Go West, Young Women!

by Hilary Hallett

  18. Manuel Weltmann, Pearl White: The Peerless Fearless Girl (South Brunswick, UK: A.S. Barnes, 1969). Pearl White, “Through Fire and Air,” The Perils of Pauline (Pathé 1914) (viewed on Kino). As was common, White said her fan mail was “mostly from women,” including more than a “few mash notes” Julian Johnson, “The Girl on the Cover,” Photoplay (April 1919): 58. Scholarship on how serial queens “abetted feminist propaganda” dates to Wallace Davies, “The Truth about Pearl White,” Films in Review (November 1959): 544. For the best recent treatments of serial queens’ representation of tensions over normative audience practices and femininity, see Shelley Stamp, Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); ch. 3; Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensation Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), ch. 8. Shenbao, May 2, 1921, quoted in Weihong Bao, “From Pearl White to White Rose Woo,” Camera Obscura 20, no. 3 (2005): 200. Moving Picture Stories, Feb. 21, 1919, p. 3, quoted in Stamp, Movie-Struck Girls, 143. Universal Weekly (1913) quoted in Mark Garrett Cooper, Universal Women: Filmmaking and Institutional Change in Early Hollywood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 45. Cooper's chapter “Universal City” explores at length the studio's creation of this image. Few reliable statistics on the industry's audience in this era exist, but most agree that the industry increasingly focused on attracting women after 1910, viewing them as its “ideal,” most “fanatic” members between the 1920s and 1940s. My interest is this widespread perception, not a particular statistic. See Benjamin Hampton, A History of the Movies, from its Beginnings to 1931 (New York: Dover, 1970 [1931]), 224–226; Leo Rosten, Hollywood: The Movie Colony, the Movie Makers (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1941), 12–15, appendix H, “Fan Mail” Stamp, Movie-Struck Girls, 10–40; Gaylyn Studlar, “The Perils of Pleasure? Fan Magazine Discourse as Women's Commodified Culture in the 1920s,” Wide Angle 13 (Jan. 1991): 6–33; Rabinovitz, For the Love of Pleasure; Koszarski, An Evening's Entertainment, 29–30; Hansen, Babel and Babylon, 245–268; Melvyn Stokes, “The Female Audience of the 1920s and Early 1930s,” in Stokes and Richard Maltby, eds., Identifying Hollywood's Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies (London: British Film Institute, 1999), 42–60; Richard Abel, “Fan Discourse in the Heartland: The Early 1910s,” Film History 18 (2006): 146.

  19. Suzette Booth, “Breaking into the Movies,” Motion Picture Magazine (June 1917): 76. This was a monthly serial that ran between January and June 1917. In 1920 the city's sex ratio was 97.8:100; see Thompson, Growth and Change in California's Population, 48–51, 88–89; Frank L. Beach, “The Effects of Westward Movement on California's Growth and Development, 1900–1920,” International Migration Review 3 (1969): 25–28. Rebecca J. Mead, “'Let the Women Get Their Wages as Men Do’: Trade Union Women and the Legislated Minimum Wage in California,” Pacific Historical Review 67.3 (1998), 317–347; Rebecca Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868–1914 (New York: New York University Press, 2004). Thompson, Growth and Change in California's Population, 89–93, 112–115. On unmarried women's higher work rates, see Joseph Hill, Women in Gainful Occupations, 1870 to 1920, Census Monograph IX (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1970, [1929]), 270–276. “The Motion Picture Autobiographies,” Case 9, compiled by Herbert Blumer, in Garth Jowett, I.C. Jarvie, and Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, eds., Children and the Movies: Media Influence and the Payne Fund Controversy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 275.

  20. Motion Picture News, quoted in Richard Abel, “Fan Discourse in the Heartland,” Film History 19 (2006): 140–153. Photoplay (Nov. 1924), quoted in Studlar, “Perils of Pleasure?” 7. Janet Flanner, “The Male Background,” Photoplay (Dec. 1920): 33. On the reorientation of fan magazines toward women readers, see Kathryn Fuller, At the Picture Show: Small-Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996). I distinguish between, on one hand, trade papers aimed at those with a stake in manufacturing and exhibiting films and, on the other, fan periodicals or newspaper movie sections designed only for fans. Trade papers existed from the industry's start, but periodicals for fans and celebrity reporting developed only in the mid-1910s. For a sense of the period's fan culture, I read the Parsons Scrapbooks, MHL, between 1915 and 1922. I also read everything in Photoplay during these years. A national publication with a circulation of 2 million, it was the largest of all fan magazines. Finally, I used the periodical database at the Herrick Library to read all the stories published in these same years turned up by keyword searches on extras, contests, how to become an actress, Hollywood, and marriage and divorce. For “mainstream” reporting I read all relevant articles indexed on motion pictures in The Readers’ Guide to Periodical to Literature, as well as those yielded by keyword searches on extras, motion picture actors, motion picture stars, and Hollywood in ProQuest Historical Newspapers and APS. In addition to works already cited, see Janet Staiger, Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Karen Ward Mahar, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006); Samantha Barbas, The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra, A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Alison McMahan, Alice Guy Blache (New York: Continuum, 2002); Kay Armatage, The Girl from God's Country (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003); Anthony Slide, The Silent Feminists (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996; rev. ed. of Early Women Directors, 1977); Eileen Whitfield, Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1997); Gavin Lambert, Nazimova (New York: Knopf, 1997); “Women and the Silent Screen,” ed. Shelley Stamp and Amelie Hastie, special issue, Film History 18.2 (2006); Women Film Pioneers Project, http://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu.

  21. Daniel T. Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), ch. 5.

  22. This is a general impression of mine that particularly pertains to performers in high-profile, prestige products and does not mean that men were not popular as well. However, when one subtracts western heroes and comedians from those considered most capable of opening pictures—or worthy of independent producing companies within studios—the list that remains is predominantly the leading ladies of the day. Even with such men, the number of females among the highest-paid performers outranked the number of men. For such a list in 1923, see Koszarski, An Evening's Entertainment, 116. In autobiographies and interviews with female stars of the period, women consistently note their belief that young women largely supported their popularity. Similar important contemporary views include those of three of the most important men involved in pioneering feature fiction films and the studio system: Adolph Zukor, Cecil DeMille, and Jesse Lasky. See letters between Jesse Lasky and Cecil De Mille, in Paolo Cherchi and Lornzo Codelli, eds., The DeMille Legacy (Pordenone, Italy: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 1991), i, 489–491. On the decline in the number of female college students and professionals from 1920 to 1960, see William O'Neill, Everyone Was Brave: A History of Feminism in America (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969), 304–305. On actresses, screenwriters, and producers, see Ally Acker, Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema 1896 to the Present (New York: Continuum, 1991), 1–8; Francke, Script Girls, ch. 1.

  23. Gloria Swanson, Swanson on Swanson (New York: Random House, 1980), 63, 135.

  24. On the theatrical roots of such behavior, see chapter 1 herein; Glenn, Female Spectacle; Faye Dudden, Women in the American Theater: Actresses and Audiences, 1790–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Benjamin McArthur, Actors and American Culture, 1880–1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984). On women's formation of independent production companies in the silent period, see Mahar, Women Filmmakers, 62–66, 126, 154–160, 175–176. On workers’ dreams of more than economic survival in this period, see Kes
sler-Harris, Out to Work, ch. 8. On the comparably excellent wages paid to even the lowest-paid actresses in this period, see Claudia Johnson, American Actresses: Perspectives on the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1984), 54–57; Robert C. Allen, “The Movies in Vaudeville,” in Balio, The American Film Industry, 42. For instance, the beginning salary of a “ballet-girl” at mid-century was between $3 and $4 a week, doubling to $8 after one month; the typical factory wage averaged $1.50 a week in the period.

  25. United States Department of Agriculture, Social and Labor Needs of Farm Women, Report No. 103 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915), 4, 14, 12. See also United States Department of Agriculture, Domestic Needs of Farm Women, Report No. 104 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915), 4. Grace Kingsley, “Extra Girls Who Became Stars: Thousands Annually Storm Fortune's Citadel,” Photoplay (April 1915): 145. “Movie ‘Extras’ Whose Lives Rival Screen Romance,” Literary Digest, Sept. 20, 1920, p. 69; William Allen Johnston, “In Motion-Picture Land,” Everybody's Magazine 33.4 (Oct. 1915): 437–448.

  26. I follow Nancy Cott in emphasizing the importance to feminism of “sex rights,” sexual equality, difference, and variety; my definition does not emphasize formal political action, since this would exclude most women outside the educated middle class and was not originally central to feminism; see Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 7–9. My reading here can be contrasted with that of Shelley Stamp, who argues that extras were only portrayed with derision; Stamp, “It's a Long Way to Filmland,” in Charles Keil and Shelley Stamp, eds., American Cinema's Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, and Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 332–351.

  27. Frances Marion, Off with Their Heads! (New York: Macmillan, 1972). On the local efforts of neighborhood associations, see “Evil Influence of Motion Pictures,” Petition 2524, Sept. 6, 1921, in “Motion Picture File to be known as 2723” File 614, 1916; File 387, 1917; File 2619, 1918; File 1000, 1918. File 387, 1917; File 1000, 1918, City Clerk's Office, Records Management Division, Los Angeles City Archives (hereafter Los Angeles City Archive). On Marion's move, see Beauchamp, Without Lying Down, 11–13. On Weber, see Shelley Stamp, “'Exit Flapper, Enter Woman,’ or Lois Weber in Jazz Age Hollywood,” Framework (Fall 2010): 358–387.

  28. King Vidor, quoted in A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1989), 105.

  29. Mutual Film Corporation v. Ohio Industrial Commission, 236 U.S. 230 (1915). For an insightful reading of how Mutual reflected the desire to impose a “pure version” of “Protestant Americanism” on screens, though the author ignores the importance of sexual obscenity, see Garth Jowett, “'A Capacity for Evil’: The 1915 Supreme Court Mutual Decision,” Historical Journal of Film, Television, and Radio 9.1 (1989): 59–78. For more on the importance of sexual obscenity, see Edward deGrazia and Roger Newman, Banned Films: Movies, Censors and the First Amendment (New York: R.R. Bowker, 1982), 7–9; Richard Randall, Censorship of the Movies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), 18–24; Kathleen McCarthy, “Nickel Vice and Virtue: Movie Censorship in Chicago, 1907–1915,” Journal of Popular Film 5.1 (1976): 37–55. My account of the film censorship movement owes the most to DeGrazia, Randall, and Lee Grieveson, Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early Twentieth Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). Grieveson describes how regulators of the movie industry sought to reproduce the cultural dominance of white, middle-class social conventions associated with respectability. He argues that the stylistic and industrial norms associated with “classical Hollywood cinema” were determined by legal struggles ending with Mutual in 1915. After this, the industry offered “harmless and culturally affirmative entertainment.” His careful readings of regulation efforts are compelling, but his functionalist interpretation appears too neatly timed to coincide with the emergence of classical Hollywood cinema and treats entertainment and Hollywood cinema as stable, transparent concepts whose meanings lay outside the shifting pressures of historical context and contingency. This is especially troublesome since “Hollywood cinema” lacked definition in this era. It also ignores the producers’ refusal to bow to systematic regulation until the Production Code of 1934, thereby ignoring another commercial imperative: the need to appeal to audiences. The James Boys in Missouri (Essanay, 1908); Night Riders (Kalem, 1908).The decision to suppress the film was supported by Block v. City of Chicago, 87 N.E. 1011 (1909).

  30. Mutual, 236 U.S. 244, 246–247. The decision was made on three grounds: films were primarily entertainment, were made wholly for profit, and possessed a special capacity for evil. McCarthy, “Nickel Vice and Virtue,” 48–53; De Grazia, Banned Films, 8–9; Randall, Censorship of the Movies, 20–21.

  31. Reformer quoted in Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 98. Regina Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 58. Both Kunzel and Meyerowitz (in Women Adrift) note a shift during the 1910s from considering these women as victims of male sexual predators to assuming they were predators themselves. On the gendered construction of delinquency, see also Ruth Alexander, The “Girl Problem”: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Mary Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). On makeup and actresses, see Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), 27–29, 47–50, 53–56.

  32. George Kibbe Turner, “The City of Chicago: A Study of the Great Immoralities,” McClure's Magazine 28.6 (April 1907): 572–592. Inside the White Slave Traffic (Social Research Corporation, 1913). On the belief that the white-slave picture Traffic in Souls helped to legitimate talk about sex, see Agnes Repplier, “The Repeal of Reticence,” Atlantic Monthly (March 1914): 297–304. New York Times editorial, quoted in Stamp, Movie-Struck Girls, 67. On the content and reception of Inside the White Slave Traffic, see Staiger, Bad Women, 128–146; Stamp, Movie-Struck Girls, 69–70, 94–101. On white slave films more generally, see Grieveson, Policing Cinema, 151–191; Stamp, Movie-Struck Girls, 42–101, Staiger, Bad Women, 116–146. In 1911 Pennsylvania passed the first state censorship law, but it did not begin operating until 1915. Between 1916 and 1920, Ohio, Kansas, and Maryland created state boards modeled on Pennsylvania's law. The literature on white slavery is vast. A good place to start is Brian Donovan, White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and Anti-Vice Activism, 1887–1917 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006). The best case for white slavery as a moral panic is made by Mark Connelly in The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 114–135.

  Treatments of prostitution also abound; one good place to start is Barbara Meil Hobson, Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American Reform Tradition (New York: Basic Books, 1987).

  33. “Girls Crave Stardom,” Atlanta Constitution, June 26, 1921, p. D5 (Pro-Quest Historical Newspapers).

  34. I base the foregoing account on the least-disputed facts gleaned from reading (on microfilm) the coverage in eight daily newspapers between August 1921 and May 1922: New York American, Chicago Herald and Examiner, San Francisco Examiner, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. I also looked at all references to the scandal listed in The Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature and the proceedings of Arbuckle's trial in police court in “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 (hereinafter, Court Transcript). “Dying Girl Hid Secret,” Chicago Herald and Examiner, Sept. 14, 1921, p. 3. See also the reference to guests “having too good a time to notice t
he time,” in Zey Prevost, Court Transcript, 310. Arthur Beardslee, Court Transcript, 195. Death Report, Virginia Rappe, San Francisco Coroner's Office. “Arbuckle Dragged Rappe Girl to Room, Woman Testifies,” New York Times, Sept. 12, 1921, p. 1.