One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley had a run of bad luck in movie theaters, seeing recycled and old-fashioned stories. After managing to stay awake through The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, she wrote:
It is tedious to watch on the screen the unwinding of a tale of which you know the end from the beginning. And how much worse to watch the unwinding of a tale that is worse on the screen than it was on the stage or in the novel!
The yarn about the feud of the Tollivers and the Falins is a good enough one, but it is like all Kentucky moonshiners feud yarns. More blood flows than the stockyards can show!…And how silly and theatrical the scene in which June Tolliver lines up the opposing feudists up and delivers a Chautauqua lecture on the beauties of brotherhood, whereas the two clans kiss and make up.
Other reviewers weren’t enthusiastic about it either; Film Daily called it merely “satisfactory” and lacking in suspense while Exhibitors’ Trade Review thought that everybody’s familiarity with the plot would be a selling point.
Pine wasn’t her only disappointing trip to the theater these weeks. Earlier she felt absolutely no nostalgia for a story from her youth:
Bertha M. Clay* is merely a state of mind! The state of mind of the 15-year-olds of late Victorian era, and of many scenario writers. You realize that when you see Thorns and Orange Blossoms from the Clay opus, which is showing down at Loews this week. Bertha worked with a regular set of puppets. They were always in her (or is it his?) tales the very, very good blonde, and the very, very bad brunette, and the man they both loved. So much I remember from my salad and under the sofa cushion library days.
Kingsley no longer had any time for this sort of plot, saying the bad girl: “must have been awfully naïve to think that after she put the poor man in jail by pretending he had taken a shot at her, he would flee with her to Spain, especially when he had a girl of his own over whom they had been quarrelling! But that wasn’t any more naïve than the fact that the bad brunette’s confession that she had lied on oath about the shooting brought forth no punishment from the courts!”
Film Daily agreed that the movie was pretty terrible, saying “the story is much too improbable and unconvincing to furnish entertainment for those who demand strong, original stories with reasonable situations,” but they thought that women like Kingsley would still like it, because they “will easily grasp that the title has something to do with marriage and that is probably the most absorbing topic for your women patrons.” Grace Kingsley proved them wrong!
However, the movie did give her a chance to reflect on how things had changed by 1920’s: “by the way, it is something of a commentary on the change in viewpoint that, whereas the late Victorian parent sternly forbade Bertha M. Clay as demoralizing, the Clay story material is now being used because it’s so wholesome!”
Nevertheless, she concluded that the film wasn’t completely worthless:
Oh, but what’s the use? You’ll get some giggles out of Thorns and Orange Blossoms, as well as renewing the days when you placed Bertha M. Clay inside your geography.
It’s a fine line between giving audiences plots they are familiar enough with that they’ll take a chance on buying a ticket, but not so worn-out that they’ve seen it too many times. Luckily this was just a temporary lull in movies worth seeing (only one of Robert Sherwood’s best films of 1922-23 was even in the theaters then, The Covered Wagon). That year, Kingsley could look forward to films we’re still watching like Safety Last, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Our Hospitality.
And she did offer a helpful suggestion for what might replace some of the awful stuff she’d been seeing:
Yet there must be a world of entertaining film material in foreign lands, in the magic empires of nature and science, and that people are hungering and thirsting for that sort of thing is shown in the way the crowds surge to see the Hunting Big Game features, Nanook of the North, Down to the Sea in Ships, Wonders of the Sea and the few others that producers have had the good sense to make.
Also this month, Kingsley got around to mentioning a story she’d left to other reporters before:
Are Pola Negri and Charlie Chaplin to be wed within the next month? This question is agitating the film colony and the picture fans. It would seem quite likely that they are to marry as soon as that. The fact that both have finished their current pictures and both have announced that they are “going away for a rest” would seem to bear out the presumption that marriage bells are shortly to ring out for the two. Moreover, Miss Negri refuses to disclose her resting place.
It might seem odd that two actors having vacations at the same time would be enough to inspire marriage rumors, but the Times had been covering this roller-coaster love story enthusiastically for several months. It began in late November with a surprisingly long front-page above the fold story called “Pola Negri-Chaplin Romance Stirs Hollywood,” in which Chaplin refusing to confirm or deny that they were engaged was taken as confirmation they would soon get married. Negri refused say anything at all to reporters. According to the article, gossip had been all over the studios for the past three weeks. The following day reporters tracked down Chaplin’s ex-wife Mildred Harris for a comment, and she said she only wished he’d “find somebody who’d make him happy.” In December the Times printed speculation that they’d marry in January, and in January they reported that the pair had quarreled and reconciled.
Then on January 28th the couple met the press and announced their betrothal. Times writer H. B. K. Willis pointed out that “no other romance, not even the reported engagement of the Prince of Wales, has so held public interest for the last two months.” No wedding date had been set. Then on March 1st Negri broke the engagement after Chaplin told the press he was too poor to marry her, and she responded with a statement that she was indeed too poor to marry him, and he should have no trouble finding a wealthy woman in the United States. They reconciled that night after he apologized in person. In early March, Negri had done an interview with Kingsley to publicize her film Bella Donna in which she absolutely refused to talk about Chaplin, except when she let slip that she’d been playing golf (badly) with Charlie. She did say she was perfectly happy in both her public and private life. Kingsley concluded from that “so Charlie has been behaving himself in a manner entirely in keeping with being the fiancé of the world’s most famous tragedy queen.” In late March Negri denied rumors that they’d be married in April, and her secretary said the wedding wouldn’t for at least six months.
News in the Times quieted down after Kingsley’s story about an immanent wedding in April. In mid-May Alma Whitaker concluded that the marriage would be a big mistake for both of them; despite his many charms, Chaplin was too coldly intellectual to be the sort of adoring husband Negri needed – in fact, he seemed to belittle her in public. Then in July the romance was officially dead when Negri was seen with tennis star Bill Tilden and she told reporters she’d broken up with Chaplin five weeks earlier, because he was too temperamental. They both went on to many more relationships.
Things were so quiet in early 1923 that the newspaper had plenty of room to publish this. Moreover, wild supposition about movie stars’ private lives has been a big part of news from Hollywood since the beginning.
*Bertha M. Clay (real name: Charlotte Mary Brame, 1836-1884) was an immensely popular writer. Her books sold so many copies that after her death, not only did her daughter take over writing under the pseudonym, another publisher hired a bunch of male writers to use the name.
“Lavish Production to Famous Old Story,” Film Daily, November 22, 1922, p. 3.
“Romance Foremost in Famous Second Adaptation of Lonesome Pine,” Film Daily, March 23, 1923, p. 13.
“The Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” Exhibitors’ Trade Review, March 31, 1923, p. 915.
“Charlie Chaplin and Pola Negri are Separated,” Los Angeles Times, January 17, 1923.
“Mildred Hopes He’ll Be Happy,” Los Angeles Times, November 26, 1922.
“Negri and Chaplin to Wed Soon.” Los Angeles Times, December 12, 1922.
“Negri-Chaplin Date Set,” Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1922.
“Negri-Chaplin Date Unnamed,” Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1923.
“Pola Ends Betrothal; Charlie Mends Break,” Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1923.
“Pola Negri-Chaplin Romance Stirs Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, November 25, 1922.
Alma Whitaker, “Heart and Mind in Grim Battle,” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 1923.
H. B. K. Willis, “Chaplin’s Betrothal to Negri Announced,” Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1923.
H. B. K. Willis, “Pola Drops ‘Sharlie,’” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 1923.
H. B. K. Willis, “Tryst Ends for ‘Charlie’” Los Angeles Times, January 30, 1923.
Grace Kingsley's Hollywood 