Go West, Young Women!

by Hilary Hallett

  31. N.d., Parsons Scrapbook no. 1, MHL.

  32. “In and Out of Focus: Norma Talmadge,” Feb. 2, 1919.

  33. “Here’s the Ideal Film Personality—Clara Kimball Young Is Playful Child and Brainy Woman,” n.d., Parsons Scrapbook no. 1, MHL.

  34. On modernity, see Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air (New York: Penguin, 1982).

  35. Cohn, “ ‘Stars or No Star’—That Is the Question.” It notes that Griffith, Mack Sennett, and Thomas Ince battled against the star system. On DeMille’s fight for directorial authority, see De Mille, Autobiography, 180–181. “Player centered institution”: Glenn, Female Spectacle, 217.

  36. The two earliest American film historians make the point about directors’ lack of box office draw. See Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights, 499–507; Hampton, A History of the American Film Industry, 86–92, 140–142, 193–195. The auteur theory of cinema shaped how scholars learned to think about film. Concerned with elevating the status of movies, the theory emerged from New Wave cinema movements and the professionalization of film studies. The most recent generation of scholars has emphasized historical reception and production.

  37. de Mille, Hollywood Saga, 233. See Cohn, “ ‘Stars or No Star’—That Is the Question,” 95–101; James Quirk, “Star Dust,” Photoplay (June 1918): 18–20; Frank Woods, “Why Is a Star?” Photoplay (Oct. 1919): 70–73, 117–118. Fan magazines’ focus on stories about stars also bore this out.

  38. Harold Wendt, “A Trifle Long but Worth It,” Exhibitors Herald, July 9, 1921, p. 70.

  39. N.d., Parsons Scrapbook no. 1, MHL. A concert pianist, Weber was from a religious middle-class family and worked for the Church Army Workers before she entered the stage after her father’s death. The Jew’s Christmas (1913), an attack on ethnic and religious intolerance, gained her public attention. Weber later directed two controversial films on birth control, Where Are My Children (1916) and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1917). On Weber’s career, see Shelley Stamp, “Presenting the Smalleys,” Film History 18.2 (2006): 119–128; Mahar, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood.

  40. Catherine Filene, ed., Careers for Women (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1920); New York Times, Dec. 16, 1920. The edition published in 1934 dropped directing.

  41. N.d., Parsons Scrapbook no. 1, MHL.

  42. Carl Laemmle created Universal in 1912 by merging IMP with several other companies. On Universal’s promotion of women, see Slide, The Silent Feminists, ch. 4; Mark Garrett Cooper, Universal Women: Filmmaking and Institutional Change in Early Hollywood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 1–90. Universal Weekly, Dec. 1913, quoted in ibid., 8. On the studio’s election, see ibid., 51–52.

  43. “Chameleon City of the Cinema,” The Strand Magazine, quoted in Washington Post, June 20, 1915.

  44. Johnston, “In Motion-Picture Land,” 441, 440.

  45. “How One ‘Extra Girl’ Climbed to Stardom,” n.d., Parsons Scrapbook no. 1, MHL.

  46. Cooper, Universal Women, 113, 166.

  47. Alfred A. Cohn, “What Every Girl Wants to Know,” Photoplay (June 1919): 28–29. This article was the most discouraging piece that I read, through 1922, on hopefuls’ chances for success.

  48. For her story of a “fatherless” upbringing, see Parsons, Gay Illiterate, 10–11. Parsons claimed she was born in 1893, but the real date was August 6, 1881; Eells, Hedda and Louella, 28. “This prejudice”: Parsons, Gay Illiterate, 12.

  49. United States Department of Agriculture, Social and Labor Needs of Farm Women, 4. See also United States Department of Agriculture, Domestic Needs of Farm Women, 4. On the rural problem, see Hempstead, “Agricultural Change and the Rural Problem”; Bowers, The Country Life Movement in America.

  50. United States Department of Agriculture, Social and Labor Needs of Farm Women, 11–12.

  51. Frances Donovan, The Woman Who Waits (New York: Arno Press, 1974 [1920]), 9. Donovan found that waitresses spent most of their leisure time at the movies, in cabarets, or in restaurants. Carl Van Doren, “The Revolt from the Village: 1920,” The Nation 113 (1921): 407–412. For a recent critic who notes the prevalence of such female protagonists, see Carl Smith, Chicago and the Literary Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 40–56. Major works about such characters include Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, ed. Neda M. Westlake et al. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981 [1900]); Edna Ferber, Dawn O’Hara, the Girl Who Laughed (Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar: 2006 [1911]); Mary Austin, A Woman of Genius (New York: Feminist Press, 1985 [1912]); Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988 [1915]); Zona Gale, Miss Lulu Bett (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1920); Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (New York: Bantam, 1996 [1920]).

  52. Hine and Faragher, American West, 418.

  53. See Louella Parsons, “Propaganda!” Photoplay (Sept. 1918): 43–45, 115.

  54. Eells, Hedda and Louella, 44; Jerry Hoffman quoted, 88.

  55. Picture-Goer quoted in Eells, Hedda and Louella, 89. Petrova starred in 26 films between 1914 and 1918, 4 under Blache’s direction. Not satisfied with playing just vamps, she formed Petrova Pictures in 1917 “to play strong women. . . . I am a feminist,” she explained to Randolph Bartlett in “Petrova—Prophetess,” 27. See also Fredrick Smith, “Petrova and Her Philosophy of Life,” Photoplay (Oct. 1916): 56–58; Anthony Slide, Silent Players (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2002); Olga Petrova, Butter with My Bread (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1942).

  56. Nasaw, The Chief, 53.

  57. E.W. Scripps quoted in Alfred M. Lee, The Daily Newspaper in America (New York: Macmillan, 1937), 10. Between 1850 and 1880, circulation increased along with the urban population; between 1880 and 1930, it grew faster. The degree of control depended on the chain. See ibid., 64, 70–71.

  58. Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, xiii. See discussion in chapter 1, note 14.

  59. Quoted in J.K. Winkler, W.R. Hearst, An American Phenomenon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1928), 22.

  60. On Hearst’s relationship to the working classes and the production of Perils, see Nasaw, The Chief, chs. 4, 19; pp. 235–236.

  61. Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, Vol. 5 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 296. “The Real Perils of Pearl White,” Literary Digest (Dec. 4, 1921): 147–149.

  62. “Movies of the Future: A Review and a Prophesy,” McClure’s Magazine (Oct. 1915): 87.

  63. De Mille, Hollywood Saga, 175. Mutual Film Corporation v. Ohio Industrial Commission, 236 U.S. 230 (1915).

  64. Sept. 20, 1918, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL. On the Liberty Loan drive, and Pickford’s role as its most spectacular seller, see Leslie Midkiff DeBauche, Reel Patriotism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), 70–71, 119–120, 155–156; Nell Irving Painter, Standing at Armageddon (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), 332–333. Painter notes that all five series of the Liberty Loans were oversubscribed, raising an estimated $23 billion of the war’s $33.5 billion cost. See also George Creel, How We Advertised America: The First Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information That Carried the Gospel of Americanism to Every Corner of the Globe (New York: Harper, 1920).

  65. De Mille, Hollywood Saga, 185. “Film Stars Here to Aid War Loan: Can You ‘Guess’ Who They Are?” April 5, 1918, Parsons Scrapbook no. 2, MHL.

  66. “Official Washington to See Liberty Loan Films,” Sept. 21, 1918, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL.

  67. “Metro Plans to Move Studio to Hollywood,” Sept. 20, 1918, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL. I make this claim about Parsons use of the term based on having read the scrapbooks through no. 8, MHL. For the first listing of “Hollywood” in the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature (Minneapolis: H.W. Wilson Co.), see “In the Capital of Movie-Land.” “Bankers May Cooperate in Lasky Undertaking,” Oct. 15, 1919, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL. On how Zukor was not the first, but only the most successful, to do this, see Sklar, Movie-Made America, ch. 9. On the escalation in the cost
of making features, see Hampton, A History of the Movies, 167–168; Mae Huettig, Economic Control of the Motion Picture Industry (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1944), 26–28; Frank Woods, “The Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” Transactions of the Society for Motion Picture Engineers 12.33 (April 1928): 25–32. Anita Loos and director John Emerson attributed the escalation to the rise in salaries paid to directors, actors, and writers and claimed that the average feature in 1911 cost between $5,000 and $7,000 and by 1921 between $50,000 to $150,000; Breaking into the Movies (New York: James A. McCann Co., 1921), 51. This was born out in “A Visit to Movieland the Film Capital of the World—Los Angeles,” The Forum (Jan. 1920): 17–29. The article reproduced the accounting for a “special”: out of a total cost of $119,158.38, approximately $54,000 was spent on director, actors, and writers—with the largest single expense category being extras. The Forum also noted that “the average movie” cost between $25,000 and $50,000.

  68. De Mille, Hollywood Saga, 233; Hampton, A History of the Movies, 146–149, 179–192.

  69. Independent production was described as the “most important event of the year”; Wid’s Yearbook 1918 (New York: Wid’s Films; Hollywood: Film Folks, Inc., 1921), 69.

  70. The Little American (Famous Players, 1917).

  71. Jesse Lasky (JL) to Cecil B. DeMille (CD), Feb. 5, 1917, in Cherchi and Codelli, The DeMille Legacy, 62.

  72. Rogers St. Johns, “Why Does the World Love Mary? 110.

  73. “In and Out of Focus: Mary Pickford,” Aug. 1, 1920.

  74. Federal Trade Commission brief, Part I, 56–58, in case against FPL Corporation, quoted in Harvard Business Reports, 8 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1930), 16 (hereinafter cited as 8 H.B.R., as requested.)

  75. The actress called the merger a shift from “an intimate little family group” to “a huge machine,” blaming the low quality of her next two pictures on her “new masters”; Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow, 105. See also Irwin, The House That Shadows Built, 251; DeMille, Autobiography, 180; letters between Jesse Lasky and DeMille, in Cherchi and Codelli, The DeMille Legacy, 449, 540–541, 531–533.

  76. “Mary Pickford Will Be Her Own Film Director,” Nov. 13, 1918, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL.

  77. 8 H.B.R., “First National Exhibitors’ Circuit, Incorporated,” 13–25; Hampton, History of the American Film Industry, ch. 9; William Marston Seabury, The Public and the Motion Picture Industry (New York: Macmillan, 1926), 21.

  78. “Mary Pickford Will Be Her Own Film Director.”

  79. Tino Balio, United Artists (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 3; Chaplin, My Autobiography, 222.

  80. “ ‘Big Four’ Not ‘Big Five’ Form New Film Concern,” Feb. 8, 1919, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL. Parsons originally included William Hart. See also “UA to Keep All Their Stock,” Feb. 13, 1919, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL.

  81. “Doris Kenyon Latest to Reach Pinnacle of the Film Star’s Ambition,” March 31, 1918, Parsons Scrapbook no. 2, MHL.

  82. With the exclusion of Chaplin and Fairbanks, I found no mention by Parsons of male actors forming independent production companies. Other actresses whom she did not mention here include Olga Petrova, Anita Stewart, Marie Doro, Gail Kane, Alma Ruebens, Madame Mureal, Ethel Clayton, Irene Castle, Justine Johnstone, Vivian Martin, Dorothy Gish, Louise Glaum, and Lillian Walker. See Mahar, Women Filmmakers, 303–307.

  83. Photoplay (May 1917): 121.

  84. “Doris Kenyon Latest to Reach Pinnacle of the Film Star’s Ambition,” March 31, 1918. For 1920, see also “New Film Corporation Formed,” April 13, 1920, on Mae Murray; “Enid Bennett to Sever Relations with Ince,” May 13, 1920; “Virginia Strikes for Liberty,” July 4, 1920, all in Parsons Scrapbooks nos. 2 and 4, MHL.

  85. “In and Out of Focus: Norma Talmadge.” Schenck arranged to release the films of Norma Talmadge Film Corporation through First National and later UA.

  86. Forbidden City (Norma Talmadge Film Corp./First National, 1918), Library of Congress.

  87. “In and Out of Focus: Norma Talmadge.”

  88. “In and Out of Focus: Eleanor Fried,” May 15, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL.

  89. “New Film Company Controlled by Woman,” Aug. 26, 1919, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL.

  90. “In and Out of Focus: Catherine Curtis,” April 4, 1920. Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL.

  91. Francke, Script Girls, ch. 1.

  92. “Film Producers Seek Material for Plays,” July 26, 1919, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL.

  93. “Eminent Authors Active,” July 23, 1919; “Goldwyn to Make Fewer and Better Pictures,” Mar. 5, 1919, both in Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL.

  94. “In and Out of Focus: Cheap Pictures to Blame,” July 11, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL.

  95. “The Girl Who Made Fairbanks Famous,” Mar. 24, 1918, Parsons Scrapbook no. 2, MHL. Loos wrote the screenplay for Fairbanks’s breakout role in His Picture in the Papers (1916). She recalled that “Bess Meredith, Frances Marion, and Jeanie McPherson were the foremost scenarists of the day”; Parsons, Gay Illiterate, 85.

  96. “Jeanine McPherson Signs Contract with DeMille,” June 26, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL.

  97. “Frances Marion to Direct Mary Pickford,” July 29, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL. The picture was The Love Light (UA, 1921), the 11th feature on which the two collaborated.

  98. On feminism’s relationship to nineteenth-century women’s rights, see Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 4–5, 8–10, 213–215, 224–226, 230–239, 276.

  99. Missouri Anti-Suffrage League quoted in ibid., 13, 14. On suffrage, see also Eleanor Flexner and Ellen Fitzpatrick, Century of Struggle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). For a critique for its ideological limitations, see Aileen S. Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981 [1965]).

  100. Of course, here I refer to what scholars today call gender. See Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).

  101. De Beauvoir, “The Independent Woman,” 683. “Man is a human being with sexuality; woman is a complete individual, equal to the male, only if she too is a human being with sexuality.”

  102. Randolph Bartlett, “Petrova—Prophetess,” Photoplay (December 1917): 26–27. The article describes how Petrova was “producing for herself, assuming full charge of every detail of her operations.” Margaret Fuller, Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845).

  103. In the twenties the number of married women working outside the home increased by more than 25 percent; Kessler-Harris, Out to Work, 229. Work after marriage became the main topic of debate regarding women’s emancipation in the 1920s. By 1930, less than 4 percent of married working-women held white-collar jobs; see Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, ch. 6.

  104. “In and Out of Focus: Ouida Bergere,” Jan. 18, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL.

  105. “Gloria Swanson a Bride,” Dec. 12, 1919, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL. Swanson married Somborn hoping he would help manage her independent production company. Instead he relied on her for support and they divorced; see Swanson, Swanson on Swanson, 131–134, 142–163.

  106. “Gloria Swanson in Elinor Glyn Story,” Nov. 24, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL.

  107. Jane Fredrickson, “Defends Manners of Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1921. For two other attempts to discredit the promotion of Hollywood as a Bohemia, see “The Real Bohemia,” an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 2, 1921, pt. 2, p. 4; Benjamin Hampton, “Cattar Lattan, USA,” Photoplay (June 1921): 80–82.

  108. Statistic cited in Dorothy Schneider and Carl Schneider, American Women in the Progressive Era (New York: Facts on File, 1992), 146.

  109. “Steady Growth in California’s Divorces Shown,” San Francisco Bulletin, April, 21, 1920, p. 3.

  110. See Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 184–206.

  111. John D’Emilio
and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters (New York: Harper& Row, 1988), 173–175. The decline in the birthrate among the native-born urban middle class was particularly pronounced. By 1900, two-thirds had two children and 15 percent remained childless. On the birth control movement, see Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).

  112. “In and Out of Focus: Anita Loos, Who Looks like a Movie Star and in Reality is the Brainy Young Woman Who Writes for Them,” Mar. 16, 1919, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL.

  113. Brooke Kroeger, Fannie (New York: Random House, 1999), 49, 28–53. See also Grant Overton, The Women Who Make Our Novels (New York: Moffat, Yard, 1922), 180–186; Grant Overton, Fannie Hurst (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928).

  114. “Fannie Hurst Wed,” New York Times, May 4, 1920, pp. 1, 4.

  115. See, for instance, “Part Time Marriage,” San Francisco Bulletin, May 7, 1920, p. 6; “Husband Approves Fannie Hurst’s Idea,” New York Times, May 5, 1920. “Doug Fairbanks and Mary Pickford Here,” June 2, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL.

  116. “Douglas Fairbanks Liberated for Love,” April 11, 1918, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL. The two divorced later that year, and Beth Fairbanks remarried in 1919.

  117. American Aristocracy (Paramount, 1916).

  118. “In and Out of Focus: Mary Pickford,” June 6, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL.

  119. New York Times, June 2, 1920, p. 9.

  120. “In and Out of Focus: Miriam Cooper,” July 25, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL. When discussing why actresses married younger, Parsons noted that “actresses, particularly the successful ones, are extraordinarily independent. Many of them manage their own financial affairs as competently as any businessman. It is not easy for an independent woman to bow to anyone other than herself as the head of the house. Younger men are far more tractable than older husbands.” Parsons, The Gay Illiterate, 184.

  121. “Humoresque,” June 6, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL.