and followed Chaplin about was a revelation.” Beatrice Barrett in Moving Picture World agreed that he was the best comedian in the picture and said “it is refreshing and diverting because you don’t have any idea what is going to happen next, and it is all good clean fun.”

When it opened in at the Rialto Los Angeles on June 4^th the Times’ Kenneth Taylor felt it was a bit overhyped, saying “you may possibly be a trifle disappointed in The Galloping Fish, but if you are it will purely be a case of too much anticipation… it merely ranks high among the humorous pictures of the year, and is entertaining generally.” He agreed with the earlier reports about the scene-stealer:

“The fame of Freddie, the fish, has preceded him, you see. And while the cast included a quartet of well-known funsters the picture would be as nothing without the fish. There’s a laugh in every finny move he makes.”

It had a very good run in Los Angeles, playing for nearly five weeks, which was a record for the Rialto. The Galloping Fish doesn’t seem to be available on DVD or streaming, but it’s been preserved at archives in Warsaw and Milan.

Naturally, Freddie was a big part of the publicity for the film. At the time he was eight years old and a vaudeville veteran. He made personal appearances at every performance at the Rialto, and the Times reported: “Meeting his film fans ‘face to face’ has added greatly to the popularity of this new star, for Freddie is never temperamental and always does just the right thing to win friends.”

Freddie was in a few more movies, including a two-reeler directed by Henry Lehrman called Sweet Papa(1924) and Dizzy Daisy (1925), a short that re-teamed him with Fazenda.

Having a few movies with a scene-stealing seal didn’t harm Fazenda’s job prospects. The Galloping Fish came out at roughly the mid-point of her long and varied career. She started out in comedy shorts at Sennett then she made some feature-length dramas like The Gold Diggers (1923) and Westerns like The Old Fool (1923). Fish was a return to comedy for her, and she continued to appear in all sorts of films for nearly two more decades. Having made excellent investments and marrying producer Hal B. Wallis (Adventures of Robin Hood 1938, Casablanca,1942), she retired in 1939 to raise their son and do charitable work. If her letter to Gebhart is any indication, I’m sorry that she didn’t write an autobiography—she was a lively writer! If you’d like to know more, Lea Stans has an article about her at Silent-ology.

Beatrice Barrett, “The Galloping Fish,” Moving Picture World, March 22, 1924, p. 304.

Louise Fazenda and Myrtle Gebhart, “A Letter from Location,” Picture-Play Magazine, April 1924, pp.65, 109.

“Galloping Fish Heading Fun Bill,” Los Angeles Times, June 23, 1924.

Grace Kingsley, “Flashes,” Los Angeles Times, November 7, 1923.

Helen Klumph, “Where are Imitators?” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 1924.

“Louise Has Birthday,” Los Angeles Times, June 17, 1924.

“Louise Infatuated with Bubbles,” Camera, January 12, 1924, p.13.

“Poor Fish Fell Hard for Louise,” Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1924.

“Reviews,” Exhibitors’ Herald, March 29, 1924, p. 53.

Kenneth Taylor, “Bizarre, Hectic and Grotesque Animal Actors to Foremost Rank,” Los Angeles Times, January 20, 1924.

Kenneth Taylor, “Galloping Fish Finny and Funny,” Los Angeles Times, June 5, 1924.

The Genuine Alaska: November 1923

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley interviewed writer/director Lewis H. Moomaw, who was in town to preview his film, Chechakos*. Named after the indigenous people’s word for newcomers, it was the first feature film shot entirely in Alaska, and Kingsley’s description includes why people are still interested in the movie:

If you want to see the genuine Alaska, several thousand square miles of it, you may do so in Chechakos…Chechakos promises a wide appeal, inasmuch as it not only has a thrilling story, but it also reveals the actual life, industries, pleasures, occupations, beauties and resources of this great Territory.

Childs Glacier is still there (for now…)

Nine months were spent in making the picture, while some two years were spent beforehand in preparation and research, location hunting, and engaging the aid of various government officials and chambers of commerce. Remote places in Alaska, like the Childs Glacier, on which human beings never before had ventured, were photographed. The pictures were taken within 300 yards of where the glacier was breaking up and pouring over a precipice.

After the box-office success of Nanook of the North, it made sense that someone would want to capitalize on audience’s interest in the North with a fiction film. Chechakos told the story of Baby Ruth, who is saved by two Alaskans, Dexter and Riley, after a boiler explosion on a steamer. Her mother, believing that her child drowned, becomes a singer in a gambling house. Years later Ruth’s rescuers learn where her mother is and they visit to plan a reunion. The evil gambling boss ties Dexter to a chair, sets the house on fire and runs away. Dexter and Riley escape and chase him to collapsing glacier, where the bad guy dies. Ruth and her mother are reunited, and she marries Dexter.

Moomaw didn’t sell his film to a distributor on his trip to Los Angeles, so he went to New York City in January. There he sold it to Associated Exhibitors, a company that released independent productions including Harold Lloyd’s early features and Mabel Norman’s The Extra Girl.

Associated really worked hard to promote the film. Moving Picture World said that to lure the industry to a screening at the Ritz-Carton Hotel:

the wide-awake publicity department of Associated devised a clever and effective exploitation stunt. A messenger, garbed as an Alaskan miner and leading a genuine malamute dog, visited the offices of the press and scores of prominent exhibitors and presented them with an envelope which contained tickets for the showing, dancing and supper…Did this stunt prove effective? We’ll say so, for everyone along Film Row is now talking about The Chechakos.

Perhaps film people were a bit less hard-bitten then, if a nice visit from a doggie could get them to a screening! When they arrived at the hotel on May 1st, they were greeted with an impressive show, according to Exhibitors’ Trade Review:

The staging at the Ritz-Carlton was masterly. One entered the grand ballroom reception foyer to be met by a weaving ray of multi-colored lights, all of a cold tone. Three beautiful white silk drops were hung at the stage end of the ballroom. Three flood-lights with specially painted lenses threw on these drops in varied colors scenes from the production. As the Paul Whiteman Orchestra started the house lights were slowly dimmed down and the lights on the drops intensified. The overture ended, a singer rendered the stirring Johnson number “The Mush-On.” Then the center curtain slowly parted and an introductory reel showed scenes of President Harding’s visit to Alaska and to the location of The Chechakos company. The final scene showed the company arriving on location in a government train. This shot dissolved into the main title of the feature.

Associated also lined up cross promotions with the movie, like this one for Borden’s Milk. Other companies they had agreements with included The Associated Knit Underwear Manufacturers of America, Auto Vacuum Ice Cream Freezers, Sterno canned heat, Thermo Sport Coats and La Palina Cigars.

Unfortunately, the reviews that were the results of the screening were pretty bad. Adele Whitley Fletcher in Motion Picture Magazine had no patience with the movie:

“We cannot, for the very life of us, understand why the producers of this picture went to such lengths in the name of such a cheap and melodramatic story…Nor are the characters portrayed by capable actors and actresses…However, we think the burden of the poor story would have been heavy, even for an exceptional cast.”

She did find some redeeming qualities: “the star of this production is the glacier formations, those walls of ice and snow, slow-moving, ever in the direction of some river or sea into which they crash, terrifying and awe-inspiring masses of white.”

Film Daily agreed with her: “it is to be regretted that the producer or director failed in developing the opportunity. This might easily have been a very big picture.” Furthermore, “the story needs a lot of editing to whip it into better shape and make it first-class in audience appeal.” However, they did think up one good way to sell it: they recommended showing it during the summer, because “this is one of the best snow pictures of the season.”

George Blaisdell in Exhibitors’ Trade Review was much more kind, but he might have been influenced by the multi-page ad for the film that ran in the same issue. He said:

The Chechakos is more than a motion picture and an interesting one at that. It is a most vivid record of the days of the Alaska gold rush in 1897 and 1898. But the historical phase of the subject is submerged in its genuinely dramatic quality and its remarkable series of massive scenic backgrounds.

He addressed the problem with the acting with some faint praise: “The players are new to the screen, but they are competent.”

The anonymous reviewer for the New York Times waited until it was playing at the Cameo Theater and then complained about it:

While some of the scenes of snow and ice are of interest and the race between dog teams across the white desert is thrilling, the actual story of Chechakos is by no means a masterpiece. It is like a Bowery melodrama with arctic settings…It is merely an excuse to show some beautiful Alaskan snow scenes; perhaps if one can look upon it as a bloodthirsty melodrama of the snows, it may be mildly diverting.

It opened in Los Angeles on June 28^th, but the L.A. Times didn’t review it. It had a respectable two-week run at the California, then it moved to a smaller theater, Miller’s. By late August it was playing in smaller markets like San Pedro, along with vaudeville acts. I couldn’t find box office figures, but it looks like it had an ordinary run and it continued to make money for a long time. It was still being shown in March 1926, as part of a kid’s show at the Strand Theater in Santa Rosa, California.

In 1923, Moomaw told Kingsley, “everybody in Alaska was much interested in the picture, and about 3000 Alaskans appear in it,” and people in Alaska are still interested in it. A copy found its way to the library at University of Alaska in Fairbanks and they restored it in 2000. In 2003 it was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, and you can see it on the National Film Preservation Foundation’s website.

Chechakos was the most enduring film by its director. Lewis H.** Moomaw was born in Baker, Oregon on May 5, 1889 and he grew up there. He told the story of how he got started in film to Grace Kingsley in 1925:

It was in 1907, and the sheriff of our town, Baker, Oregon, had been killed—dynamited at his home by some of his enemies. I had made myself a camera out of an old Edison motion-picture machine, which I afterward patented.*** I was going to high school, and the drama of the Sheriff’s death appealed to me. I thought I would make a movie of it! I got into the premises of the Sherriff’s home while the family was a church one Sunday morning, about a week after the Sherriff’s death, and managed a very good reproduction of the accident. I thought I had done a lot for art, but when the local acting Sherriff put on his uniform and came to high school to arrest me, the thing took on another aspect. It was ordered that the picture be burned. So I gave them the positive film. Dramatically it was hurled into the air-tight stove in the courtroom—and naturally the celluloid film exploded! That did give the simple village folk a thrill! However, I kept the negative, and I did afterward show the picture.

Yikes! I’m amazed he told that story about himself. Still in Baker, in 1908 he started a film production company, World Film Manufacturing, and they made comedies like The Amateur Bicyclist and The Man with a Big Mouth and dramas like A Desperate Chance.Later that year the company moved to Portland, but they went out of business in 1910 after a fire destroyed the studio.

Undaunted, Moomaw started a new company in Portland, the American Lifeograph Company. They made films like the documentary Where Cowboy is King (1915). This lead to him getting a job in 1916 with the Burton Holmes Lecture Company and he shot films for their lectures and travelogues in Canada. In January 1917 he applied for a passport to visit Alaska, Canada, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, China, Korea, Japan to gather more material, but he got sick in March and canceled it. He went back to Portland where he continued to work for American Lifeograph, and he wrote and directed The Golden Trail (1920), another Alaska-set melodrama shot in the Lower 48. He married Irene Simpson in November 1920.

So he was ready to be hired when George A. Lewis formed the Alaska Moving Picture Corporation, a stock company with 500 shareholders, to make the first big production to be filmed there. The article in Variety about it said: “They are tired up north of Alaska pictures made in California and have organized to give the world at least one real Alaska picture.” On March 7, 1923 Moomaw and 18 cast and crew members left Seattle on a steamship to do just that.

After Chechakos, Moomaw signed a contract with the film’s distributor to make four more films, but he completed only two, Under the Rouge (1925) and Flames (1926). After that he occasionally appeared in the trades with plans to move his studio to Hollywood and projects that fell through, but his directing career ended and he became a camera designer.

He went to work for the Stewart-Warner Company, who was mostly known for manufacturing gauges and instruments for cars as well as scoreboards for sporting events. In the late 1920s they decided to expand their line to film cameras for amateurs that would be sold through radio stores, according to International Photographer. Lewis Moomaw designed the “Hollywood Model” 16 mm camera and they built the initial run of 500 under his supervision in a factory on Santa Monica Blvd. They retailed for $50.00. The company moved the plant to Chicago in February 1931 and Moomaw, his wife and son David moved along with it. Unfortunately the Great Depression affected sales, and the company discontinued making it in 1933.

However, he continued to have a successful career in designing cameras. He went to work for Bell and Howell in Chicago and he was granted thirteen patents between 1934-1952 for equipment including cameras, projectors, film feed devices and a rewind mechanism. He retired and, according to his biography on Find a Grave, he became a rancher in San Diego where he died on August 22, 1980.

*There were several different spellings of the title, including Cheechacos and Chechahcos. Arbitrarily I settled on the shortest one, Chechakos, so I’ve used that throughout.

**When he was born, his middle name was Hembree (his mother’s maiden name). Later he changed it to Herman, but his death record changed it back to Hembree.

***There’s no record of him patenting a camera this early.

“Associated Will Issue First Picture of Alaska,” Exhibitors’ Trade Review, March 29, 1924, p. 11.

“Associated Gets Rights to Chechakos,” Motion Picture News, March 29, 1924, p.1426.

George Blaisdell, “The Chechakos is Entertaining Drama,” Exhibitor’s Trade Review, May 17, 1924, p. 30

“The Chechakos,” Film Daily, May 18, 1924, p. 10.

“The Chechakos Has Notable Preview,” Exhibitors’ Trade Review, May 17, 1924, p. 23.

“Chechakos Shows, Los Angeles Times, June 27, 1924.

Adele Whitley Fletcher, “Across the Silversheet,” Motion Picture Magazine, August 1924, p.57.

“A Gold Rush Thriller,” New York Times, May 13, 1924.

“Heard on Film Row,” Moving Picture World, March 25, 1917, p. 1976.

“Home Equipment for Radio Stores,” International Photographer, April 1931, p. 25.

Grace Kingsley, “Director Signs,” Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1925.

Grace Kingsley, “Moomaw to Make Mormon Film,” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 1928.

“Moomaw in Los Angeles, to Make Four for A.E.,” Exhibitors’ Herald, September 5, 1925, p. 40.

“Moomaw to Build New Plant,” Film Daily, March 29, 1926, p.1

“Moomaw to Transfer Unit Here,” Los Angeles Times, January 4, 1926.

“New Company Plans Alaskan Picture,” Moving Picture World, March 31, 1923, p. 568.

“Plans to Produce in the Orient,” Los Angeles Times, January 25, 1926.

“Real Alaskan Picture Will Be Made There,” Variety, March 8, 1923, pp. 1, 27.

“Six Veritable Gold Mines in Chechakos Tie-Ups.” Exhibitors’ Trade Review, May 17, 1924, pp. 41-42.

“Snappy Stunt for The Chechakcos,” Moving Picture World, May 10, 1924, p. 209.

“Title of Alaskan Film is Changed,” Los Angeles Times, May 20, 1923.

“Tomorrow’s Cabrillo Film Shows Big Alaska Ice Slide, Also Vaudeville,” San Pedro News Pilot, August 21, 1924.

“Tourist Influx Predicted,” Los Angeles Times, August 17, 1926.

“Working in Portland, Ore., Film Daily, October 29, 1924, p. 9.

“World Film Mfg. Co.,” Moving Picture World, September 19, 1908, p. 217.

Keep the Wrong Ones Out: October 1923

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley mentioned a new policy at the movie studios:

Public is invited! Tourists and others who have been disappointed by the recent order closing studios to visitors will have a chance to see real stars working before a movie camera tomorrow when John M. Stahl directs Lewis Stone, Helena Chadwick, Mary Carr and William V. Mong in a number of important exterior scenes for his new attraction Why Men Leave Home. The Church of the Sacred Heart, an old landmark at Sichel and Baldwin, will be the scene of the action and the company will work there from noon until evening.

Why Men Leave Home told the story of a couple who get married, drift apart, get divorced, realize their mistake and get remarried. Kingsley didn’t say which marriage was being filmed at the church – maybe it was both.

What’s most interesting about her note is that it seems that people once expected to be allowed to wander around film sets. (I bet the cast and crew weren’t thrilled about Kingsley sending people to gawk when they were on location!) This new no visitors policy at the studios had begun on August 15^th, and Kingsley’s co-worker Kenneth Taylor wrote about it under the headline “’No Visitors;’ They Mean It.” He said:

With one fell swoop the tourists’ pet pastime has been completely wiped out. The motion picture studio is barred tight. Unless you are on business—and they don’t consider screen applicants as being “on business,” nor do they allow special privilege to “jewelry salesmen”—you haven’t a chance. The sign that greets you in the front office, to the effect that “all applications to visit this studio are respectfully referred to the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., Frank W. Beetson, secretary” is no joke. Will Hays isn’t kidding.

Taylor got his first name wrong: it was Fred. Frederick W. Beetson was a former salesman and assistant secretary to the Republican Committee in New York City. He went on to become Will Hays’ assistant at the MPPDA, and he moved to Los Angeles in 1922 to act as Hays’ representative. He stayed there for the rest of his career until his retirement in 1943.

It’s interesting that the individual companies didn’t just make their own rules about who could be admitted. At first I thought that it helped take the pressure off of them – they weren’t saying no to their beloved customers and distinguished visitors, the mean old MPPDA was to blame.

Taylor asked Beetson for an explanation, and he said: “in his kindly way that it is in the best interests of art, not to mention business.” When pressed further, he said that MPPDA president Joseph Schenck had done a study estimating that each visitor cost producers about $100, due to lost work time (the workers had to answer questions, for example, cameramen explaining why they used two cameras but made only one film) and theft by souvenir hunters.

Taylor mentioned this added benefit to the increased security.He said this was a real sign inside a studio!

It make sense to keep the public out (none of the libraries I worked in invited visitors into our back rooms, but then nobody really wanted to go there), but it seemed odd that the producers’ association would be the ones to come up with the rule and to enforce it. Exhibitors’ Trade Review gave more details about how it happened, reporting that the Association “held a meeting and passed such a drastic resolution forbidding tourists, salesmen, friends of actors and employees entering the studio.” ETR even quoted the sign that was put up at most of the entrances:

The studios, who are members of the Producers’ Association, agree that after August 15 no visitors are to be admitted within the studios. This action has been taken because of abuses resulting from admission of visitors, and this notice is to ask the co-operation of all concerned in not inviting anyone to the studio, and in the case of uninvited visitors to receive them in the waiting room.

They also told why it was the MPPDA, which were at the time working very hard to rehabilitate Hollywood’s image, was enforcing it:

This act, it is said, followed the lecture tour of a woman who came here armed with credentials from high officials in the industry admitting her to the studios, and who then went on a lecture tour telling of the “vice and depravity” she found there which of course were untrue.

I’ve been amazed by how much people in Hollywood did to overcome the scandals of the early 1920s, from Rupert Hughes’ film Souls for Sale defending the business to Picture-Play magazine’s series of articles from a visiting fan. They even held an exposition to demonstrate how wholesome they were. They thought of everything. Plus, it took only one lecturer* for such a big reaction from the producers.

It had been a while since just anybody could wander on to a lot, as a passerby who returned Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to his father did in 1919. There were fences, gates and guards – just last month, Kingsley mentioned the gatekeeper at Fine Arts. However, plenty of people got tours, like the King and Queen of Belgium and writer Peter Kyne’s son. The new rule stopped all of that for a time. A year later Exhibitors’ Herald in an article about the many successes of the MPPDA said:

One of the chief time savers effected is the judicious handling of the thousands of tourists who annually come to Los Angeles and who feel it is their right to visit the motion picture studios. Unchecked admission of these hordes of sight-seerers, which was more or less common a few years ago, so seriously interfered with picture making that producers decided to call a halt. Now every studio carries a conspicuous sign in the anterooms that are the portals of the realm of make-believe, advising prospective visitors they must call at the offices of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, Inc., and tell their reasons why they should be admitted to Mr. Beetson. If there are reasons which seem sufficient, Beetson may issue a pass, but the reasons must be more than just curiosity on the part of a visitor.

Beetson with his third wife (*Motion Picture Herald*, May 7, 1932)

So the ban was still being enforced in 1924, but eventually it was relaxed. However, similar bans happened every few years. In 1927, Exhibitors’ Herald reported that the five biggest studios had excluded visitors again, but this time it was the individual companies’ decisions. Once again they said the cost of delayed shooting was the reason. They gave as an example, “for several years MGM officials have attempted to accommodate a limited number of requests and have allowed tourists to view the inside of the huge plant, but a survey of costs, it is said, involving thousands of dollars weekly, has compelled them to withdraw this courtesy.”

There was an earlier ban by some of the studios. This photo was published in *Exhibitors’ Herald*, November 1922.

Occasionally they tried to even ban journalists and agents, and they had a new reason to keep people away: lawsuits. According to Motion Picture Herald some people sued because they tripped on a cable. However, as the Herald predicted, the studios forgot about the ban pretty quickly after:

one studio refused to permit its employees to receive publications on the lot, contending they wasted too much time reading…these severe rules in most cases have been softened, one reason being that the general manager of one studio went berserk when his trade papers were held up.

However, Universal Studios did figure out how to monetize tourists’ fascination with Hollywood, but it didn’t last as long as several different places online claimed (shocking, I know: wrong information on the Internet! But I expected better from public TV). In similar wording, they all said that Universal let anyone in for a quarter, and patrons could wander around the stages, collect autographs and visit the zoo until sound came and forced them to stop. That sounded fishy! Why would filmmakers put up with that?

Earlier writers didn’t have the benefit of the Media Digital History Archive to check on this, but I do. In a 1923 article in Picture-Play magazine about the wonders of Universal, from Von Stroheim’s Monte Carlo set to an African jungle, Helen Klumph wrote:

The managers of Universal City aren’t blind to the fascination of all these things. They realize that the public would like to see them, but that can’t be. About seven years ago when Universal City was new, visitors used to be allowed. For twenty-five cents you could go in and see that they really had a hospital and a post office of their own, ask the actors if the make-up hurt their faces and if they didn’t have a lot of interesting experiences traveling around and making pictures. But the crowds got to be so great that they broke through the ropes that were stretched to keep them out of the way. In scenes where the action demanded that someone open a door and rush out, the actor frequently found such a crowd of gaping bystanders just outside the door that he couldn’t get through. And the last straw came when a lion who was supposed to be rearing, tearing wild became so enamored of being petted that he acted like a frolicsome puppy. So, there are no more visitors—that is except favored mortals like newspaper and magazine writers.

The tour as we know it today, with a tram ride and shows just for visitors, began in 1964.

* I tried to find out exactly who the lecturer was, but none of the articles about the new rule named her (no extra publicity for her, I guess) and I didn’t find any obvious vice and depravity speaker listed in the trades.

“Ban on Visitors Put Into Effect; Passes Revoked,” Motion Picture Herald, April 25, 1931, p. 52.

Edwin S. Clifford “Producers Alliance Effects Economies,” Exhibitors Herald, July 5, 1924, p. 59, 138.

“Exclusion Signs Posted on West Coast,” Exhibitors’ Trade Review, September 1, 1923, p. 593.

“Five Studios Close to Visitors to Save Cost Reaching Thousands a Week,” Exhibitors’ Herald, April 2, 1927, p. 29.

Jack Grant, “No Visitors, Please,” Motion Picture, July 1931, pp. 64-5, 114-5.

Helen Klumph, “Around the World at Universal City,” Picture Play Magazine, August 1923, pp. 53-55, 92.

“No Visitors at Coast Studios,” Film Daily, August 15, 1923, p. 1.

“Pacific Studios Closed to Visitors as Result of Producers’ Ruling,” Daily News Leader (San Mateo), August 20, 1923.

“Snub for Los Angeles,” Variety, April 1, 1921, p. 47.

Already Haunted: September 1923

The uncredited cartoonist thought that the ghosts were displeased by the new tenants, but Kingsley didn’t agree—she was happy to see new life at the old studio.

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley observed: “What a long, long time are nine years in the life of motion pictures!” She and screenwriter Mary O’Connor had taken a nostalgic evening trip around the old Fine Arts Studios buildings where O’Connor had been the head of D.W. Griffith’s scenario department. The night watchman let the women wander around with a flashlight to visit the ghosts of their pasts. Kingsley wrote:

Rome and those other moldy places aren’t a bit ahead of the old Griffith studio on Sunset Boulevard when it comes to spooks. We know, Mary O’Connor and I, because we were over there recently when the moon was hanging in the sky, to see the transformation that had been wrought since the Hamilton-White organization has ensconced itself in the famous establishment, and the buildings have been rehabilitated and moved back from the street.

The Griffith studio was always such a humble, odd looking, rambling old place. Nobody would take a second look at it even in its palmiest days. Yet, right there were mothered a hundred geniuses! The old green front is being obliterated with some pretentious brick buildings, and the rotting old gate, pressed by a thousand hands whose owners are famous now, has been taken away, and the faithful old gateman dismissed. But the studio is still there for those who care to wander through its echoing spaces.

Here’s the cartoon version of what the current tenants were up to.

Oh, the ghosts that look out at you from the cobwebby old dressing rooms on the balconies—dressing rooms left to mice and the spiders now, because most of the Jack White Comedy companies that occupy the studio at present scorn the musty old place and dress in a clean, new, beautiful building.

Jack White was one of the leading short comedy producers in the 1920’s-50’s. In 1923 he was making films for Educational Pictures. He supervised Mermaid Comedies, Lloyd Hamilton Comedies, Jack White Specials and Cameo Comedies at the Fine Arts Studios. He became most famous for his work with his brother Jules and the Three Stooges.

Their memories were mostly happy, if a little wistful, as they reminisced about the old days which really hadn’t been that long ago. They had a look in the old projection room where Kingsley first saw Birth of a Nation and she recalled:

When we came out of that hot little projection room we were in a daze. We hadn’t known that pictures like that could be. Somebody gasped, “Why, it’s as good as Cabiria!”

Kingsley told of Douglas Fairbanks worrying about whether Triangle would renew his contract, or if he should just go back on stage, and director John Emerson being irritable at his assistant, Erich Von Stroheim. She said, “What simple lives those stars led in those days,” for example:

I remember the pride with which Lillian Gish informed us that now she had running water in her dressing-room, and she meant to paint the room white. And she did the work, too, herself! And how May Allen scolded when she first arrived at the studio, and saw only a wash bowl and pitcher with which to perform her ablutions. “My Lord,” she said, “I thought they kept all those things in the museum!”

Nobody feels nostalgic for a lack of indoor plumbing! They continued their tour, remembering all the people had passed through the studio:

Mary and I went and gazed at the famous old bench in the waiting room, where so many now famous ones had waited anxiously and eagerly for a hearing. There had sat Henry Walthall, Seena Owen, Carmel Myers, Zasu Pitts, Bessie Love, Winifred Westover, and a dozen others.

O’Connor had a brief bit of sentimentality:

I found Mary sniffling a little over the office where she wrote her big, successful stories in those old days—until a mouse ran under her foot and she squealed.

When they were remembering the past, Griffith was busy back East, shooting his final epic, *America*, and still trying to do great things.

The old buildings were not being cared for–Hollywood has never been great at preserving its history. At least Kingsley could write about the departed people and places, and that did get saved. She marveled, “What great things were done here!” and we can find her article in the L.A. Times Historical Archive database.

With that, they returned to their busy present:

“Come,” I said to Mary, “the moon has gone and the ghosts have departed.”

After all, we’ll all join them soon enough. Nine years in the life of motion pictures seem much shorter now; 2014 was the year of The Grand Budapest Hotel and the first installments of Guardians of the Galaxy and John Wick. How did the time pass so quickly?

Kingsley’s fellow ghost hunter, Mary O’Connor, had been Griffith’s scenario editor after a career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter for Vitagraph, Mutual, and Triangle. Now that part of her career barely gets mentioned in her biographies, because she had become the head of the Famous Players-Lasky scenario department in 1918 where she had a fine career until 1926 when retired. She stayed active in the Screen Writers’ Guild and died on September 3, 1959 in Los Angeles. C.S. Williams called her “the grand dame of scenarists” in their article about her on Classic Film Aficionados.

The place where Kingsley and Hamilton reminisced began as the Reliance-Majestic Studios in 1914. D.W. Griffith moved in when he went to work for Majestic and changed the name to the Fine Arts Studios. In 1919 he left for Mamaronek New York and his old lot became a place independent producers could lease. In 1923 the owners renovated it and Jack White rented it. His company was followed by Tiffany-Stahl Productions, Tiffany Pictures, Talisman, and others. Unfortunately, it’s no longer there for us to wander its echoing spaces–now it’s a Vons supermarket. I don’t suppose the ghosts haunt the bakery aisle.

“Change of Comedy Units to Fine Arts Plant Complete,” Motion Picture News, September 15, 1923, p.1329.

Grace Kingsley, “Frivols: Griffith Changes,” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1917.

“Reconstructing Fine Arts Studio,” Motion Picture News, April 28, 1923, p. 2041.

‘The caviar of picture entertainment’: August 1923

One hundred years ago this month (after her annual August vacation), Grace Kingsley was already getting ready for the busy fall season:

Those picture fans who love luxury along with their pictures have got something to look forward to now. When the Kinema reopens in October they won’t know the old place. It will not only be called the Criterion, but it will be all fitted up with the most luxurious lounges—lounges from which no pictures could possibly be bad to look upon.

But the best of it is that they won’t have to look at any bad pictures. Only the best are to be booked, and just by way of proving it, the initial picture will be Charlie Chaplin’s The Woman of Paris, starring Edna Purviance, which the comedian directed, and to the appearance of which all the critics and fans are eagerly looking forward.

Readers already had been told about the film; a glowing review of it was in the paper the week before in the Times’ new weekly magazine, The Pre-View. The writer (probably editor Hallett Abend) promised “now comes a photoplay which smashes the old conventions and—what is more important—gives something better in place of what has been smashed.” He gave a plot summary:

It is the story of a girl from a small town in France who misunderstands the man whom she is to marry. She goes to Paris and becomes the mistress of the richest and gayest bachelor of the capital. Then she meets her sweetheart, who has become an artist. The old love revives, and there is some shooting.

He admitted that it was “a chestnut as a story” and “cheaply melodramatic,” however both Romeo and Juliet and Treasure Island were melodramatic and they were still Art. What made A Woman of Paris great was its naturalism: “there has never been a film made that I know of which was so little ‘stagy’…if Mr. Chaplin makes ten pictures like this he will have done for screenland what Ibsen did in humanizing the stage with the cream of his plays—and this sort of revolution is what screenland must undergo.” That was a lot to promise!

Over the following weeks the Times helped build anticipation for the premiere. At the end of the month, an article had more details about the five week long theater renovation: management was installing 500 “luxurious loge chairs” to make it the most comfortable auditorium in the country, along with new projection equipment, and entirely new decoration. In late September they said the total cost was $75,000 and the decor was in a Byzantine style:

the ceiling has been transformed into a great dome of massive squares, brilliantly illuminated…Rich tapestries adorn the walls, while the stage is framed in flashing colors of the rainbow.

Surprisingly, the 1850-seat house hadn’t sold out by then, even though the guest list for opening night included nearly every star, director, and studio head in town as well as city officials like the mayor, fire chief, police chief, and judges. People were even traveling from England, Paris, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit and San Francisco to attend.

As usual, Kingsley didn’t get to attend the premier; her boss sent himself. (I do wonder what she thought of the movie, but she didn’t tell.) Edwin Schallert admired the film just as much as the Pre-View writer had:

The caviar of picture entertainment—that is Charlie Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris. It is the sophisticated film drama of the year. It is so full of novelty and subtlety that it will perhaps open a new epoch for the photoplay technician, and intrigue and mayhap delight the taste jaded by too much routine.

The really tremendous thing about Chaplin’s picture—for it has a tremendousness of a kind—in its simplicity and directness….Chaplin’s debut as a director of a serious drama justifies all the expectations for real seriousness.

Altogether, Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris is going to prove one of the big events of the year in a community that is as picture-wise as Los Angeles.

Schallert reported a bit about the opening night: “the usual madness that distinguishes a premiere was increased…The crowd thronged and surged around the doors of the theater on Grand Avenue, and even blocked traffic down the street.” He even thought that the militia should have been called. He also mentioned the prologue, which Chaplin himself had written and supervised:

The prologue is like no other prologue, the music, everything that spells the personality of the comedian…It really has a place as an introduction to the picture, really sets the atmosphere, and is a bit high-brow in the amount of the French language it introduces besides.

Chaplin directing Adophe Menjou and Edna Purviance.

Woman opened in New York on October 1^st, and the reviewers there admired it just as much (I didn’t find any bad ones). Moving Picture World titled their round-up “Critics unanimous in praise of Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris.” The L.A. Times reporter in New York, Helen Klumph, said:

Everyone hailed the picture as a masterpiece of direction—as a great advance in technique—but there were a few bewildered individuals who wondered what the story meant, if anything. It is the first picture I have ever seen that was apparently devised by an adult mind for people of intelligence. It gives motion pictures what they most need—a touch of sophistication.

However, she anticipated that there were commercial problems with the movie, quoting an upstate exhibitor who said his local women’s club would blacklist him if he showed it. Schallert had also mentioned “some of the picture is a little too subtle to have a wide popular vogue, unless I mistake its effect. A Woman of Paris is really for the intelligentsia.”

Lower than hoped for ticket sales was why Chaplin didn’t abandon comedy to be a ‘serious’ director. Woman had a respectable run in Los Angeles of seven weeks. But this was at the same time that a huge hit like The Covered Wagon was playing in its seventh month. Before the opening Chaplin gave an interview in which he said:

“My future production activities will be largely guided by the manner in which the public receives my latest picture, A Woman of Paris….Does the public want truth in motion pictures? Does the public want the stereotyped happy ending? Does the public feel willing to accept an unhappy ending?

Somehow I have faith that the public is not stereotyped, but is and always has been ready for genuine truth and realism.”

That worked out exactly as you might expect. By October 24^th Kingsley was already reporting, “Charlie Chaplin is going to make another laugh picture. Whether so much seriousness as was displayed in A Woman of Parisgot on his nerves, or whatever, he has decided to put aside his idea of playing a serious role and will appear in one of his old-time joy-bringers.” He did that, and it went awfully well for him: his next movie was The Gold Rush (1925), which is now regarded as one of the best movies ever made. However, Woman still has admirers. Wes D. Gehring called it “a misunderstood masterpiece” and wrote a whole book about it.

“Chaplin Stages Show,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1923.

“Criterion to be Most Comfortable,” Los Angeles Times, August 26, 1923.

“Critics Unanimous in Praise of Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris.” Moving Picture World, October 20, 1923, p. 680.

“Her Art Embraces All Roles,” Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1923.

Helen Klumph, “Highbrows Are For It,” Los Angeles Times, October 7, 1923.

“Premiere of Chaplin Film,” Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1923.

Edwin Schallert, “Chaplin Film Notable,” Los Angeles Times, September 28, 1923.

Edwin Schallert, “Chaplin Opens New Epoch,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1923.

“Speak, Vox Populi!” Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1923.

“Theater Ready for Woman of Paris Opening,” Los Angeles Times, September 21, 1923.

Hollywood Finds Another Use for History: July 1923

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley reported on an upcoming event at an exposition that was celebrating of all things, the centennial of the Monroe Doctrine:

If you want to see the picture stars in all their glory, be sure to visit the Exposition tomorrow evening. The afternoon and evening have been turned over to the Actors’ Fund, for which benevolent purpose Daniel Frohman is now working in the West. The stars will occupy boxes at the Exposition Stadium in the evening and each will be introduced in person.

“The stars have given their word to be present,” said Mr. Frohman, “and I feel sure they will not disappoint me in such a worthy cause as the Actors’ Fund.”

Frohman really had convinced most of the big stars of 1923 to appear, including Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Norma and Constance Talmadge, Pola Negri, William S. Hart and many more. The Actors’ Fund was founded in 1882, and it assisted actors and their families when they were down on their luck. The organization is still going strong, but it changed its name to the Entertainment Community Fund, because now they help both performers and behind the scenes workers in film, theatre, television, music, opera, radio, and dance.

The place Kingsley called Exposition Stadium is better known as the Coliseum, and in 1923 it was brand-new. This photo shows the MDC/MPE’s stage and grounds, and it was the first big event held there. It sits in Exposition Park, which was named in 1910.

Actors’ Fund Day was just one of the special events at the Exposition, whose full name was the Monroe Doctrine Celebration, American Historical Revue and Motion Picture Exposition. It ran for five weeks, July 2-August 5. It was a big deal at the time, and now it’s forgotten (a bit like the Monroe Doctrine itself).

I certainly needed a reminder of exactly what the Doctrine was. In 1823, in his annual message to Congress, President James Monroe said that as a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy we would not interfere in Europe, they could no longer colonize or interfere in countries in the Western Hemisphere, and any attempt to do so would result in war. In 1923, none of the reporting seemed to think this was a really odd excuse for a fair.

Led by W. J. Reynolds, secretary of the Motion Picture Producers’ Association, planning among film executives and city officials began in late November 1922, according to Exhibitors’ Herald. They started by sending Los Angeles Mayor George E. Cryer to Washington D.C. to invite President Warren Harding to the event. They offered to bring the President to it in a special train, made up of “the most palatial cars obtainable” including one car “converted into a luxurious motion picture theater in which will be projected the leading current photoplays.” They hoped he’d bring along members of the diplomatic corps and leading members of Congress, and it would cost $40,000, according to the trade paper Camera.

Cryer also met with representatives of South American countries to invite them, too, since the Monroe Doctrine concerned them. At the same time, Congressman Walter Lineberger (R-CA) introduced legislation to mint a commemorative 50-cent piece for the event and Senator Hiram Johnson (R-CA) took up the bill. They planned to sell the coins for a dollar each, and use the profits to help fund the Exposition. The coins were approved, and Chester Beach, a California sculptor, designed them. Now they’re an oddball collector’s item.

Plans for the grounds were published in April.

Construction of Spanish-American-style buildings on the fairgrounds began in March. They called the midway “The Location” and that’s where the motion picture industry exhibits were planned. The first bungalow was reserved by the Rockett Film Company, and they proposed to put up their recreation of Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace, along with other relics and documents that they used in their forthcoming film about him.

To publicize the event, Clara Kimball Young, Ruth Roland and Madge Bellamy toured the country. Bellamy went to 30 cities and invited all the mayors, and she stopped in Washington, D.C. to invite Harding again. This time he accepted the invitation.

They also began planning an ambitious stage show. Motion Picture News reported that they formed a commission of educators to guarantee “an accurate pageant that will graphically picture the successive steps in the making of America, from its discovery down to the present day.” The volunteer members included the presidents of USC, Stanford, and Cal Tech as well as the dean of UCLA and the school superintendents of L.A. City and County public schools. At their first session, they found there was so much material that could be presented, it would take a year for it all, so they needed to pick the highlights. They settled on five tableaux: the arrival of Columbus, the founding of the Spanish missions, Washington assuming command of the Continental Army, Monroe and the “spirit of Liberty and Peace” keeping Russia out of California, and Lincoln emancipating slaves. They turned over their outline to a pageant-master. First R.H. Burnside of the New York Hippodrome was hired, and he was enthusiastic. When interviewed by the Times, he said, “I expect to make the American Historical Revue the greatest production of my career.” Nevertheless, he was later replaced by Emile De Recat (ballet master of the Paris Grand Opera), but they kept that little drama out of the papers, so I don’t know what happened.

Since January they had been selling Patron’s Certificates for ten dollars apiece. Buyers got admission to the opening day.

They continued with the hard work of planning and preparation, and on June 25^th the Times reported that Exposition Park was “a scene of feverish activity these days. Gangs of laborers are working night and day in putting the finishing touches, while exhibitors are equally busy.” The paper threw its full support behind the event: the day before they had run an editorial that said “this exposition is the greatest opportunity that has ever come to the motion picture people to put themselves before the world in the light in which we of Los Angeles have come to know them. It is more than just a show, it is a demonstration. It should be an epochal event in the history of a great and growing institution.”

The *L.A. Times* did their part to boost the Exhibition, publishing a ten-page special section on opening day, July 2^nd.

Finally, opening day arrived. In attendance were state and local dignitaries, motion picture celebrities, and the 20,000 people who bought patrons’ certificates. President Harding did not show up, but seventy-five Latin American diplomats based in Washington did. They had arrived the day before, and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce were to show them a pretty good time during their week-long visit, with tours of picture studios, Pasadena, Catalina and the harbor. (At least it seems this project didn’t do damage to international relations.)

Times writer H.B.K. Willis reported that the day’s events began with the unveiling of an imitation bronze statue of President Monroe, followed by the opportunity to look at the booths where both studios and local businesses (everything from a lamp shade company and several towns’ Chambers of Commerce to the U.S. Forestry Service) had set up displays. The dignitaries attended services at a church on the grounds called the Little Church Around the Corner, and then they had dinner at an inaugural banquet in the Montmartre Garden Café. At 8 o’clock all the attendees saw the first illumination of the buildings (The Billboard said, “the lighting effects are the greatest ever”), then they went to the premier of the historical pageant.

It was quite a show. Since nobody was expected to sit through too much history, the tableaux were interspersed with comics, animal acts, singers, celebrity appearances, and ballet. Will J. Farley, in The Billboard trade paper, gave a nearly complete run-down:

“The First Natives”
“The Landing of Columbus”
Solo by soprano Mrs. Charles Duffield (she got two encores)
Tom Kirnan and his Congress of Cowgirls and Cowboys, who did trick roping
A car parade of movie stars, including Viola Dana, Madge Bellamy and Conrad Nagle
“Washington Taking Command”
Comic Poodles Hanneford’s stand-up routine
The Flying Floyds and the Flying Cordonas acrobatic acts
An even longer movie star car parade that include Ruth Roland, Anna Q. Neilson, Louise Fazenda, and Bessie Love
A tableau featuring the cast of The Covered Wagon
Randow, a French pantomime clown
“The Emancipation of the South”
A ballet choreographed by Theodore Kosloff with 100 “perfect and well dressed” women
The Pander Troupe, a group of French clowns
Another act by Tom Kirnan and his group, this one with trick riding
A 30-horse act from the Muaczkwiski Circus of Warsaw
“The Motion Picture,” a tableau all about the movies
Another ballet by Kosloff
A Russian horse act
And finally, a fireworks spectacle called Montezuma. Farley reported that everybody stayed for it, even though it was at midnight.
After that, they held an informal dance. (On a Monday night! How did people stay awake?)

Oddly enough, Farley somehow missed the Monroe Doctrine offering. However, Josephs in Variety mentioned that he saw it, and it featured Nigel De Brullier as Monroe and William Mong as Daniel Webster. He found it “very impressive.” I imagine that nobody was paying full attention to all of the three-and-a-half-hour show.

The Monroe Doctrine got smaller in the ads.

Farley estimated the attendance was between 15,000-30,000, but Josephs said 28,000 and he mentioned that Coliseum more than half taken up by the stage. Since it could usually seat 80,000 people, there were still some empty seats. Josephs mentioned another problem in his review: he wasn’t impressed by the exhibits. He said “there is not enough amusement to warrant the 55-cent gate…despite its good-looking layout, [it] has very little to attract the public for a second visit.”

It turned out that he was right. Even though an estimated 40,000 people came for the Independence Day celebration on the Fourth, ticket sales began to flag. On Sunday July 8^th they sold only 25,000 tickets, according to the Times. So on July 12^th, they added carnival attractions, including a Ferris wheel, to the grounds. The paper reminded people who were waiting to visit “if you don’t go now you are likely to get caught in a last-minute jam and see the show either under unsatisfactory conditions or not at all…It’s your show. Go to it!”

The newspaper was really invested in the event: on Sunday the 15th they had actress Helene Chadwick drop 2,000 free tickets from their airplane (piloted by J.H. Zapp) over Venice and Ocean Park between 2 and 3 pm.

The following day, the Exposition corporation had an evening parade lit by arc lights on trucks from downtown L.A. to Exposition Park, with bands and floats that featured the pageant acts, as well for films like Rosita, Robin Hood, The Covered Wagon and even Human Wreckage (a story about drug addiction that wouldn’t seem to lead itself to a jolly parade float). Animals from the Selig Zoo marched, and Tom Mix on his horse Tony lead an equestrian group from the studios. The paper said that 70,000 people turned out to line the streets for it.

Another way they tried to encourage attendance was with theme days, like Veterans Day, Boy Scouts Day, and Rotary Club Day. Just as Kingsley reported, Friday July 20^th was Actors Fund Day. The Times article about it said “As part of the evening’s entertainment more than a score of the best-known motion picture stars were introduced to the crowds in the great Coliseum. The introductions were made by [film director] Fred Niblo between the regular numbers of the show…. Mr. Niblo called the name, the spot light hunted along the boxes and picked out the star in question. In every instance a roar of applause greeted the star.” William Hart got the biggest cheer, but the responses for Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Theda Bara were also huge. It looks like Charlie Chaplin had changed his mind—when his name was called, the spotlight couldn’t find him. 12,000 people attended that night, and the Fund got a share of the receipts.

The organizers will still trying to get President Harding to visit. After the first week, they sent a telegram, inviting him again and pointed out he could stop off on his trip to Alaska. He was supposed to arrive on August 2nd, but instead he sent his secretary, George Christian, who read a message from him during a Children’s Day event in the afternoon. Expert presidential historians will already know that Harding died of a heart attack that night. News of his death was announced to the crowd of 15,000 people attending the evening program. The Pastor of the Exposition’s church Neil Dood appeared suddenly on the stage near the end of the program with a megaphone and said, “It is my sorrowful duty to announce to you that President Harding passed away at 7:30 o’clock tonight in San Francisco.” He had to repeat it three times before the crowd fully grasped it. He read a prayer for him, the orchestra played “Nearer My God to Thee” and the audience filed out in complete silence.

Attendance peaked in the last few days, with 50,000 ticket buyers on the final Saturday. The Times proclaimed that “it will be remembered as one of the big events in the history of Los Angeles.”

But it wasn’t enough. On August 3rd, three of the Exposition’s creditors filed a petition of involuntary bankruptcy in Federal Court against them. The corporations assets were estimated at $30,000 and their liabilities at $120,000. Months later, Henry L. Marshall in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Daily News, said what happened next:

The Monroe Doctrine Centennial closed its doors finally, dying a miserable death, with contractors, artisans, musicians, electricians, plumbers, ballyhoo barkers, stenographers, ticket takers and an army of laborers besieging the appointed receiver for a settlement. A settlement of some kind was eventually made. The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce rooms were a battling ground for days, where men and women who had labored in the interests of this initial affair tried to get a few cents on the dollar for work and materials.

He also accused all five of the town’s other newspapers of “giving it frantic artificial respiration through countless columns of space.” The L.A. Times was certainly guilty as charged.

Walter Johnson Reynolds, the Exposition’s chief administrator, did an enormous amount of work and gained nothing for it. He’d lost his job as secretary of the Motion Picture Producers’ Association in April, when its board realized it looked like they were sponsoring the Exposition because he was working for both (they were, but they didn’t want people to know it). In July he had to resign as the secretary and treasurer of the Cinema Mercantile Company, a costume and prop rental company, because they were one of the Exposition’s major creditors. A Times reporter caught up with him on August 8th and wrote, “In discussing his financial condition yesterday, Mr. Reynolds admitted that he is the principal loser in the Exposition, but refused to disclose the amount of his loss.” It looks like the former owner of a boat factory in Muskegon, Michigan left the film industry (there weren’t any more Times or trade paper articles about him) and he gave his profession in the 1930 census as a capitalist in the investment industry. He did still had money; in 1930 he and his wife Rose were living in a beautiful house in Hancock Park. He died in 1933, age 63.

The Exposition also took down Reynolds’ old employer, the Motion Picture Producers’ Association. The Billboard reported that it was dissolved in late August, and its work was taken over by the MPPDA (Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America), headed by Will Hayes.

So why did the film industry go to all this trouble in the first place? H.B.K. Willis had hinted at the real purpose in the Times’ special section:

“though the motive of the Exposition is the attainment of more cordial relations and greater sympathy for the makers of motion pictures from photoplay patrons, it is indeed happy that Southern California commercial and civic interests are co-operating with the magnates of the silver screen in this $800,000 gesture of entente cordiale.”

Historian Alex Bryne had a similar conclusion, stated more bluntly in his 2020 book:

The Los Angeles Celebration in which the Monroe Doctrine served a secondary role for its organizer—the Hollywood film industry. Held in the newly constructed Coliseum at Exposition Park, the month-long event was essentially a public relations stunt that aimed to restore faith in the motion picture industry after several high-profile scandals had tarnished its reputation.

It’s really impressive, the amount of work that went into rehabilitating Hollywood’s image in 1922-1923. Most film histories point to the appointment of Will Hayes and his work at the MPPDA, but there was also Ethel Sands’ series of articles on how wholesome Hollywood was in Picture Play Magazine, Rupert Hughes’ movie about hard-working actors called Souls For Sale, and Grace Kingsley’s own actresses-are-too-innocent-to-smoke article. All hands were on deck, and ultimately they were successful.

After this disaster, Monroe Doctrine’s bicentennial this year won’t be celebrated with a fair – not only because this one lost so much money, but also because in 2013, John Kerry, then Secretary of State, pronounced the Doctrine officially dead. Nowadays, Hollywood would need to find something else to rehabilitate its image, even if they wanted to.

Alex Bryne, The Monroe Doctrine and United States National Security in the Early Twentieth Century, New York, NY: Springer International Publishing, 2020, pp 180-1.

“Cheer Actors at Exposition,” Los Angeles Times, July 21, 1923.

“Christian To Be at Revue,” Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1923.

“Coast Exposition Boosted by Tours of Picture Stars,” Exhibitors’ Trade Review, April 28, 1923, p. 1078.

“Coast Exposition Plans Center in New York,” Motion Picture News, April 21, 1923, p. 1886.

“Coins, Pageantry, and a New Epoch,” Camera, January 6, 1923, p.5

“Crowd Church at Exposition,” Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1923.

“Crowds Throng Gates as Centennial Opens,” Los Angeles Times, July 3, 1923.

“Diplomats to be Feted Here,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1923.

“Educators to Aid in L.A. Festival,” Motion Picture News, May 19, 1923, p. 2366.

“The Exposition,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1923.

“Exposition Plans are Told,” Los Angeles Times, June 25, 1923.

“Exposition Sends Wire to Harding,” Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1923.

Will J. Farley, “Monroe Doctrine Centennial and M.P. Exposition Veritable Fairyland,” The Billboard, July 14, 1923, p. 5, 115.

“Film Exposition Rounding into Shape,” American Cinematographer, April 1923, p. 9-10, 22.

“Filmland Will Parade Tonight,” Los Angeles Times, July 16, 1923.

“Film World on Review,” Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1923.

“Fireworks on Display Each Night,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1923.

“Fun Lovers Given Innings,” Los Angeles Times, July 12, 1923.

“Harding Receives Cryer,” Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1922.

Josephs, “Big Show in Stadium Motion Picture Expo.,” Variety, July 18, 1923, p. 26.

“L.A. Box Offices Dull Because of Exposition,” Variety, July 18, 1923, p. 23.

“L.A. Plans to Entertain President in Special Train on his Trip to Exposition,” Camera, December 23, 1922, p. 11.

“Lasky Will Show Story of Pictures,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1923.

“Many Worries in Film Work,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1923.

Henry L. Marshall, “Business vs. Patriotism,” Daily News (Los Angeles), February 5, 1924.

“Motion Picture Exposition Will Be International Event,” Exhibitors’ Herald, March 24, 1923, p.22.

“Motion Picture Producers’ Assn to Dissolve,” The Billboard, August 18, 1923, pp. 1, 123.

“Noted Producer Engaged,” Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1923.

“Plan International Exposition on Coast,” Exhibitors’ Herald, December 2, 1922, p. 34.

“Record Exposition Crowd,” Los Angeles Times, July 20, 1923.

“Record Throng Crowds Centennial on Fourth,” Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1923.

Joseph M. Schenck, “Centennial to Boost City,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1923.

“Program of Events at Centennial,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1923.

“Revue Admits Bankruptcy,” Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1923.

“See Exposition Without Cost,” Los Angeles Times, July 13, 1923.

“Snappy Show at Exposition,” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 1923.

“Southland’s Greatness Told in Many Ways,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1923.

“Tableaux to Depict Epochal Events of Hemisphere,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1923.

“Throng is Grief-Stricken,” Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1922.

“Thousands See Exposition End,” Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1923.

H.B.K. Willis, “Centennial Opens Today for Five Week Period,” Los Angeles Times, July 2, 1923.

“W.J. Reynolds Quits Two Jobs,” Los Angeles Times, August 9, 1923.