June 2023 – Grace Kingsley's Hollywood

Virginia Valli in *A Lady of Quality* (1924)

One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley had thoughts on the latest trend in movies:

Costume pictures! Ugh, how we used to shy at the words! Because they conjured up to our minds only a bunch of puppets walking through their roles dressed in funny clothes, and of extra soldiers fighting battles over which we knew not what and didn’t care when we found out. And the producers used to shy, too, at the words “costume pictures,” but principally because the accent was on cost!

She pointed out that even Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) didn’t inspire American directors to make good historical dramas. However, then “the Germans brought us Passion and Deception and proved that little old kings and queens were only human beings after all. Ever since which time, period pictures have had a vogue.”

Kingsley was right: in 1922-23 there were more historical dramas being made in Hollywood, but it wasn’t because filmmakers suddenly realized royalty are people, it was because they were making money. As Exhibitors’ Herald reported in an article called “Costume Pictures Prosper” in November 1922, “the big pictures of the moment were Robin Hood, The Eternal Flame, When Knighthood was in Flower and Under Two Flags.” Film critic Robert Sherwood agreed with Kingsley about the movie that inspired the revival, but he was happy to mention it was the ticket sales, not necessarily the filmmaking:

Before Passion was imported to this country, there was a belief current among exhibitors that the public would never stand for any costume picture—no matter how romantic or spectacular or authentic they might be. This theory was exploded with a resounding bang, and almost every producer in Hollywood turned back into the pages of romance for movie material.

So Kingsley took herself to the set of one now-forgotten film that was part of the trend, A Lady of Quality. It was based on a Frances Hodgson Burnett novel set in Queen Anne’s time. She spoke to its director, Hobart Henley, and as was usual in the publicity for historical dramas, he emphasized how much everything cost. He told her there was “almost unlimited expense account” for the film, and the costumes for the extra women alone cost $11,000. A few days later, Kingsley also made a case for the spectacle that the movie would deliver, reporting:

500 extras will tomorrow fall under the direction of Hobart Henley, when he makes the scenes showing Queen Anne, played by Aileen Manning, reviewing the return of the Duke of Marlborough and his troops from the battle of Blenheim. This will be one of the most picturesque scenes of the feature.

Of course Hobart also mentioned the third important part of what they thought people wanted from historical dramas then: the authenticity of what went up on the screen. The director said he and the writers had spent four months going over “countless pages of articles, sketches, old wood cuts and historical data.” Hobart covered all the bases. I’ve never quite understood why these three things would make people want to buy a ticket, but it must have worked, because that’s how they always did it.

The plot of A Lady of Quality is shockingly melodramatic, if you only know France Hodgson Burnett’s work from her children’s books The Secret Garden and The Little Princess. The adaptation was faithful to the novel. Clorinda Wildairs (Virginia Valli) is raised as a boy (her father wanted a son), but when she meets Sir John Oxen (Earle Foxe) she falls in love and becomes the lady of quality of the title. Alas, he is a cad, he threatens to blackmail her, they have a fight and she (accidentally) kills him. But she successfully hides the body and ends up with worthwhile suitor (Milton Sills). Hooray? That little princess Sara Crewe didn’t off anybody, no matter how rotten her schoolmates were. Smart Bitches, Trashy Books ran a funny review of the novel in 2016.

The film came out in early 1924, and the reviews were pretty good. Film Daily called it “easily one of the most interesting costume dramas seen recently,” while Mary Kelly in Moving Picture World said it was “a production of great beauty.” Exhibitors’ Herald thought Hobart made a “very satisfactory job of it” and called the murder an “unusual twist to the tale [that] serves to stimulate interest in the picture’s unfolding.” I bet it did!

It had a star-studded premier at the Mission Theater February 4^th in Los Angeles on February 4^th, and Kingsley’s boss Edwin Schallert attended. He agreed with the trade paper critics:

England, merrie old England, reproduced in A Lady of Quality, with beauty evident at every turn of the reel in photography, settings, and costumes, will fascinate the beholders of the photoplay. This feature indeed is one of the surprises of the season pictorially, and though the fabric of drama may not be securely bound together, what it has to offer of charm and naturalness in the acting of the principals is in a way quite unforgettable.

A Lady of Quality is a lost film. It’s staggering how much work and money and time and trouble went into movies that have disappeared.

The fad for historical dramas did die down fairly soon, and it’s not a surprise why: just as Kingsley said, producers didn’t want to pay for them. In January 1924 Film Daily quoted producer Joseph Schenk about plans for the 1924-5 season: “there will be but few costume pictures made on the Coast during the coming year. No other phase of production was as costly as costume pictures.” He would know, having just produced Ashes of Vengeance with Norma Talmadge, The Dangerous Maid with Constance Talmadge, and Our Hospitality with Buster Keaton.

Rudolph Valentino in *Monsieur Beaucaire*

However, costume dramas are still popular. As James Quirk in Photoplay pointed out in October 1924: “The muezzins of Hollywood have been crying death to the costume picture. They contend that the box office scrolls reveal that the public is tired of it. The truth is that the public is tired of bad costume pictures…What has actually happened is, not that the costume has given the picture a bad name, but that picture has given the costume a bad name.” He pointed out that Monsieur Beaucaire was selling lots of tickets.

Whether they’re called historical dramas, heritage films or frock flicks, they have continued to go in and out of fashion, and just as Kingsley did, film writers can always speculate on their popularity. For example, Kat Escher wrote one for Smithsonian Magazine to celebrate Gone with the Wind’s anniversary.

“Adapted Book Makes Fine Play,” Exhibitors’ Herald, December 8, 1923, p. 54.

“Costume Pictures Prosper,” Exhibitors’ Herald, November 4, 1922, p. 52.

Mary Kelly, “A Lady of Quality,” Moving Picture World, December 23, 1923, p. 704.

“A Lady of Quality,” Film Daily, December 16, 1923, p. 10.

“Plans,” Film Daily, January 21, 1924, p.1.

Edwin Schallert, “Merrie Old England,” Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1924.

Robert E. Sherwood, The Best Moving Pictures of 1922-23, Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1923, p. xviii

“Stars to Attend Mission Opening,” Los Angeles Times, February 4, 1924.

One hundred years ago this week, Grace Kingsley and the audience really enjoyed an ordinary movie that’s been forgotten, What a Wife Learned:

It is a pip of a picture to my way of thinking, and anybody who says that real characterization and psychological analysis cannot be put on screen should go and see this one. A great many people did see it yesterday, the house being packed all afternoon and evening. Which just proves either that lots of people were just dying to find out what it was a wife learned, or else that Marguerite de la Motte and John Bowers are prime drawing cards, or perhaps both.

Kingsley praised both the stars: Marguerite de la Motte did “deeply emotional work” as the successful writer and wife, while her co-star “as the rough diamond hero, jealous of his clever wife’s career, and suffering himself, all unconsciously for a long time from an urge to big ambitions, Bowers has given us a portrayal that seems inspired and that stands positively alone.”

What a Wife Learned was about a novelist (de la Motte) who marries a rancher (Bowers) who promises not to interfere with her career. When her book is a success, they go to New York where he becomes a truck driver. Then a theater producer (Milton Sills) falls in love with her. Her husband goes back home to supervise the construction of a dam, and she and the producer follow. After he saves the producer from drowning after a rival dam breaks, the rancher and novelist reconcile. Kingsley thought that the action “is merely thrown in for good measure. The play is good enough as it is. What a Wife Learned is logical, penetratingly human, full of real human beings.” Now it sounds melodramatic, but our current ‘realistic’ fiction will undoubtedly seem outlandish in a few decades.

They had plenty of good reviews to choose from for the ad.

Unlike the reviews in the advertising or Grace Kingsley, The Film Daily writer didn’t think it was so special, saying “it is an arbitrary plot that doesn’t get far as entertainment, nor does Wray’s direction sustain the interest satisfactorily, although it would have been difficult to do very much better with such poor situations. The spectator gets more or less peeved at being taken into the confidence of the couple’s marital difficulties to such an extent that it lasts for six reels.”

Kingsley mentioned that *The Uncovered Wagon* “is full of whimsy, and is good for a round of laughs.”

What a Wife Learned was at the Kinema for the usual run of a movie, one week. It’s been preserved at Gosfilmoford in Russia.

Evelyn McCoy turned up in only one still from *What a Wife Learned* in the trades.

Later that week, Kingsley spoke with the child actress who was “excellent” as the hero’s invalid sister in the film.

Little Evelyn McCoy, the clever child playing the part of the invalid sister in What a Wife Learned at the Kinema, though she has played many similar roles with success, isn’t at all satisfied with her work. She is studying dancing with Ernest Belcher. “Maybe when I become a dancer, they will let me graduate from invalid roles,” smiled Evelyn yesterday. “I’ve already played three or four of that sort. Of course I like doing them, but just for a change I hope in my next picture to play a tomboy.

Evelyn played the 10-year-old version of Pauline Frederick in The Sting of the Lash (1921) and Ruby debuted in The Child Thou Gavest Me (1921)

So even child actors got sick of typecasting. Evelyn McCoy did stop playing invalids, but her career didn’t go as well as perhaps she’d hoped. She and her older sister Ruby were both supporting their family by playing small parts in films. Evelyn was born on May 17, 1911 in Wisconsin. By 1920 Ruby (born in 1907) and their parents Ida and Daniel (a railroad conductor in Wisconsin and a real estate broker in L.A.) were living in a rooming house in Los Angeles. Their parents soon got divorced and the girls went to work.

The sisters’ careers were recorded mostly by cheesecake photos in magazines like these:

This one was captioned “A hard directorial task assigned to Charles Lamont, who, as you see, is coaching a bevy of beauties for and Educational Ideal comedy. They are Evelyn McCoy, Amber Norman, Bernice Snell, Billy Lohman, Muriel Evans, and Ruby McCoy.” *Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World*, September 1, 1928, p. 30.

Evelyn also got her picture in the *L.A. Times* in December, 1926, as part of the publicity for Venice’s New Year’s Eve carnival. The article said she was one of the girls of Venice, “displaying a decoration which will be popular on the occasion.” It hadn’t been that long before this that ladies didn’t show their knees, let alone in the newspaper.

In 1927 something happened that set them apart from all the other young ladies trying to break into the movie business. Ruby had gotten a job at a nightclub, and Kingsley reported in March of that year:

Talk about beauty and virtue coming into their own, that is just what is going to happen to that lovely young girl, Ruby McCoy, who sells cigarettes, you may remember, at the Monmartre Café in Hollywood. Monta Bell, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer director, has written a story around this quiet, lovely child, who, though she vends cigarettes, is distinctly a superior person, modest and reserved as any finishing-school mistress could wish. Miss McCoy, not having much experience in pictures, is not to play the principal role in the film however, but she will probably have a small part. She has played bits in Bell’s pictures before, and has several beauty-contest prizes to her credit.

The star of the picture will be Norma Shearer, who is to peddle cigarettes and cigars in a café, just as Ruby does. Bell has spun a romance of great charm around the personality of the girl, which Miss Shearer will interpret.

Unlike so any projects announced in Kingsley’s columns, this one got made. Bell did write a short story based on Ruby’s life called “Liberty Bonds,” then he adapted it into a film called After Midnight. When the movie was coming out, Dorothy Manners tracked her down for an article in Motion Picture magazine and left this snapshot:

“Every night she mounts the carpeted steps that lead to Hollywood’s most Bohemian café and straps a cigarette tray over her shoulder. Her full name is Ruby McCoy and she works at the Monmartre. Everybody knows her and loves her. She has red-gold hair that hangs in long curls to her waist when she lets it down, and cream-white skin and a gentle manner. You hear her voice night after night inquiring softly as she moves from table to table: “Cigarettes? Cigars? Cigars? Cigarettes?”

Eager-eyed tourists wonder why she isn’t in the movies. Certain directors who patronize the café have wondered the same thing and tested her for the screen. But, as is often the case with pretty girls who come to Hollywood looking for fame, Ruby’s beauty is not captured by the camera lens.

Ruby adores the movies and everything connected with them. It thrills her to death to sell cigarettes to Gloria Swanson or to pass along the tables where Corinne Griffith or Bebe Daniels or Marion Davies are lunching. Sometimes she stops to talk to Billie Dove or to admire Evelyn Brent’s new hat.

For four years her life went along uneventfully. Her days she spent at home with her mother and younger sister and her nights in the smoky rooms of the Monmartre. Then something happened to Ruby. Something very important. The movies she adores so much are immortalizing her. In other words, Norma Shearer’s picture Liberty Bonds is based on Ruby’s life at the Monmartre, and Monta Bell, the author, got his inspiration from the little cigarette girl herself.

She is quite proud. “Can you imagine Norma Shearer playing me?” she asked. “It just seems too exciting to be true. I don’t see how anyone could find anything interesting about my life to write about.”

The movie came out in Los Angeles in July and the reviews weren’t great. According to Marquis Busby who wrote one for the L.A. Times:

After Midnight, the screen feature of the week, with Norma Shearer, is painfully dull, to put it politely. For the most part, it involves close-ups of the star illustrated with prosy subtitles.

After Midnight is a story of the big town and two sisters, one who dip generously into the wild night life, and the other who saves her money. When she believes her sweetheart is unfaithful, the quiet, stay-at-home sister starts splurging. She spends her savings for gowns and goes out to drown her sorrow in drink. An auto smash-up in which the wild, wild sister is killed provides the climax.

How unflattering for poor Evelyn! However, she was only 15 when Ruby was chatting with Monta Bell, so if the sister was at all based on her, at least her ambition to marry for money was only theoretical (the age of consent in California was 18 in 1920). Fifteen-year-olds have all sorts of ideas about what they might do with themselves. Two decades later, Evelyn did marry a man of means 30 years her senior, but she was hardly a young gold-digger at that point. I think the melodramatic plot demanded that a good girl had to tormented by a bad one and it wasn’t their real life. As compensation for Evelyn, the actress who played the sister role stole the show. Busby wrote: “Gwen Lee, who has scored repeatedly in “hard-boiled blond” roles, pockets most of the acting honors again in this case with her portrayal of the other, and intriguingly naughty, sister.”

Gwen Lee played the wild sister in *After Midnight*

The publicity around After Midnight (preserved at the Cinematheque Francais) didn’t do anything for the sisters’ careers, which continued to consist of small parts mostly in two-reel comedies. On the 1930 census the girls both gave their profession as actress in motion pictures and their mother Ida was still unemployed. Monmartre Café’s business began to decline in 1929 when a rival opened, and it went bankrupt in 1932, so Ruby’s job there was gone. Later she worked as a stenographer and in 1937 she married James Parrot, noted Laurel and Hardy director (including The Music Box, 1932) and Charley Chase’s brother. Unfortunately, his drug and alcohol addictions killed him just a few years later in 1939. In 1943 she married Felix Hughes, Jr. (vocal teacher and Howard Hughes’ uncle). He died in 1961 and she died in 1992.

In 1940 Evelyn was working as a bookkeeper for a furniture store. By 1950 she’d married widower Thomas Verrain Grant (born 1879), the owner of a fur store. She died on February 24, 1960.

Marquis Busby, “Morgan Royally Welcomed,” Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1927.

Grace Kingsley, “Monta Bell Writes Story,” Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1927.

Dorothy Manners, “They Aren’t Famous, but Hollywood Loves Them,” Motion Picture, October 1927, p. 111.

“The Old Question of Marriage or a Career Worked Out With Much Argument,” Film Daily, January 28, 1923, p. 18.

Month: June 2023

History Makes a Comeback: June 16-30, 1923

1920’s Feet From Stardom: June 1-15, 1923