Go West, Young Women!

by Hilary Hallett

25. Cushman quoted in Merrill, When Romeo Was a Woman, 75.

  26. “Charlotte Cushman,” unsourced, Nov. 4, 1874, vol. 131, RLC, 20.

  27. On Cushman's reputation as “the best breeches figure in America,” see Denise A. Wallen, “Such a Romeo as We Had Never Ventured to Hope For,” in Schanke and Marra, Passing Performances, 41–62; Dudden, Women in the American Theatre, 92–99. To me, actresses’ popularity in breeches roles with female fans suggests women's enjoyment of their gender-defying conventions. Some argue that breeches roles acted primarily as a means for men to gape at women's legs, but since it was easy elsewhere to see them wearing less, this argument seems less persuasive to me; see Tracy Davis, “Questions for a Feminist Methodology in Theater History,” in Thomas Postlewait and Bruce A. McConachie, eds., Interpreting the Theatrical Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989), 79.

  28. Willis J. Abbot, “Famous Women of History,” unsourced, Dec. 31, 1912, vol. 131, RLC, 150.

  29. William Winter, “Great Actresses and Great Women: Charlotte Cushman,” Saturday Evening Post, Sept. 29, 1906, vol. 131, RLC, 151.

  30. Benjamin Brown French, Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankees Journal, 1828–1870, ed. Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), 58.

  31. Abbot, “Famous Women of History.”

  32. “Miss Cushman,” Spirit of the Times: The American Gentleman's Newspaper, Feb. 26, 1876, vol. 131, RLC, 25.

  33. Reminiscences of the Life of the World-Renowned Charlotte Cushman, Compiled from Various Records by Mrs. Dr. Walker, Her Chosen Medium (Boston: William P. Tenny, 1876), 49.

  34. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The New Woman as Social Androgyne: Social Disorder and Gender Crisis,” in Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Knopf, 1985), 245–296.

  35. Merrill, When Romeo Was a Woman, 205–242.

  36. John Coleman, Fifty Years of an Actor's Life, Vol. 1 (New York: Hames, Pott and Co., 1902), 363.

  37. Julia Ward Howe to Charlotte Cushman, Sept. 20, 1857, quoted in Leach, Bright Particular Star, 278.

  38. S.A.E. Walton to Charlotte Cushman, Nov. 2, 1874, quoted in Dudden, Women in the American Theatre, 77.

  39. Figures cited in Nasaw, Going Out, 37. On women's entrance into vaudeville, see Kibler, Rank Ladies.

  40. Hill, Women in Gainful Occupations, 1870 to 1920, 42.

  41. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 190–191.

  42. On women's wage work, see Barbara Wertheimer, We Were There (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), 95, 157. On actresses’ wages, see Johnson, American Actress, 54–57. The beginning salary of a “ballet-girl” at midcentury was $3 to $4 dollars a week, doubling to $8 after one month; the typical factory wage averaged $1.50 a week.

  43. According to the New York Mirror Annual, by the late nineteenth century, there were more women stars than men; the Annual listed 73 women (7.7% of total actresses) and 68 men (4.7 of total actors). Reprinted in McArthur, Actors and American Culture, 13–14. On actresses as theater managers, see Johnson, American Actress, 63–74; Dudden, Women in the American Theatre, 123–148.

  44. Most have followed the reductive treatment of women's roles in this period by relying on a book that treated them only slightly: Grimsted's Melodrama Unveiled. On the greater variety of theatrical heroines after 1850, see Dudden, Women in the American Theatre, 70–78; Rosemarie K. Blank, “The Second Face of the Idol,” in Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins, eds., Women in American Theatre (New York: Crown Publishers, 1981); Martha Vicinus, “Helpless and Unfriended,” in Judith L. Fisher and Stephen Watt, eds., When They Weren't Doing Shakespeare (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989); Gabrielle Hyslop, “Deviant and Dangerous Behavior,” Journal of Popular Culture 19 (Winter 1985): 65–78.

  45. Stephen Stanton, ed., Camille and Other Plays (New York: Hill & Wang, 1957). As Stanton notes, these plays downplayed moral lessons in favor of intense action and suspense.

  46. Augustin Daly's Under the Gaslight (1867).

  47. On the label, see the editorial New York Herald, Jan. 20, 1857, p. 4. On Camille as the “grand prototype for the whole sensational school of drama and acting,” see Lawrence Hutton, Plays and Players (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1875), 158.

  48. Boardman, The Oxford Companion to American Theatre, 66–67, 213, 295. On the popularity of Camille, see Stanton, Camille and Other Plays, xxvi; Brandon, Being Divine, 236–244.

  49. Duse quoted in Henry W. Knepler, The Gilded Stage: The Lives and Careers of Four Great Actresses: Rachel Félix, Adelaide Ristori, Sarah Bernhardt and Eleanora Duse (London: Constable, 1968), 183.

  50. Roberts, Disruptive Acts, 165–219; Berlanstein, Daughters of Eve, 115–124.

  51. Quoted in Dudden, Women in the American Theatre, 228n22.

  52. Clayton Hamilton, “The Career of Camille,” in The Theory of the Theater (New York: Henry Holt, 1910), 369–371.

  53. New York Herald, April 21, 1857. Other critics delighted in how these “unconventional” heroines offended moralists; see Tice Miller, Bohemians and Critics: American Theatre Criticism in the Nineteenth Century (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1981), 30–31, 60–62.

  54. Quote is from Dorothy Schneider and Carl J. Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era, 1900–1920 (New York: Anchor, 1994), 16. See also Elizabeth Otto and Vanessa Rocco, eds., The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011).

  55. Einstein quoted in Rena Sanderson, “Gender and Modernity in Transnational Perspective: Hugo Munsterberg and the American Woman,” Prospects (Jan. 1998): 285. Miriam Hansen, “Early Silent Cinema: Whose Public Sphere?” New German Critique 29 (Spring–Summer 1983): 153; Noel Carroll, “Film/Mind Analogies: The Case of Hugo Munsterberg,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (Summer 1988): 489–499.

  56. Butsch, The Making of American Audiences, 123; Hugo Munsterberg, The Americans (New York: McClure, Philips, 1904), 587.

  57. Hugo Munsterberg, American Traits (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1971 [1901]), 138–139, 160; Walter Prichard Eaton, “Women as Theater-Goers,” Woman's Home Companion 37 (Oct. 1910): 79.

  58. Clayton Hamilton, “Organizing the Audience,” Bookman (Oct. 1911): 34.

  59. See also Arthur Wang Pinero's The Second Miss Tanqueray (1893); The Amazons (1894).

  60. On female variety stars, see Linda Mizejewski, Ziegfeld Girls: Image and Icon in Culture and Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999). Janis introduced Pickford to her future husband Douglas Fairbanks; see Elsie Janis, So Far, So Good! (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1932), 167, 340. Pickford got the Gishes their break at Biograph; see Charles Affron, Lillian Gish: Her Life, Her Legend (New York: Scribner, 2001), 43–47.

  61. Adela Rodgers St. Johns, The Honeycomb (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), 97. See also Louise Brooks and Ruth St. Denis's discussion of mothers, quoted in Barry Paris, Louise Brooks: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1989), 37.

  62. Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964), 222. On the centrality of her salary and business renegotiations to her persona, see Mary Pickford Core Clipping File (hereinafter PCC), MHL; Higashi, “Million Dollar Mary,” in Virgins, Vamps, and Flappers.

  63. Mary Pickford, “The Best Known Girl in America: Mary Pickford Tells What It Is Like to Be a ‘Movie’ Actress,” Ladies’ Home Journal (Jan. 1915): 9, PCC, MHL. On the Ladies’ Home Journal, see Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 54, 112.

  64. “Mary Pickford Wins! Her Letter to Our Readers,” Ladies’ World (April 1915): n.p., PCC, MHL. Pickford won with 1,147,550 votes out of 2,682,900, and was followed by Alice Joyce, Mary Fuller, Blanche Sweet, Clara Kimball Young, and Norma Phillips.

  65. Estimate by economist John Commons, quoted in Alice Kessler-Harris
, Women Have Always Worked (New York: Feminist Press, 1981), 63. Pickford, “The Best Known Girl in America,” 9.

  66. “Thanks to a Silly White Goose, Mary Is Back in Belasco Ranks Again,” New York American, Jan. 1, 1913, r. 12, David Belasco Scrapbooks, Robinson Locke Collection, New York Public Library of the Performing Arts (hereinafter DBSB, RLC).

  67. Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow, 55–56; Whitfield, Pickford, 36–53.

  68. “Belasco's Latest Star a Success,” Philadelphia Press, Dec. 24, 1907, r. 25, DBSB, RLC.

  69. MPOH, 2676.

  70. Boston American (untitled article), Sept. 20, 1908, r. 25, DBSB, RLC.

  71. On the shift to naming players, see deCordova, Picture Personalities, ch. 1. On branding actors, see Catherine Kerr, “Incorporating the Star: The Intersection of Business and Aesthetic Strategies in Early American Film,” Business History Review 68.3 (1990): 383–410.

  72. Much has been written on Laemmle's promotion. Here I rely on deCordova, Picture Personalities, 55–64.

  73. “The Maude Adams of the Moving Picture Show,” Toledo News Bee, Mar. 30, 1910, env. 1125, Florence Lawrence Collection, Robinson Locke Collection, New York Public Library of the Performing Arts (hereinafter FLC, RLC).

  74. E.W. Dustin to Florence Lawrence, Mar. 7, 1910; Betty Melnick to Florence Lawrence, April 9, 1910, both in Lawrence Collection, MHL.

  75. Hilary A. Hallett, “Based on a True Story: New Western Women and the Birth of Hollywood,” Pacific Historical Review (May 2011): 176–187.

  76. Daniel Boone; or, Pioneer days in America (Edison, 1906), Museum of Modern Art, New York City (hereinafter MOMA). Like most films from the silent era, the vast majority of the shorts in which Lawrence played a leading role between 1908 and 1914 are lost, complicating claims about their content and character. Yet film synopses, critical reaction, and what celluloid remains make some generalizations possible. The filmography of Lawrence's biographer includes 175 films in which she played a leading role; see Kelly Brown, Florence Lawrence (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999), 159–180. According to the FIAF's International Index to Film Periodicals, Treasures from Film Archives, Lawrence appears in 103 films still in existence. Of these, all but 10 were made at Biograph, and many of these feature Lawrence in small parts. By “mythology” I mean a metaphorical guide to a society's values that suggests how a culture frames and answers key questions and contradictions. Myths depict an imagined past while structuring an equally imagined present and future. The literature on western mythology is immense; my approach follows Fred Erisman, “The Enduring Myth and the Modern West,” in Gerald Nash and Richard Etulain, eds., Researching Western History: Topics in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 167–186; Robert Hine and John Mack Faragher, The American West: A New Interpretative History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 472–511; William Cronon, “Turner's First Stand,” in Richard W. Etulain, ed., Writing Western History: Essays on Major Western Historians (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991), 73–102; Ann Fabian, “History for the Masses,” in William Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds., Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 223–238.

  77. The Dispatch Bearer (Vitagraph, 1907), MOMA. Florence Lawrence, with Monte Katterjohn, “Growing Up with the Movies, Part II,” Photoplay (Dec. 1914), Florence Lawrence, env. 1125, FLC, RLC.

  78. The Girl and the Outlaw (Vitagraph, 1908), MOMA. Florence Lawrence, with Monte Katterjohn, “Growing Up with the Movies, Part III,” Photoplay (Jan. 1915): 99, env. 1125, FLC, RLC.

  79. On these films, see Brown, Florence Lawrence, 28–29, 154–157; 166–169.

  80. “Florence Lawrence,” unsourced, n.d., env. 1125; “Miss Florence Lawrence of the Lubin Company” (she was at Lubin in 1911); “A Film Favorite Who Is Also an Inventor,” Green Book Magazine (May 1914): 841, env. 1125, all in FLC, RLC.

  81. Florence Lawrence, with Monte Katterjohn, “Growing Up with the Movies,” part 1, Photoplay (Nov. 1914): 36–38, env. 1125, FLC, RLC.

  82. Mead, “'Let the Women Get Their Wages as Men Do,’” Mead, How the Vote Was Won. On the suffrage movement's use of actresses as glamorous front women, see Albert Auster, Actresses and Suffragists: Women in the American Theater, 1890–1920 (New York: Praeger, 1984); Ellen Carol DuBois, Harriet Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Margaret Finnegan, Selling Suffrage: Consumer Culture and Votes for Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

  83. “Miss Florence Lawrence of the Lubin Company” Gladys Roosevelt, “Miss Florence Lawrence of the Victor Film Company,” Motion Picture Magazine (Oct. 1913): n.p., both in env. 1125, FLC, RLC.

  84. “Maude Adams,” Toledo News; “Florence Lawrence,” Cleveland Press, Feb. 16, 1914, env. 1128, FLC, RLC.

  85. Phyllis Robbins, Maude Adams: An Intimate Biography (New York: Putnam, 1956).

  86. Charles Musser, “Pre-classical American Cinema: Its Changing Modes of Production,” in Richard Abel, ed., Silent Film (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 85–108.

  87. The Little Rebel (1911, Lubin), MOMA. Lawrence made forty-eight films at Lubin in 1911; three others remain: The Cook (George Eastman House, Rochester); Her Child's Hour (Filmmuseum, Amsterdam); The Two Fathers (British Film Institute, London).

  88. Brown, Florence Lawrence, 74–75.

  89. Lotta Lawrence quoted in Florence Lawrence with Monte Katterjohn, “Growing Up with the Movies,” 38, FLC, RLC. On Lawrence's move to Victor, see Brown, Florence Lawrence, 77–79, 80–84, 89–90.

  90. Flo's Discipline (Victor, 1912), one of two Victor films that remains (Library of Congress). More than one-third of her films involved such roles during her Lubin years (8 of 48) and Victor years (8 of 45), including actresses foremost. By contrast, only 3 of the 77 films at Biograph involved such roles; see filmography in Brown, Florence Lawrence, 159–180.

  91. “Maude Adams,” Toledo News; “Florence Lawrence,” Cleveland Press.

  92. Balio, “Stars in Business,” 156–157. Sweet Memories (IMP, 1911); In Old Madrid (IMP, 1911); Mary Pickford Collection of Early Silent Short Subjects (Hollywood's Attic, 1996).

  93. On how the more naturalistic acting techniques common on stage made their way to the screen, see Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 87–97.

  94. Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York: Macmillan Company, 1909), 5.

  95. Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow, 73. Pickford recalled that “I would not run around like a goose with its head off, crying ‘oooooh . . . the little birds! Ooooh . . . look! A little bunny!’ That's what he [Griffith] taught all his ingenues, and they all did the same thing” quoted in Brownlow, Mary Pickford Rediscovered, 67. On how Biograph rigorously imposed anonymity on players while using their real names as character names, see Kerr, “Incorporating the Star,” 397–399.

  96. “The Biograph Girl,” New York Morning Telegram, Dec. 21, 1912, n.p.; “The Maude Adams of the ‘Movies,’” Theatre Magazine (June 1913): n.p.; New Belasco Star,” New York Press, Jan. 5, 1913, r. 12; Stuart Clyde, “Out of a Picture to Fame,” The World Magazine, Dec. 22, 1912, n.p.; “Belasco Contract Christmas Present to this ‘Movies Heroine,’” Worchester Massachusetts Gazette, Dec. 12, 1912, r. 12, all, DBSB, RLC.

  97. Mary Jean Corbett, Representing Femininity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, ed. L.W. Conolly (London: Methuen Drama, 2008), introduction.

  98. “The Gelatine Juliet,” The North American, Jan. 12, 1912, r. 12; “This ‘Maude Adams of the Movies’ Says,” New York American, Jan. 20, 1913, vol. 386, both in DBSB, RLC.

  99. “Miss Pickford Likes Things Baltimorean,” Dec 13, 1913, unsourced clipping, r. 12, DBSB, RLC.

  100. Gertrude Price, “Daddy of the Family,” n.d., unsourced, r. 12; “Maude Adams,” Theatre Magazine, June 1913, DBSB, RLC. On the strategy of using women writers to appeal to other women, see Virginia Morris,
“Women in Publicity,” in Charles Reed Jones, ed., Breaking into the Movies (New York: Unicorn Press, 1927), 204–205.

  101. “Alan Dale Has a Chat with Mary Pickford,” Pittsburgh Leader, Dec. 27, 1914, 102, vol. 141, RLC. Mary Pickford, “My Own Story,” Ladies’ Home Journal (July 1913): r. 14, DBSB, RLC. Richard C. Wallace, “Little Mary and Her Husband,” Motion Picture Album 1.10 (March 1913): 5–8, vol. 386, RLC. “Miss Pickford Likes,” unsourced clipping; “New Belasco Star Presented Wednesday Night,” New York Press, Jan. 5, 1913, r. 12, DBSB, RLC.

  102. Pickford, “My Own Story.”

  103. On her continued struggles with Griffith, see Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow, 88–91.

  104. See William de Mille, Hollywood Saga (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1939); Hampton, History of the American Film Industry, 153–154.

  105. Will Irwin, The House That Shadows Built (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, & Co., 1928), 151. On Zukor's exhibition of the European features through the road show method, in which patrons were charged $.75 to $2.00, see Tino Balio, “Struggles for Control,” in Balio, The American Film Industry, 109–113. On how more expensive features became standard by 1915, see Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 192, 212–215.

  106. “Miss Pickford Likes Things Baltimorean.”

  107. Zukor, The Public Is Never Wrong, 59, 71, 93–95, 98; Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow, 97. See also Daniel Frohman, Daniel Frohman Presents (New York: Claude Kendall & Willoughby Sharp, 1935), 248, 249, 275. Frohman credits Pickford's salary, not Bernhardt, with sparking Charles's interest in the movies.

  108. On these films, see Whitfield, Pickford, 123–143.

  109. Carolyn Heilbrun, Writing a Woman's Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), 48.

  110. Tess of the Storm Country (Famous Players, 1914), Library of Congress.

  111. Moving Picture World, n.d., MPCC, MHL.

  112. Tibbetts, “Mary Pickford and the American ‘Growing Girl,’” 50–62; Lynne Vallone, Disciplines of Virtue (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). Readers’ responses might reflect the “liberatory” approach discussed in Angela Hubler, “Can Ann Shirley Help ‘Revive Ophelia'?” in Sherrie Inness, ed., Delinquents and Debutantes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 270–272. On Marion's career, see Beauchamp, Without Lying Down.