The criticism shattered her self-confidence as a writer. Always exceptionally dependent on the judgment of her peers, she gave up her poetry and short stories, convinced that she was as ignorant as her neighbors said. Louella later wrote of those years in the cruelest of terms: "I sometimes think of this small town, with it Midwest drab grayness, as though it were an outpost of darkest Siberia. Perhaps that sounds like a harsh indictment. I am sure it was-and is-no different from any other small town, but we remember places by the happiness or unhappiness we have felt there. I was young and homesick for my family in Dixon, and it is the memory of my misery that persists, not the reality."86
In early 19o6, not long after the move to Burlington, Louella discovered that she was pregnant. Around the same time, she learned that John had taken up with Ruth Schaefer, a young blonde who worked at his office. On August 23, 1906, Louella's first and only child, Harriet Oettinger Parsons, was born. Abandoned by John, Louella struggled to bring up Harriet alone.87
Louella did have two unlikely friends in Burlington. One was Adeline Moir, a teenager who lived nearby. The other was Martin Bruhl, a pianist who performed frequently at the opera house. Louella would visit Bruhl and tell him her troubles. Bruhl was a "crazy musician" and Louella was a "crazy poetess" so they "had a good time together," recalled Bruhl's wife. Martin Bruhl described Louella as a "doll," who, he said, "would have captured the Miss America title if it had been in existence around 1905. Charisma is the word for Louella then, and her daughter Harriet was an angel. How John Parsons could have been so cruel to [leave] such a beautiful family is hard to understand." Bruhl, unlike the other neighbors, recognized her spirit and ambition. "She was allergic to mediocrity and her aim for perfection was high," he recalled.88
Despite Bruhl's occasional companionship, Louella spent much of her time alone or at the theater. She was a frequent patron of the opera house, and Martin Bruhl believed that it was Louella's contact with the "immortal stage stars of the day"-DeWolf Hopper, the Barrymores, David Warfield, Edwin Booth, all of whom performed at the opera house-that gave her the "background and inspiration to become the great critic of the cinema into which she developed."89 At the Garrick Theater she watched cheap vaudeville and melodrama and, beginning in 1907, "flickers," one- or two-minute films exhibited between vaudeville acts.90
Developed byThomas Edison in the 187os, motion pictures had been first publicly exhibited at a New York vaudeville house, Koster and Bial's, in 1896. These early films, dubbed "views" or "actualities," consisted of short documentary footage of simple scenes-waves crashing on a beach, dancing chorus girls, short segments of boxing matches. The images were blurry and jerky, but viewers were nonetheless thrilled by the sight of photographic images in motion. When an onrushing train appeared on the screen, audiences leaped out of their seats. A short film of a man and woman kissing seemed so lifelike that many viewers looked behind the screen for the couple.91
Considered a technological novelty that could add spice to a theatrical program but that merited little interest on their own, motion pictures were initially exhibited as part of vaudeville programs. But by 19oz, movies had become so popular in urban areas that special theaters were built exclusively for film exhibition. That year, a Los Angeles entrepreneur named Thomas Tally opened the nation's first nickelodeon, a motion picture theater charging a nickel admission. Most nickelodeons were simple storefronts with a sheet tacked onto the wall for a screen. Audiences sat on hard wooden benches or on the floor and sometimes spent the whole afternoon in the theater, watching the same short films over and over again. By 1905, movies had advanced from short "views" to five- or ten-minute narrative films-comedies, Westerns, adventure films, and melodramas that were crudely photographed, performed by inexperienced actors in exaggerated pantomime, and, of course, silent.
By the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century, nickelodeons flourished primarily in urban, working-class areas. In 1905, a nickelodeon boom started in Chicago; in New York alone there were over four hundred nickelodeons that exhibited films to twenty thousand patrons daily. 92 Considered vulgar by reigning cultural standards, motion pictures initially attracted few middle-class audiences, but they did appeal to thousands of immigrant workers, whose lack of English was no impediment to the wordless entertainment. The cinema's association with the immigrant working class raised the ire of religious and social elites, who saw the new medium as a corrupting "foreign" influence. Social reformers also claimed that film plots were filled with sexual innuendo and violence, and that movie theaters were the "breeding grounds of vice." In New York, Protestant reform groups attempted not only to censor films but also to shut down nickelodeons, an effort that resulted in the closure of all the city's movie theaters on Christmas Day, 1908.93
In the Midwest, the cinema was less likely to spark class and ethnic controversy than to arouse religious fears. In some midwestern small towns, Protestant leaders either banned film altogether or permitted only educational films shown in church-run venues. Nonetheless, according to the film historian Kathryn Fuller, the movies flourished in the rural Midwest, where by 1903, small-town theaters drew moviegoers from the surrounding coun- tryside.94 In 1909 the Lyric Theater, a nickelodeon, opened in Burlington and showed a complete bill of short films nightly.95 In her autobiography, Louella claimed to have seen "movies of the funeral of King Edward VII" as well as dozens of short comedies and melodramas.96 By the time she left Iowa, she was a movie fan-or as Harper 's magazine described it in 1907, a "cinemad- dict."97
Louella's only other diversion consisted of regular visits to Dixon. During summers, Louella took Harriet to Dixon to stay with John Parsons's parents, Edwin and Christiana, who gave their granddaughter expensive gifts and treated her to weekends at the nearby Lowell Park Lodge.98 Though they knew about John's affair, they treated Louella and Harriet royally. In Dixon, Louella and Harriet also visited Helen and John Edwards, who were having marital troubles of their own.
Back in Burlington, John and Louella's marriage continued only on paper. Everyone knew of John's affair with Ruth Schaefer, and there were rumors that he planned to marry her. Finally, one day in the winter of igio, Louella decided to leave. What triggered her departure is unclear. She may have simply snapped from the loneliness and frustration, or John may have announced his intent to marry Schaefer. Or perhaps she was prompted by the fiery destruction of the opera house next door, which had been dynamited by vandals in September.99 She took Harriet and headed for Chicago, where she planned to look for work and start a new life. Depressed and penniless, Louella had just turned twenty-nine.
Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders: They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
CARL SANDBURG, "Chicago," 1916
LOUELLA WAS NO STRANGER TO THIS CITY OF BIG SHOULDERS, this gritty metropolis that, in 1910, over two million residents called home. Like Frank Cowperwood of Theodore Dreiser's 1914 novel The Titan, she had seen from the train window the flat brown land that ringed the city's outskirts, the Chicago River "with its mass of sputtering tugs and its black oily water," and the "little one and two story houses" that stood on the edge of town.' Before, on her visits from Freeport with Helen, Louella had enjoyed the bright lights of the theater district and the color of the streets downtown. Now she faced a different Chicago, one of bustling streetcars and open-air markets and filthy, rundown cold-water flats crowded with workers and their families.
Louella was not the only newcomer to seek her fortunes in Chicago. Between 188o and 192o, nearly two and a half million immigrants arrived, having fled poverty and political pers
ecution in southern and eastern Europe.2 Tens of thousands of native-born Americans also went to the city in search of employment, and many of these migrants were women. Self-supporting women-unmarried, divorced, or widowed-were the largest group of native-born Americans to move to Chicago in the early twentieth century. Between 188o and 1930, the female labor force in Chicago increased from thirty-five thousand to four hundred thousand, or over 1,000 percent. During those years, rural towns in Iowa, Minnesota, and northern Illinois experienced a "defeminization" as daughters left the countryside for work in the city 3
In her autobiography, Louella described Chicago as "gutsy."4 That word better characterized Louella. In the early twentieth century, leaving a philandering husband took strength: women were expected to tolerate affairs, considered a man's prerogative. Depressed but optimistic, Louella moved in with her aunt and uncle Hattie and Eli Oettinger, who had since moved from Freeport to a small flat on the city's North Side. She quickly found a job as a secretary in a company that manufactured stereopticons, an early form of motion picture projector, but when she found that her "chief chore seemed to be playing flunky to the boss's little blonde secretary," she moved on. Louella then secured a position at the Chicago Tribune, in the syndication department. Being hired by a newspaper thrilled her, but her enthusiasm was short-lived. Within a week, Louella discovered that her job was essentially clerical-she retyped the syndicated articles that came off the wire-and within two weeks, she was bored. At a salary of only nine dollars a week, considered barely subsistence wages, she was also broke.5 She allowed herself one luxury-regular trips to the movies.
The cinema flourished in Chicago, with its large immigrant and workingclass population. In r91o, there were 407 movie houses for a population of slightly over two million, twice as many movie theaters per capita as in New .6 Film fans often went to the movies three, four, or even five times a week, and they were lured to the theater not only by films but also by an emerging motion picture celebrity culture.
Before 1910, the actors who appeared in films were unbilled. Fearing association with the "lowbrow" cinema, they insisted on remaining anonymous. Neither they nor the heads of the fledgling New York-based film companies anticipated the level of curiosity among moviegoers, who sent hundreds of letters to the studios asking for the identities of their favorite screen players. In response to pressure from moviegoers, in 1910 Carl Laemmle, head of the IMP studio, publicized the name of his leading ac tress, Florence Lawrence. In a carefully planned stunt, Laemmle planted a rumor that Lawrence had been killed in a car accident, then refuted the accident with a flurry of press releases and newspaper stories that he used to publicize Lawrence's name. Laemmle set off a trend for name popularization that resulted in the development of a movie star system, much like the star system that had dominated the theater. By 1911, films were being advertised not only by "brand name"-prior to 1910, studios used their companies' reputations as a marketing tool-but also, increasingly, by the names of the stars who appeared in them.'
Drawing on stage tradition, film companies began publicizing personal information about their stars, both in the mainstream press and in two new motion-picture fan magazines. In February 1911, the Vitagraph studio head J. Stuart Blackton launched Motion Picture magazine, the nation's first publication devoted exclusively to motion pictures. Although the publication initially printed cinematic plots in short-story form, in 1912 it began printing interviews with popular film actors and question-and-answer columns that answered readers' inquiries about stars' private lives. By January 1913, the "Answer Man," the columnist who presided over the magazine's "Answers to Inquiries" section, claimed that he was receiving twenty-five hundred letters from film fans each month.' Beginning in 1912, another new fan publication, Photoplay, offered readers a similar diet of star news along with advertisements for perfumes, clothing, and cosmetics, all bearing celebrity endorsements.
Fans devoured the information and begged for more and, by 1912, began to organize into movie star fan clubs. Unlike theater fans, who had the chance of meeting their idols in person, there were few if any opportunities for film fans to see motion picture stars in the flesh. As a result, movie fans depended on tidbits of personal data about stars, rather than personal contact, to create the feeling of intimacy with their idols that was the essence of the fan-star relationship. From the fans' perspective, the more personal the information, the better. But detailed private information about stars' marriages and romantic affairs was the last thing the magazines or studios wanted to reveal. Truthful depictions of stars' often turbulent and scandalous romantic lives, they felt, would only further damage the cinema's already precarious reputation. Motion Picture's Answer Man refused to respond to the hundreds of questions he received each month about actors' marriages and romantic affairs. "Questions concerning the marriages of players," the magazine warned, will be completely ignored."9
By 1913, however, the magazine had changed its policy, publishing slightly more revealing articles that disclosed actors' marital status. But on the whole, the fan magazines' approach to star "gossip" was timid and innocuous. Typical pieces described actors as virtuous, hardworking, and devoted to their spouses. In an article on actress Helen Gardner's home, Photoplay gushed, "Here Miss Gardner and her mother, who looks no older than her daughter ... live happily, plan pictures, design costumes, and receive their friends." 10 In their free time, actors allegedly pursued such hobbies as cooking, embroidery, gardening, reading, and socializing with friends, and the magazines took great pains to distance film actors from their allegedly debauched theatrical counterparts. In contrast to stage life, "with its night work, its daytime sleep, its irregular meals, [and] its traveling and close contact," working for a film studio was stable and dignified. A film "player is located in one neighborhood and is recognized as a permanent and respectable citizen. Evenings can be spent at home, and the normal healthiness of one's own fireside is an atmosphere conducive to refining influences," Motion Picture wrote in 1915.11 These details and "slice-of-life" depictions were, of course, thoroughly false, the concoction of imaginative magazine editors, studio publicity departments, and press agents.
Though the magazines skirted carefully around actors' personal lives, they were aggressive on the subject of scenario writing. In the years around 1910, thousands of moviegoers began writing their own short "scenarios," the oneor two-page plot summaries that were the scripts of early silent films. According to one estimate, by 1913 over twenty thousand fans had submitted scenarios to studios, and thousands more were harboring half-written pieces that sat unfinished in desk drawers.'2 Thankful for the free material, the film studios encouraged the submissions and occasionally offered cash prizes for high-quality material. The fan magazines colluded with the studios, offering advice to aspiring scenarioists and frequently running scenario success stories. In 1912 Photoplay reported that Cordelia Ford, a housewife who wrote in her spare time, earned $250 in a screenwriting contest. Helen O'Keefe, who "scribbled" after her children had gone to bed, paid off her debts with a prize from the American Film Company; and Elaine Sterne, winner of the Thanhouser studio's screenwriting contest, earned a position with the studio as its chief scenario writer.13
By 1911, Louella was thoroughly immersed in movie fan culture. She bought and read the fan magazines, developed crushes on popular stars, and went to the movies almost nightly. Reviving her long-dormant interest in writing, she also tried her hand at scenarios. She wrote dozens of short scripts, which she sent to a few Chicago film studios, and received dozens of rejections. But she enjoyed the work and was intrigued by the cash prizes, so she persisted. She was determined to see her work on the screen, even if it took years. Little did she know that her encounter with the film industry would come much sooner.
Many film historians correctly cite New York as the moviemaking capital before World War I. But Chicago, between 1907 and 1915, ran a close second. The city had two assets that made it ideal for film production: a central midwestern
location, perfect for shipping finished films to either coast, and over ten thousand theater actors and stagehands, frequently unemployed and eager for parttime work in the "flickers." By 1911, Chicago was home to the film industry's official trade journal, Moving Picture World, and two studios, Essanay and Selig.14
Essanay was founded by Gilbert Anderson, a cowboy actor who had starred in the famous 1903 film The Great Train Robbery, and George Spoor, owner of a small chain of movie theaters. Spoor had wanted to go into film production but needed an experienced hand to work with him. In 1907, Spoor and Anderson joined forces as partners and founded the studio, which they named after their initials (S and A). The studio was known for its slapstick comedies, many of which featured the studio's janitor, Ben Turpin. In one of the studio's first films, An Awful Skate, Turpin careened down the streets on roller skates, mowing over pedestrians. Unbeknownst to the film's viewers, the slapstick was hardly staged. Turpin could not skate, and many of the unsuspecting passersby were injured during the filming.15
Such disasters were common during Essanay's first years. Like most early film studios of the period, the company was a fly-by-night operation. The cavernous warehouse was packed to the gills with a collection of brokendown props-old clothes, rusted cars, headless mannequins-and its small staff, a troupe of loud and often foul-mouthed former stage actors, puttered around the studio building sets, mending costumes, performing stunts before the camera, and playing practical jokes on each other. Cameramen operated crude, hand-cranked machines, and due to poor indoor lighting, all filming had to be done outside. When the sky turned cloudy, the actors sullenly waited around the studio for the next sunny day. In 1910, Essanay set up a studio in Niles, California, to shoot its cowboy films, but its Chicago crew constantly struggled with lighting problems.16
The First Lady of Hollywood Page 4