Go West, Young Women!

by Hilary Hallett

  118. “New Organization of Distributors and Producers Planned—Will Hays Offered Presidency,” Wid's Daily, Dec. 9, 1921, pp. 1–2; “Says Hays Accepts,” Wid's Daily, Dec. 21, 1921, p.1; “Hays Accepts Offer to Head Producer-Distributor Alliance,” Exhibitors Herald (Jan. 28, 1922): 43–45. Accounts vary as to the development of the idea for the MPPDA and the precise timing of the approach to Hays. See Sklar, Movie-Made America, 82–83, 132; Jowett, Film, 152–159; May, Screening Out the Past, 179, 205; Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights, 814–817. All authors agree that the Arbuckle scandal convinced producers to go ahead with hiring Hays and instituting the MPPDA.

  119. “Arbuckle Trial Ends in Disagreement: Grand Jury to Probe Tampering Charges,” SFX, Dec. 5, 1921, pp. 1, 3.

  120. On Harding's election, see Hawley, The Great War and the Search for Modern Order, 44–49. On Hays as an architect of “advertised politics,” see McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics, 169–171; Braeman, “American Politics in the Age of Normalcy,” 17–18. On his use of newsreels, see Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights, 811–813.

  121. “How to Make Virtue Popular,” editorial, CHE, Jan. 17, 1922, p. 8. See also “Hays to Quit Cabinet for Movie Post,” CHE, Jan. 15, 1922, p. 6; “Moral House-Cleaning in Hollywood,” Photoplay (April 1922): 52–53; “Will Hays—A Real Leader: A Close-up of the General Director of the Motion Picture Industry,” Photoplay (May 1922): 30–31.

  122. “Mary Pickford Accused of Perjury,” CHE, Jan. 4, 1922, p. 1. “Arbuckle Jury 10 to 2; Calls Judge,” NYA, Feb. 2, 1922, p. 1. The never-solved murder of director William Desmond Taylor wrecked the careers of Mary Miles Minter and Mabel Normand; see “Star Tells of Movie Murder,” CHE, Feb. 3, 1922, p. 1.

  123. On the referendum, see “Industry Directs Guns at Massachusetts Censorship,” Exhibitors Herald (Oct. 25, 1922): 43.

  124. Beyond the Rocks (Paramount, 1922). Swanson, Swanson on Swanson, 173.

  125. Adrienne L. Mclean and David A. Cook, Headline Hollywood: A Century of Film Scandal (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 1–11. See also note 10, ch. 4.

  126. “McNab Pleads for Arbuckle: Poetry Quoted in His Slam against Women,” LAT, April 12, 1922, p. 2. See Alvin V. Sellers, Classics of the Bar: Stories of the World's Greatest Legal Trials, Vol. 8 (Baxley, GA: Classic Publishing Co., 1922).

  127. I found no transcript for any of the following three trials. The first biography interested in clearing the comedian's name was David Yallop, The Day the Laughter Stopped (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1976). Yallop claims to have obtained copies of the transcripts, but in comparing his use to the one in my possession, I found that he misrepresents the dialogue. Two other popular biographies display similar tendencies: Andy Edmonds, Frame Up! The Untold Story of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (New York: William Morrow, 1991); Stuart Oderman, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1994). All three basically follow McNab's characterization of Rappe. On Arbuckle's career, see Young, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. Young also presents a similar portrait of Rappe, relying on Yallop, whom he otherwise criticizes, and an oral history by Arbuckle's wife. When I asked Young about the evidence he used for his portrait of Rappe, his reply demonstrated his absorption of such assumptions himself (email in my possession). Although he also treats the apocryphal incident of the WVC spitting on Arbuckle as fact, a much better analysis of the scandal is Gary Alan Fine, “Fatty Arbuckle and the Creation of Public Attention,” in Difficult Reputations, ch. 4.

  128. Breen quoted in Black, Hollywood Censored, 170, 171. See also Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Frances Couvares, “Hollywood, Main Street, and the Church: Trying to Censor the Movies before the Production Code,” American Quarterly 44.4 (Dec. 1992.): 584–616.

  129. Lea Jacobs, The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928–1942 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).

  CONCLUSION

  1. As Told by Roscoe Arbuckle to Adela Rodgers St. Johns, “Love Confessions of a Fat Man,” Photoplay (Sept. 1921): 22–23, 102.

  2. St. Johns, The Honeycomb, 13, 16, 21 (italics in the original). Alice Ames Winters File, MHL. Winters was president between 1920 and 1924. In 1929 she became associate director of the MPPDA's Studio Relations Committee.

  3. St. Johns, The Honeycomb, 31.

  4. Ivan St. Johns, “Fifty-Fifty,” Photoplay (Oct. 1926): 46.

  5. See Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, ch. 6.

  6. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 41–47, 60–67, 143–146.

  7. Theodore Dreiser, “Hollywood: Its Manners and Morals; Pt. 1, The Struggle on the Threshold of Motion Pictures” (Nov. 1921), in Taylorology 41 (1996), http://www.public.asu.edu/∼ialong/Taylor41.txt (Shadowland, Nov. 1921) (accessed May 16, 2012). On his time there, see Theodore Dreiser, American Diaries, 1902–1926, ed. Thomas Riggio et al. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 360–420.

  8. Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Girl from Hollywood (New York: Ace, 1979 [1923]), 54. The novel was first serialized in Munsey's Magazine between June and Dec. of 1922.

  9. Hollywood (Famous-Players Lasky, 1923). James Cruze remains understudied, see Karl Brown, “James Cruze,” Films in Review 37.4 (1986): 234–236; R. Starman, “James Cruze: Cinema's Forgotten Director,” Films in Review 36.10 (1985): 460–465.

  10. On Hughes, see James Kemm, Rupert Hughes (Beverley Hills: Pomegranate Press, 1997). Kemm notes (20–21) that the “easy moral code” of his heroines and his works, many of which offered “an enthusiastic brief for a woman's rights to a career apart from family ties,” shocked some.

  11. “Famous Writers Who Write in Hollywood,” LAT, July 23, 1922, p. 30. The article calls Hollywood “what Greenwich Village tried to be before it was invaded by fat grass widows from Keokuk” and Hughes its highest-paid writer

  12. Van Doren, “The Revolt from the Village: 1920.”

  13. “Billy Sunday of the Movies,” Los Angeles Times, LAT, April 30, 1922, p. 31.

  14. Hughes, Souls for Sale, 1, 167–168, 163, 168, 220, 186, 403.

  15. Susan Faludi, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (New York: William Morrow, 1999); Estelle Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002).

  16. On mass culture's doublespeak, see Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Random House, 1994); Joanne Meyerowitz, “Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946–1958,” Journal of American History 79.4 (March 1993): 1455–1482; Meyerowitz, “Women, Cheesecake, and Borderline Material,” Journal of Women's History 8.3 (Fall 1996): 9–33.

  17. On women's declining professional opportunities in film, see Mahar, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood; Cooper, Universal Women.

  18. Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (New York, 1916), 157.

  19. My own view is that one continuous wave of feminism has emphasized different elements at different times. See also Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  Acknowledgments

  I went to graduate school because I wanted to write a history book that people might enjoy reading. My greatest debts are to the people who sustained my faith in that enterprise, beginning with my sister, Kaitlin Hallett, who acted as the ideal reader in my mind's eye and whose belief in my abilities is built into who I am. My advisor, David Nasaw, performed a similar feat in graduate school, focusing my inchoate intellectual interests on a topic and offering blasts of his great good humor in moments when gloom loomed. Barbara Welter and the late George Custen provided valuable mentorship in this project's early stages. I also thank the history department at the CUNY Graduate Center for awarding me its E.P. Thompson dissertation fellowship, which provided the financi
al support needed to lift this project off the ground. The camaraderie and constructive criticism of my fellow graduate students there did the most to keep it aloft, making my debts to Kelly Anderson, Marcella Bencivenni, Marcia Gallo, Carol Giardina, and Carol Quirke both pleasurable and difficult to repay.

  The John Randolph Haynes Foundation helped to finance my earliest trip to Los Angeles, where my first discovery was a fascination for a city I expected to dislike. It helped that several of my oldest friends, including Fia Perera, Randy Redroad, and Richard Register, had migrated there from New York to work. Over the years they made sure I got the most from my trips and served as constant reminders of the creativity and smarts of those who make the film industry whir. William Deverell offered early advice about where to look for things, and the staff of the Margaret Herrick Library, headed by Barbara Hall, were unfailingly good-natured about my innumerable requests.

  While writing this dissertation and turning it into a book, I have had the good fortune to pass through several places and institutions that supported its completion. Gabrielle Spiegel welcomed me to Johns Hopkins with her inimical warmth, and the history department there provided a model of intellectual engagement that left a deep impression. I was also lucky enough to earn the companionship and advice of Mark Blyth, Jennifer Culbert, Donald Ganns, Diana Keener, and Akim Reinhardt while in Baltimore–and beyond. At Rutgers University I became particularly indebted to Ann Fabian, Alison Isenberg, Jackson Lears, and Karen Parker Lears for their friendship and support. From the start, Eileen Gillooly smoothed my entrance to Columbia University, and she has never stopped. I have also appreciated the mentorship of Alice Kessler-Harris and the comradeship and friendship of Marwa Elsharky, Evan Haefeli, Rebecca Kobrin, Hagar Kotef, Line Lillevik, and Caterina Pizzigoni. The department of history at Columbia gave me a career development award that financed my procurement of the book's illustrations. The field of women's film history is filled with generous and convivial scholars, and among them I particularly thank Shelley Stamp and Jane Gaines for their inspiration and encouragement. Finally, I always knew I wanted this to be a University of California Press book, and I have Niels Hooper to thank for making it one. The press appears to me a model of high-quality professionalism, and I thank particularly Kim Hogeland and Steven Baker for shepherding this project through its final stages.

  My thanks also to those who fail to fit into any neat category related to the production of this book, but whose support of its author, and her children, has been irreplaceable, including Robin Aronson, the staff of Basic Trust, Alexander Bowie, Carolyn Brown, Ragunath Dindial, Michele Grodberg, Sylvain Etcheverry, Sterenn Fichant, Ron Genereaux, Regan Hallett, Gregory Metz, Dan Polin, Emma Ramos, Hank Richards, Nancy Riley, David Stone, and Treece Tappan Wright.

  In teaching me to, above all, trust my instincts and to settle for nothing less than enjoyable, meaningful work, I thank my mother, Kathryn J. Hallett, for setting me on the path that ended with this book. The arrival of my sons, Miles and Jackson Hallett-Brown, surely slowed the completion of it, but almost entirely in ways their mother appreciates. They will forever remain her favorite production. Finally, it would take a very different genre, a poem perhaps, to express my debts to my husband, my love, my camerado, Christopher Leslie Brown. What I owe him is impossible to capture in words, but now there will be a bit more time to show him.

  Index

  Academy Awards, 105

  actuality films, 6–7

  Adams, Maude, 51, 53

  Addams, Jane, 52, 169

  Adventures of Ruth, The, 251n137

  Adventuress, An, 182

  advertising, 5, 123, 156; and growth of celebrity culture, 29, 69, 73, 145

  Affairs of Anatol, The, 267n28

  African Americans. See blacks

  Agriculture, U.S. Department of (USDA), 15-16, 80

  Alger, Horatio, 75

  Allen, Frederick Lewis, 103, 262n1

  American Aristocracy, 95

  American Country Life movement, 4, 15–16, 80, 227n2

  Americanism, 172; anti-Semitism and, 164; of censorship advocates, 195; and immigration restrictions, 157; sobriety equated with, 108; in Westerns, 59

  American Legion, 196, 292n57

  American Tobacco Company, 250n116, 277n6

  Anti-Saloon League (ASL), 108, 292n57

  anti-Semitism, 22, 157–58, 163–65, 177, 197, 211, 278n12

  Arbuckle, Fatty, 172, 213, 214, 216, 294n72

  Arbuckle-Rappe scandal, 22-24, 86, 182-211, 191, 291n52, 294n72, 298n118, n127; arraignment and trials, 22, 199–200, 202, 204–7, 211, 237n34, 291n48, 297n110; newspaper coverage, 185, 188-89, 193, 194, 199, 203-5, 287n10, 290n42, 297n110

  Artcraft, 56

  Art Deco, 143

  Astor, Mary, 255n25

  Astor Place Riots (New York, 1849), 34

  Atherton, Gertrude, 90, 218

  Atlantic Monthly, 21, 105

  auteur theory, 256n36

  Avenging Arrow, The, 251n137

  Bailey, Peter, 119

  Bancroft, Hubert Howe, 4–5, 7

  Bara, Theda, 66, 111, 116, 129, 142, 252n150, 267n23

  Barnum, P.T., 145

  Barrie, J.M., 51

  Barry, Iris, 9, 13, 70

  Bartlett, Randolph, 257n55

  Beauvoir, Simone de, 27-29, 219

  Belasco, David, 46-47, 52-53

  Bella Donna (Hichens), 141

  Belletti, Valeria, 146-48

  Bergere, Ouida, 93

  Berlant, Lauren, 70

  Bernhardt, Sarah, 41, 44, 54, 249n107

  Bertola, Mariana, 200, 202–4, 294n80

  Beyond the Rocks, 209, 210

  Biograph Studios, 46-48, 52, 53, 189, 246n60, 247n76, 249n90, 280n39

  birth control, 94, 133, 166; censorship advocates’ opposition to, 167, 177; films about, 77, 256n39; moral panic over, 106

  Birth of a Nation, The, 75, 164–65

  Bishop's Carriage, The, 54

  Blache, Alice Guy, 82, 257n55

  Black, Winifred. See Laurie, Annie

  blacks, 3, 75, 283n79; Klan violence against, 164, 165; prizefight films of, 175-76

  Blackton, J. Stuart, 50

  Blair, Karen, 283n79

  block-booking, 56

  Block v. City of Chicago (1909), 236n29

  Blumer, Herbert, 64

  Bly, Nellie, 72

  bohemianism, 11, 12, 146-49, 154; depictions in popular fiction of, 47, 218; of extra girls, 17, 113, 151–53

  Bohemian Life (Murger), 148

  Boorstin, Daniel, 28

  Bordwell, David, 9

  Bowery Theater (New York), 33

  Brady, Matthew, 188, 193

  Brady, William, 174, 176, 178

  Breaking into the Movies (Jones), 70

  Breaking into the Movies (Loos), 148

  Breen, Joseph, 211–12

  Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 157, 171–74, 189, 277n4

  Brooks, Peter, 242n14

  Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 215, 231n15

  California Federation of Women's Clubs (CFWC), 200

  California Pastoral (Bancroft), 4-5

  Camille (Heron), 40-41, 46; film adaptation of, 54

  Camille: Paris 1921, 143

  Caprice, 54

  Careers for Women (Park), 77

  casting couch, 150, 219

  Castle, Irene, 259n82

  Catholics, 95, 147, 164, 199, 211

  celebrity culture, 29-33, 40, 46, 99, 124, 142, 240n6. See also star system; Cushman and, 29–31, 35; historiography of, 27–28; impact of Arbuckle-Rappe scandal on, 184, 194-95, 206; interior design and, 121; journalism of, 69–71, 73, 145, 234n20. See also specific writers and magazines; Pickford and, 26, 53, 57; sexual double standard in, 95, 207-8

  censorship, 18-21, 24, 151, 156, 169; agitation for and debate over, 155–56, 171–74; anti-Semitism in calls for, 165, 197; Arbuckle-Rappe scandal and, 184, 196-98, 208; federal, legislation drafted for, 175-76; Orientalism and, 161-62; public information on dangers of,
199; self-, motion picture industry's adoption of. See Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association; shift in campaigns for, 165–67; state and local, 19–20, 67, 108, 152, 165, 167, 170–71, 178, 209, 237n32, 264n20, 282n67, 283n82, 284n91; women's clubs roles in, 155, 169-71, 174, 209

  Chandler, Harry, 185, 197

  Chaplin, Charlie, 9, 22, 44, 57, 185, 189, 216; and founding of United Artists, 88, 259n82; on Liberty Loan tours, 84-85; Negri's affair with, 111

  Chase, William Sheafe, 165, 176–78

  Chicago, 180; censorship in, 18, 19; film production in, 7, 16, 48; Motion Picture Commission, 156, 167, 284n88; theater in, 39

  Chicago, University of, 272n87

  Chicago American, 80, 180

  Chicago Herald and Examiner, 287n10, 290n42

  Chicago Herald-Record, 72, 73, 80

  Chicago Political Equality League, 170, 284n85

  Chicago Tribune, 72

  Church Federation, 292n57

  City Federation of Women's Clubs, 174; Committee on Moving Pictures, 171

  Civil War, 39; films set in, 50, 51

  Clansman, The (Dixon), 164

  Classics of the Bar, 209

  Clipper, The, 81-82

  close-ups, 48

  Cody, William “Buffalo Bill,” 59

  Coffee, Lenore, 57, 67, 135, 150

  Cold War, 28

  Collier's, 5

  Comique Pictures, 294n72

  Committee on Public Information (CPI), 155

  companionate marriage, 124, 133, 272n86

  Comstock, Anthony, 176

  Congress, U.S., 85, 108, 157, 175

  Constitution, U.S., 176; Eighteenth Amendment, 108; Nineteenth Amendment, 166, 213

  consumer culture, 32, 114, 269n42; celebrities in. See celebrity culture; DeMille's sex films and, 117–18; glamour in, 112, 119–21, 127–28; participation of women in, 19–20, 35, 40, 219

  Cook, The, 248n87

  Cooper, Mark Garrett, 78, 233n18

  Cooper, Miriam, 96–97

  cosmopolitanism, 6, 8, 107, 113, 136, 196; actresses exemplifying, 12, 64, 111, 118, 143; Americanism versus, 159; bohemianism and, 146, 151; of Glyn, 127–29; of immigrant Jews, 17, 165; Orientalism and, 128, 178