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.
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.
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.
They continued with the hard work of planning and preparation, and on June 25th 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.”
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.
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 8th they sold only 25,000 tickets, according to the Times. So on July 12th, 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 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 20th 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.
Grace Kingsley's Hollywood 