But as the term “Hollywood” settled into the nation’s vocabulary in the scandal’s wake competing interpreters vied to define the picture of women’s place there. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ novel The Girl from Hollywood (1922), described Hollywood as a second sin city whose attractions acted like an addictive drug that endangered women’s lives. The best-selling author of Tarzan of the Apes (1914), Burroughs wrote The Girl from Hollywood at Tarzana, his 540-acre ranch in the San Fernando Valley, an area experiencing a population boom since its greening-by-aqueduct left it a lush retreat walled off by mountains from rapidly urbanizing Los Angeles. The novel offered readers the first noir portrait of Hollywood-cum–Los Angeles. Here was a city whose “unnatural dangers and pressures” were all the more sinister because they took place under a blazing azure sky. Tellingly, the novel’s two heroines were not from Los Angeles at all, making the title a sly indication of Hollywood’s power to obliterate any girl’s true nature. The first young woman, Grace, puts her childhood sweetheart on hold and leaves a ranch in the San Fernando Valley “to make her own way, unassisted, toward her goal.” Drug addicted and pregnant by a director-producer within one year, Grace commits suicide. The heroine, Shannon, is the second girl to go Hollywood. A Midwesterner driven west to find work as an actress to support her ailing mother, Shannon ends up dealing drugs in Los Angeles instead, yet manages to protect her chastity. In this way she signals why she can escape to the same ranch Grace deserted, where an infusion of old fashioned California-Pastoral allows her to end up married and drug-free.8
Paramount’s Hollywood (1923), a lost comedy, sent a more gentle warning to female fans by satirizing women’s professional ambitions; its poster features Hollywood as a great male maw into which all kinds of girls gaily jump. The film’s heroine, Angela, travels to Los Angeles with her grandfather in search of her fortune. At the end, gramps becomes famous, while little Angela succeeds only in finding a man to wed. The film’s director, James Cruze, was a notorious partier who had directed Arbuckle in his last five features at Paramount. Hollywood’s real draw was the view it offered behind Paramount’s walls. As Angela and her grandfather wander the studio’s sets, they encounter dozens of kindly, glamorous stars who appear in cameo roles, including Mary Pickford, Pola Negri, Charlie Chaplin, and Roscoe Arbuckle, who plays himself forever waiting at a casting office for a part. Thus Hollywood managed simultaneously to tweak the attitudes of moral custodians and young hopefuls, while aiming to incite the curiosity of both.9
In contrast to such portraits, Rupert Hughes offered a straightforward feminist defense of Hollywood’s unconventional women in Souls for Sale (1922). The book indicated that satire and noir—a modernized version of a traditional melodrama of sexual danger—would not be the only ways to tell the story of Hollywood’s bohemian girls.10 Hughes (whose nephew Howard later so enjoyed the Hollywood scene) was one of the most prolific authors of his day, writing plays, histories, novels, and short stories. His enormous commercial appeal derived from his facility for leavening topical issues that attracted the female fiction reading public—divorce, the sexual double standard, and careers for women—with humor, satire, and sentiment. In 1919 producer Samuel Goldwyn brought Hughes to work as an “eminent author” in Los Angeles, where he quickly outperformed other literary luminaries, including Gertrude Atherton, Anzia Yezierska, and Somerset Maugham. Hughes also embraced life in Los Angeles, permanently relocating and founding the Hollywood Writer’s Club (later the Screen Writers Guild), called by one reporter “a place where men and women mingled in disregard of ancient prejudice.”11 Like so many midwestern writers associated with the “revolt from the village” school, Hughes’s protagonist was a prairie girl driven west by her home’s moral guardians to find redemption in the City of Angels.12 Thus the book offered a defense of Hollywood in the scandal’s aftermath that traded budding cliché for budding cliché.
FIGURE 30. Poster from James Craze’s Hollywood (1923). Author’s collection.
But Hughes’s novel also employed “a feminist philosophy” that one reviewer called “as refreshing as it is provocative.”13 Following fan culture’s conventions, Hughes traced his heroine’s climb from degraded obscurity to self-respect and fame. The novel opens with Mem’s father delivering a sermon on the movies’ transformation of Los Angeles into “Los Diablos . . . the central factory of Satan and his minions.” After discovering she is pregnant, the unwed preacher’s daughter flees to a desert town in the Southwest where she encounters a friendly film crew, suffers a miscarriage, and then moves to Los Angeles after an extra-girl offers her a place to stay and help finding a job. In Hollywood, Remember initially works as a film editor and rooms with four women who lived “with no more thought of chaperonage than a crowd of bachelors.” Raised “to believe in duty first—in self-denial, abstention, modesty, demurity, simplicity, meekness, prayer, remorse,” she is “aghast at their contempt for conventions.” Whether Mem had come to “her ruination or her redemption, she had come to a new world,” where “she learned how freely, with what masculine franchise, these women conducted their lives.” Embracing these “bohemian standards of behavior,” she becomes “mad to act.” The decision transforms her into a modern artist, willing “to unleash her soul and body from the shackles of respectability” in order “to build her soul and sell it.” The novel’s conclusion celebrates this bohemian New Woman’s future. Rejecting a director’s proposal, she decides to keep house with her sister, another runaway, instead.14
Go West, Young Women! offers, in short, neither a declension narrative nor a Whiggish tale of progress about the influence of Hollywood’s girls on modern femininity and gender roles. Certainly new risks lurked as more young women worked and socialized without chaperones. It is safe to assume that some Hollywood hopefuls were forced, or felt pressured, into using the casting couch to get ahead. Yet the movie industry held no monopoly on such occurrences. Sensationalizing such dangers mostly justified curtailing women’s ability to challenge gender conventions and to instill terror about where their sexual freedom might lead. It is no stretch, I think, to say that the media’s penchant for dramatizing instances of young white women’s sexual victimization still erases the more typical ways most women are exploited by petty tyrants in average, sex-segregated work-a-day jobs or in their own homes. But as the twentieth century recedes and historians move to chart its contours, returning to the exploits of early Hollywood’s women-made women emphasizes one of the most striking aspects of the century’s shape: the expansion of women’s opportunities in consumer-oriented democratic societies—which is nowhere more visible in the United States than in California, where women exercise unparalleled clout in both politics and culture.15
To understand this process, Hollywood’s Janus-faced relationship to feminism and modern femininity demands another account.16 In its heyday the film industry perfected talking to women from at least two directions, providing them with stars and stories that played to their New Woman ambitions, while ridiculing these aspirations and radically constricting their professional opportunities.17 Even after World War II, during the so-called doldrums of the feminist movement, actresses like Barbara Stanwyck served as rare avatars of the “Independent Woman” that Simone de Beauvoir discussed in The Second Sex (1949). Hugo Münsterberg, the Harvard psychologist who offered one of the first theories of film in 1916, worried over how such doublespeak would affect women, writing of the movies’ “stirring up of desires” that aimed “to keep the demand and its fulfillment forever awake.”18 Certainly cultural conservatives have never lost sight of Hollywood Bohemia’s influence in fomenting the breakdown of traditional sex roles. Such critics have long recognized that it tantalized women not only with the one-in-a-million chance to be a star but, more importantly, with acting the part of bold adventurer that boys had for so long enjoyed, as they experimented with different romantic liaisons and work roles and with self-fashioning free from any but their own control.
The social imaginary
of early Hollywood displayed not only women’s new professional and physical mobility but also a more general ethos that encouraged female fans to understand their support of the industry as support of their own emancipation. In this way, the movies’ women-made women became real and iconic representations of the period’s contested sexual politics. Thus fans’ heroine worship reflected the desire of many so-called modern young girls to embrace a type of individually oriented, “feminine-friendly” feminism. Compatible both with capitalism and with popular culture, this feminism provides continuity with many of the preoccupations of what some have called third-wave feminism, which is typically thought of as focusing on women’s empowerment rather than their victimization and as taking pleasure in fashion, romance, and sex.19 This approach was more likely to be embraced by working-class secretaries than college graduates; by young, single, or divorced women than middle-aged wives or highly educated, middle-class professionals. It focused on the problem of women’s individuality rather than their group identity. It celebrated women’s ability to seize prerogatives long enjoyed by single young men—to seek pleasure freely in their professional and personal lives—while cultivating their boy-crazy daydreams and use of a glamorously “femme” fagade as a reasonable means to get ahead. In short, it assumed that, more than a political movement, women needed role models like early Hollywood’s women-made women who could teach them how to navigate modernity’s choppy waters—and come out on top.
Filmography
This filmography includes only the titles discussed in the text of this book or viewed by the author. They are listed alphabetically with information on the original production company, year released, and how viewed by the author, if at all. The following acronyms indicate the archives where the films are held: Library of Congress, Motion Picture and Television Reading Room, Washington, D.C. (LOC); Museum of Modern Art, Film Preservation Center, New York City (MOMA); University of California, Los Angeles, Film and Television Archive (UCLA); George Eastman House, Rochester, New York (Eastman).
The Adventures of Ruth (Pathé, 1919). Considered lost.
An Adventuress (Republic, 1920). UCLA.
The Affairs of Anatol (Famous Players–Lasky, 1921). Passport International Entertainment, 2007.
American Aristocracy (Fine Arts Film Corp., 1916). Grapevine Video, 2011.
Beyond the Rocks (Paramount, 1922). Milestone Video, 2006.
Birth of a Nation (Epoch Production Co., 1915). Image Entertainment, 1998.
The Bishop’s Carriage (Famous Players, 1913). Considered lost.
The Blot (Lois Weber Productions, 1921). Chatsworth Entertainment, 2004.
Camille (Metro, 1921). Warner Home Video, 2005.
Caprice (Famous Players, 1913). Considered lost.
The Cheat (Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co., 1915). Kino, 1994.
Daddy-Long-Legs (Mary Pickford Co., 1919). Image Entertainment, 1994.
The Danger Girl (Keystone Film Co., 1916). Passport Video.
Daniel Boone; or, Pioneer Days in America (Edison, 1907). MOMA.
Daughter of Two Worlds (Norma Talmadge Film Corp., 1920). LOC.
The Dispatch Bearer (Vitagraph, 1907). MOMA.
Don’t Change Your Husband (Famous Players–Lasky, 1919). Passport International Entertainment, 2007.
Dumb Girl of Portia (Universal, 1916). British Film Institute.
Eyes of Youth (Clara Kimball Young Film Corp., 1919). LOC.
The Female of the Species (Biograph, 1912). Image Entertainment, 2002.
The Flapper (Selznick/Select, 1920). Eastman.
Flo’s Discipline (Victor, 1912). LOC.
A Foolish Virgin (Clara Kimball Young Film Corp., 1916). Considered lost.
A Fool There Was (Fox, 1915). Kino, 2002.
For Better, For Worse (Famous Players–Lasky, 1919). Eastman.
Forbidden City (Norma Talmadge Film Corp./First National, 1918). LOC.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Metro, 1921). Nostalgia Family Video, 1997.
Gasoline Gus (Famous Players–Lasky, 1921). Cinémathèque Royale (Bruxelles).
The Girl and the Outlaw (Biograph, 1908). MOMA.
The Great Moment (Paramount, 1921). Considered lost.
The Hazards of Helen (Kalem Company, 1914–1917). Nos. 1–4, Video Yesteryear, 1983.
Heart o’ the Hills (Mary Pickford Co., 1919). Image Entertainment, 2005.
Hearts Adrift (Famous Players, 1914). Considered lost.
His Musical Sneeze (Sunshine Comedies, Fox Film Corp., 1919). Considered lost.
His New Job (Essanay Film Manufacturing Co., 1915). Passport Video.
Hollywood (Famous Players–Lasky, 1923). Considered lost.
Humoresque (Cosmopolitan Productions, 1920). UCLA.
Hypocrites (Hobart Boswarth Productions, 1914). Kino, 2008.
In Old Madrid (IMP, 1911). Hollywood’s Attic, 1996.
The Jew’s Christmas (Universal, 1913). Considered lost.
Johanna Enlists (Pickford Film Corp., 1918). UCLA.
The Little American (Pickford Film Corp., 1917). Passport International Entertainment, 2007.
Little Lord Fauntleroy (Mary Pickford Co., 1921). Image Entertainment, 2005.
The Little Rebel (Lubin, 1911). MOMA.
The Love Light (Mary Pickford Co., 1921). LOC.
Male and Female (Famous Players–Lasky, 1919). Passport International Entertainment, 2007.
M’Liss (Pickford Film Corp., 1918). Image Entertainment, 2005.
The New York Hat (Biograph, 1912). Hollywood’s Attic, 1996.
Old Wives for New (Famous Players–Lasky, 1918). Passport International Entertainment, 2007.
Paradise Garden (Metro, 1917). Considered lost.
Passion (First National, 1920). LOC.
The Penalty (Goldwyn Pictures Corp., 1920). Kino, 1998.
The Perils of Pauline (Pathé, 1914). Episodes 1–9, Grapevine Video.
The Poor Little Rich Girl (Pickford Film Corp., 1917). St. Clair Entertainment Group, 2008.
The Pride of the Clan (Pickford Film Corp., 1917). Classic Video Streams, 2009.
The Punch of the Irish (First National, 1921). MOMA.
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Pickford Film Corp., 1917). St. Clair Entertainment Group, 2008.
The Red Lantern (Nazimova Productions, 1919). Women’s Film History screening, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2011.
Resurrection (Biograph, 1909). UCLA
Rosita (Mary Pickford Film Co., 1923). UCLA.
Ruth of the Range (1923). Considered lost.
Ruth of the Rockies (Ruth Roland Serial Productions, Inc., 1920). Nos. 14, 15, UCLA.
Sadie Thompson (United Artists, 1928). Kino, 2001.
Salome (Nazimova Productions, 1923). Video Yesteryear, 1986.
Sex (Parker Read Productions, 1920). LOC.
The Sheik (Famous Players–Lasky/Paramount, 1921). Image Entertainment, 2002.
The Sign on the Door (Norma Talmadge Film Co., 1921). LOC.
The Social Secretary (Fine Arts Film Co., 1916). UCLA.
The Son of the Sheik (Paramount, 1926). Image Entertainment, 2002.
Stella Maris (Mary Pickford Film Corp., 1918). Grapevine Video, 1992.
The Sultan’s Wife (Keystone Film Co., 1917). Passport Video.
Sweet Memories (IMP, 1911). MOMA.
Teddy at the Throttle (Keystone Film Co., 1917). Passport Video.
Tess of the Storm Country (Famous Players, 1914). UCLA.
Tess of the Storm Country (Mary Pickford Company, 1922). Image Entertainment, 1999.
The Timber Queen (Pathé, 1922). Episodes 1, 4, 8, 9, UCLA.
Too Wise Wives (Famous Players–Lasky, 1921). LOC, 1993.
Traffic in Souls (George Loane Tucker, 1913). Image Entertainment, 1995.
A Twilight Baby (Sunshine Comedies, 1920). MOMA.
What Happened to Mary (Edison, 1912–1913). Episodes, 5–8, 10, 11.
Where Are My Children? (Universal, 1916). Image Entertainment, 2007.<
br />
Why Change Your Wife? (Famous Players–Lasky, 1920). Image Entertainment, 2005.
You Can’t Believe Everything (Triangle, 1918). Considered lost.
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS
BDE Brooklyn Daily Eagle
CHE Chicago Herald and Examiner
Court Transcript “The People of the State of California vs. Roscoe Arbuckle for Murder, in the Police Court of the City and County of San Francisco, Department No. 2, Honorable Sylvain J. Lazarus, Judge,” 158, Special Collections, San Francisco Public Library
DBSB David Belasco Scrapbooks (RLC)
FLC Florence Lawrence Collection (RLC)
GS File Gloria Swanson Core Clipping File, MHL
HCC Helen Holmes Core Clippings, MHL
HHC Helen Holmes Clippings (RLC)
HRC Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin
International Jew The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem
LAT Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles City Archive City Clerk’s Office, Records Management Division, Los Angeles City Archives
MHL Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills
MOMA Museum of Modern Art, New York City
MPOH Mary Pickford Oral History Transcript, Columbia Center for Oral History, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York
NYA New York American
NYPL-TC New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Theater Collection
NYT New York Times
PCC Mary Pickford Core Clipping File, MHL
Rappe Death Report Death Report, Coroner’s Office, San Francisco Department of Public Health, Bureau of Records and Statistics
RCC Ruth Roland’s Core Clippings, MHL
RLC Robinson Locke Dramatic Collection, Billy Rose Theater Division, New York Public Library of the Performing Arts, New York City
SFC San Francisco Chronicle
SFX San Francisco Examiner
STL St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Studio Club Young Women’s Christian Association of Los Angeles Collection, Hollywood Studio Club, Urban Archives Center, University Library, California State University, Northridge
Go West, Young Women! Page 27