#42: If Aleta Freel Hadn't Committed Suicide in 1935, Chances Are That Ronald Reagan Would Never have Been Elected President in 1980

June 30, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Yes, I know it’s a pretty bizarre title for a “Tales From Hollywood & Vine” essay . . . but hopefully, it’s an attention grabber. If you got beyond the title, you likely have at least a couple of questions, such as: who in the Hell was Aleta Freel, why and how did she commit suicide (at age 28) in 1935, and what in the world does she have to do with “The Gipper” being elected POTUS 45 years later? To make matters even more mysterious, Reagan never met - or likely had ever heard of - Aleta (Mrs. Ross Alexander); the future POTUS didn’t even reach Hollywood until 1937 . . . the year her husband, movie star Ross Alexander also committed suicide at age 29. And to make things even more mysterious, how in the hell does movie star Henry Fonda fit this true tale?

I know, it reads like the initial plotline of what’s going to turn out to be an historic cinematic stinker. . . but believe me, it’s not.

And so, let’s begin with Aleta. Born Aleta Friele (for purposes of acting she changed the spelling to “Freel”) in Jersey City on June 17, 1907, she was the daughter of a physician, attended the Bergen School for Girls in Jersey City, and graduated from Smith College in 1928. Having had the yen to act since early youth, she wound up spending her summers learning her craft at a summer stock theater company on Cape Cod called the “University Players.” Although the company (which was made up largely of Ivy League and “Seven Sisters” graduates and undergraduates) would only last for 4 years (1928-1932), it became an incubator for future talent - both on stage and in film. Among its members who would go on to achieve fame in the theatre and film industry were Joshua Logan, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullavan (whom Fonda would be married to from Dec. 1931 to Mar. 1933) Mildred Natwick, and Burgess Meredith. Its founders included Harvard’s Kent Smith and John Swope (son of G.E. President Gerard Swope), and Bartlett Quigley, the father of actor Jane Alexander.

From 1931 to 1933 Aleta appeared in 4 Broadway plays: two melodramas, one drama, and one a comedy. The most "successful” of the four, a melodrama entitled “Double Door,” ran for not quite three months; her name appeared third on the cast list. During that time, Aleta’s University Players friend and colleague, Henry Fonda, had made his way to Broadway, appearing in such long-forgotten plays as The Game of Love and Death in late 1929 and I Loved You Wednesday which ran for 63 performances in late 1932.

The Grand Island (Nebraska)-born, Omaha-raised Fonda’s earliest acting coach in Ohama was Dorothy "Do” Brando, whose son, Marlon "Bud” Brando would become one of the most acclaimed movie stars of the 20th century. Where Aleta never became a Broadway notable, Fonda rang the bell in early 1934 when he became one of the stars of a musical called New Faces of 1934 which ran for more than a year on Broadway and then went out on tour. Despite being neither a singer nor dancer, Hank Fonda quickly became an audience favorite, along with the 25-year old Imogene Coca (1908-2001), best known for the 4 years she spent playing opposite Sid Caesar on the megahit Your Show of Shows (1950-1954).

One day, during the time Fonda was learning his craft with the University Players, a shy twenty-four year-old named Ross Alexander wandered in and charmed the entire company, particularly Aleta. Alexander had done some acting on Broadway, but the powers-that-be at the University Players wouldn’t allow him to join the group: he’d never attended college (Fonda himself had spent two years studying journalism at the University of Minnesota). The young Alexander didn’t seem to mind this slight; he participated in skits at the University Players tearoom and slept in the men’s house when he wasn’t making time with Aleta. Ross Alexander (Alexander Ross Smith, Jr.), was the son of Maude Adele Cohen. He had had his first taste of Broadway in a three-act play called Enter Madame, a comedy about an opera singer. Its star was Blanche Yurka (1887-1974), and would have a highly-respectable 350 performance run from August 1920 to April 1922 at Broadway’s famed Garrick Theatre. (In 1934 Enter Madame would be made into a motion picture starring Elissa Landi and the up-and-coming Cary Grant.

During his years on Broadway, Alexander appeared in nearly a dozen plays including “The Ladder” (1926), “Let Us Be Gay” (1929) and “That’s Gratitude” (1930). In the early years of talking motion pictures, Hollywood studios looked to Broadway for new faces with good voices; many of their silent stars simply couldn’t cut it; their voices didn’t fit their image. Alexander possessed both a handsome face and a good voice. He was signed by Paramount, sent out to Hollywood in 1932 appeared in his first picture, The Wiser Sex . . . but nothing came of it. So, he returned to New York appeared in more four plays, got noticed by Warner Brothers, and before going back to Hollywood, married Aleta Freel. Hank Fonda was his best man. Quickly, Warner Brothers began casting him in their popular “backstage” Depression-era musicals and college-caper films. After appearing as second leads in such musicals as Social Register and Flirtation Walk, Ross Alexander hit the bigtime, appearing as Demetrius in Warner’s all-star A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream (1935), Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn (also 1935) and China Clipper, starring Humphrey Bogart (1936). By then he was making big bucks, purchased a large home in Laurel Canyon and looked to be on top of the world. But things were about to go horribly awry . . .

Before we get to Alexander’s downward spiral in Hollywood, let’s return for a moment to Henry Fonda’s life on Broadway. Almost immediately after closing in New Faces of 1934, Hank starred in a comedy-drama called The Farmer Takes a Wife. In it, Hank played Dan Harrow, a man who works on the Erie Canal in order to earn enough money to buy a farm. Along the way Fonda’s character meets cook Molly Larkins, falls in love with her, and asks her to marry him; the only problem (and here a bit of comedy enters the play) is that she can’t consider leaving the “exciting life” of the canal for a banal existence on a farm. On Broadway, Molly was played by June Walker, a noted stage actor. (Also appearing in her third play was Margaret Hamilton, who just 5 years later would become immortalized as Miss Gulch/the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz.) Fonda received stellar reviews for The Farmer Takes a Wife, and within a few days, signed a “run of the play” contract for $250.00 per week. When the rights to the play were purchased by the Fox Film Corporation, they decided to sign the then 28-year old Henry Fonda to reprise his role as Dan Harrow. But instead of similarly hiring June Walker to play Molly, they decided that Academy Award winner Janet Gaynor would make for a better box office draw. Also appearing in Fonda’s film debut was Charles Bickford, who played Molly’s boyfriend. (Ironically, Fonda would only appear in one more movie with Bickford: 1967’s A Big Hand For the Little Lady, which was Bickford’s last film.)

Upon arriving in Hollywood, Hank moved in with Aleta and Ross. From that point on Fonda’s Hollywood career was assured. And, he was smart enough to get a clause written into his contract that would permit him to perform on stage at least once a year . . . which he would do for the next 45 years. Soon, he purchased a place in Beverly Hills, where his first roommate was his best friend from the University Players, Princeton College grad James Stewart. . .

Even as Ross Alexander’s career was gaining him fame and fortune, there were problems at home for both husband and wife. Aleta, having made the rounds of studio casting offices and even being filmed to see how she would look and sound on the screen, had not a single nibble or offer . . . which made her terribly depressed. There is an old saying on both Broadway and in Hollywood that one of the most essential traits a potential star must possess is an ability to withstand rejection . . . and keep “a-going.” Aleta simply could not not accept rejection. And, to make matters worse, her husband Ross turned out to be a not-so-closeted gay man whose dalliances were becoming well-known in Hollywood, that smallest of small towns. Despite the fact that the film capital was the original “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” community in America, Ross could not - or would not - exercise the discretion expected of a star-in-the-making. Things became so bad for Aleta that she wound up shooting herself in the temple with a .22 rifle outside their Laurel Canyon home. The date was December 7, 1935. Less than two weeks later after her tragic death, Captain Blood had its world premiere. Ross, despite his wonderful reviews, was a mess.

Although he was still getting parts, his placement in film credits started inching precipitously downward. After Arleta died, he began drinking heavily and spending money like a drunken sailor. He quickly sold his home in Laurel Canyon and moved in with Hank Fonda and Jimmy Stewart. By September 1936, he remarried up-and-coming star Anne Nagel (1915-1966), a woman whose life could be summed up in two words: “pretty miserable.” Ross and Anne, who quickly bought a ranch at 17221 Ventura Blvd, in Encino (just a few acres away from Spencer Tracy’s ranch), fed off each’s others pain, insecurity and serious drinking problems; on January 2, 1936, Ross, like Aleta 13 months earlier, shot himself in the temple with a .22 target pistol. His body was found by his gardener in a pile of grain sacks in the loft of his barn.

(It should be noted that Aleta and Ross’s dear friend Henry Fonda would be surrounded by suicide throughout his life. His first wife, Margaret Sullavan [with whom he made one film: 1936’s The Moon’s Our Home] died of a drug overdose on January 1, 1960. Despite having been divorced for nearly 30 years, Fonda and “Peggy” had remained friends ever since and often lived within a few houses of each other in both California and Connecticut. Fonda once described his first wife as "cream and sugar on a dish of hot ashes." Fonda’s second wife, socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw Fonda - the mother of Lady Jane and Peter Fonda - killed herself by slashing her throat while she was a patient a the Craig House Sanitarium in New York. Additionally, Thomas Heggen, author of Fonda’s greatest stage success, “Mr. Roberts”, drowned himself in his bathtub at age 30. At the time of his death he was suffering from a crippling case of writer’s block. Towards the end of his brief life, Heggen said “I don’t know how I wrote Mr. Roberts . . . It must have been spirit writing”).

Arleta Freel’s suicide led directly to Ross Alexander taking his own life. Alexander’s death ultimately resulted in a young radio announcer, hailing from Tampico, Illinois by way of Iowa, receiving a Hollywood Break. The story goes that a Warner Brothers casting director placed a young Ronald Reagan in a western role meant for Ross Alexander, feeling the actors’ voices were similar. The western was never made. However, after being groomed and prepped by Warners, “Dutch” appeared (uncredited) in a crowd scene in the 1937 film They Won’t Forget, a courtroom drama based loosely on the notorious murder trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank in 1915. If the film is remembered 88 years later, it is more for the debut of another future star: Lana Turner, who played the murder victim, rather than for a future POTUS (President of the United States). Later that year (1937) Reagan would get his first credited role: “ace radio crime reporter” Andy McCaine in the long-forgotten Love Is on the Air, costarring the equally long-forgotten June Travis, the daughter of Harry Grabiner, vice president of both the Cleveland Indians and (later) Chicago White Sox.

After his inauspicious start, Reagan would, within 3 years play the ill-fated George Gipp (hence one of Reagan’s nicknames, “The Gipper”) in Knute Rockne All American (staring Pat O’Brien), and 2 years later scoring a major triumph costarring with Ann Sheridan and Robert Cummings in the coming-of-age period drama Kings Row. It would unquestionably be the very best of his 81 films. One of his lines in that film (“Where’s the rest of me?”) became the title of his 1965 autobiography The Gipper, well-liked in the Hollywood community, would go on to serve two terms (1947-1960) as president of the Screen Actor’s Guild (thereby becoming the only POTUS to run a labor union), two four-year terms (1966-74) as California Governor, and, of course, two terms (1980-88) as POTUS. (Ironically, up until he became president of SAG, he was a rabid New Dealer, who was accustomed to calling FDR “my other daddy.”)

One wonders: if Aleta Freel hadn’t committed suicide, would Ross Alexander have had a long film career? And if he had lived a long, happy and successful active life, would Ronald Reagan have ever been noticed by some Warner Brothers talent scout? And if Reagan hadn’t become a movie star would he ever have become a labor leader, a governor and then POTUS?

If it sounds like a play or film, you are absolutely correct. It’s called Six Degrees of Separation.

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categories / Films & Politics

#41: This Land is Mine

April 08, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

This week I am trying something new: publishing two interconnecting blog essays on my two different websites. It is my hope and plan that you, loyal reader, will digest this essay first . . . then watch the movie I am writing about in the essay below . . . and then, next week, go on to an essay with the same title on my K.F. Stone Weekly site.

Thanks, and now on with part 1.
K.F. In the history of Hollywood, there was but one “master of the malaprop” - Samuel Goldwyn. And whether or not he he was the actual creator of the many verbal corruptions known collectively as “Goldwynisms” is of no importance. Some claim that the best of them were really written by such world-class cinematic scriveners as Dorothy Parker, Budd Schulberg and Garson Kanin. Whatever the case, I thank the nameless Muse for Uncle Sammy’s many bits of wit, among my favorites being:

“A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.”
”Give me a couple of years and I'll make that actress an overnight success.”
”Anybody who goes to see a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.”
”He's living beyond his means, but he can afford it” and, one of my favorites, dealing with certain screenplays:
”If you want to send a message, call Western Union.”

Indeed, films are created in order to be - pick your poison - fun, entertaining, sometimes dramatic, other times melodramatic, filled with belly laughs and as frightening as hell and - despite the Goldwynism - capable of delivering a sometimes unsettling message. And of course, all of these cinematic genotypes are made in the hopes of turning a profit. I guess Uncle Sammy (or his ghostwriter) was down on films which “send a message” because they rarely put many bucks in the bank.

For my money, one of the greatest of all “message” films was the 1943 gem This Land is Mine, directed Jean Renoir from a screenplay by Dudley Nichols, and starring Charles Laughton (one of the two or three greatest character actors of all time), the luminous 23-year old Maureen O’Hara, George Sanders, Walter Slezak - both of whom, eerily would end their lives via suicide - and perhaps the greatest cinematic scene-stealer of all time, Una O’Connor. This Land is Mine was produced by RKO and shot on a limited budget and mostly on patently artificial studio sets. Although the title card read, simply “somewhere in Europe,” it doesn’t take too long to understand that director Renoir and screenwriter Nichols clearly meant that “somewhere” to be Renoir’s beloved France. In 1943, it was referred to as “Vichy” (a town in central France, which was the seat of the infamous collaborationist government headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain.)

This is My Land tells the story of the painfully meek, socially awkward Albert Lory (Laughton), who teaches boys at the local school. His students have no respect for him; whenever his back is turned they hurl paper airplanes and spit-wads at him. Albert lives with his tiny, emotionally overbearing elderly mother (O’Connor), and is secretly in love with the beautiful Louise Martin (a very young Maureen O’Hara) who teaches the girls. Louise is a fiery patriot who hates the Nazis. Her brother Paul (played by the underrated Kent Smith) is an underground resistance fighter who carries out acts of sabotage against the occupation. Louise is also but she’s also engaged to George Lambert (George Sanders), a local factory owner and fascist collaborator.

Director Jean Renoir (the son of the great impressionist painter Pierre-August) was a solid anti-fascist. Joseph Goebbels declared Renoir’s flawless 1937 masterpiece La Grande Illusion (“The Grand Illusion”) “Cinematic Public Enemy No. 1,” and destroyed every European print he could find. But what makes This Land is Mine so fascinating and compelling after more than 80 years is how Lambert, Manville (Thurston Hall), the collaborationist Mayor, and the Nazi military commander Major Erich von Keller (Walter Slezak) are complex, three dimensional human beings, not cartoon villains. Von Keller is an evil, manipulative political mastermind, but he’s not stupid. He knows that being appointed military governor over a resentful, sullen, occupied people is no easy job. This is Vichy, not Poland. Von Keller not only has to rule with an iron hand. He has to keep up the charade that the local civilian government is still in charge, that Mayor Manville is more than just a puppet. Manville is just the typical politician who bends with the prevailing wind. Lambert (George Sanders) is the most interesting character of all; he embodies the inner conflicts of the bourgeoisie, of the French capitalist who depends on the German occupier to put down a revolutionary proletariat he can’t control himself.

When Louise’s brother Paul hurls a grenade from a second-floor building, killing several Nazis, von Keller declares that unless and until the perpetrator is identified, he will round up ten men at random and put them before a firing squad. One of these men will be Professor Sorel (Phillip Merivale) the headmaster of the school where Albert and Louise teach. Albert considers the professor to be the ideal father figure: cultured, literate and oh so kind. When the ten men are led into a courtyard opposite the school, Albert sees Sorel and yells out his name; putting on his spectacles and spotting Albert, the professor smiles and waves. Suddenly the camera moves back to Albert as we hear the horrifying sound of automatic weapon fire. Albert is heartbroken.

(n.b.If this film were made today [G-d forbid!] we would see the men fall and the blood flow. Not so in 1943 . . . and especially at the hands of Dudley Nichols and Jean Renoir. They knew that the imagination of the movie-goer creates far more gore than his or her eyes could ever provide.)

After seeing the professor - along with the other townsmen - gunned down, Albert remembers one of the last things his mentor told him: that there would come a time when he would have to be a decision. Would he have the courage to die like a man? After being visited by Major von Keller, George Lambert, beset with guilt, commits suicide. At precisely that moment, Albert enters Lambert’s office, sees him lying dead, a pistol close to his body. Albert picks it up just as a clerk enters, and flees, assuming that the cowardly teacher has murdered the railroad yard’s boss.

Albert, who is put on trial, is transformed from coward to a heroic man with a conscience. At his trial - for which he has refused to accept legal representation - he gives a stunning speech . . . given with all the passion and power that Charles Laughton can give. In part, he says:

“It’s very hard for people like you and me to understand what is evil and what is good. It’s easy for the working people to understand who the enemy is because the aim of this occupation and invasion is to make them slaves. But middle-class people like us can easily believe as George Lambert did that a German victory is not such a bad thing. We hear people say that too much liberty brings chaos and disorder. And that’s why I was tempted last night by Major Von Keller when he came to my cell. But this morning I looked out through bars and I saw this beautiful new world working. I saw ten men die because they still believed in freedom.”

In his speech, he even publicly admits his great love for Louise. Found innocent of Lambert’s murder, Albert knows that he nonetheless will be shot . . . for speaking so bluntly against the Nazis. He returns to his classroom. This time, the boys all rise from their seats, respect and admiration in their eyes. Albert tells them that this will be the last time he can teach them. He has chosen to read from Lafayette’s 1789 work (composed with the assistance of Thomas Jefferson) Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a fundamental document of the French Revolution. Albert Lory then reads aloud:

"A Declaration of the Rights of Man.
ARTICLE I: All men are born and remain free and equal in rights.
ARTICLE II: The purpose of all political parties is the safeguarding of the natural and inalienable rights of man. These rights are liberty, property security, and resistance to tyranny.
ARTICLE III: The principle of all government resides in the nation itself. No group, no individual can exercise any authority that does not expressly emanate from the people.
ARTICLE IV: Liberty consists in freedom to do all that does not harm others.
ARTICLE V: The law has the right to forbid only those things which are harmful to society.
ARTICLE VI: The law is the expression of the will of the people. All citizens have the right to assist personally or through their elected representatives In its formation. It ought to be the same for all whether it protects or whether it punishes. All citizens being equal in the eyes of the law have equal rights to all dignities, places and public positions according to their capacity and without any other distinctions than those of their virtues and talents."

This is, of course, the movie’s emotional and intellectual climax. Before Albert can complete reading the text, the Nazis come to take him away. Before leaving, he tells his charges that although this book (given to him by Professor Sorrel many years ago) may be burned, it will always remain in their heads and hearts. As he is taken away, he gives the text to Louise, who continues reading to the class . . . fini.

This Land is Mine opened simultaneously at 72 theaters in 50 key cities on May 7, 1943. It set a box office record for gross receipts on an opening day. It won the Academy Award for Best Sound .

This is a film which needs to be seen in 2025. It delivers a message as timely and powerful as anything we could - and should - experience.

I urge you to watch it and let it sink in. Then, next week, go to my other blog, The K.F. Stone Weekly and read yet another take . . . not about Nazis. and French collaborators in 1943, but about the meaning of heroism in 2025.

LINK TO THIS LAND IS MINE

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categories / Films & Politics

#40: From Courtroom to Celluloid: The Scopes "Monkey Trial" and the Film "Inherit the Wind"

March 16, 2025 / Kurt F. Stone

Ever since Socrates was put on trial for “impiety” and “corrupting the youth” more than 2,500 years ago, many of history’s greatest dramas have taken place not on the stage, but rather in the courtroom. Every generation claims to have its “Trial of the Century” – a crime and legal proceeding which captivates and remains on the front pages for weeks if not months. Since the dawn of film, many of these trials have been the fodder for movies. Often, what we believe we know about a famous case is based not on what transpired in the courtroom . . . but rather what was committed to celluloid. Among the most famous of these crimes-and-trials-turned-into-movies are:

The Trial of Leo Frank (1913): Leo Frank, a Jewish factory foreman in Atlanta was tried for the rape and murder of young Mary Phagen. In 1937, Warner Bros. fictionalized this tragedy into They Won’t Forget . . . best remembered today for introducing 16th year old Lana Turner.
The Case of Leopold and Loeb (1924): 2 wealthy and brilliant 19-year-olds decide to commit the perfect crime . . . the murder of a 14-year old boy. The crime and its trial, which captured the attention of the world has been adapted no less than 4 times: (Rope [1948]; Compulsion [1958]; Swoon [1992]; and Murder by Numbers [2002]).
The Trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961): Nearly 15 years after the conclusion of WWII, Israeli Mossad agents kidnapped Adolf Eichmann, the man who ran the Nazi extermination machine, living in Argentina. He was spirited back to Israel and put on trial for genocide and crimes against humanity. In 1975, the American Film Theatre released The Man in the Glass Booth, based on a play by Robert Shaw.
The Scopes “Monkey Trial” (1925): Tennessee high school teacher John Thomas Scopes is arrested and tried for the crime of teaching evolution in his biology class. 35 years later, two legendary actors (Frederic March and Spencer Tracey) teamed together to star in one of the best, most powerful courtroom films in history, Inherit the Wind.

Starting in July, I will be teaching an 8-week course on these very trials/films at Florida Atlantic University campuses in Jupiter (Tues. afternoons from 2:30-4:30) and Boca Raton (Thurs. from 3:00-5:00). One week, we’ll study a famous crime, the individual (or individuals) involved and the actual trial. A week later, equipped with historical context, we’ll screen the film adaptation of the case we learned about the week before. By moving “from courtroom to celluloid,” we’ll explore not only these landmark trials, but also the nature of dramatic license and what historical truths have been altered or omitted in the pursuit of making a compelling film the public wants to see . . . again and again.

As a bit of a פאַרשפּייַז (an appetizer), what follows is my lecture on the Scopes “Monkey Trial.”

BTW: If you are interested in attending either of these classes (you can also catch them online), feel free to call (561) 297-3185.

THE SCOPES “MONKEY TRIAL”

The early 1920s found social patterns in chaos. Traditionalists, the older Victorians, worried that everything valuable was ending. Younger modernists no longer asked whether society would approve of their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval of their intellect. Intellectual experimentation flourished. Americans danced to the sound of the Jazz Age, showed their contempt for alcoholic prohibition, and debated abstract art and Freudian theories. In a response to the new social patterns set in motion by modernism, a wave of revivalism developed, becoming especially strong in the American South.

Who would dominate American culture--the modernists or the traditionalists? Journalists were looking for a showdown, and they found one in a Dayton, Tennessee courtroom in the summer of 1925. There, a jury was to decide the fate of John Scopes, a high school biology teacher charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. The guilt or innocence of John Scopes, and even the constitutionality of Tennessee's anti-evolution statute, mattered little. The meaning of the trial emerged through its interpretation as a conflict of social and intellectual values.

In brief, in 1925, school teacher, Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he purposely incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant.

Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity, as national reporters flocked to Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes. The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy, which set Modernists, who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion, against Fundamentalists, who said the word of G-d as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen as both a theological contest and a trial on whether modern science regarding the creation-evolution controversy should be taught in schools.

Origins

State Representative John W. Butler was a Tennessee farmer and ardent member of the World Christian Fundamentals Association, a pre-millennial group dedicated to Biblical literalism. The Association, founded in Minnesota in 1919 by Baptist Minister William Bell Riley, lobbied state legislatures to pass anti-evolution laws; the Association’s first success came in Tennessee, with the passage of the Butler Act. The bill, which the state legislature overwhelmingly passed, stated in part that:

“. . .It shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.

Representative Butler later stated, "I didn't know anything about evolution... I'd read in the papers that boys and girls were coming home from school and telling their fathers and mothers that the Bible was all nonsense." Tennessee Governor, Austin Peay III signed the law to gain support among rural legislators, but believed the law would neither be enforced nor interfere with education in Tennessee schools. William Jennings Bryan thanked Peay enthusiastically for the bill, saying at the time: "The Christian parents of the state owe you a debt of gratitude for saving their children from the poisonous influence of an unproven hypothesis."

In response, the American Civil Liberties Union financed a test case in which Scopes agreed to be tried for violating the Act. Scopes, who had substituted for the regular biology teacher, was charged on May 5, 1925, with teaching evolution from a chapter in Civic Biology, a textbook by one George William Hunter, that described the theory of evolution, race and eugenics.

Dayton

The ACLU offered to defend anyone accused of teaching the theory of evolution in defiance of the Butler Act. On April 5, 1925, New York-born George Rappleyea, a metallurgical engineer and local manager for the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company, arranged a meeting with county superintendent of schools Walter White and local attorney Sue K. Hicks at Robinson's Drug Store, convincing them that the controversy of such a trial would give Dayton much needed publicity. According to drug store owner Robinson, Rappleyea said, "As it is, the law is not enforced. If you win, it will be enforced. If I win, the law will be repealed. We're game, aren't we?" The men then summoned the 24-year-old Scopes. The group asked Scopes to plead guilty to teaching the theory of evolution.

Rappleyea pointed out that, while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution, the state required teachers to use a textbook that explicitly described and endorsed the theory of evolution, and that teachers were, therefore, effectively required to break the law. Scopes mentioned that while he couldn't remember whether he had actually taught evolution in class, he had, however, gone through the evolution chart and chapter with the class. Scopes added to the group: "If you can prove that I've taught evolution and that I can qualify as a defendant, then I'll be willing to stand trial."

Scopes urged students to testify against him and coached them in their answers. He was indicted on May 25, after three students testified against him at the grand jury; one student afterwards told reporters, "I believe in part of evolution, but I don't believe in the monkey business." The judge, John T. Raulston accelerated the convening of the grand jury and "... all but instructed the grand jury to indict Scopes, despite the meager evidence against him and the widely reported stories questioning whether the willing defendant had ever taught evolution in the classroom.” Scopes was charged with having taught from the chapter on evolution to an April 24, 1925, high-school class in violation of the Butler Act and nominally arrested, though he was never actually detained. Paul Patterson, owner of The Baltimore Sun, put up $500 in bail for Scopes.

The original prosecutors were Herbert E. and the aforementioned Sue K. Hicks, two brothers who were local attorneys and friends of Scopes. Ultimately though, the prosecution was led by Tom Stewart, a graduate of Cumberland School of Law. Stewart, who was a Democrat, would later become a U.S. Senator and serve from 1939 to 1949. Stewart was aided by Dayton attorney Gordon McKenzie, who supported the anti-evolution bill on religious grounds, and described evolution as "detrimental to our morality" and an assault on "the very citadel of our Christian religion".

Hoping to attract major press coverage, George Rappleyea went so far as to write to the British novelist H. G. Wells, asking him to join the defense team. Wells replied that he had no legal training in Britain, let alone in America, and declined the offer. John R. Neal, a law school professor from Knoxville, announced that he would act as Scopes' attorney whether Scopes liked it or not, and he became the nominal head of the defense team.

Baptist pastor William Bell Riley, the founder and president of the World Christian Fundamentals Association, was instrumental in calling lawyer and three-time Democratic presidential nominee, former United States Secretary of State, and lifelong Presbyterian William Jennings Bryan to act as that organization's counsel. Bryan had originally been invited by Sue Hicks to become an associate of the prosecution and Bryan had readily accepted, despite the fact he had not tried a case in thirty-six years. As Scopes pointed out to James Presley in the book Center of the Storm, on which the two collaborated: "After [Bryan] was accepted by the state as a special prosecutor in the case, there was never any hope of containing the controversy within the bounds of constitutionality.” In response, Darrow, who was an agnostic, volunteered his services to the defense, later stating that he "realized there was no limit to the mischief that might be accomplished unless the country was aroused to the evil at hand". After many changes back and forth, the defense team consisted of Darrow, ACLU attorney Arthur Garfield Hays, and Dudley Field Malone, an international divorce lawyer who had worked as Bryan’s 3rd Assistant Secretary when the “Great Commoner” was Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State. Parenthetically, Malone (1882-1950) would go on to appear as Winston Churchill in three motion pictures: An American in Paris, Mission to Moscow and Edge of Darkness.

The prosecution team was led by Tom Stewart, district attorney for the 18th Circuit, and included, in addition to Herbert and Sue Hicks, Ben B. McKenzie and William Jennings Bryan.

The trial was covered by famous journalists from the South and around the world, including H. L. Mencken for The Baltimore Sun, which was also paying part of the defense's expenses. It was Mencken who provided the trial with its most colorful labels such as the "Monkey Trial" of "the infidel Scopes," and referring to Bryan as “The Fundamentalist Pope.” It was also the first United States trial to be broadcast on national radio.

The proceedings

The ACLU had originally intended to oppose the Butler Act on the grounds that it violated the teacher's individual rights and academic freedom, and was therefore unconstitutional. Mainly because of Clarence Darrow, this strategy changed as the trial progressed, and the earliest argument proposed by the defense once the trial had begun was that there was actually no conflict between evolution and the creation account in the Bible; later, this viewpoint would be called theistic evolution. In support of this claim, they brought in eight experts on evolution. But other than Dr. Maynard Metcalf, a zoologist from Johns Hopkins University, the judge would not allow these experts to testify in person. Instead, they were allowed to submit written statements so that their evidence could be used at the appeal. In response to this decision, Darrow made a sarcastic comment to Judge Raulston `(as he often did throughout the trial) on how he had been agreeable only on the prosecution's suggestions. Darrow apologized the next day, keeping himself from being found in contempt of court.

Judge Raulston was accused of being biased towards the prosecution and frequently clashed with Darrow. At the outset of the trial Raulston quoted Genesis and the Butler Act. He also warned the jury not to judge the merit of the law (which would become the focus of the trial) but on the violation of the act, which he called a 'high misdemeanor.' The jury foreman himself was unconvinced of the merit of the Act but he acted, as did most of the jury, on the instructions of the judge.

By the later stages of the trial, Clarence Darrow had largely abandoned the ACLU's original strategy and attacked the literal interpretation of the Bible as well as Bryan's limited knowledge of other religions and science.

Only when the case went to appeal did the defense return to the original claim that the prosecution was invalid because the law was essentially designed to benefit a particular religious group, which would be unconstitutional.

Bryan chastised evolution for teaching children that humans were but one of (precisely) 35,000 types of mammals and bemoaned the notion that human beings were descended "Not even from American monkeys, but from old world monkeys".

Dudley Malone responded for the defense in a speech that was universally considered the oratorical triumph of the trial. Here it is, in full:

What I don't understand is this, your Honor, the prosecution inside and outside of the court has been ready to try the case and this is the case. What is the issue that has gained the attention, not only of the American people, but people everywhere? Is it a mere technical question as to whether the defendant Scopes taught the paragraph in the book of science? You think, your Honor, that the News Association in London, which sent you that very complimentary telegram you were good enough to me to show me in this case, because the issue is whether John Scopes taught a couple of paragraphs out of his book? Oh, no, the issue is as broad as Mr. Bryan has published it and why the fear? If the issue is as broad as they make it, why the fear of meeting the issue? Why, where issues are drawn by evidence, where the truth and nothing but the truth are scrutinized and where statements can be answered by expert witnesses on the other side -- what is the psychology of fear? I don't understand it. My old chief -- I never saw him back away from a great issue before. I feel that the prosecution here is filled with a needless fear. I believe that if they withdraw their objection and hear the evidence of our experts their minds would not only improve but their souls would be purified.

I believe and we believe that men who are God-fearing, who are giving their lives to study and observation, to the teaching of the young -- are the teachers and scientists of this country in a combination to destroy the morals of the children to whom they have dedicated their lives? Are preachers the only ones in America who care about our youth? Is the church the only source of morality in this country? And I would like to say something for the children of the country. We have no fears about the young people of America. They are a pretty smart generation. Any teacher who teaches the boys or the girls today an incredible theory -- we need not worry about those children of this generation paying much attention to it. The children of this generation are pretty wise. People, as a matter of fact I feel that the children of this generation are probably much wiser than many of their elders. The least that this generation can do, your Honor, is to give the next generation all the facts, all the available data, all the theories, all the information that learning, that study, that observations has produced -- give it to the children in the hope of heaven that they will make a better world of this than we have been able to make it. We have just had a war with twenty million dead. Civilization is not so proud of the work of the adults. Civilization need not be so proud of what the grown-ups have done. For God's sake let the children have their minds kept open -- close no doors to their knowledge; shut no door from them. Make the distinction between theology and science. let them have both. Let them both be taught. Let them both live....

We want everything we have to say on religion and on science told and we are ready to submit our theories to the direct and cross-examination of the prosecution. We have come in here ready for a battle. We have come in here for this duel.

I don't know anything about dueling, Your Honor. It is against the law of God. It is against the church. It is against the law of Tennessee, but does the opposition mean by duel that our defendant shall be strapped to a board and they alone shall carry the sword? Is our only weapon the witnesses who shall testify to the accuracy of our theory -- is our weapon to be taken from us, so that the duel will be entirely one-sided? That isn't my idea of a duel. Moreover it isn't going to be a duel.

There is never a duel with the truth. The truth always wins and we are not afraid of it. The truth is no coward. The truth does not need the law. The truth does not need the forces of government. The truth does not need Mr. Bryan. The truth is imperishable, eternal, and immortal and needs no human agency to support it. We are ready to tell the truth as we understand it and we do not fear all the truth that they can present as facts. We are ready. We are ready. We feel we stand with progress. We feel we stand with science. We feel we stand with intelligence. We feel we stand with fundamental freedom in America We are not afraid. Where is the fear? We meet it! Where is the fear? We defy it! We ask your honor to admit the evidence as a matter of correct law, as a matter of sound procedure and as a matter of justice to the defense in this case

The courtroom went wild when Malone finished, and Scopes declared Malone's speech to be the dramatic highpoint of the entire trial and insisted that part of the reason Bryan wanted to go on the stand was to regain some of his tarnished glory.

On the sixth day of the trial the defense ran out of witnesses. The judge declared that all of the defense testimony on the Bible was irrelevant and should not be presented to the jury (which had been excluded during the defense). During the court proceedings (7th day of the trial) the defense asked the judge to call Bryan as a witness to question him on the Bible, as their own experts had been rendered irrelevant; Darrow had planned the day before and called Bryan a "Bible expert." This move surprised those present in the court, as Bryan was a counsel for the prosecution and had himself (according to a journalist reporting the trial) never made a claim of being an expert; although he did tout his knowledge of the Bible. This testimony revolved around several questions regarding biblical stories and Bryan's beliefs, and culminated in Bryan declaring that Darrow was using the court to "slur the Bible" while Darrow replied that Bryan's statements on the Bible were "foolish."

Examination of Bryan

On the seventh day of the trial, Clarence Darrow took the unorthodox step of calling William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the prosecution, to the stand as a witness in an effort to demonstrate that belief in the historicity of the Bible and its many accounts of miracles was unreasonable. Bryan accepted, on the understanding that Darrow would in turn submit to questioning by Bryan. Although Arthur Garfield Hays would claim in his autobiography that the cross-examination of Bryan was unplanned, Darrow spent the night before in preparation. The scientists the defense had brought to Dayton—and Charles Francis Potter, a modernist minister who had lost a public debate on evolution with the fundamentalist preacher John Roach Straton - prepared topics and questions for Darrow to address to Bryan on the witness stand.

(Two years after the trial, James I. Elliott, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism, would offer $50,000 in cash to the Rev. Dr. Straton of for any "proof of a single cure of an organic disease by prayer, faith and anointing." Elliott wrote Dr. Straton: "If you accept the offer, the reward will be deposited in a bank within forty-eight hours. Dr. Straton, well-known as one of the nation's most prominent opponents of evolution and modern science, replied in a simple statement: "I won't dignify it by my attention." The story got national attention.)

Kirtley Mather, chairman of the geology department at Harvard and also a devout Baptist, played Bryan and answered questions as he believed Bryan would. Judge Raulston had adjourned court to the stand on the courthouse lawn, ostensibly because he was "afraid of remaining in the building" with so many spectators crammed into the courtroom, but probably because of the stifling heat.

Adam and Eve

An area of questioning involved the book of Genesis, including questions such as if Eve was actually created from Adam's rib, where did Cain get his wife, and how many people lived in Ancient Egypt. Darrow used these examples to suggest that the stories of the Bible could not be scientific and should not be used in teaching science with Darrow telling Bryan, "You insult every man of science and learning in the world because he does not believe in your fool religion." Bryan's declaration in response was, "The reason I am answering is not for the benefit of the superior court. It is to keep these gentlemen from saying I was afraid to meet them and let them question me, and I want the Christian world to know that any atheist, agnostic, unbeliever, can question me anytime as to my belief in God, and I will answer him.”

Prosecutor Stewart objected, demanding to know the legal purpose of Darrow's questioning. Bryan, gauging the effect the session was having, snapped that its purpose was "to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible". Darrow, with equal vehemence, retorted, "We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States."

A few more questions followed in the charged open-air courtroom. Darrow asked where Cain got his wife; Bryan answered that he would "leave the agnostics to hunt for her" When Darrow addressed the issue of the temptation of Eve by the serpent, Bryan insisted that the Bible be quoted verbatim rather than allowing Darrow to paraphrase it in his own terms. However, after another angry exchange, Judge Raulston banged his gavel, adjourning the court.

End of the trial

The confrontation between Bryan and Darrow lasted approximately two hours on the afternoon of the seventh day of the trial. It is likely that it would have continued the following morning but for Judge Raulston's announcement that he considered the whole examination irrelevant to the case and his decision that it should be "expunged" from the record. Thus Bryan was denied the chance to cross-examine the defense lawyers in return, although after the trial Bryan would distribute nine questions to the press to bring out Darrow's "religious attitude." The questions and Darrow's short answers were published in newspapers the day after the trial ended, with The New York Times characterizing Darrow as answering Bryan's questions "with his agnostic's creed, 'I don't know,' except where he could deny them with his belief in natural, immutable law."

After the defense's final attempt to present evidence was denied, Darrow asked the judge to bring in the jury only to have them come to a guilty verdict:

We claim that the defendant is not guilty, but as the court has excluded any testimony, except as to the one issue as to whether he taught that man descended from a lower order of animals, and we cannot contradict that testimony, there is no logical thing to come except that the jury find a verdict that we may carry to the higher court, purely as a matter of proper procedure. We do not think it is fair to the court or counsel on the other side to waste a lot of time when we know this is the inevitable result and probably the best result for the case.

After they were brought in, Darrow then addressed the jury, telling them that:

We came down here to offer evidence in this case and the court has held under the law that the evidence we had is not admissible, so all we can do is to take an exception and carry it to a higher court to see whether the evidence is admissible or not...we cannot even explain to you that we think you should return a verdict of not guilty. We do not see how you could. We do not ask it.

Darrow closed the case for the defense without a final summation. Under Tennessee law, when the defense waived its right to make a closing speech, the prosecution was also barred from summing up its case.

Clarence Darrow (L) & Wm. Jennings Bryan (R)

Scopes never testified since there was never a factual issue as to whether he had taught evolution. Scopes later admitted that, in reality, he was unsure of whether he had taught evolution (another reason the defense did not want him to testify), but the point was not contested at the trial

William Jennings Bryan's summation of the Scopes trial (distributed to reporters but not read in court):

"Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endanger its cargo. In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane, the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times as bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love. Science has made war so hellish that civilization was about to commit suicide; and now we are told that newly discovered instruments of destruction will make the cruelties of the late war seem trivial in comparison with the cruelties of wars that may come in the future. If civilization is to be saved from the wreckage threatened by intelligence not consecrated by love, it must be saved by the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene. His teachings, and His teachings alone, can solve the problems that vex the heart and perplex the world."

After eight days of trial, it took the jury only nine minutes to return with their verdict. Scopes was found guilty on July 21 and ordered to pay a $100 fine (approximately $3,123 in present day terms). Raulston imposed the fine before Scopes was given an opportunity to say anything about why the court should not impose punishment upon him and after Neal (Scopes’ personal attorney) brought the error to the judge's attention the defendant spoke for the first and only time in court:

Your honor, I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute. I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose this law in any way I can. Any other action would be in violation of my ideal of academic freedom—that is, to teach the truth as guaranteed in our constitution, of personal and religious freedom. I think the fine is unjust.

Appeal to Supreme Court of Tennessee

Scopes' lawyers appealed, challenging the conviction on several grounds.

First, they argued that the statute was overly vague because it prohibited the teaching of "evolution," a very broad term. The court rejected that argument, holding:

Evolution, like prohibition, is a broad term. In recent bickering, however, evolution has been understood to mean the theory which holds that man has developed from some pre-existing lower type. This is the popular significance of evolution, just as the popular significance of prohibition is prohibition of the traffic in intoxicating liquors. It was in that sense that evolution was used in this act. It is in this sense that the word will be used in this opinion, unless the context otherwise indicates. It is only to the theory of the evolution of man from a lower type that the act before us was intended to apply, and much of the discussion we have heard is beside this case.

Second, the lawyers argued that the statute violated Scopes' constitutional right to free speech because it prohibited him from teaching evolution. The court rejected this argument, holding that the state was permitted to regulate his speech as an employee of the state:

He was an employee of the state of Tennessee or of a municipal agency of the state. He was under contract with the state to work in an institution of the state. He had no right or privilege to serve the state except upon such terms as the state prescribed. His liberty, his privilege, his immunity to teach and proclaim the theory of evolution, elsewhere than in the service of the state, was in no wise touched by this law.

Third, it was argued that the terms of the Butler Act violated the Tennessee State Constitution, which provided that "It shall be the duty of the General Assembly in all future periods of this government, to cherish literature and science." The argument was that the theory of the descent of man from a lower order of animals was now established by the preponderance of scientific thought, and that the prohibition of the teaching of such theory was a violation of the legislative duty to cherish science.

The court rejected this argument, holding that the determination of what laws cherished science was an issue for the legislature, not the judiciary:

The courts cannot sit in judgment on such acts of the Legislature or its agents and determine whether or not the omission or addition of a particular course of study tends "to cherish science."

Fourth, the defense lawyers argued that the statute violated the provisions of the Tennessee Constitution that prohibited the establishment of a state religion. The Religious Preference provisions of the Tennessee Constitution (section 3 of article 1 ) stated, "no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship."

Writing for the court, Chief Justice Grafton Green rejected this argument, holding that the Tennessee Religious Preference clause was designed to prevent the establishment of a state religion as had been the experience in England and Scotland at the writing of the Constitution, and held:

We are not able to see how the prohibition of teaching the theory that man has descended from a lower order of animals gives preference to any religious establishment or mode of worship. So far as we know, there is no religious establishment or organized body that has in its creed or confession of faith any article denying or affirming such a theory. So far as we know, the denial or affirmation of such a theory does not enter into any recognized mode of worship. Since this cause has been pending in this court, we have been favored, in addition to briefs of counsel and various amici curiae, with a multitude of resolutions, addresses, and communications from scientific bodies, religious factions, and individuals giving us the benefit of their views upon the theory of evolution. Examination of these contributions indicates that Protestants, Catholics, and Jews are divided among themselves in their beliefs, and that there is no unanimity among the members of any religious establishment as to this subject. Belief or unbelief in the theory of evolution is no more a characteristic of any religious establishment or mode of worship than is belief or unbelief in the wisdom of the prohibition laws. It would appear that members of the same churches quite generally disagree as to these things.

Further, the court held that while the statute forbade the teaching of evolution (as the court had defined it), it did not require the teaching of any other doctrine, so that it did not benefit any one religious doctrine or sect over the others.

Nevertheless, having found the statute to be constitutional, the court set aside the conviction on appeal because of a legal technicality: the jury should have decided the fine, not the judge, since under the state constitution, Tennessee judges could not at that time set fines above $50, and the Butler Act specified a minimum fine of $100.

Justice Green added a totally unexpected recommendation:

The court is informed that the plaintiff in error is no longer in the service of the state. We see nothing to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case. On the contrary, we think that the peace and dignity of the state, which all criminal prosecutions are brought to redress, will be the better conserved by the entry of a nolle prosequi (“unwilling to pursue) herein”). Such a course is suggested to the Attorney General.

Attorney General L.D. Smith immediately announced that he would not seek a retrial, while Scopes' lawyers offered angry comments on the stunning decision.

In 1968, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas 393 U.S. 97 (1968) that such bans contravene the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because their primary purpose is religious. Tennessee had repealed the Butler Act the previous year.

Aftermath of the trial

The trial revealed a growing chasm in American Christianity and two ways of finding truth, one "biblical" and one "scientific." Without question, the majority of Christians denounced evolution at the time. In June 2012, the Huffington Post released findings of a Gallup poll measuring Americans' belief in the origin of human beings, and how this belief correlates with church attendance, political party affiliation and education level. According to the poll, 46% of the American public chose Creationism over Evolution – suggesting little change since the days of Scopes, Darrow and Bryan.

Many assume that, as in the play and film Inherit the Wind the Scopes trial caused a humiliated fundamentalism to retreat into the political and cultural background. However, it is quite possible that the real cause of fundamentalism's retreat shortly after the trial was the death of its leader, Bryan. Most fundamentalists saw the trial as a victory and not a defeat, but Bryan's death soon after created a leadership void that no other fundamentalist leader could fill. Bryan, unlike the other leaders, brought name recognition, respectability, and the ability to forge a broad-based coalition of fundamentalist and mainline religious groups to argue for the anti-evolutionist position.

Anti-evolution movement

The trial escalated the political and legal conflict between strict creationists and scientists to influence the extent to which evolution would be taught as science in Arizona and California schools. Before the Dayton trial only the South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Kentucky legislatures had dealt with anti-evolution laws or riders to educational appropriations bills.]

After Scopes was convicted, creationists throughout the United States sought similar anti-evolution laws for their states.

By 1927, there were 13 states, both in the North and South that considered some form of anti-evolution law. At least 41 bills or resolutions were introduced into the state legislatures, with some states facing the issue repeatedly. Nearly all of these efforts were rejected, but Mississippi and Arkansas did put anti-evolution laws on the books after the Scopes trial that would outlive the Butler Act.

In the Southwest, anti-evolution crusaders included ministers and members of the Creation Research Society in California. They sought to ban evolution as a topic for study in the schools or, failing that, to relegate it to the status of unproven hypothesis perhaps taught alongside the biblical version of creation. Educators, scientists, and other distinguished people favored evolution. This struggle occurred later in the Southwest than elsewhere, and persisted through the Sputnik era after 1957 when it collapsed, as the national mood inspired increased trust in science in general and support for evolution in particular.

The opponents of evolution made a transition from the anti-evolution crusade of the 1920s to the creation science movement of the 1960s. Despite some similarities between these two causes, the creation science movement represented a shift from overtly religious to covertly religious objections to evolutionary theory — sometimes described as a Wedge Strategy — raising what it claimed to be scientific evidence in support of a literal interpretation of the Bible. Creation science also differed in terms of popular leadership, rhetorical tone, and sectional focus. It lacked a prestigious leader like Bryan, utilized pseudoscientific rather than religious rhetoric, and was a product of California and Michigan instead of the South.

Publicity and drama

Edward J. Larson, a historian who won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, noted: "Like so many archetypal American events, the trial itself began as a publicity stunt.” The press coverage of the "Monkey Trial" was overwhelming. The front pages of newspapers like The New York Times were dominated by the case for days. More than 200 newspaper reporters from all parts of the country and two from London were in Dayton. Twenty-two telegraphers sent out 165,000 words per day on the trial over thousands of miles of telegraph wires hung for the purpose more words were transmitted to Britain about the Scopes trial than for any previous American event. Trained chimpanzees performed on the courthouse lawn. Chicago's WGN radio station broadcast the trial with announcer Quin Ryan via clear-channel broadcasts for the first on-the-scene coverage of a criminal trial. Two movie cameramen had their film flown out daily in a small plane from a specially prepared airstrip. H.L. Mencken's trial reports were heavily slanted against the prosecution and the jury, which was "unanimously hot for Genesis." He mocked the town's inhabitants as "yokels" and "morons." He called Bryan a "buffoon" and his speeches "theologic bilge." In contrast, he called the defense "eloquent" and "magnificent." Even today some American creationists, fighting in courts and state legislatures to demand that creationism be taught on an equal footing with evolution in the schools, have claimed that it was Mencken's trial reports in 1925 that turned public opinion against creationism. The media's portrayal of Darrow's cross-examination of Bryan, and the play and movie Inherit the Wind, caused millions of Americans to ridicule religious-based opposition to the theory of evolution.

The trial also brought publicity to the town of Dayton, Tennessee, and was hatched as a publicity stunt. One journalist wrote: The whole matter has assumed the portion of Dayton and her merchants endeavoring to secure a large amount of notoriety and publicity with an open question as whether Scopes is a party to the plot or not.

Court house

At the site of the trial, the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, a $1-million restoration project was completed in 1979, which restored the second-floor courtroom to its original appearance during the Scopes trial. A museum of trial events in its basement contains such memorabilia as the microphone used to broadcast the trial, trial records, photographs, and an audiovisual history. Every July local people re-enact key moments in the courtroom. In front of the courthouse stands a commemorative plaque erected by the Tennessee Historical Commission:

2B 23
THE SCOPES TRIAL Here, from July 10 to 21, 1925 John
Thomas Scopes, a County High School
teacher, was tried for teaching that
a man descended from a lower order
of animals in violation of a lately
passed state law. William Jennings
Bryan assisted the prosecution;
Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield
Hays, and Dudley Field Malone the
defense. Scopes was convicted.

Rhea County Courthouse was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 1976. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

Humor

Anticipating that Scopes would be found guilty, the press fitted the defendant for martyrdom and created an onslaught of ridicule. Time's initial coverage of the trial focused on Dayton as "the fantastic cross between a circus and a holy war." Life adorned its masthead with monkeys reading books and proclaimed, "the whole matter is something to laugh about.” Hosts of cartoonists added their own portrayals to the attack. (The greatest collection of cartoons available would be the 14 reprinted in L. Sprague de Camp's The Great Monkey Trial.) Both Literary Digest and the popular humor magazine Life (1890–1930) ran compilations of jokes and humorous observations garnered from newspapers around the country. Overwhelmingly, the butt of these jokes was the prosecution and those aligned with it: Bryan, the city of Dayton, the state of Tennessee, and the entire South, as well as fundamentalist Christians and anti-evolutionists. Rare exceptions were found in the Southern press, where the fact that Darrow had saved Leopold and Loeb from the death penalty continued to be a source of ugly humor. The most widespread form of this ridicule was directed at the inhabitants of Tennessee. Life described Tennessee as "not up to date in its attitude to such things as evolution." Time related Bryan's arrival in town with the disparaging comment, "The populace, Bryan's to a moron, yowled a welcome."

Attacks on Bryan were frequent and acidic: Life awarded him its "Brass Medal of the Fourth Class," for having "successfully demonstrated by the alchemy of ignorance hot air may be transmuted into gold, and that the Bible is infallibly inspired except where it differs with him on the question of wine, women, and wealth." Papers across the country routinely dismissed the efforts of both sides in the trial, while the European press reacted to the entire affair with amused condescension.

Famously vituperative attacks came from journalist H. L. Mencken, whose syndicated columns from Dayton for The Baltimore Sun drew vivid caricatures of the "backward" local populace, referring to the people of Rhea County as "Babbits", "morons", "peasants", "hill-billies", "yaps", and "yokels". He chastised the "degraded nonsense which country preachers are ramming and hammering into yokel skulls". However, Mencken did enjoy certain aspects of Dayton, writing, "The town, I confess, greatly surprised me. I expected to find a squalid Southern village, with darkies snoozing on the horse-blocks, pigs rooting under the houses and the inhabitants full of hookworm and malaria. What I found was a country town full of charm and even beauty—a somewhat smallish but nevertheless very attractive Westminster or Balair." He described Rhea County as priding itself on a kind of tolerance or what he called "lack of Christian heat", opposed to outside ideas but without hating those who held them. He pointed out, "The Klan has never got a foothold here, though it rages everywhere else in Tennessee." Mencken attempted to perpetrate a hoax, distributing flyers for the "Rev. Elmer Chubb", but the claims that Chubb would drink poison and preach in lost languages were ignored as commonplace by the people of Dayton and only the Commonweal bit. Mencken continued to attack Bryan, including in his famously withering obituary of Bryan, "In Memoriam: W.J.B.", in which he charged Bryan with "insincerity"—not for his religious beliefs but for the inconsistent and contradictory positions he took on a number of political questions during his career. Years later, Mencken did question whether dismissing Bryan "as a quack pure and unadulterated" was "really just". Mencken's columns made the Dayton citizens irate and drew general fire from the Southern press. After Raulston ruled against the admission of scientific testimony, Mencken left Dayton, declaring in his last dispatch, "All that remains of the great cause of the State of Tennessee against the infidel Scopes is the formal business of bumping off the defendant." Consequently, the journalist missed Darrow's cross-examination of Bryan on Monday.

Stage and film

The play Inherit the Wind (1955), by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, is loosely based on this trial. It turns Darrow and Bryan into characters named Henry Drummond and Matthew Brady. The play's preface says that while the trial was its "genesis", it is "not history". Lawrence and Lee later said that it was written in response to McCarthyism and was chiefly about intellectual freedom. However, despite its disclaimer, and the fact that it deviates from actual events in many ways, the play has largely been accepted as history by the public.

Inherit the Wind was made into a 1960 film directed by Stanley Kramer, with Spencer Tracy as Drummond and Fredric March as Brady. Although there are numerous changes in the plot, they include more of the actual events recorded in the trial transcript, such as when Darrow implies the court is prejudiced, being cited for contempt of court for his comments and his subsequent statement of contrition that persuaded the judge to drop the charge. There have also been a trio of television versions, with Melvyn Douglas and Ed Begley in 1965, Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas in 1988, and Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott in 1999. The Scopes trial did not appear in the Encyclopædia Britannica until 1957, when its inclusion was spurred by the successful run of Inherit the Wind on Broadway, which was mentioned in the citation. It was not until the 1960s that the Scopes trial began to be mentioned in the history textbooks of American high schools and colleges, usually as an example of the conflict between fundamentalists and modernists, and often in sections that also talked about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the South.

John Scopes the man whose name was forever linked to the two words “monkey” and “trial,” left Dayton shortly after the trial, never to return. After the trial Scopes accepted a scholarship for graduate study in geology at the University of Chicago. He then did geological field work in Venezuela for Gulf Oil of South America. There he met and married his wife, Mildred, and was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1930, he returned to the University of Chicago for a third year of graduate study. After two years without professional employment, he took a position as a geologist with the United Gas Company, for which he studied oil reserves. He worked, in Houston, Texas then in Shreveport, Louisiana, until he retired in 1963. He died on October 21, 1970 at the age of 70, and is buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in Paducah, Kentucky.

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#39: A Paper Route to Beat the Band

December 30, 2024 / Kurt F. Stone

Shortly before I turned 11 (1960), I got an urge to find a job. Sharing the aim with my father, he sweetened the pot by promising that for every $5 I earned at whatever it was I was going to do, he would match it and then put the combined $10 in an account at the local savings and loan. After scouring the want ads, in the local paper it dawned on me that becoming a paper delivery boy was ideal. And so, I was hired by the local rag - called the Green Sheet due to its front page being a kind a muted lime green color - picked up my canvas bag, box of rubber bands plastic bags and twist ties (for those rare rainy days) and went into business for myself. Back in 1960, the Green Sheet came out 4 times a week and cost (if you chose to pay) a whopping 65¢ a month. Even if you chose not to pay, you still got the paper. It was up to the paper boy (no girls in those days) to go door-to-door once a month and collect the 65¢ (of which we got 30¢ minus tip . . . if we were so lucky.)

After learning the ropes - but before going out on my first monthly collection run - I decided it might make for better business if I were to knock on every door along my route (#2739), introduce myself and convince my customers that the paper was well worth 65¢. And so, unstrapping the canvas bags from the handlebars and back fender of my black Schwinn, and scrubbing the printer’s ink off my hands, I went down the street. As luck would have it, no one was home at the first 8 houses I visited. The 9th house, which was within a stone’s throw (pun intended) from ours, I knocked and a kindly looking gentleman answered. Being a Hollywood Brat, I wasn’t terribly bowled over by the fact that he was Milburn Stone (no relation), who played “Doc Adams” on Gunsmoke.

At the time, all I knew was that the customer living at 6013 Allott Avenue was named Stone. I was all prepared to begin my sales-pitch by asking him if we might be related. (I knew we weren’t: our name was legally changed from “Schimberg” to “Stone” only 3 years earlier). He turned out to be everything you’d expect Doc Adams to be off-screen: not terribly tall, a tad irascible, but with a delightful twinkle in his eye. I was amazed that for a shortish (5’7”) man he had a really, really deep voice. At the end of about 10 minutes of chit-chatting he handed me a dollar, said “keep the change Mr. Stone," gave me a wink and put out his hand. Shaking it I grinned and said “Thanks Doc.” He would turn out to be my favorite client . . .

(By the time Milburn Stone became “Doc Adams” in 1955 . . . and would go on to play for 605 episodes . . . he had already been in nearly 170 pictures for a quarter century. His most famous [uncredited] role was that of Stephen A. Douglas in the 1939 Henry Fonda/John Ford-directed classic “Young Mr. Lincoln.”)

Pedaling down Allott Avenue, the dollar bill burning a hole in my pocket, I came to a house about 400 yards away on the other side of the street. Ringing the door bell, a fairly tall, clean-shaven man with not a lot of hair answered the door. He looked familiar . . . very familiar. Suddenly it dawned on me where I had seen him. “Good afternoon,” I said, “my name is Kurt Stone, and I am your Green Sheet delivery boy. Aren’t you Lieutenant Jacoby, the guy who works with Peter Gunn?” He chuckled and said “The very same, although when I get home from work my name is Mr. Bernardi . . . Herschel Bernardi. Do you like the show?” Swallowing hard, I said “I really do, especially the music and the way Peter Gunn dresses.” (Note: Even as an 11 year-old, I had an eye for good tailoring . . . an inheritance from my father. And as for the music, Peter Gunn was probably the first show in the history of television to have a “cool jazz” score coupled with one of the most memorable opening themes of all time . . . composed by the then up-and-coming Henry Mancini.)

On the few occasions I would happen to meet up with Mr. Bernardi, he always struck me as being a happy man. Years later I learned why: back in the late 1940s Bernardi was blacklisted for alleged Communist sympathies. He couldn’t find an acting job to save his life for nearly a decade. When I met him, he was as happy as a clam: he had a steady, well-paying job on a hit television show created by Blake Edwards that earned Bernardi his lone Primetime Emmy nomination (Best Supporting Actor [Continuing Character] in a Dramatic Series.) He wound up losing to Dennis Weaver, who, of course played “Chester” in Gunsmoke. Herschel Bernardi was from a Yiddish theater family, much like the Adlers (Jacob, Luthor and Stella), Paul Muni and the young Sidney Lumet.)

By the time he was 3, he was known along 2nd Avenue (the Yiddish Theatre District) as a ווונדער קינד (vunderkind), a “child prodigy. He made his film debut at age 13 costarring in one of the greatest of all Yiddish films, גרינע פֿעלדער (Green Fields), an adaptation of a classic Yiddish play by writer Peretz Hirschbein, often called “the Yiddish Maeterlinck.” Bernardi’s strong Yiddish theater upbringing and resonant singing voice would serve him well in later years; he took over for Zero Mostel as Tevye the Milkman in the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof, eventually earning a Tony nomination. Over his career he had roles in 95 films and television shows. From 1970 to 1972, he was the star of his own show, “Arnie.” In 1976, a decade before his death, he played blacklisted producer Phil Sussman in the former black-listed Martin Ritt’s bittersweet memorial to the Hollywood Blacklist, The Front, written by the Blacklisted Walter Bernstein and starring Woody Allen along with former black listees Zero Mostel, Lloyd Gough and Joshua Shelley. From 1961 until the year of his death (1986) Herschel Bernardi was the “Ho-Ho-Ho’ voice of the Jolly Green Giant commercials as well as the voice of “Charlie the Tuna” for Star-Kist.

And by the way, Mr. Bernardi always gave me an 18¢ tip.

Being that I had school, homework, piano lessons and Little League baseball (among other endeavors) to take up my life, I could only devote an hour or so to my end-of-the-week collections. I met and introduced myself to “Doc Adams” and “Lt. Jacoby” on the first day. It wasn’t until 3 days later that I was working Buffalo Avenue. On the corner of Buffalo and Collins St. was the home of my best friend, Peter Hirsch. His father, Dr. William Hirsch was founder and principal of the Loman Street School in North Hollywood, the first public school dedicated to educating children with physical disabilities. He was a great, great man. A couple of times a year our “Woodcraft Ranger” group (the “Sundown Tribe”), would go to the school located on Saticoy, to visit and play with the children. It added so much to our human sensitivity and spirit of volunteerism to be with these children with special needs . . . decades before that term was created and popularized.

Getting Dr. Hirsch to pay his 65¢ was a no brainer . . .

Across the street and 3 or 4 houses down there was a man who, quite frankly, scared the living daylights out of me. He was over six feet tall, had bulging eyes and an unmoving left eye, was almost always unshaven, and generally had a scowl on his ugly punim. I found it hard to describe him to my folks. Many, many years later, in reading a short-story by Edna Ferber entitled The Man Who Came Back (published in a collection called "Butter Side Down,” published in March 1912, I came across the following which described my customer’s fearsome face to a T: “Birdie had a face that looked like a huge mistake.” In Hollywood, the expression would be having “a face made for radio.” He undoubtedly knew that I was scared of him and, as I was to learn sometime later, played up his gruesomeness to the hilt. That gruesomeness, as it turned out, would make him one of Hollywood’s most recognizable - though least known - character actors, playing tens of dozens of ghoulish psychopaths and head cases until many years later, actor James Garner, seeing the comic possibilities, turned him in a western sidekick with few brains but a heart of gold.

His name was Jack Elam.

Hailing from Miami, Arizona, William Scott “Jack” Elam served in World War II and then became both a bookkeeper at the Bank of America and a manager of the Hotel Bel-Air. Elam went to Santa Monica City College and studied accounting. Eventually he became an independent auditor for Samuel Goldwyn and an accountant for Hopalong Cassidy Productions. Unfortunately, all the examining of financial records (usually in small print) put too much strain on his already poor vision, and he had to quit what had become a pretty lucrative gig. Someone suggested that perhaps he could earn a few dollars by becoming a movie extra . . . and a half-century career was born.

I of course had no idea that “Mr. Scary,” as I called him came from such a benign background and was, in matter-of-fact, a warm-hearted husband and father. I had my doubts about ever going back to his house. Then I happened to be watching an episode of The Twilight Zone in which Mr. Scary had a major role as - what else? - a crazy man called “Grandpa Avery,” stranded at a diner in the middle of nowhere. It was definitely Mr. Scary, but he actually smiled and made jokes! Then it dawned on me: perhaps he was just playing a part when he answered the door. He must have sensed my fear . . . and just played off that. And so, the next time I went to hopefully collect my 65¢. I had a smile on my face. And it worked, for when he opened the door he broke out into a big grin, stuck out his hand and said “welcome sonny . . . so nice to see you!” What a character.

That first month with the Greensheet I made about $17.00 in subscriptions and nearly $5.00 dollars in tips. True to his word, Dad doubled my earnings and I was able to put $34.00 into the local S&L and have almost $5.00 in my pockets. To me, that $34.00 (nearly $365.00 in 2024 money) was a fortune. I would continue delivering the paper, adding subscribers and banking my earnings for the next year or so. The year after I “retired” from being a newspaper boy we moved about 5 miles away to a new, bigger home on Addison Street. I would eventually go back to delivering and soliciting for a different paper and meeting other members of the acting community.

But that’s a tale for an upcoming post.

Wishing one and all a happy, healthy New Year!

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categories / The Hollywood Brat, Hollywood Bios

Nick and Nora, Minnie and Bill: America’s Favorite (Never-Married) “Husband and Wife”

November 18, 2024 / Kurt F. Stone

PLEASE NOTE: I WILL BE TEACHING AN 8-WEEK COURSE ON NICK & NORA AT FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY - BOTH BOCA RATON AND JUPITER CAMPUSES BEGINNING IN EARLY FEBRUARY NEXT YEAR AND EXTENDING INTO EARLY MAY. THE BOCA COUSE IS DIVIDED INTO TWO 4-WEEK INSALLMENTS AND YOU CAN VIEW THE CLASS ON VIDEO CAPUTURE AS WELL AS BEING IN ATTENDANCE. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED GO TO THE LIFELONG LEARNING WEBSITE

Nick and Nora, along with Asta (AKA “Skippy”)

Nearly 6 years ago I posted a Tales From Hollywood & Vine blog titled Cinematic Chemistry: That Certain Something. In the opening paragraph I wrote about how, from the earliest days of moving pictures, “ . . . producers (originally called “presenters”) have been on the lookout for cinematic couples who possessed that indescribable something called "chemistry.” That earl post included such long-forgotten couples as John Bunny and Flora Finch, Harold Lockwood and May Allison, Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor as well as Charles Chaplin’s most frequent costar, Edna Purviance, with whom hhe made 30 silent films over just an 8-year period.

Hollywood’s “Golden Age” continued the trend with such favorite teams as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (who made 10 pictures together from 1933-1949); Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, "America’s Singing Sweethearts” (who sang their way through 8 splashy MGM musicals in the 1930s and '40s) and of course, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn who made 9 films together from 1942 to 1967. Spence and Kate were believed by most outsiders to have carried on a torrid affair throughout all those years; many within “the neighborhood” were aware that theirs was a classic “lavender romance” in which their public partnership was, in reality, a cover for their true private lives. But this is a topic for another posting . . . perhaps.

Over the years, some of the busiest, best and most profitable cinematic “pairings” were comic teams:

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy who over the same of 30 years (1921 to 1951), made and costarred in an amazing 79 shorts and 27 feature length films including Sons of the Desert (1933), March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934), The Flying Deuces (1939) and A Chump at Oxford (1940). In real life, they were the best of friends, with Laurel (who came to America as Charles Chaplin’s understudy) being the creative “brains” of the team.
Bud Abbott and Lou Costello: starting in radio, moving on to Broadway and eventually to Hollywood, Abbott and Costello were one of the most popular comic duos of their time, ranking among the top ten box office stars for most of the 1940s. Their “Who’s on First?” routine is considered one of the greatest comedy bits of all time. From 1940-1956 they made an amazing 36 films.
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby: The obvious friendship between the comedian and the crooner transferred seamlessly to the big screen. Over 22 years (1940-1962) they made 17 films, many beginning with the words “The Road to . . .” What made their pictures such audience pleasers was that in virtually every one, they had fun parodying films of the day and poking fun at both themselves and other actors.
Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney: They became lifelong friends as teens on the set of the 1937 film Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, and then went on to costar in 3 of Roony’s popular “Andy Hardy” films. But the two are perhaps best remembered for their series of “backyard musicals,” the most famous of which was Babes in Arms.
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor: Theirs was a romance that began on screen: 1963’s colossal cinematic bomb Cleopatra, and then continued through 9 more films between 1963 and 1972. In 13 year’s time, they would become one of the most famous couples in the world, marry and divorce twice, and star alongside each other in ten films, including Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, for which Taylor won a Best Actress Oscar.

One could go on and on with such pairs as stoners Cheech and Chong (12 films from 1978-2013), Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau (11 films from 1966-1998), Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (9 films from 1935-1942) and of course, “Bogie and Baby”, husband and wife Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who made 5 incredibly literate films in 4 years including 1944’s To Have and Have Not (from a novel by Ernest Hemmingway and a screenplay by William Faulkner) 1946’s The Big Sleep (from a novel by Raymond Chandler and a screenplay by, once again, William Faulkner), and 1948’s Key Largo (based on a play by Maxwell Anderson with a screenplay by both John Huston and Richard Brooks).

For my money (and that of many, many others), the greatest team of ‘em all was Myrna Loy and William Powell who, over a span of 13 years (1934-1947) played husband and wife so often - and so very convincingly well - that most of the film-going public actually believed they were married to one another . . . both on-screen (i.e. “reel”) and real life. Beyond the obvious chemistry they shared with one another, Minnie (Myrna’s nickname in Hollywood) and Bill made married life look so much fun and frenzy. And whether they were portraying Nick & Nora Charles in the 6 "Thin Man” films; Jim & Eleanor Wade in 1934’s "Manhattan Melodrama,” headlined by Clark Gable; Florenz Ziegfeld & Billie Burke in the 1936 biopic "The Great Ziegfeld, which captured the Oscar for "Best Film”; or Steve & Susan Ireland in 1941’s romantic comedy “Love Crazy,” they managed to never hit a false note . . . they were just made for each other.

Off screen, they were great friends and true admirers of one another’s acting talents. It really isn’t all that surprising that a romance never developed because, as Loy put it many years later, the two were far too alike, and their wisdom in not pursuing a relationship likely contributed to the ease and joy they felt in working together. Unquestionably, we, the many generations of movie audiences over the past 90 years, are the beneficiaries of that joy.

William Horatio Powell (1892-1984) was born in Pittsburgh and early in life decided that he wanted to be an actor. Borrowing $700.00 from a wealthy aunt, he headed up to New York and enrolled as a student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which had been founded by a Harvard professor in 1884. Leaving before his graduation with the class of 1913, he went out on the road, touring with traveling road companies for the next several years. Throughout these years, he played in dozens upon dozens of comedies, melodramas and classics. Although he eventually made the cast of no less than 5 relatively inconsequential, long forgotten Broadway plays between 1917 and 1928, he earned much of his living in Silent Films . . . first in New York and then Hollywood.

In his first film, 1922’s Sherlock Holmes, starring the immortal John Barrymore, Powell had a small feature role. From 1922-1928 he was featured in nearly 35 silents, playing mostly in historic costume dramas or crime flicks, where he was regularly portrayed as a cad, rogue or downright villain. The coming of sound was his salvation. With his mellifluous voice and aristocratic diction, he was a cut above his fellow movie actors. His first talking film, 1929’s The Canary Murder Case, in which he played detective Philo Vance to the exotic Louise Brooks’ "Canary,” made him a star. 5 years later he would be paired with Minnie . . .

Myrna as “Nubi", a Hungarian Gypsy in “The Squall” (1925)

Myrna Adele Williams Loy (1905-1993) was born in Helena, Montana where her father, David was the youngest person ever elected to that state’s legislature. She spent the first 13 years of her life either on her family’s cattle ranch or in a middle-class neighborhood in Helena, the state capital. A couple of blocks away lived the British-born Supreme Court Justice Charles Henry Cooper who had two sons: Arthur and Frank James, who was 4 years older than Myrna Williams. Years later, Frank’s first name would be changed to Gary (Cooper) and he, like his young neighbor, would become one of the most popular movie stars in the world.

Following her father’s death in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, Myrna, her mother and the rest of the family moved to Los Angeles, where young Myrna attended the Westlake School for Girls and caught the acting bug. Dropping out of Venice High School before she was 17, Myrna got a job working for a brother-and-sister team called Fanchon and Marco, who were hired to create a prologue at Sid Grauman’s for Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.

In the ‘20s movie prologues were elaborately staged theater productions that would either provide a literal preview of the action in the movie that was to follow or provide a sense of the atmosphere to give the audience members an impression of the movie’s time, place and characters. One night, while dancing at Grauman’s Chinese, Mrs. Rudolph Valantino (Natacha Rambova, nee Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy) took a fancy to the barely 18-year old Myrna and pulled strings so she could get some extra work in Hollywood. Over the next several years Myrna (now named Loy) got bit parts, playing mostly vamps and young vixens and gypsies, like “Nubi” in the 1925 film The Squall. She had small, uncredited parts in Ben Hur (1925), Don Juan. the first film with sound effects (1926), and The Jazz Singer (1927), mistakenly referred to as “the first talking picture,” and Noah’s Ark (1928), one of the silent era’s greatest spectacles. Finally, in 1933, after appearing in some 75 pictures, Loy got a break, costarring with Walter Huston and professional boxers Max Baer, Jack Dempsey and Primo Carnera in The Prizefighter and the Lady. Despite its unpromising title, the film was well-received by both critics and movie-going public alike. The next year, 1934, she costarred with Clark Gable and William Powell in Manhattan Melodrama . . . a couple was born.

In this, teiir first pairing Myrna and Bill joined Clark Gable and the then 14-year old Mickey Rooney in a story about 2 childhood friends who go in opposite directions – one becomes first a D.A. and is then elected governor (Powell), the other a crook and murderer (Gable, playing the memorably-named “Blackie Gallagher"). Originally Blackie’s girl, Loy (Eleanor) leaves him when D.A. Powell (Jim Wade) arrests his childhood friend for murder. Jim and Eleanor eventually fall in love and marry, as Blackie goes to the chair. Written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and directed by W.S. Van Dyke (who would direct most of their “Thin Man” films), Manhattan Melodrama drew immediate worldwide attention. This was the movie that bank robber John Dillinger (“Public Enemy #1”) had just seen before he was gunned down in front of Chicago’s Biograph Theater on July 22, 1934. It turned out to be a press agent’s dream. It certainly did not hurt that the vast majority of critics found the pairing of Minnie and Bill to be nothing short of inspired.

Ironically, on May 25, 1934, two months before Dillinger was shot to death in Chicago, The Thin Man was released in the United States. It was that most hoped for of all Hollywood prayers: both a commercial and critical smash hit. Completed in an amazing 2 weeks with a scant B-movie budget of $226,000, it ended up grossing $1.4 million worldwide and was nominated for 4 Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay (the husband/wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. This was the year It Happened One Night took home awards for nearly everything in sight, including:

Best Picture
Best Actor (Clark Gable),
Best Actress (Claudette Colbert in a role originally offered to Myrna Loy),
Best Director (Frank Capra) and
Best Adapted Screenplay (the husband-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett).

The critics were absolutely besotted. Take but one review, that of Seton Margrave, movie critic for the Daily Mail, who wrote: “The most attractive feature of “The Thin Man” to me is the charm of the husband and wife as played by William Powell and Myrna Loy. These two people have a glorious time. They are completely in love with each other and with life. They share a marvelous sense of humor.” The anonymous reviewer for The New Republic noted that “The playing of Powell and Miss Loy rates the highest superlatives. It is a dead heat for first honors.” Louella Parsons called it “. . . the greatest entertainment, the most fun and the best mystery-drama of the year.”

From that point on, Minnie and Bill would make 12 more films together, including 5 more in the Thin Man franchise. The public simply could never get enough of Nick and Nora’s witty, urbane, gin-swilling husband-and-wife crime solving duo . . . always surrounded by audacious Runyonesque characters, their wire-haired terrier Asta (real name, “Skippy”) and their son Nickie, Jr., played first by 7-year old Richard Hall in 1941’s Shadow of Thin Man), and last by 11-year-old Dean Stockwell in 1947’s Song of the Thin Man, the final outing for Nick and Nora. The Thin Man oeuvre consists of:

.The Thin Man (1934): Newly married Nick and Nora drink their way through a case involving the disappearance of an inventor. Costarring Maureen O’Sullivan, Nat Pendelton and Cesar Romero.
After the Thin Man (1936): Back home in San Francisco for New Years, Nick and Nora (along with Asta and “Mrs.” Asta) reluctantly hunt for the murderer of Nora’s cousin’s husband. Co-starring James Stewart in one of his earliest films.
Another Thin Man (1939): Back in New York with Asta and son Nickie, Jr., the couple seeks to find out who killed Nora’s late father’s business partner. With C. Aubrey Smith.
Shadow of the Thin Man (1941): While at a local racetrack hoping for a pleasant afternoon, a jockey is killed. Nick and Nora are enlisted to look for the murderer by their friend, police Lt. Abrams (Sam Levene).
The Thin Man Goes Home (1945): While on a visit to Nick’s hometown, the local criminals assume he’s there on a case. When a corpse shows up on Nick’s father’s doorstep, the Charles’ vacation turns into yet another case.
Song of the Thin Man (1947): Nick and Nora are on a gambling ship where a murder occurs. 2 leading suspects come to them for help. The couple turns them over to the police and then looks for the real murderer.

One of the best things about the series was all the crackling, witty dialogue. Frequently being in their cups, Nick and Nora were capable of some of the most crackling, witty banter ever heard on screen:

Nick: I’m a hero. I was shot twice in the Tribune.
Nora: I read you were shot 5 times in the tabloids.
Nick: It’s not true. He didn’t come anywhere near my tabloids. (The Thin Man)

Nora: I love to watch you sleep. You look so cute. Nicky, have you any pictures of yourself taken as a baby?
Nick: No.
Nora: Aww, that’s a shame. I want to see what you looked like.
Nick: I’ll have some taken in the morning. (After the Thin Man)

Nick: I tell you what; you go home, cold cream that lovely face, slip into an exciting negligee.
Nora: Yes.
Nick: And I’ll see you in the morning. (Shadow of the Thin Man)
Nora: Nicky, do you really like cider?
Nick: Like it? I love it. Just the pure, natural juices of trhe apple. What could be better, for instance?
Nora: A dry martini, for instance.
Nick: That’s horrible stuff. It almost took the lining off my stomach.
Nora: Why do you care? It didn’t show. (The Thin Man Goes Home)

Minnie and Bill made 7 other films together, one of which, 1936’s The Great Ziegfeld was sui generis; it was a non-comedy, their only drama with music biopic; and the only movie they costarred in that captured the Oscar for Best Picture. Powell stars as the legendary Florenz Ziegfeld who went from being a sideshow barker to theater entrepreneur extraordinaire and became known as the man who “glorified the American girl.” After being married to the Jewish French revue star Anna Held (played by Luise Rainer who won the Academy Award for Best Actress) the non-Jewish Ziegfeld married the famous Broadway star (and future “Glinda, the Good Witch” in The Wizard of Oz), the role played to perfection by Loy. Of Powell’s Ziegfeld and Loy’s Burke, the New York Times’ Frank Nugent wrote: Mr. Powell's portrayal is no less attractive than it is flattering to the original. Miss Loy is a stately Billie Burke, and somewhat lacking, we fear, in Miss Burke's effervescence and gayety.

The rest of their filmography consists of films well within their comfort zone; roles the film-going public ate up:

Evelyn Prentice (1934) in which Powell plays John Prentice, a high-profile New York attorney married to Evelyn (Loy). Evelyn feels neglected by John, who has taken up with one of his clients (played by 27-year-old newcomer Rosalind Russell) and out of boredom, becomes involved with an unscrupulous womanizing poet essayed by the dependable character actor Harvey Stephens. Evelyn eventually finds herself a victim of blackmail and becomes involved in the poet’s murder. She begs her husband to defend her. They fall back in love. Show over. Evelyn Prentice is best known today as a courtroom mystery . . . a far cry from Nick and Nora. Nonetheless, Minnie and Bill play off one another with a dramatic dexterity that, in the end, steals the movie.
Libeled Lady (1936): A “screwball” comedy in which Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy) is the chief editor of the New York Evening Star. He keeps on delaying his marriage with Gladys (Jean Harlow) because of problems his newspapers must face. When a 5 million dollar lawsuit is filed by Connie Allenbury (Loy) for falsely printing she is a marriage-breaker, he plans a marriage in words only between Gladys and the Don Juan Bill Chandler (Powell). The goal is to catch Connie alone with a married man. In real (as opposed to “reel”) life, at the time this film was in production, Powell and Harlow were contemplating marriage. Regrettably, Harlow would die the following year at age 26. Powell paid for her $30,000 funeral, and after the coffin was dug up and held for ransom, Powell paid to have it found and then made sure that tons upon tons of concrete covered her burial site.
Double Wedding (1937): A screwball comedy like none other, Powell plays Charlie Lodge, a bohemian artist who lives in a trailer; Loy is Margit Agnew, who lives with her sister Irene (Florence Rice) and Irene’s long-time fiancé Waldo (John Beal). Margit, who is a comic example of a person with OCD has planned every aspect of her sister’s and future brother-in-law’s wedding, honeymoon and future married life down to a tee. Problem is, Waldo is a 100% milquetoast and will not stand up to Margit. After a mind-boggling series of misadventures, Irene marries Waldo and - not surprisingly - Margit winds up with Charlie. Tightly directed by Richard Thorpe with a screenplay by the Ukrainian-born Jo Swerling based on a play by the brilliant and at times contoversial Ferenc Molnar, production on Double Wedding was shut down for nearly a month due to Jean Harlow’s death.
I Love You Again (1940): Directed by W.S. Van Dyke (Minnie and Bill’s favorite director), Powell stars as Larry Wilson, an upstanding - and mean -teetotaler. While on a cruise he receives a blow on the head, causing him to revert to his old forgotten persona of a suave conman named George Carey. When he docks in New York, he is met by Kay (Loy) whom he discovers is his wife. What Larry/George does not know is that she is in the process of divorcing him in order to marry Herbert (Donald Douglas). As in Double Wedding, a series of misadventures
Love Crazy (1941): Costarring Gail Patrick (who had played Cornelia Bullock in Powell’s 1936 smash hit My Man Godfrey, and would go on to produce the long-running television show Perry Mason in the 1950s and ‘60s). In this romantic comedy Minnie and Bill played Steve and Susan Ireland, who are about to celebrate their 4th wedding anniversary by reenacting their first date. Susan’s meddling mother interrupts and injures herself. Steve is left to take care of her and when he meets an old flame in the elevator, Susan’s mother takes the opportunity to break up their marriage. She convinces Susan that Steve is cheating on her and urges her to divorce him. Upon seeking legal advice, Steve is informed that the only solution to save his marriage is to pretend he’s insane. Steve goes so far as to dress in drag (minus his famous moustache) to proof that he is bonkers. Both critics and public alike fell in love with this picture. Variety called it “. . . another marital comedy loaded with solid comedy, compactly set up and tempoed at a zippy pace. Love Crazy is a standout laugh hit of top proportions, a happy successor to previous Powell-Loy teamings.
The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947): Although Myrna Loy only has but a cameo in this, their last pairing, she nearly steals the picture. And believe it or not, the cast and crew kept her presence in the picture - which occurs at the very end - a secret from William Powell. In this, the only film that playwright, theater director and producer, humorist and drama critic George S. Kaufman ever directed, Powell plays the dim-witted blowhard United States Senator Melvin G. Ashton, who wants more than anything to be elected President. Ella Raines plays a reporter interested in the detailed diary he has kept for years and years detailing all the political misdeeds of his colleagues. The diary gets stolen and all hell breaks loose. Eventually the diary is found (Sen. Aston believed it had been stolen by Communists) and the Senator and his political bosses, are forced to flee to a South Sea Island, where he becomes chief of the native population. Loy shows up at the end of the movie in an uncredited cameo appearing as Aston’s wife who, throughout the film we’ve heard about but never seen. All-in-all, a hilarious though lightweight romp . . .

Although this was Minnie and Bill’s cinematic swansong together, they continued making motion pictures for several more years. Powell had starring and co-starring roles in an additional 8 films, his swansong being “Doc” in the 1955 delight Mister Roberts, starring warhorses Henry Fonda, James Cagney and Ward Bond, and directed by the greatest of them all, John Ford. By the time the film was shot, Powell was beginning to have trouble remembering his lines and was suffering from Cancer. Unbelievably, he lived another 29 years, spending the lion’s share of his time in Palm Springs with his 3rd (and longest lasting) wife, Diana "Mousie” Lewis. to whom he was married to until the day he died, March 5, 1984. (Powell’s 2nd wife was Carole Lombard, his costar in the 1936 screwball comedy My Man Godfrey. Despite the fact that they had divorced 3 years earlier, Powell demanded that Universal Studios hire her for the role of ditzy Irene Bullock.) His first wife was Broadway actress. Eileen Wilson, with whom he had his only child, a son named William Powell, Jr. Young Bill committed suicide at age 43; he had been suffering from depression, hepatitis. and kidney problems.

Minnie would continue making motion pictures and guest-starring on popular television shows (Ironside, Columbo, The Virginian) until the early 1980s. Among the 31 films and television shows she made, none was better - or more warmly remembered - than 1948’s Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House in which she plays Cary Grant’s wife, Muriel Blandings. In this much beloved films, the Blandings decide to build a home in the country. It turns out to be a whole lot more fraught with difficulties than they ever imagined. In 2000, the American Film Instituted listed this film as #72 of the Top 100 Funniest American Movies. Myrna Loy was married and divorced 4 times; her most notable husbands were producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. (to whom she was married from 1936-1942.) He was best known for Gaslight (1944), The Asphalt Jungle (1950) Oklahoma (1955) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957). Her, third husband was screenwriter Gene Markey (married 1946-1950), who is best remembered for penning the 1939 The Hound of the Baskervilles, and for also being married to actresses Hedy Lamarr and Joan Bennett. Myrna never had any children. Myrna Loy died in New York City on December 14, 1993. She was 88 years young.

Like all truly gifted thespians, William Powell and Myrna Loy, always made their craft look so very, very easy. What made them so exceptional as a cinematic couple, is that the audience knew they were having a grand old time together. Is it any wonder then, that most of the movie-going public believed they were husband-and-wife both on screen and off? They made movie magic by making marriage a glorious gambol.

Nora: Pretty girl.
Nick: Yes, she’s a very nice type.
Nora: You got types?
Nick: Only you darling. Lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.

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Make Me a Star!

November 08, 2024 / Kurt F. Stone

Most die-hard classic movie fans know that John Garfield was born Julius Garfinkle, Edward G. Robinson, Emmanuel Goldenberg, Cary Grant, Archibald Alexander Leach, and Joan Crawford, Lucille Fay LeSueur. It takes a world-class flicker freak to identify the following (the answers will be found at the end of this piece):

Spangler Arlington Brugh
Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke
Jane Alice Peters
Clara Viola Cronk
Ruby Stevens
William Henry Pratt
Alphonso d’Abruzzo
Maurice Micklewhite
Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko
Frederic Austerlitz Jr. & Virginia McMath
Dino Paul Crocetti & Jerome Joseph Levitch
Melvin Kaminsky & Jerome Silberman

What few fans know is that during the silver screen's first fifteen years (1900-1910), the movie-going public had no idea what their favorite stars names were - let alone those of directors, producers or screenwriters; they were either completely anonymous, known by their character names (such as "Broncho Billy," the first cowboy star, born “Max Aronson”) or identified by some physical characteristic. As an example, years before the public knew the name Mary Pickford (Gladys Marie Smith), they were head-over-heels in love with a virginal young actress known simply as "The Girl With the Curls." Similarly, the silver screen's first matinee idol, Maurice Costello, (who would one day become John Barrymore's drinking buddy . . . not to mention father-in-law) was known as either "The Dimpled Darling," or simply, "Dimples."

There were two reasons why early movie stars had no names:

Early studio owners and producers kept their actors (largely amateurs) anonymous, figuring that if the public knew their names, these nameless amateurs would demand higher salaries. (For the most part they earned $2.50 and $5.00 a day.)
Those actors who did come from the legitimate stage didn't want theatre-goers or the fellow thespians to know that they were "slumming." Most stage actors coming from the thee-ah-ter considered motion pictures decidedly déclassé. They managed to justify their "walk on the wild side" by convincing themselves (and their Broadway colleagues) they were only in it for the money . . . hence the anonymity.

That all changed in February, 1910.

The two people most directly responsible for this revolution were an elfin mogul named Carl Laemmle and a Canadian-born actress known to the public as "The Biograph Girl." Laemlle, originally from Laupheim, Germany emigrated to the United States as a young man with $50.00 in his pockets and an itch to make something of himself. By the age of 17 he was bookkeeper for the Continental Clothing Company in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Armed with an innate genius for self-promotion and a love of spectacle, he wandered into the nascent movie industry and in 1909, on a shoestring, created a production/distribution company with the pixiesque name "I.M.P.," which stood for "Independent Moving Pictures." Its logo featured a suitably impish logo of a grinning devil wielding a pitchfork. It took guts to create IMP; in so doing, Laemmle would be forced to take on Thomas Alva Edison's "Motion Pictures Patents Trust," which ordained that any company wishing to use an Edison-made camera had to pay his trust a royalty for every foot of film exposed. Against tremendous odds, Laemlle successfully took on Edison and proved in court that the Trust was in violation of the Sherman Anti Trust Act.

Step one.

Next, Laemmle decided to enhance both his image and that of his company by stealing away and signing the most popular movie star of the day: the Canadian-born Florence Lawrence, who had been a stage actress since age 6. Moving over to moving pictures in about 1906, Florence worked first for the Vitagraph Company and then for Biograph, whose director was the great D.W. Griffith. So taken was the public with this incredibly photogenic young woman with the most expressive face on celuloid, that they flooded the studio, (located at 11 East 14th St. near Union Square) demanding to know her name. When the studio refused to reveal her name, her hundreds of thousands of fans took to calling her, simply "The Biograph Girl." Making upwards of three one-reel films a week, Florence made a fortune for Biograph, which paid her a mere $25.00 (about $655.00 in today's money) a week. Needless to say, Florence was dissatisfied, and surreptitiously, began contacting other studios to find out if anyone might be willing to pay her more. When Biograph found out about what she was doing, they fired her. But Florence wasn't out of work for long.

Enter Carl Laemmle.

Laemmle, who as mentioned above, had a flair for self-promotion and publicity stunts, came up with a doozy which he shared with the Biograph Girl. She agreed to go ahead with it . . . especially since Laemmle agreed to pay her an astounding $125.00 a week (about $3.200.00 in today's dollars. What Laemmle did was to stage a ruse to publicize his new leading lady.

Laemmle planted a newspaper story in February 1910 that the “Biograph Girl” had been struck and killed by a streetcar, and then took out an advertisement in an industry newspaper to debunk the story. “We Nail a Lie” (see facimile above) declared the IMP advertisement, which blamed rival studios for the deception of its own creation and announced that not only was Lawrence alive, but that she would star in its next film.

A star was born. Shortly thereafter, Laemmle revealed to the public the name of one of the heretofore leading male heartthrobs: King Baggot, the first "King of the Movies." Before too long, an ever-increasing number of photo-players were known by name and, as the early producers feared, were paid more and more money. Within four years, a Jewish girl from the North Avondale section of Cincinnati (where yours truly lived while studying to become a rabbi) named Theodosia Goodman, would be renamed "Theda Bara" (supposedly an anagram for "Arab Death”) was turned into a vamp and paid $4,000.00 a week by William Fox (Vilmos Fried), the eponymous founder of everything Fox. (BTW, Theda's $4,000.00 is the equivalent of nearly $95,000.00 per week in today’s money . . . and at a time when there was no such thing as an income tax.)

Lawrence and Laemmle's fortunes would go in opposite directions. Florence Lawrence would make some 55 pictures for Carl Laemlle's IMP Company over the next year, then move on to the Lubin Company for which she would make another 75 pictures. By 1916, her career was on a downward spiral; over the next 20 years she would appear on screen (frequently as an uncredited extra) in but 20 pictures for such "Poverty Row" studios as Nestor, Supreme, M.H. Hoffman, and Ben Wilson Productions. By the end of 1938, Florence Lawrence, the "Biograph Girl" and world's first motion picture star with a name was dead . . . the victim of suicide. It was depressing when an adoring public did not know her name back before 1910; it became lethally so when the public had entirely forgotten her less than 30 years later . . .

For Carl Laemmle, things went in the precise opposite direction . . . up, up, up. In 1915, "IMP" became "Universal Studios," with a 237-acre facility located in an area just outside Hollywood proper, forever known as "Universal City." At the studio's two-day grand opening (March 15 and 16, 1915) which was attended by the crème de la crème, including Henry Ford and literally thousands of locals, the young John Ford who managed to get his job because he was the brother of then-serial star Francis Fox, then an assistant director, occasional actor and all-round roustabout, managed to burn down an entire Western set which quickly spread to the rest of the studio, nearly burning it to the ground. The quick-on-his-feet, nearly fired Ford (born Seán Aloysius, sometimes with surname O'Feeny or Ó Fearna), claimed that he had done it on purpose in order to get spectacular footage for an upcoming Western film! He was subsequently hired to direct cowboy pictures . . . and the rest is history. Within 3 years, Laemlle's Universal Studios had more than 6,000 employees, a vast number of whom were relatives including future director William Wyler and his 18-year old secretary Irving Thalberg, who would eventually become the legendary production manager at MGM. Indeed, Laemmle had so many cousins, nieces, nephews and children working for him that all Hollywood grew to know the line "Carl Laemmle (pronounced lem-lee) has a big femiy . . ." And of course today, Universal is as big as ever.

But for all his accomplishments, Laemmle's most important - and certainly most enduring - accomplishment may well have been giving stars the right to have names . . . either the ones they were born with or the ones they were assigned by their studios, agents or publicists.

And speaking of names, here are the Hollywood names of the people listed at the beginning of this piece:

Spangler Arlington Brugh: Robert Taylor
Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke: Mary Astor
Jane Alice Peters: Carole Lombard
Clara Viola Cronk: Clair Windsor
Ruby Stevens: Barbara Stanwyck
William Henry Pratt: Boris Karloff
Alphonso d’Abruzzo: Alan Alda
Maurice Micklewhite: Michael Caine
Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko: Natalie Wood
Frederic Austerlitz Jr. & Virginia McMath: Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers
Dino Paul Crocetti & Jerome Joseph Levitch: Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis
Melvin Kaminsky & Jerome Silberman: Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder

That's pretty much how a Hollywood brat born with the last name "Schimberg," got lawfully "Stoned" when he was 7 . . .

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#35 Adolph Zukor (1873-1976): Architect of Hollywood

December 17, 2023 / Kurt F. Stone

In his 1953 autobiography, The Public is Never Wrong, the then 80-year old Adolph Zukor wrote:

My supreme faith was in the public. I was convinced that audiences would create stars of its own.We built the modern movie industry on the star system, but the public made the stars. All the skill of directors and all the booming of press-agent drums will not make a star. Only the audiences can do it

There was a group at Shanley’s Restaurant at Forty-third Street and Broadway. It was a theatrical rendezvous, much like Sardis would become years and years later.

Included in the “group” were William A. Brady, who had managed heavyweight boxing champions “Gentleman” Jim Corbett and Jim Jeffries and Adolph Zukor. The early, early movie industry owes much to brothers: Charles and Daniel Frohman, Jake and Lee Schubert (their brother Sam was killed in a train accident, otherwise there would have been three of them), Joe and Nick Schenck. A couple of the younger regulars – Jake and Lee Schubert –- had come down from Syracuse, and were fighting Klaw & Erlanger, the legitimate theatrical syndicate.

The Schencks had moved from the drugstore business in the Bronx to management of an amusement part, which occupied only part of their time. Joe booked vaudeville acts and Nick devoted most of his time to theater management.

Thus seven of the round-table regulars were in the business end – Brady, the Schuberts, the Schencks, Marcus Loew and the elfin Adolph Zukor. With the exception of William Brady, the regulars were all children of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, with only Loew having been born in New York.

Of these, Loew and Zukor would become the most important to the development of the motion picture industry – literally taking it from what most believed to be a passing fad to a multi-billion dollar industry. And although the name “Loews” is still well-known and “Zukor” largely forgotten, it is the latter who was, by far, the more important of the two in terms of the industry. Part of the reason is that Marcus Loew, he whose holding company would be the parent of MGM, died young – at age 57 in 1927 – Zukor, despite being merely 3 years younerg than Loew, would live for another half-century, finally dying of old age at 103.

So just who was Adolph Zukor?

He was born Adolph Cukor in the village of Ricse in Hungary on Jan. 7, 1873. He lost both of his parents - father Jacob, who ran a general store, and his mother, Hannah - before he reached the age of 10, and along with his brother Arthur, were sent to live with their uncle, Kalman Liebermann, a rabbi who hoped Adolph would follow in his footsteps. In his autobiography, Zukor noted: "I had the devil of a time persuading my uncle … that I wasn't cut out for the theological calling." His brother, Arthur, did, in fact, become a rabbi.

Zukor was an unexceptional student. At the age of 12, he was apprenticed to a store owner for whom he swept, ran errands, and did chores. He attended night school twice a week. Zukor got paid nothing for his work, but received clothes and shoes from an orphans' fund. Learning of America from letters sent by immigrants, Zukor decided that he wanted to travel there. In 1888, he asked the orphans' fund for money to travel to America. He received enough for a steamship ticket and $40.

In 1889, at the age of 16, he immigrated to America. In New York City, Zukor found work as an apprentice in a fur shop for $4 a week. Zukor stayed there for two years. When he left to become a "contract" worker, sewing fur pieces and selling them himself, he was nineteen years old and an accomplished designer. But he was young and adventuresome; three years later, the 19-year-old Zukor bought a ticket to Chicago, IL, drawn there by the 1893 Columbian Exposition, which commemorated Columbus' arrival in the New World. (The fellow who directed the exposition’s so-called Midway Plaisance its amusement section, which contained the world’s first Ferris Wheel – was a 23 year old San Franciscan named Sol Bloom, who would go on to have a storied career including nearly 30 years as a member of Congress.)

One planted in Chicago, Zukor joined a fellow former New Yorker, Morris Kohn, in a successful fur business. Zukor, who was somewhat shy and retiring, worked in the shop while Kohn handled the sales and customer relations. In the second season of operation, Zukor and Kohn's Novelty Fur Company expanded to twenty-five men and opened a branch factory. It was while on the road that Kohn first met Marcus Loew, then also a furrier, a dandy in a high hat and fur-lined coat.

Over the next 2 years, Zukor saved several thousand dollars. Around age 21, he returned to Hungary for a visit and saw some of Europe. He married Lottie Kaufman, also a Hungarian immigrant, in 1897. The couple would have two children, Mildred and Eugene.

After their firm, renamed Kohn & Company moved to New York in 1900, Zukor lived across from the Loews at 111th Street and Seventh Avenue, and were soon warm friends. The two started dining at Shanley’s with the rest of the impresarios. Zukor’s first serious interest in show business came through the conversation of a cousin, Max Goldstein, who in 1903 approached him for a loan to invest in exhibition pioneer Mitchell Mark's penny arcade business. Zukor joined forces with Mark to open the Automatic Vaudeville Company which featured Thomas Edison's phonograph recordings, as well as early motion pictures. The company soon expanded into Philadelphia, Boston and Newark thanks to another furrier, Marcus Loew.

Their penny arcade featured phonographs and short movies, as well as peep machines, a shooting gallery, punching bags, stationary bicycles, and candy. Zukor built his penny arcade business, the nucleus of his cinema empire, with the money he had made from inventing a patent snap for furs. The business did very well, bringing in $500 to $700 a day. Zukor decided to get out of the fur business and devote all his time to the arcade.

As Zukor tells the story in his autobiography, The Public is Never Wrong: At that time the center of show business in New York was at Fourteenth Street. In time, the conversation got around to the possibilities of a penny arcade in that section. Such a venture would cost a lot of money.

The total cost, the three partners estimated, would run to $75,000. We leased a building on East Fourteenth Street. A hundred or more peep machines were installed. about 60% of them phonographs and the rest motion pictures. The phonographs were more popular because changes of records were available. Sufficient film was hard to get.

Other slot machines delivered peanuts, candy, and the like. Everything cost a penny, a penny to get in and a penny a look, a listen, or a handful of food.

From the beginning the enterprise was a success. The daily take ranged from five hundred to seven hundred dollars. By the end of 1903, we were expanding to Newark, Philadelphia, and Boston, with the result that Kohn and I decided to close out our fur business to devote full energies to the arcades.

Marcus Loew, hearing us talk about the arcades, wanted in. Our next step was to convert the floor over the Fourteenth Street Arcade to a motion picture theater. In 1904 the Crystal Hall, as we named the theater, was ready

Crystal Hall patrons got a fifteen-minute show for a nickel. Some better material was arriving from France. Among the most popular films with the penny-paying public were the works of the Frenchman Georges Méliès. They were absolutely remarkable for their time.

In 1903, the first “story” picture, Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery, caused an absolute sensation. The most important film of its time was less than a reel in length, with a showing time of less than ten minutes. Porter showed great talent and skill in telling his simple story, using flashbacks and a careful organization of scenes. It was a revolutionary film.

At the end of the film – which for the first time told a story from beginning to end – a lone gunman faces the camera and fires. People ran in fear for their lives; no one had ever seen anything like it . . . and they told their friends. With that one pistol shot, flickers – or “chasers” were quickly coming out of their infancy. Zukor, among others, sat up at took notice.

As a sideline to his promotion of Gentleman Jim Corbett and other ventures, impresario William A. Brady had bought the New York rights to the Hale’s Tours, developed by George C. Hale, ex-chief of the Kansas City fire department.

Hale had built a motion picture theater in the shape of a typical railroad coach of the day. As the film ran, the “car” moved back and forth, giving the feel of movement. In its time, it was as exciting as any ride at Disneyland. Zukor decided to go into Hale’s Tours with Brady.

Zukor's fascination with the growing field of motion pictures led him to create Hales' Tours, a simulated train ride that featured travelogue footage and elaborate sound effects. The venture failed, but Zukor rebounded after joining Marcus Loew's growing company as its treasurer. Nickelodeons were its stock and trade, but the public's desire for more motion pictures soon led them to purchase more businesses to convert into movie theaters. But he soon tired of the brick-and-mortar aspect of the business, and left Loews in 1912 to strike out on his own.

A perceived obstacle to his ambitions was the fact that movies, or "flickers" as they were then known, were very short, usually no more than 12 minutes. Others in the industry felt that American audiences would not want to see anything longer. Zukor felt that audiences would sit through a movie for an hour or more, if it had a good story. Zukor tested his theory by paying $40,000 (worth approximately $1.25 million in 2023 dollars) for the rights to a three-reel European religious movie, The Passion Play. Zukor described the audience's reaction in his autobiography: "The scene was one of the most remarkable I have ever witnessed. Many women viewed the picture with religious awe. Some fell to their knees. I was struck by the moral potentialities of the screen." The film had a good run and proved to Zukor that Americans would sit through longer pictures.

Soon afterward, Zukor learned of a French producer, Louis Mercanton, who wanted to make a four-reel movie starring the famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt, in her successful play Queen Elizabeth. Mercanton's project was being delayed for lack of funds. Zukor, in partnership with Daniel Frohman, advanced Mercanton $40,000 to secure the North American rights to the movie. It was the first test of his theory that American audiences sit through a film of this length.

On July 12, 1912, the movie premiered and their investment paid off when New York society elites attended the premiere at the Lyceum Theater. Historians consider this to be the first full-length film ever shown in America.

Zukor and Frohman also launched a road-show by touring the country with the film, which amassed some $200,000 in ticket sales. The pair used the proceeds to establish their own production company, Famous Players Film Company, with which Zukor hoped to create filmed versions of full-length classical plays. They rented the top two floors of the old Ninth Regiment Armory at 213-227 West Twenty-Sixth Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.

For their publicity man they chose a smart young fellow named Ben P. Schulberg. In late 1912, the Connecticut-born Shulberg was in his early twenties, a newspaperman who recently had been doing publicity for Edwin Porter’s Rex Company.

Al Kaufman, who would become the Famous Players-Lasky studio manager, spent a good deal of his time hanging around outside the Lambs’ Club, buttonholing actors. He had no easy time hiring players. Zukor’s salary offers of from fifty to two hundred dollars a week ($1,500 to $6.000 in today’s money), according to the size of the role, worked a number of wonders.

Their first production was 1913's The Prisoner of Zenda, starring the famous Shakespearian stage actor named James K. Hackett. Zukor signed Hackett for $1,200 a week for 4 weeks work. The total budget for the film was estimated at forty thousand to fifty thousand dollars (upwards of $1.5 million in today’s money).

Though tiny compared with the multimillion budgets of today, it was three or four times the sum ever spent on a picture in America. Most one-reelers were ground out on a budget of a few hundred to a thousand dollars. The fact that each of their five reels would run nearly ten times, the top figure shows how much above the average they were paying for cast, authorship, scenery, costumes, and the rest.

The Prisoner of Zenda wound up reaping a sizable box office reward. The following year, Zukor and a former San Francisco-born vaudevillian named Jesse L Lasky went into business together, forming the Jesse L. Lasky's Feature Player Company. Zukor and Lasky quickly signed deals with Paramount Pictures Corporation to distribute their films throughout the United States. Lasky and his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldwyn, had just released "The Squaw Man" (1914), directed by a former stage actor named Cecil B. DeMille.

Jesse Lasky and his sister Bess had been traveling vaudevillians. When Bess quit the act in order to marry a prosperous, cantankerous glove salesman named Samuel Goldish (Gelbfisch), Jesse decided to become an agent. As with many, he began thinking about getting into flickers. In 1914, Jesse and Sam, with the financial backing of Adolph Zukor, who would distribute their first film through his Paramount Distribution Company, hired the young Cecile B. DeMille to direct their first picture . . . whatever it may be. DeMille had never directed a film. In matter of fact, it was his brother, William C. de Mille that Famous Players really wanted. They wound up paying a hefty sum for the rights to a tried-and-true Broadway play called “The Squaw Man.” They also agreed to pay $5,000 to the famous actor Dustin Farnum to star in the film version of the play he had made famous on Broadway.

A small crew traveled out west to make the picture. Before this time, 95% of all Westerns were filmed in Ft. Lee, New Jersey. Owing largely to the fact that Famous Players was going to be haunted – and hunted – by members of the so-called “Trust” – the hand-picked group approved of by Edison to make films – they decided to go out west. The “trust” was reaching for a strangle hold, beginning in 1910 with the Patents Company and following with the General Film Company.

The moment an “outlaw” piece of equipment or film appeared in a movie house, the license was withdrawn and the supply of “trust” pictures cut off. As an additional weapon, the “trust” contracted with the Eastman Kodak Company, major supplier of raw film, to sell stock only to licensed companies.

The companies involved in the trust were Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Kalem, Selig, George Kleine, and the American branches of Pathé and Méliès.

The first person to challenge the Trust – and win – was Carl Laemmle, who headed up a conglomerate called “IMP” – the Independent Motion Pictures. IMP would eventually coalesce into Universal Studios.

Laemmle plays a very important role in the history of motion pictures. Heretofore, actors weren’t identified by name. The feeling was, that if the public knew the names of the people appearing on the screen, they, the actors, would demand salaries in excess of the $10 per week they were earning at the time. Instead, the public only knew them as “the girl with the curls” (Mary Pickford), “the man with the dimples” (Maurice Costello) or “the fat Man” (John Bunny). (Bunny, by the way, was at the time of his death in 1915, the most popular film comedian in the world. Within a year of his death, he had been completely forgotten. The reason? Charlie Chaplin had taken the world by storm.)

Laemmle changed all that via a ruse. About the time Zukor was becoming interested in motion pictures, the most popular – though unnamed – actor on screen was a woman known as “The Biograph Girl” – Florence Lawrence. The Biograph Company paid her the munificent sum of twenty-five dollars a week. Laemmle made arrangements to hire Lawrence at double her salary. Here’s where the ruse came in. Laemmle released an anonymous story to the press stating that “The ‘Biograph Girl’, whose real name was Florence Lawrence, was killed in a street car accident yesterday.” Laemmle then waited twenty-four hours while the horrific news quickly traveled across the country. The public was devastated to learn that their favorite star – whose name they now knew – was dead. Then, Laemmle held a press conference at which he denounced who ever had released the information, saying that it must’ve been done by his enemies, because Florence Lawrence, the former “Biograph Girl,” was now to be employed by IMP, in a one-reel film to be entitled, ironically, “Never Again.” From that point on stars, began making real money. Within 6 years Adolph Zukor would be paying Mary Pickford $20,000 a week, 52 weeks a year.

When DeMille and his crew arrived in Arizona to begin filming, they quickly came to realize that 100+ degree temperatures were no good for their film stock; it quickly melted. And so, they traveled further west until they came to a small town called Hollywood (pronounced in those days HollyWOOD). There, for $75.00 they took out a 3-month lease on a stable at the southeast corner of Selma and Vine. And that is where they shot their picture. Made at a cost of slightly under $20,000, the film grossed nearly a quarter of a million; Lasky, Goldfish, DeMille and Zukor were on their way to fame and fortune.

The picture drew the attention of Paramount Pictures Corporation, a distributor in search of features. The Paramount Pictures Corporation was not founded by Zukor, though he was partly responsible. The organizers were a group of film exchange men led by W.W. Hodkinson, who represented exchanges in the Far West. Its purpose was not to make pictures but to distribute them. Famous Players and Lasky signed an agreement to allow Paramount to handle their pictures, but quickly realized that they could reap bigger profits by controlling the distribution as well as the production. So Zukor purchased a large majority of Paramount stock to take control of the company, and in 1916, it was folded into a larger entity, the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, with Zukor as its president and Lasky its vice-president. Goldwyn initially settled for vice-president status, but was eventually forced out; he would later help to establish Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer before launching one of the most successful independent producing careers in Hollywood history.

After consolidating his numerous subsidiary companies, including Paramount, Realart Pictures and the George M. Cohan Film Corporation, under the Famous Players-Lasky umbrella, Zukor set out to streamline his business. He signed many of the top stars of the period, including Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson. In doing so, he required that any exhibitor who wished to screen their films also had to purchase a year's worth of other Famous Players-Lasky releases, often sight unseen. This practice, known as "block booking," drew the ire of numerous exhibitors, including the First National Exhibitions Circuit, who boycotted Famous Players-Lasky in 1919. Faced with the loss of nearly 600 nationwide theaters, Zukor then began purchasing theater chains. Within a few years, he had snapped up hundreds of movie houses, making Famous Players-Lasky one of the largest theater owners in the world.

In 1921, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) caught wind of Zukor's plan and charged Famous Players-Lasky and its subsidiaries with conspiracy and restraint of trade, which violated their anti-trust laws. Theater owners testified about the company's strong-arm tactics, which included building movie houses across the street from theaters that refused to accept block booking and even outright physical intimidation. In 1927, the FTC ruled that block booking was an unfair trade practice, and filed a cease and desist order against Zukor and his company. But Zukor had built his company into a formidable entity that could withstand such threats, even from the government. The profits he drew from his box office hits allowed him to make several significant purchases, including a hefty share of the Columbia Broadcasting System and the Balaban and Katz theater chain, which allowed him to expand his theater holdings to over 2,000 screens across the United States. He had also built a West Coast studio for production, which would eventually become Paramount Studios. An animation department, headed by Max and Dave Fleischer, was also presentin serious competition for Walt Disney's product. When faced with the FTC's charges, Zukor simply denied them. His stance was regarded as arrogance by both the media and the government, which responded with a massive anti-equity suit in 1929, charging Famous Players-Lasky and nine other studios of monopolizing 98 percent of domestic distribution. The following year, the Supreme Court declared the 10 studios guilty of violating anti-trust law.

Zukor had an interesting relationship with Mary Pickford, to say the least. There has never been anything just like the public adulation showered on Mary. It caught Zukor by surprise.

In 1916 Mary was twenty-three, had been married for several years, and was being paid more money than the President of the United States. Yet to the public, she was a little girl somewhere between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Zukor did nothing to discourage the illusion.Pickford had started out on Broadway acting in David Belasco’s “The Warrens Of Virginia,” and then went on to do dozens of one and two-real pictures for DW Griffith at Biograph Studios. With Zukor, she had a sometimes father-daughter, sometimes employer/employee relationship. Every time Charlie Chaplin would get a raise, she’d march into Zukor’s office and ask for at least one dollar more than the little tramp was getting. At one time her salary demand was so excessive that Zukor offered her a quarter of $1 million – $250,000 a year for five years – to not make pictures. Pickford, who always played a little girl despite being in her twenties, responded that she wasn’t getting any younger, and to stay away from the screen, would effectively end her career. Eventually, Pickford – along with Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and DW Griffith – would go into business for themselves as United Artists. Zukor was fond of saying that Mary Pickford had a cash register for a brain.

At one point, in order to keep Pickford in line, brought in an exquisite actress by the name of Marguerite Clark to play a role similar to Mary’s. Curiously though, Marguerite did not care to be a star. She did not dislike acting. She was merely indifferent to fame. For a couple of years she was just a step behind Mary Pickford in terms of national popularity. But Clarke retired from the screen in 1921, shortly after Pickford had left to found United Artist. Zukor had no other choice but to find another second string Mary Pickford. This time he chose a teenager named Mary Miles Minter. Minter rose to the crest of fame but less in than two years, was out of pictures for good; at age 20, she was prominently named in his scandal in which the famed director William Desmond Taylor was found murdered.

In the summer of 1916, Famous Players merged with the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. Goldfish became chairman of the board, De Mille director-general, Lasky vice-president, and Zukor president.

A short time later Zukor put on his hat and started for the door. Lasky and Zukor had gotten along fine. De Mille made things hum efficiently in Hollywood. Every hour on the hour, and sometimes the half hour however, Goldfish sent a shock through the organization.

Zukor became convinced that Goldwyn disagreed many times only for the sake of argument. He liked operating in turmoil. Zukor, on the other hand, liked to move with greater care. His aim was the building of a large and wide-flung organization, while Goldwyn operated in the moment.

Things became so tense and unmanageable that in 1916 Zukor, Lasky and DeMille, decided to buy out Goldfish for nearly $900,000. With that money, he and Edgar Selwyn (Simon), a prominent actor and impresario, formed Goldwyn Pictures. The name “Goldwyn” was an amalgam of the first syllable of Sam’s name (“gold”) and the second syllable of Edgar’s name (“wyn”). The partnership was not to last; several years later Sam who was again tossed out on his ear – but not before receiving yet another $900,000 with which he started Samuel Goldwyn Productions, and purchased the old Thomas Ince Studios in Inglewood, which would eventually become the home of MGM. And even though Sam Goldwyn never had anything to do with MGM, he did own the land and buildings they used. Sam eventually legally changed his name to Goldwyn, and at the time a pundit quipped, “he took the wrong syllables. He should have taken the first syllable from Edgar’s last name and the second syllable from his, thereby becoming Samuel Selfish.”

One of the high points in the twenties for Zukor was the dedication, in 1926, or the Paramount Building, occupying the Broadway block between Forty-third and forty-fourth streets in Times Square – including the site of the old Shanley Restaurant. The building was thirty-three stories high and contained the vast Paramount Theatre. The structure cost seventeen million dollars.

The 1930s saw Paramount develop into a movie factory, turning out 60 to 70 films per year. It boasted a stable of talent as impressive as its roster of silent stars, including Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Bing Crosby, Carole Lombard and the Marx Brothers. Zukor himself oversaw many of Paramount's best films of the decade, including "The Cocoanuts" (1929), the Oscar-winning "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1931) and "The Milky Way" (1937). Other hits films to spring from the corner of Melrose and Gower were "Morocco" (1930), "Duck Soup" (1933), "She Done Him Wrong" (1933) and "Beau Geste" (1939). Its animation department also found great success with two of its creations, Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor, which would go on to become iconic figures in cartoon history. Zukor managed all of these various entities with a calm, avuncular manner that belied the accepted notion of the studio chief as tyrant, as put forth by such notorious martinets as Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer and his former partner, Samuel Goldwyn.

Zukor was, first and foremost, a businessman. He retained only as much interest in the artistic side of Paramount motion pictures as was necessary, preferring instead to work behind the scenes to ensure his company's financial stability. When required to deal with his stars, he was a shrewd negotiator who sought to resolve contract disputes and other issues as swiftly as possible. He quashed a feud between squabbling stars Gloria Swanson and Pola Negri by moving Negri, a Polish-born sex goddess, to Hollywood while keeping Swanson, an all-American flapper, at his home base in New York. At one time he soothed Mary Pickford's aggressive stage mother by building a clause into her daughter's contract that gave her $25,000 a year for "moral support."

A tiny man, the five-foot, one-inch Zukor had a knack for disarming people with his serene demeanor, a quality that earned him the nicknames "Sugar" (which was the literal translation of his surname in Hungarian) and "Uncle Adolph." And if he was occasionally ruthless with business partners or potential adversaries, he did it in a manner that made it clear that the conflict was strictly part of business, and not a personal vendetta. Zukor saved his energies for card-playing and golf, both of which he pursued with such a passion that he built an 18-hole course at his estate in Rockland County, NY.

But as many moguls who came to power in the 1920s soon discovered, the old ways of making movies were gradually rendered irrelevant in the 1940s and 1950s. Paramount, in particular, suffered considerable losses during these decades. The long-dormant specter of block booking returned with a vengeance in 1948, when the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department reopened their anti-trust case against the five major studios. The Supreme Court eventually sided with the government, as seen in the 1948 decision of United States vs. Paramount Pictures Inc., which barred movie studios from owning theater chains. The ruling not only forced Paramount to cut back on production at the height of its popularity - when stars like Bob Hope, Alan Ladd, Dorothy Lamour and Betty Hutton were on their payroll, all earning upwards of $20,000 per week - but also signaled the end of the studio system . . essentially, the deregulation of Hollywood.

Paramount went into a decline as a result of the court decision. They released their players from the contracts, and produced most of their projects through independent entities. Attempts to break into the television market through the DuMont Network and a pay TV service called International Telemeter also failed, further plunging their finances into disarray. With his empire now in tatters, Zukor decided to avoid the fate of many of his peers who had been ousted by the studios they had built, and retired in 1959. The respect he had earned from his employees allowed him to be named Chairman Emeritus, a position he held until his death at the age of 103 on June 10, 1976.

His wife Lotte had died in 1956 at age 80

They had two children: Mildred (1900-1986) who married and divorced Arthur Loew, the son of Marcus Loew, and son Eugene (1897-1994) who was an entertainment executive and film producer. He produced a handful of films including "The Island of Lost Men," "The Way of All Flesh" and "Women Without Names."

Towards the end of his life, Zukor, when asked why so many Jewish people were involved with creating the motion picture industry, succinctly stated:

Those of us who became film producers hailed from all sorts of occupations--furriers, magicians, butchers, boilermakers--and for this reason highbrows have often poked fun at us. Yet one thing is certain: every man who succeeded was a born showman. And once in show business he was never happy out of it

The man knew what he was talking about . . .

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categories / Hollywood Bios

Meet Dalton Trumbo, AKA Robert Rich

June 25, 2023 / Kurt F. Stone

Beginning this Fall (Thursday, October 12 to be precise) I will begin presenting a four-week course at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, on Dalton Trumbo - one of Hollywood’s most talented screenwriters. In a career spanning nearly 45 years and just shy of 80 films, Colorado-born Trumbo (1905-1976) won 2 Oscars for best screenplay (1954’s Roman Holiday and 1957’s The Brave One [both written under assumed names]). A down-to-earth writer and longtime political activist, Trumbo was known to write most of his screenplays while reclining in a bathtub filled with hot water. At times a member of the Communist Party, he also wrote some of the most patriotic films during World War II. As a result of his political affiliations and causes, he became a member of the notorious “Hollywood Ten,” a group of mostly actors and directors, who were imprisoned (and eventually blacklisted). For actors, being blacklisted meant being out of work; one cannot change their face. For directors, it meant going abroad to ply their craft - if they were lucky - in Europe; for screenwriters, it meant penning scripts and then employing a “front” to hand in the completed work . . . often receiving a mere percentage of what they were accustomed to earn. (In the late 1930s and early 1940s Trumbo earned more than $3,000 a week . . . nearly $65,000 a week in 2023 dollars. In the 1950’s, his “fronted” screenplays often earned him no more than $250.00 in total. )

Among his 80 screenplays One finds some of the best films of all time, including:

Five Came Back (1939)
Kitty Foyle (1940 - for which Ginger Rogers took home the best actress Oscar)
A Guy Named Joe (1943) starring Spencer Tracy and Irene Dunne)
Tender Comrade (1943) starring Ginger Rogers and directed by Edward Dmytryk)
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) starring Spencer Tracy in one of the best of all WWII dramas.
Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945) starring Edward G. Robinson and Margaret O’Brien
Gun Crazy (1950) one of the all-time best noir thrillers
Town Without Pity (1960) starring Kirk Douglas
Spartacus (1960) winner of 4 Academy Awards
Exodus (1960) Kirk Douglas; from the novel by Leon Uris
Lonely Are the Brave (1962) one of the most intelligent Westerns of all time.
The Fixer (1968) from the novel by Bernard Malamud
Johnny Got His Gun (1971) one of the most devastating antiwar films ever, remade in 2008
The Way We Were (1973) Streisand and Redford; a film close to Trumbo’s heart
Papillion (1973) Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman; one of Hollywood’s best escape films; remade in 2017

As mentioned above, my 4-week course will begin on October 12. The first film we will screen is the 2015 biopic Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston as Trumbo, Diane Lane as his wife Cleo, and Dame Helen Mirren as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, one of the nastiest, most virulent anti-Communists in Hollywood - a woman who hounded Trumbo (among many others) both before, during and after their blacklisting. The film was well received by both critics and the public alike. The reviewer for Screen Daily noted “Bryan Cranston creates a potent sense of Trumbo as a reasonable man, full of charm, eloquence and principle and he is surrounded by a string of performances to savour.”

The other 3 films to be screened and discussed will be, in order, Tender Comrade, The Brave One, and The Fixer. Tender Comrade, starring Ginger Rogers, Robert Ryan, Ruth Hussey, Kim Hunter (in only her 2nd film) and Patricia Collinge is crucial to Dalton Trumbo’s career; it would turn out to be the one film anti-Communist witch-hunters would use against him the most to “prove” that he was injecting Soviet propaganda into his scripts. For the most part, they would begin and end their accusations with the very name of the film Tender COMRADE, a term frequently used among Communists. What was almost unanimously overlooked was the fact that at the very begining of the film . . . before any dialogue or introduction of the stars . . . there was this: TO MY WIFE - Teacher, Tender, Comrade, Wife, A fellow-farer true through life, Heart-whole and soul-free The August Father gave to me. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

“Tender Comrade” is the story of 4 women, all working at a war munitions factory, as their husbands are off fighting the Nazis and Japanese. All 4 live in separate apartments and complain how little money they have left over after paying rent. One day, Jo (Ginger Rogers) suggests that if they pool their salaries, they can afford to rent a house and still have enough to hire a housekeeper. Jo calls for a vote “It’s a Democracy!”) and they agree to “share and share alike.” That’s the basic plot. But for the conspiracists who were beginning to see “Reds beneath the beds”, that was too much. What Trumbo saw as good old-fashioned American ideals, the Red-hunters saw as pure Stalinism. And then there was the matter of Trumbo and director Edward Dmytryk.

Both of them were already well known in the Hollywood community for their leftist leanings. During filming, Ginger Rogers, a staunch Republican, began noticing what she interpreted to be anti-American speeches in her dialogue. Upon complaining, the speeches were given to other actresses. Here is but one example:

Barbara Thomas (Ruth Hussey): Maybe I'm not so dumb as you think I am. This whole thing would never have happened in the first place if we'd been minding our own business! We wouldn't have to get a government stamp out every time we wanted to buy a piece of butter if they weren't shipping it all to a lot of foreigners! Why, they're rationing gas right here in California where they got more of the stuff than they can haul away! Even the government doesn't know what its going to do tomorrow! They're going to ration this. They're going to ration that. They are. They aren't. Blow hot. Blow cold. He's up. He's down. What kind of business is that, anyway? While we're being pushed around at home, our guys are out fighting in countries they never even heard of! Where a lot of foreigners will turn on us like a pack of wolves the minute its over!

Doris Dumbrowski (Kim Hunter): Barbara!
Barbara Thomas: Well its the truth and you know it!
Jo Jones (Ginger Rogers): You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Do you know where that kind of talk comes from? It comes straight from Berlin! Every time you say, every time you even THINK IT your double-crossing your own husband!
Barbara Thomas: No!
Jo Jones: How can we go on minding our own business when somebody blackjacks us in an alley and you've got Pearl Harbor on your hands! And who wants to get slick and fat when half the people in the world are starving to death for things that we can do without! Mistakes? Sure, we make mistakes! Plenty of them. Do you want a country where they won't stand for a mistake? Go to Germany. Go to Japan. And the first time you open your trap, like you have tonight, you'll find a gun in your stomach! You're the kind of people Hitler counted on when he started this war. Talk! Talk! Talk! And never THINK! And that's the biggest mistake any guy ever thought of making. Because there are NOT enough of you and there are plenty of us and by Judas Priest if it takes...
[Barbara Thomas Doorbell rings]: That's my date.
Jo Jones: Saved by the bell!
Ginger Rogers herself was a loyal member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPAPAI, also MPA) along with such ultra conservatives as John Wayne, Ward Bond, Walter Brennan, Gary Cooper, Cecil B. DeMille, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, Hedda Hopper, Walt Disney and Robert Montgomery. When the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) began investigating Hollywood, the vast majority of “friendly” witnesses would be members of MPA. Sadly, most of the people they pointed their fingers at for being “enemies of the state” were Jewish. Opponents of the MPA described it as as fascist-sympathizing, isolationist, Anti-Semitic, red-baiting, anti-unionist, and supportive of Jim Crow laws. The MPA denied these allegations, with Jewish writer and MPA member (and former Socialist) Morrie Ryskind (A Night at the Opera, My Man Godfrey, Stage Door) writing in defense of his fellow members.

Interestingly, Ginger Rogers never testified against Dalton Trumbo before the House Un-American Activities Committee . . . nor did he ever say anything publicly against her or her politics. The reason was probably because Trumbo had written the script for Rogers first (and only) Oscar winning performance (Kitty Foyle), which proved to both producers and the public that she could be far, far more than Fred Astaire’s dance partner. Ginger’s mother, Lela, was another story. After performing in 2 Trumbo-penned scripts back-to-back, Ginger Rogers became the highest-paid star in all Hollywood.

In researching Trumbo the man and his times, the manner and method of his screenwriting, his films and political activism, I am becoming increasingly aware of how, despite epic changes in technology and the making of movies, there are many haunting similarities between his time and ours. Just as he faced a world fraught with autocracy, uncertainty and intolerance for those who didn’t fit “the idyllic myth” of who we are and should strive to be, so too do we here in second decade of the twenty-first century. Both the age of FDR, the Second World War and its aftermath as well as the time of Trump have had its version of McCarthyism. From Louella Parson and Hedda Hopper to Lauren Boebert and Anna Paulina Luna isn’t just vast expanse. The ability to define precisely what is “Communism” and what is “Woke” is just as hazy for the lazy. The need to place blame upon “the other” hasn’t changed all that much. The biggest difference (thank G-d) is that while in Trumbo’s era they could blacklist and otherwise make the lives of “others” terribly difficult through imprisonment and the loss of employment, today those who are adjudged “enemies of the state” are censured - act “full of sound and fury” and signifying next to nothing.

The greatest symbol of the transition in Hollywood was, believe it or not, Ronald Reagan. When Trumbo was at the peak of his success, the President of the Screen Actor’s Guild was “The Gipper” - the only POTUS who ever led a union. By the time Trumbo and Dmytryk et al stood before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the same Ronald Reagan was one of the loudest voices against them. Simply stated, he found that his future lay not in 3rd-rate films (like Hellcats of the Navy and Bedtime for Bonzo), then in working for General Electric and eventually getting involved in politics.

There were three people in Hollywood who would turn out to play the biggest roles in bringing the Blacklist to an end: Actor Kirk Douglas, producer Otto Preminger and Kim Hunter who, ironically played the part of the naïve Doris Dumbrowsky in Tender Comrade. In the case of Douglas, he publicly announced at the Academy Awards ceremony that the winner for best screen play for The Brave One, Robert Rich, was actually a front for Dalton Trumbo . . . and that moreover, he, Trumbo, would write the screenplay for Douglas’ next film Spartacus, under his own name. Actually, Douglas was beaten to the punch by producer Preminger, who earlier, had announced that Trumbo would write the screenplay for Exodus using his own name.

In the case of Ms. Hunter, who would win the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress fin A Streetcar Named Desire, she was a longtime political activist, who signed several civil rights petitions and was a sponsor of a 1949 World Peace Conference in New York - which triggered her label of being a Communist sympathizer, for which she was blacklisted in films and TV even though she never even held pro-Communist views. Her testimony to the New York Supreme Court in 1962 against the publishers of "Red Channels" helped pave the way for clearance of many performers unjustly accused of Communist connections.

For anyone who may be interested in being part of my class on Dalton Trumbo, you can always contact Florida Atlantic University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and sign up. You need not live anywhere near Boca Raton. The class takes place both at Friedberg Hall on the Boca Raton campus and online. Their phone number is 561.297.3185. You can also email them at olli.boca@fau.edu.

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categories / The Hollywood Blacklist

"The Happiest Married Couple in Hollywood"

March 13, 2023 / Kurt F. Stone

Haines & Shields

**Hollywood’s Happiest Married Couple**

During Hollywood’s “Golden Age” (c. 1920-1955) studios pretty much controlled the lives, destinies, family histories and even names of all the actors they had under contract at any given time. Have an obviously ethnic or unpronounceable name like Mischa Ounskowsky, Naftaly Birnbaum, Jacob Julius Garfinkle, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler or Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker? Well, with a mere snap of the finger and a couple of dozen press releases voila! - your studio had renamed you, in order, Mischa Auer, George Burns, John Garfield, Hedy Lamarr or Simone Signoret. Each star - or star-in-the-making - was assigned a P.R. agent whose job was to keep their name in the movie mags when things were good, and off the police blotters when they wound up in trouble. The studios also put their newcomers through a rigorous schedule of “schooling” in such varied areas as dancing, fencing, saddlery and, when talkies came in, singing.

Much of studio “puffery” (a quaint term for “B.S.”) informed the adoring movie-going public that their favorite stars were either descendants of Mayflower families, Ivy League educated, inveterate church-goers, or somehow related to European (most British) royalty. It goes without saying that much of what the public “knew” about these stars and starlets was pure twaddle. Beginning in the early 1920s, however, a series of scandals hit the film industry, effectively revealing that their idols had feet of clay. Gossip columnists, particularly those working for Hearst publications, gave a lurid accounting of the foibles and failings of their heroes. Soon, “blue-noses” and members of women’s clubs began pushing the studios to institute morality codes for both the people they employed and the films they made. Among the things the strait-laced noted and complained about most bitterly was that a vast number of these movie people were piling up marriages and divorces at an alarming rate. Quelle immoralité !

Truth to tell Hollywood has long suffered from an overabundance of monogamy . . . meaning too many people getting married far too often. Sometimes the marriages last but a few weeks or months; often they ended not in divorce, but in annulment. Among the marriage champs we find:

Lana Turner: 8 marriages (Her 1st, to bandmaster Artie Shaw [Arthur Jacob Arshawsky] last 1 day shy of 7 months); Shaw next married Ava Gardner; that marriage lasted precisely 1 year
Mickey Rooney: 8 (His first, to Ava Gardner, lasted a mere 26 months)
Judy Garland: 5
Rita Hayworth: 5 (including Orson Welles)
Clark Gable: 5
Humphrey Bogart: 4
Charlie Chaplin: 4 (all of whom were teenagers; in total, 2 of these wives presented him with 11 children; the first in 1925, the 11th in 1957)
John Barrymore: 4 (including the “love of his life,” the writer “Michael Strange.”)

As seemingly commonplace as this has been over the past century, there are also Hollywood couples whose marriages lasted far, far longer than most can imagine. Consider the following:

Norman and Peggy Lloyd (who was a friend of mine), were married for an amazing 75 years, 65 days.
Karl Malden and Mona Greenberg were married 70 years, 195 days.
Bob and Delores Hope were married for 69 years, 5 months.
Kirk and Anne Bydens Douglas were married 65 years 253 days.
Cyd Charrise and Tony Martin (Alvin Morris) were married 60 years, 34 days.
Alan Alda and Arlene Weiss will be celerating their 66th anniversary on March 15.
Sir Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville, were married for nearly 54 years.
Dawn Nickerson (my dear friend and student) ) and Richart L. Fox , Sr. were married for 48 years.

(IT SHOULD also BE noted that our parents, Alice K. and Henry E. Stone were married for 59 years. In many ways bipolar opposites, dad never missed a chance to usher at any of Madame’s performances. They proved how different they were at a 50th anniversary gathering (at the Sportsman’s Lodge), where my father gave a loving, romantic toast to his bride (which had most of the women wishing their husband’s were so articulate) and mom, responding in her 30 megawatt voice proclaiming : “HERE’S TO HENRY. FIFTY YEARS OF MARRIAGE AND NEVER ONCE CONSIDERED DIVORCE. Then, pausing for a perfect amount of time continued . . . “MURDER? MANY TIMES!”).

Returning to the opening paragraphs of this post, it should be noted that in Hollywood - a truly small town in every sense of the term - most everyone knew who their neighbors were in real life . . . behind the silver, P.R.-created curtain of fiction. We knew who drank too much and who was popping pills, who was gay and who was an uneducated jerk. And for the most part, it really didn’t matter. One of the things that made growing up in that world so different (although as kids we did not know it) was how accepting most of us were taught to be.

Continuing with the “marriage thread,” everyone knew that the actor William (“Billy”) Haines and his lifetime companion James “Jimmy” Shields were an ideal couple. The two met in New York even before the Virginia-born Billy first hit Hollywood in the early 1920s. It didn’t take long for Billy to become a major star; the picture which first brought him to the attention of the movie-going public was 1926’s Brown of Harvard. in which Billy played a supremely confident, wisecracking player on the football team. This would be the personality - that of a wise-acre - which brought him to public acclaim. So much so that by the late 1920s, he was the #1 box office attraction in the United States, making more than $1 million dollars a year and costarring with the likes of Marion Davies, Joan Crawford, Lon Chaney, and Lionel Barrymore. His best picture, in my estimation, was 1928’s Show People, costarring Marion Davies (also her best picture) and directed by one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest directors, King Vidor. In this late silent film, Billy plays movie comic Billy Boone, who is in love with up-and-coming actress Peggy Pepper (Davies) who, taking herself oh-so-seriously, transforms herself into “Patricia Pepoire,” the cinematic ancestor of Jean Hagen’s character “Lina Lamont,” in 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain.

Unlike stars Ramon Navarro, Greta Garbo, comedienne Patsy Kelley and directors Dorothy Arzner and George Cukor, of whom the movie-going public knew nothing vis-a-vis their proclivities, Hollywood was completely aware - and by a wide margin accepting - of their sexuality. Indeed, for many years, director George Cukor (1899-1983) was well-known in Hollywood for the legendary Sunday afternoon poolside Sunday brunches he would put on at his opulent home at 9166 Cordell Drive in Beverly Hills. These gatherings included the best and brightest of the Hollywood homosexual underground. In time to come, Billy and Jimmy would serve as the interior designers of Cukor’s home.

The advent of talking motion pictures threw a monkey wrench into the industry; all sorts of changes began to occur. Stars like Vilma Banky, Karl Dane and Emil Jannings were let go because their European accents were impossible to understand. Others, like top-flight stars Clara Bow and Norma Talmadge with their heavy Brooklyn “toidy-toid-and-toid” patois simply could not make it in the talkies.

Pronunciation aside, MGM head Louis B. Mayer had another problem with William Haines; one which had nothing to do with his pronunciation. Meyer told Haines, (the first proudly self-outed actor in Hollywood), know in no uncertain terms that if he were to continue earning his millions, he would first have to part company with Jimmy Shields (whom he had been with, by this time for nearly a decade) and enter into a “Lavendar” marriage . . . one with a woman, for the sake of publicity. Haines refused Mayer’s ultimatum, thereby forsaking his movie career for the man he loved. Mayer was one problem for Haines; the other was the Hays Production Code, which in 1930, imposed a set of “moral” guidelines that actors were commanded to obey. One was an absolute prohibition on "homosexual behavior" - both onscreen and off. At the peak of his stardom, Haines was able to have the clause removed from his contract and continue acting. But when several of his movies didn’t perform well at the box office, - including the overtly “swishy” 1930 film Way Out West, there was mounting pressure to conform.

A few years before being dropped by MGM, Haines had become part-owner of an antiques store on La Brea Avenue. He had an excellent eye and his home at 1712 Stanley Ave. (called the "Haines Castle) was a designer showcase. He was best friends with Joan Crawford (whom he had nicknamed “Raspberries”) and welcomed into the inner circle of William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, attending their famous parties in San Simeon. Thanks to these and many other connections, Haines became Hollywood’s most in-demand decorator. Crawford was one of his first clients, followed by Tallulah Bankhead, Jack Warner, Betsy Bloomingdale, and, as mentioned above, director George Cukor. Without question, the pinnacle of Billy and Jimmy’s decorating career was their 1968 redecorating of Winfield House, the lavish residence of America’s Ambassador to the Court of St. James . . . who at the time was publishing magnate Walter Annenberg.

Beyond his distinguished clientele, Billy Haines became synonymous with good taste in Hollywood. Gone were the dark, moody interiors, the leopard print rugs, the garish purchases made by rising stars suddenly flush with cash. In their places, he hung hand-painted wallpaper, refined low seating, chinoiserie, and English antiques; all harbingers of what we now call Hollywood Regency. Hollywood directors incorporated Haines’s aesthetic into their films, often literally: Billy and Jimmy’s personal art collection was hung on the walls of Tara in Gone with the Wind. Nancy and Ronald Reagan were also fans, and Haines decorated their home in Pacific Palisades when Reagan became governor of California (after he retired, his protegé Ted Graber decorated the Reagan White House).

It was Joan Crawford who first referred to Billy and Jimmy as “Hollywood’s happiest couple.” In many respects, like many happily married couples, they were a study in opposites: Billy was always “on,” while Jimmy was quiet. One was a born entertainer, the other more of a homebody. And yet, it worked admirably well for nearly a half century. There are very, very few pictures of the two together - either at home or in public. What few exist are mostly from their later years . . . with the exception of the rare photo above at the beginning of this post.

But alas, nothing lasts for ever. Billy died of lung cancer in Santa Monica on December 26, 1973; he was 73 years old. 10 weeks later - March 6, 1974, Jimmy Shields put on a pair of Billy’s favorite pajamas, climbed into their bed, took an overdose of sleeping pills, and passed away. His suicide note said, simply, "Goodbye to all of you who have tried so hard to comfort me in my loss of William Haines, whom I have been with since 1926. I now find it impossible to go it alone, I am much too lonely."

They are interred side by side in Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery in Santa Monica, California. William Haines Designs remains in operation, with main offices in West Hollywood and an additional showroom in New York. Playwright Claudio Macor created the biographical drama The Tailor-Made Man in the mid-1990s in London, telling the story of Haines' discovery in a talent contest, his movie career, its curtailment by Louis B. Mayer, and Haines' re-invention as an interior designer. The 50-year marriage of Billy and Jimmy is, of course, a major theme of this work . . . which is only fitting for Hollywood’s happiest married couple . . .

Copyright®2023 Kurt F. Stone

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categories / The Hollywood Brat

Anybody Interested in Coming to My New 4-Part Film Series at the Boca Raton Museum of Art?

September 15, 2022 / Kurt F. Stone

Check it out: Motion Pictures: The World’s Most Collaborative Art

Lecture Series

With the possible exception of constructing a medieval cathedral, there is no more collaborative art form than a studio-made motion picture. Besides all the actors on the screen, there are hundreds – even thousands – of artists and artisans behind the scenes writing, composing, painting, sculpting, decorating, orchestrating, editing, coaching, cooking, dubbing, sewing, lighting…you name it.

In this 4-lecture series, Kurt Stone, a “Hollywood Brat” with an encyclopedic knowledge of his hometown’s greatest industry, takes us behind the screen for a fascinating look at its early history and deconstructing several of its most famous collaborations.

1. Did the Jews Really Invent Hollywood? A Fascinating History
Wednesday, October 12, 2022 | 3-4pm

2. Descending From Mt. Sinai Not Once, But Twice: DeMille’s 1923 and 1956 Versions of The Ten Commandments
Wednesday, October 19, 2022 | 3-4pm

3. Starting at the Very Top: Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane
Wednesday, October 26, 2022 | 3-4pm

4. Round Up the Usual Suspects: The Brilliance of Casablanca
Wednesday, November 2, 2022 | 3-4pm

Kurt Stone’s passion for film is, he says “genetic,” having been born in Hollywood, CA, and raised both in and around the movie industry. Stone is a multi-disciplinary man who has also written well-received books on Congress, published nearly 900 essays, is an ordained rabbi, and earns his living as a medical ethicist.

If you are interested (and are in the area), please contact the box office at 561.392.2500 ext. 228.

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A Woman of Great Consequence (#30)

September 11, 2022 / Kurt F. Stone

How’s this for a mind-blowing historic fact? Both William Shakespeare - arguably the greatest writer in the English language - and Miguel de Cervantes - arguably the greatest writer in the Spanish language - died on the same day: April 23, 1616. (n.b. While Shakespeare and Cervantes did both die on the 23rd of April in 1616, back then, the April 23rd of Spain was ten days earlier than the April 23 of England—Spain had already adopted the Gregorian calendar, and England was still using the Julian calendar . . . she wouldn’t adopt the Gregorian until 1752. But the coincidence is too chilling and great to engage in silly nit picking.) One wonders if Cervantes’ death in Madrid (likely from cirrhosis at age 68) received any mention in the English press, or if Shakespeare’s passing in Stratford-upon-Avon at age 52 (from unknown causes) would have been noted by what passed for the Spanish press. In any event, it is almost as eerie as both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams passing away on the 4th of July 1826, the 50th birthday of their greatest creation . . .

One can add to these historic serendipities the date of November 22, 1963. Instantly recognized as being the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, it was also the date upon which two gifted writers passed: Aldous Huxley and Clive) Staples (C.S.) Lewis. Had it not been for the murder of J.F.K. the passing of either (or both) of these dazzlingly brilliant and accomplished men would have captured front-page headlines all over the world, instead of (in Grandpa Doc’s great expression) “ . . . on page 56 just beneath the truss ads”). Huxley is best known for the novels Point Counter Point (1925) The Doors of Perception (1954 - from which the rock group “The Doors” took their name) and his most famous, Brave New World (1932), one of the greatest dystopian novels of all time. Lewis, of course, is best known for the seven-volume children’s fantasy work, The Chronicles of Narnia and the satirical The Screwtape Letters. Huxley was also a much lauded, highly-paid Hollywood screenwriter, who penned 1940 Pride and Prejudice (1940), starring Lawrence Olivier and Greer Garson, and 1944’s Jane Eyre, starring Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. (There is actually a third-rate novel about the deaths of JFK, Huxley and C.S. Lewis by the writer Peter Kreeft entitled “Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death.” Originally published in 1982, the novel has the three meeting in Purgatory and engaging in a philosophical discussion on faith.)

And yet, neither man’s obituary appeared for a full 24 hours after their deaths.

We can now add to this the blacklisted Hollywood star Marcia Hunt, who passed away just hours before Queen Elizabeth II at her home in Sherman Oaks, California at the age of 104. Understandably, the passing of the longest-reigning monarch in British history pushed any mention of Marsha’s death off the front pages of the world’s press. And mind you, although she was no Queen Elizabeth, she lived an even longer and just as consequential a life. Even our hometown rag, The Hollywood Reporter didn’t publish an obit until nearly 36 after her passing.

Marsha was born in Chicago on October 17, 1917, which means that next month she would have turned 105. She died from what we in the Stone family refer to as “terminal longevity.” In a movie/stage/radio/television career that spanned nearly 75 years (she made her first picture in 1935, and her last in 2008), she was variously a star, leading lady, character actor and even an occasional extra. Marsha was a strong consideration for the role of Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind (1939), since the studio's first pick, Olivia de Havilland, was having trouble being loaned out by Warner Bros. In fact, the film’s producer, David O. Selznick selected Marsha to play the role at one point but the following day the loan-out worked itself out and Olivia was handed the role.

Marsha Hunt’s best-known films were Hollywood Blvd. (1936) Pride and Prejudice (1940) from the screenplay by the above mentioned Aldous Huxley; The Human Comedy (1943)'; The Valley of Decision (1945) and her last, 2008’s Empire State Building Murder. In total, she was in 116 films and television shows. Although she never hit the heights of stardom, she was constantly employed and always turned in a stellar performance.

Outside of her many film roles, her career had been greatly defined by the blacklisting she faced from Hollywood executives for protesting the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although she never joined the Communist Party, she was a fervid believer in the First Amendment’s guaranteed right to freedom of speech and assembly. In 1947, she joined the likes of Myrna Loy, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Danny Kaye, Paul Henreid, John Garfield, Katherine Hepburn, Frank Sinatra, Robert Ryan among many others, in creating the Committee for the First Amendment, which flew to Washington, D.C. (aboard a charter flight paid for by the Bogarts) to voice their protest over the House Un-American Committee’s (HUAC) hearings into “the Communist takeover of Hollywood.” She was also one of those who voiced loud and persistent opposition to the guilty verdicts (and eventual imprisonment) of “The Hollywood Ten” - a group of 10 directors and screenwriters who refused to “name names” in order to keep their jobs.

In the early 1950s, Marsha’s name appeared in Red Channels, a McCarthy-era publication that "exposed" alleged Communists and "subversives.” Anyone whose name might appear in this rag could expect to lose work; producers became increasingly fearful that anyone with this “mark of Cain” on their back would be rejected by the public. And thus Marsha Hunt, who had put her name on numerous liberal petitions in the 1930s and 40s, became all but unemployable. But it did not stop her . . .

In the spring of 1952 she was signed for the Stanley Kramer-Columbia film production of “The Happy Time.” After the contract was settled, she was asked to sign a loyalty oath and instructed her agent to give the Kramer company a copy of the non-Communist affidavit that had been distributed throughout the radio-television industry. The agent did this, but Marsha was nevertheless asked by Sam Katz, chairman of the board of the Kramer Company, to sign another statement prepared by the company’s legal department. Katz told her, “You don’t have to sign to make this picture, but you’ll never work again in films if you don’t.” The statement included a paragraph which declared she was sorry she had participated in the political activities cited by Red Channels (mainly copies of petitions she had signed), that she was guilty of bad judgment, and would show more discretion in the future.

She refused . . . but offered another of her own which said: “If any of these activities furthered the cause of communism, I regret have done them.” Although it was acceptable to Katz, representatives from Columbia Pictures demanded that she take out an advertisement in the trade papers saying she was not a Communist and expressing regret for her previous political activities. It was not enough never to have been a Communist, the Columbia executive told her. “There is a time for expediency, not integrity.”

Once again, Marsha Hunt said no. She told the people from Columbia she would have no objections to the Kramer company’s buying such an ad, but would not do it herself. Columbia paid for the ad. The picture did well, got good reviews and was not picketed. Nonetheless, Marsha Hunt wouldn’t find work for another several years . . . except in radio and on Broadway.

She leaned harder into her activism efforts in her later years, supporting the United Nations and delivering lectures for the World Health Organization. One of her later television efforts included a documentary that she wrote and produced in 1960 called “A Call From the Stars,” which was about the plight of refugees. She was a very active member of both the Hollywood Democratic Committee and the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and donated her time and money to many liberal causes (such as the creation of the United Nations and the Civil Rights Movement) and political candidates (including FDR, Henry Wallace, Adlai Stevenson, JFK, RFK, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama.

She was also the longtime honorary Mayor of Sherman Oaks, California where she and her late husband, the screenwriter Robert Presnell, Jr. (1914-1986) purchased a house in 1946 at 13131 Magnolia Blvd. (at the corner of Fulton Street), where Marsha lived until the day she died. Her house was within walking distance of ours; for a short while I delivered a thrice-weekly newspaper (the long defunct Valley Times) to her. Years later, when I was doing research on the Hollywood Blacklist - a lifelong passion with me - I got to interview her on several occasions. At the time I decided to seek an interview, I asked our mother if she had Marsha’s phone number. I remember Madam smiling and handing me the White Pages. “You can look it up yourself; she’s listed.” (Madam was certainly correct; Marsha’s number was (818) 994-9695.

Even though she had lost a great deal of sight, her memory and recall were all but total. More importantly, she harbored precious little anger or resentment towards those who had put the ultimate stumbling block in her artistic path. During one interview I mentioned this to her and asked the obvious question: “Why?” Her answer was both honest and straightforward: “Life’s simply too short, and I’m too busy trying to heal the world to engage in such utter nonsense.”

Wow!

Marsha Hunt would wind up outliving just about everyone she ever knew and all but a few of those she ever acted with. She even outlived all the costars of her last movie, the aforementioned Empire State Building Murder: Ben Gazzara, Kirk Douglas, Mickey Rooney, Cyd Charisse and Anne Jeffries.

Like HRH Queen Elizabeth II, whose death kicked Marsha off the front-page, she lived a long life of great consequence. And like the Queen, she will always be remembered . . . so long as there are movie fans and Hollywood Brats, humanitarians and people who prize integrity above all.

Break a leg Marsha!

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categories / Obituary

#29: "Zany Sophisticates" - Great Screwball Comedies

August 04, 2022 / Kurt F. Stone

Starting on August 25, I will be leading a six-week film course at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where I’ve been teaching since 1998. This course features six of the greatest screwball comedies of all time. As ever, my classes are on Thursday; this semester from 3:00-5:00 at Friedberg Hall on the Boca campus. Don’t worry if you don’t live in the area; many of the students “attend” class via Zoom. And, there is always the option of watching a video version of the 6 classes from the comfort of you home . . . regardless of whether you live locally or anywhere on Planet Earth!

If, after reading the course perspective below, you are interested, you can contact the Osher Lifelong Learning office at FAU either by phone (561-297-3185 or 561-297-3171 for automated information) or via email (olliboca@fau.edu). I hope you will consider joining us, whether it be in person or via the internet, and have a great time as together, we laugh ourselves silly.

KFS (a.k.a. “The Hollywood Brat”)

ZANY SOPHISTICATES:

6 GREAT SCREWBALL COMEDIES

Kurt F. Stone, D.D.

Recipient of the 2004 Excellence in Teaching Award

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: In baseball, the term “screwball” denotes a pitch that breaks in the precise opposite direction of the curve. In Hollywood, “screwball” connotes a film genre peopled with characters who act the opposite of what one might expect. Often defined as “sex comedies without the sex,” screwball films are frequently set in high society, where eccentric behavior is perhaps more tolerable. Screwball comedies, which were a Hollywood staple between roughly 1934 and 1946, are known for their antic characters, improbable plots, overlapping dialogue, and language that can often be as dizzy as the characters themselves.

During this series, we will view screen six screwball comedies, which, in f Dr. Stone’s opinion are, or at least should be, classics in the genre.

LECTURES/FILMS::

1. "Twentieth Century" (1934) - Directed by Howard Hawks, starring John Barrymore and Carol Lombard. Simply one of the funniest films ever made.

2. "Bombshell" (1933) - Jean Harlow at her best as a glamorous film star who rebels against the studio, her pushy press agent, and a family of hangers-on.

3. "Theodora Goes Wild" (1936) - Irene Dunn is the author of a controversially racy best-selling book who tries to hide her celebrity status from her provincial, small-town neighbors.

4. "Stand-In" (1936) - Leslie Howard stars as a stuffy, bookish Brit sent to take over the reins of floundering Colossal Studios who finds the film community eyeing him with thinly-veiled amusement. Co-Starring Humphrey Bogart.

5. "The Devil and Miss Jones" (1941) - Jean Arthur and Robert Cummings: A tycoon goes undercover to ferret out agitators at a department store, but gets involved in their lives instead.

6. "Love Crazy" (1941) - Wm. Powell and Myrna Loy: A wife suspecting infidelity starts divorce proceedings, so the husband pretends to be insane in order to delay the divorce and clear up the misunderstanding.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Kurt F. Stone, D.D., is now in his 24th year with Lifelong Learning. His passion for film is, he says, "genetic," having been born in Hollywood, CA, and raised both in and around the movie industry. Stone is a multi-disciplinary sort of man who has also written two well-received books on Congress, published nearly 900 essays, is an ordained rabbi and earns his living as a medical ethicist.

Time: 3:00 pm -5:00 pm

Dates[ : Thursdays, August 25; September 1, 8, 15, 22, 29

Location: Friedberg Auditorium, Lifelong Learning Building

Fees: : $ 90/member; $ 120/non-member | Video Catch-up

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#28 . . . "Casablanca": The Best Movie to Watch on the Fourth of July

July 05, 2022 / Kurt F. Stone

There’s never been a question in my mind that Casablanca, the movie that captured the Best Picture award at the 1944 Oscars, is unquestionably the best film of all time. Period. I have also long believed that it contains the single-most emotional and patriotic 2 minutes in the history of motion pictures: to wit, the scene where the Czech freedom-fighter Victor Laszo (actor Paul Henreid) leads the in-house orchestra and all the escapees from Hitler’s Germany in the playing and singing of La Marseilles, in stunning counterpoint, drowning out the Nazis officers’ singing of Die Wacht am Rhein (“Watch on the Rhein”) at “Rick’s” café. At one point, the camera focuses on Yvonne, Rick’s former girlfriend/mistress (played by French actress Madelaine Lebeau) who has a real, honest-to-God tear rolling down her cheek while she sings her country’s National Anthem. As a result of this one scene, she forever became the face of the French Resistance.

There can be no question that her tears were real and not the product of typical movie magic - spraying either glycerin or menthol into the eyes. In matter of fact, most everyone in that scene - the vast majority of whom were (mostly Jewish) escapees from Hitler’s Third Reich felt overwhelmed during its filming. Ironically, Conrad Veidt, the Berlin-born actor who played the utterly detestable Major Heinrich Strasser likely felt it more than most. A virulent anti-Nazi, the well-known actor (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Man Who Laughs) claimed on both his c.v. and his German exit visa that he was Jewish . . . as a sign of solidarity to his Jewish-born wife, Lily Prager. He would die the year after Casablanca’s release from a sudden heart attack while playing golf in Los Angeles; today, his ashes are interred in a niche of the columbarium at the Golders Green Crematorium in North London, the most Jewish section of that great city.

In real life, Mme. Lebeau (that’s her, above) was married to fellow actor Marcel Dalio (born Israel Moshe Blauschild) who played the croupier Emil, the man who handed handed Capt. Renault (Claude Raines) his casino winnings just 5 seconds after announcing “I’m shocked! Simply shocked to find out that there’s gambling going on here.” At one point before fleeing Vichy-era France, the Germans, who had found some publicity stills of Dalio, displayed them throughout the city with the caption 'a typical Jew' so that citizens could more easily report anyone suspected of unrepentant Jewishness. Eerily following one of Casablanca’s major plotlines, Dalio and Lebeau fled Vichy and made their way to Portugal, where eventually, they wound up in Hollywood. Sadly, they divorced the year after Casablanca won the Oscar, and she made her way back to France at war’s end. She would die in Malaga, Spain, in 2016, the film’s last surviving credited cast member.

Let’s spend 2 minutes watching this most heartfelt scene. To this day - and after a minimum of 175 viewings, it still brings tears to my eyes:

As with most national anthems, La Marseillaise speaks to the proudest, most patriotic and courageous emotions within the Gallic genome. The first of its seven verses and refrain are sung in Casablanca.

Allons enfants de la patrie, Let's go children of the fatherland

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!   The day of glory has arrived!
Contre nous de la tyrannie Against us tyranny's
L'étendard sanglant est levé ! (bis)   Bloody flag is raised! (repeat)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes, In the countryside, do you hear
Mugir ces féroces soldats ? The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras   They come right to our arms
Égorger nos fils, nos compagnes! To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!

Refrain:

Aux armes, citoyens ! Grab your weapons, citizens!
Formez vos bataillons !   Form your battalions!
Marchons ! Marchons !   Let us march! Let us march!
Qu'un sang impur   May impure blood
Abreuve nos sillons ! Water our fields!

As originally intended by the film’s producers, Hal B. Wallace and Jack L. Warner, La Marseillaise was supposed to be sung in counterpoint to Die Horst Wessel, the barely 12-year old anthem of the Third Reich. (In comparison, La Marseillaise had been written in 1792). Horst Wessel was a young Nazi who was shot in 1930, and shortly thereafter made into a martyr for the “state that would last for no less than 1,000 years.” The Warner Bros. legal department soon learned that the copyright to “Horst Wessel” was controlled by a German publisher. If they used the song, the studio would be able to show Casablanca in countries at war with Germany, but copyright restrictions would make it impossible to show the film in neutral countries, which included most of South America. And so, Warners decided to replace Die Horst Wessel with a far, far older song, Die Wacht am Rhein, the singing of which went totally against the principles of the Nazi Party.

The Watch on the Rhine: The Horst Wessel
The cry resounds like thunder's peal, The flag is high, our ranks are closed

Like crashing waves and clang of steel: The S.A. marches with silent solid steps.

The Rhine, the Rhine, our German Rhine, Comrades shot by the red front and reaction

Who will defend our stream, divine? March in spirit with us in our ranks.

Dear fatherland, no fear be thine, The street is free for the brown battalions)

Dear fatherland, no fear be thine, The street is free for the Storm Troopers.

Firm and True stands the Watch, the Watch at the Rhine! Millions full of hope, look at our swastika

Firm and True stands the Watch, the Watch at the Rhine! The day breaks for freedom and for bread

They stand, a hundred thousand strong, For the last time the call will now be sounded

Quick to avenge their country's wrong, Soon will fly Hitler’s banners over every street

With filial love their bosoms swell Our slavery will last only a short time longer They shall guard the sacred landmark well. The flag is high, our ranks are closed

At the 100th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower in 1989, the great French chanteuse Mireille Mathieu, accompanied by a full orchestra and chorus, sang the French National Anthem at the statue’s base. According to reports at the time, "Mathieu sang the anthem of France so grandly and shrewdly that tears welled up across the country, many patriotic citizens even needed medical treatment." Ten years later, she was awarded the Medal of the French Legion of Honor. I share it with you to give but a small impression of what kinds of emotion can raised and felt on a day like today:

The average American citizen, I would imagine, only hears - let alone sings - the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of sporting events. And then, as the last few words are about to be sung the crowd begins to cheer . . . not so much for the spirit of the anthem, but for the future victory of their home team. And as for our national heroes - Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Lincoln - they are trotted out as spokespeople for sales campaigns rather than as symbols of our ideals. Whenever I feel the need to reach some sort of emotional climax on the 4th of July, I watch anew the great musical 1776, and marvel at how this country came into being. For as with a classic motion picture - such as Casablanca, the greatest of them all - its success is the more the product of its numerous close encounters with failure, than the absolute genius of its creators.

One of the things that has always drawn me to watching Casablanca on the Fourth of July is the incredibly emotional, patriotic vision it gives to one of its central characters: The United States of America. For to the refugees and émigrés of that North African city, America is a refuge . . . man’s last, greatest hope . . . the land of the open arms and willing hearts. One gets the sense that those who manage to escape Casablanca and finally land at Ellis Island, they will become wonderful, grateful additions to the American family. It is an image - and a reality - which is at root, the very meaning of the Fourth of July.

Yes, we are truly blessed to be citizens, residents, refugees or asylees of this great nation. But at the same time, our blessings should never be taken for granted . . . especially in times like these when there are growing segments of the nation who do not consider those who have different opinions, different heroes and heroines or different backgrounds to be traitors, deviants or even worse. Our motto, so far as I recall, has long E Pluribus Unam, which is Latin for "Out of many (comes) one.” Alas, for so many of our fellow citizens - especially those who haven’t the slightest idea of what our national motto is . . . let alone where it comes from - this nation is not (in the words of Woody Guthrie) "made for you and me.” How sad it is that when it comes to observing the Fourth of July, we are no longer memorializing or drinking a toast to the same nation as others.

Ironically, many of us of a certain age were considered "Communists,” "Socialists” or "Anarchists” a half-century ago when we wore our hair long, went without bras and, as the terminology of the day had it "let our freak flags fly.” Today, I consider our ilk - now in our sixties and seventies - to be far more patriotic, more in tune with the historic purpose of America, than those who seek to delimit freedom, see enemies behind every crack and crevice, and reread history to the point that it suits their dishonorable purposes. I for one would love nothing more than tearing up whenever I hear the Star Spangled Banner, like I do when La Marseillaise is sung at Cafe Rick’s in Casablanca, circa 1942.

Undoubtedly, that is the main reason why I watch it every Fourth of July.

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categories / The Hollywood Brat

Hollywoodland: Bringing Zukor and Goldwyn, Cohen, Mayer, Fox, Warner and Laemmle Back Home

April 11, 2022 / Kurt F. Stone

September 25, 2021 was a very special day. For not only did it fall on the Jewish Sabbath (shabat) in the midst of Hag Sukkot, (the Fall harvest festival), but, after more than 17 years of planning, fundraising and meticulous craftmanship the long-awaited Academy Museum of Motion Pictures held its grand opening. The mammoth project was, to a great extent, the brainchild of Sid Ganis, a former president of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and an award-winning producer of, among other films, Akeelah and the Bee. I’ve known Sid and his wife Nancy for many years . . . ever since I officiated at the funerals of Sid’s parents in South Florida. The Academy Museum, housed in a magnificent structure located at 6067 Wilshire Blvd, is well-known to native Angelinos and Hollywood Brats alike as “The old May Company building.” It is but a hop, skip and jump from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the La Brea (Spanish for “tar”) Pits, billed as “A paleontological gateway back to the Ice Age, right in the heart of L.A.”

The Academy Museum’s opening exhibitions included, in the words of museum director Bill Kramer, “ . . . moments devoted to The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, Spike Lee, Hayao Miyazaki, costume design, visual effects, sound design, pre-cinematic storytelling and so much more.” Early visitors widely praised the museum for its design, the quality of its exhibits and its vast assortment of cinematic memorabilia. However, before too long, a question began growing among patrons and visitors: “What happened to the Jews?” For it turned out that a museum devoted to an industry largely birthed by the likes of Samuel Goldwyn (Szmuel Gelbfisz), Adolph Zukor (Paramount) Fox’s William Fox (Wilhelm Fuchs), Carl Laemlle (Universal) the brothers Warner and Harry and Jack Cohen (Columbia) were all AWOL. And to make matters even more confusing, the overwhelming role played by Jews in the creation of the Hollywood film industry was being housed in a structure whose major financial backers were themselves Jewish: media mogul Haim Sabin and producer/director Steven Spielberg.

Before too long, articles began appearing in Jewish papers like The Algemeiner, and The Forward, not to mention the Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and eventually the New York Times. In their own way, each writer asked the same exact question: What became of the Jews? Why weren’t they included in the museum? One writer noted “ . . . scant mention of Jewish trailblazers,” with the exception of “Sunset Boulevard” director Billy Wilder, and that “One of the six Oscars won by Wilder is displayed with a small placard stating that he fled Nazi Germany due to his religion.”

My mostly-Jewish film students at Florida Atlantic University (which bills me, their instructor, as “The University’s resident ‘Hollywood Brat’”) – began asking me to explain the museum’s glaring oversight, and then wanting to know what “You, Dr. Stone, are going to do about it.” Truth to tell, I had no answer to their first question, but promised to look into it and see what I could do . . .

Then, on January 18, 2022, my phone rang. The name on the I.D. was that of my friend Sid Ganis. I naturally assumed that the call dealt with a project we were working on - one which had virtually nothing to do with the museum. But to my amazement, there he was, on the line, asking me if I would be interested in becoming part of an advisory panel whose purpose was to create a permanent exhibit on the role that Jews played in the creation of the film industry. It took me a nanosecond to say “Yes!” Within five minutes, I was on the phone speaking to the museum’s director, Bill Kramer. In all honesty, my first thought was how proud our recently-deceased mother (“Madame”) would be to know that her youngest had received the invite.

And so the work began . . .

Jesse Lasky, Adolph Zukor, Sam Goldwyn and Cecil B.De Mille

To “Hollywood Brats” and historians of Hollywood in general (which was originally pronounced “holly-WOOD”), its Jewish involvement is a given. Prior to the West Coast, the majority of films were made in New York City . . . except for Westerns, which were made almost exclusively in New Jersey. That all changed, in 1913-14 when the Hungarian Jewish furrier Adolph Zukor, along with the San Franciso-born vaudevillian Jesse Lasky, Lasky’s brother-in-law the Hungarian-born glove salesman Szmuel Gelbfisz (Sam Goldwyn) and actor/playwright Cecile B. DeMille, the son of a Jewish-born Brit named Helena Beatrice Samuel, spent a minor fortune to purchase the rights to a Broadway play called “The Squaw Man” for the sole purpose of making a photoplay out West. When the tortuous heat of Arizona proved to be totally inhospitable (their film melted), they pushed on to the Pacific Coast, rented a barn at the southeast corner of Selma and Vine Streets, and shot their picture. It cost about $15,000 (about $245,000 in 2022) to make, and earned the partners nearly a quarter million dollars - just under $6,000,000 in today’s dollars. (The picture was so successful that its director, Cecile B. DeMille, remade it 2 more times: a second silent version 1918 and a talkie version in 1931).

1914’s The Squaw Man put Hollywood on the map.

As Jewish producers began creating their nascent studios in and around Hollywood, they hired Jewish directors - mostly from Europe - and began making stars out of Jewish actors and actresses. But hardly anyone in the growing movie-going public had the slightest idea that directors like Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, Josef von Sternberg or Lewis Milestone; superstars such as Sarah Bernhardt (Henriette-Rosine Bernard), “Broncho Billy” Anderson (Maxwell Aronson) Theda Bara (Theodosia Goodman), Alla Nazimova (Miriam Leventon), Douglas Fairbanks (Douglas Elton Ulman) or Edward G. Robinson (Emanuel Goldenberg) were Jewish as well.

And then, moving into the early talkie era, Jewish producers made stars out of such Jewish actors (again, whom most of the public hadn’t the slightest idea were Jewish) like Paul Muni (Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund), Ricardo Cortez (Jacob Krantz), Sylvia Sidney (Sophia Kosow), Al Jolson (Asa Yoelson), Peter Lorre (László Lowenstein), Bert Lahr (Irving Lahrheim) and Ed Wynn (Isaiah Edwin Leopold) to name but a few.

When it came to producing films with Jewish content, the Hollywood moguls showed distinct discomfort. While it is true that the cash-strapped brothers’ Warner released one of early Hollywood’s most overtly Jewish-themed films (1927’s The Jazz Singer starring the Lithuanian-born Al Jolson, who, in real life was the son of a cantor) many believe that the reason they added sound (“You ain’t heard nothing yet!”) was to insure its profitability all across the country . . . and not just in New York, Chicago or Hollywood. (It should be noted that the Warners’ casting office chose the Swedish-born Warner Oland [nee Johan Verner Öhlunda, a future Charlie Chan] to play the part of Jolson’s father the Cantor).

Two years later, Warner Brothers released Disraeli, starring the distinguished British actor Mr. George Arliss (who had made a career of playing the late Jewish-born P.M. in both London’s West End, on Broadway, and in a 1921 silent version); one would have had to listen very closely to discover that the lead character was Jewish. In 1932, the 30 year-old David O. Selznick teamed up with Pandro Berman at RKO to release the ironically-named (and now largely forgotten) Symphony of Six Million, based on a a story by the one of that era’s most popular writers, the Jewish-born Fannie Hurst. Starring Ricardo Cortez (Jacob Krantz) as the Lower-East Side-born Dr. Felix “Felixel” Klauber, the film told the story of a young Jewish physician who rose from his humble Lower East Side roots to the top of his profession and how the social costs of losing his connection with his community, his family and the craft of healing led to a crisis of conscience. The film never mentions the word "Jew" or specifically points out that the characters are indeed Jewish. But it does include Jewish prayers, such as the Shema, recited in Hebrew, and incorporates a Pidyon Ha-Ben, the Jewish ritual Redemption of the First Born.

Two additional Jewish-themed films of the 1930s: Universal Pictures’ Counsellor at Law (1933), starring the unbelievably miscast John Barrymore as Jewish attorney George Simon. The film was adapted from a play by Elmer Rice (Reizenstein), produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr., and directed by William Wyler (a cousin of Universal’s founder Carl Laemmle). Then, in 1937 Warner Brothers’ classic The Life of Emile Zola starring two distinguished actors from the Yiddish theater, Paul Muni as the writer Zola and Joseph Schildkraut as the French Captain Alfred Dreyfus (both of whom received Oscars for their performances), who was falsely accused of giving over French military information to the Germans. Based on one of history’s most notorious anti-Semitic conspiracies, nowhere in the script does one find the word “Jew” or “Jewish.” When asked about this in later years, Jack Warner said that it was done on purpose in order to make the picture’s “message” more universal. For their efforts, Jack Warner did walk away with the Best Picture Award for 1937.

Although the original moguls were both uncomfortable and intensely private when it came to being Jewish, they did build one of the most opulent Reform Synagogues in the world: the Wilshire Blvd Temple, located 24 blocks away from where the new Academy Museum sits. Completed at a cost of $1.5 million in 1929, the Temple was built largely through the donations of Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, and the Warner brothers. In keeping with its Hollywood roots, the sanctuary’s magnificent murals were created by studio artist Hugo Ballin.

The “other” synagogue in Hollywood, Temple Israel on Hollywood Blvd., was founded in 1926 by seven men, five of whom were prominent in the film industry, including Sol M. Wurtzel, Isadore Bernstein, and Edward Laemmle. From the time of its founding, the temple was well-known for its “Midnight Show,” a series of fundraisers which over the years saw such Jewish and non-Jewish stars as Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Lena Horne headline on behalf of the Temple.

In an article written for the March 21 , 2022 edition of The Hollywood Reporter Bill Kramer, director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of ADL (Anti-Defamation League) wrote a front-page essay noting the absence of any reference - let alone exhibit - dealing with the immigrant Jewish experience as it related to the creation of Hollywood. As they noted, throughout the industry and among museum stakeholders, a single question was being repeatedly asked: “Where are the Jews?”

As it turns out, answering that question was not nearly as important as doing something about it. In their article, Kramer and Greenblatt noted that when the museum opened this past September, there was “ . . . a two-month screening and panel series on Viennese émigrés, many of whom were Jewish, who helped to define the classical Hollywood era, including Max Steiner, Billy Wilder, and Hedy Lamarr.” After numerous discussions and a great deal of what the authors referred to as “self-reflection” (which is something as deeply Jewish as Manishewitz, kvetching und kvelling), it was decided to create a permanent exhibit on this utterly crucial aspect of Hollywood history. The working title for the exhibit is “Hollywoodland,” named after the original sign adorning the hills above my home town. (First erected in 1923, the sign was meant to serve as an advertisement for a 640-acre real-estate development which never came to fruition due to the Stock Market Crash of 1929; the last 4 letters would be removed in 1949, which happens to be the year of my birth.)

Again, the reason or reasons why the Academy Museum opened without a permanent exhibit dedicated to the role immigrant Jews played in creating one of the most vibrant industries on the planet, really isn’t that important . . . and most likely unknowable. Perhaps it lay in the genomic make-up of the founders; being Jewish but neither comfortably nor obviously so. Then too, most of them had fled the anti-Semitism of Central and Eastern Europe and wanted nothing so much as to become 100% American. That they entered the world of nickelodeons, kaleidoscopes and celluloid isn’t, when stops to think about it, all that surprising. After all, this was a brand new endeavor; one which had few if any historic barriers or prejudices at its core. Then too, coming from such endeavors as gloves, coats, dresses and small dry goods stores, the future moguls possessed a collective innate sense of future trends and fashions . . . a marvelous asset for the making of motion pictures for the fickle masses. Three examples: Max Aaronson (Broncho Billy) foresaw the Western Film craze long before Tom Mix and William S. Hart arrived on the scene; Wilhelm Fuchs (William Fox) saw a future fortune to be made in the making of films centering around “vamps” before anyone else, and made Theda Bara, the daughter of a Jewish tailor, a star of international import within less than a year; Universal’s “Uncle Carl” Laemmle understood that the public would be far more excited about going to see movies over and over again when they knew (or thought they did) the names of their favorite stars as opposed to merely their nicknames such as "The Girl With the Curls” (Mary Pickford); "The Dimpled Darling” (Maurice Costello) or "The Biograph Girl” (Florence Lawrence).

The Academy Museum board, its officers, advisors and curators are looking to create and finish the “Hollywoodland” project within a year. I for one am terribly proud to play a role (small though it might turn out to be), and anxiously await the day when Meyer and Goldwyn, Zukor, Cohen, Warner and Laemmle can finally receive the tribute they so richly deserve.

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categories / The Hollywoodland Project

Welcome to the Family, Hedy Lamarr Stone

May 30, 2021 / Kurt F. Stone

(As regular readers of The K.F. Stone Weekly know, we had to send our beloved 13-year old pup and service dog Fwed Astaire Stone “across the Rainbow Bridge” two weeks ago. We have now brought a new star into the family, a 5-year old Beagle we named “Hedy Lamarr Stone.” She is, like her namesake, beautiful and quite loving. She is already showing signs of being a star. And so, as a welcome to the newest in a line of unique canines which extends all the way back to Buster Keaton (a tri-colored Collie who was my great love in grad school), Ginger Rogers (a Chocolate Lab whom many of you knew) and Eleanor Roosevelt (a pug who looked a lot like the late First Lady), it is my pleasure to say a few words about Hedy’s eponymous ancestor, an Austrian Jewish beauty born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler).

Of the scores of stars who graced the silver screen during Hollywood’s “Golden Era,” it is likely that the most beautiful and alluring of all was Hedy Lamarr . . . who was named for the silent star Barbara La Marr, who, in her day was known “the girl who is too beautiful” But unlike Barbara Lamarr, who most lamentably died in 1926 from tuberculosis and nephritis at the tender age of 31, this Lamarr lived to the ripe old age of 86, and was far, far more than just another pretty face. Indeed as early as 1931, her first director, the great Max Reinhardt (Max Goldmann) referred to her as “the most beautiful woman in the world” And for my money, he was clearly correct. Far from being a world-class actor (in all honesty, she was fair at best), Hedy was nonetheless one of the smartest and most accomplished stars of all time . . . both on and away from the silver screen. When she entered a scene or a room, all eyes were upon her. When she entered her lab, she was capable of changing the world.

Born November 9. 1914 in Vienna to Gertrude (Lichtwitz), from Budapest, and Emil Kiesler, a banker from Lember, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler the future Hedy Lamarr was raised in a cultured upper-middle class Jewish home in the city of Döbling. It was a small and accomplished family. One of Hedy’s cousins, the avant-garde theater designer and architect Frederick Kiesler (1890-1965) became best known for his “Shrine of the Book,” a wing of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the repository for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Inextricably drawn to theatre and cinema, Hedy dropped out of school in her teens in order to study with the great theater director Max Reinhardt (Maxmillian Goldmann – 1873-1943) in Berlin. While studying and working with Reinhardt, Hedy (pronounced Hady) befriended such future luminaries as Otto Preminger, Sam Spiegel and Peter Lorre.

Acting at first in minor theatre roles and German-language films, she became internationally famous in her 5th film, Ecstasy, in which she appeared in the nude. Now mind you, this was 1933, when films featuring nude women were not screed in first-rate movie palaces. Ecstasy is believed to have been the first non-pornographic film to depict a woman having an orgasm. Barely making it past the censors in Europe it was spirited to America and quickly banned by the notorious Breen Office. After a particularly nasty trial in Federal Court, its American distributor simply ran off 3 dozen new prints, and started screening the film in America’s most open-minded cities. Although it quickly became a sensation in Europe, it did not receive a full American release until 1940. By then her name had been changed to Lamarr and she had become the exotic apple of every movie-goers’ eye.

Shortly after making Ecstasy, Hedy married a man named Fritz Mandl, the Catholic son of a Jewish munitions merchant. Known variously as ”Austria’s Munitions King” and the “Merchant of Death,” Fritz was a martinet who hid his Jewish background by becoming an ardent Nazi supporter. Indeed, prior to leaving Germany, he made a deal with the Nazis allowing him to keep his non-Austrian holdings. In return he allegedly carried Nazi funds belonging to Göring, Ribbentrop, and other high-ranking party members to invest in Argentina. The marriage didn’t last long; by 1937, Hedy had divorced him; feeling the angst and utter discomfort of Hitler and the Nazis, she set sail for England, were she happened to meet MGM’s Louis B. Mayer who told her that as soon as she could find her way to Hollywood, he would sign her to a major contract. As mentioned above, it was Mayer who would change her name to Hedy Lamarr.

Although she was only one of many Europeans who found refuge in Hollywood, Hedy was one of the few high profile women to have done so on her terms, rather than as the wife or daughter of a more famous man or as the protégée of an established director. Her continued insistence on doing things on her own terms was equally remarkable, even if it contributed toward making her the difficult individual she was. She arrived in 1937 and was immediately signed to an MGM contract starting at $550.00 a week. The 5’7” Lamarr was also told that she must immediately take off a minimum of 15 pounds.

It turned out that before Mayer could put her in a picture, she was lent out to independent producer Walter Wanger (Feuchtwanger) who immediately cast her in the remake of the 1937 French gem Pepé lo Moko, directed by Julien Divivier and starring the marvelous Jean Gabin. In this new, translated version, entitled Algiers, Hedy, playing a character named Gaby costarred alongside French heartthrob Charles Boyer. Algiers is a moody melodrama revolving around Pepé (Charles Boyer), a charming fugitive from the law and his battle of wits with Slimane (Joseph Calleia), the police chief dedicated to luring him from the relative safety of the Casbah. Costarring in her first Hollywood-made film, Hedy Lamarr was never better cast than as Gaby, a faintly shady adventuress. She scored big in her love scenes with the newly emergent sex symbol Boyer.

With her marvelous notices, Hedy Lamarr was quickly cast in a series of films opposite some of the most popular and dashing stars in the Hollywood firmament:

1939: Lady of the Tropics (Robert Taylor)
1940: I Take This Woman (Spencer Tracy)
1940: Boom Town (Clark Gable)
1940: Comrade X (Clark Gable)
1941: Come Live With Me (James Stewart)
1941: Ziegfeld Girl (James Stewart)
1941: H.M. Pulham, Esq. (Robert Young)
1941: Tortilla Flat (John Garfield)
1942 Crossroads (William Powell)
1942: White Cargo (Walter Pidgeon)
1944: The Heavenly Body (William Powell)
1944 The Conspirators (Paul Henreid)
1946: The Strange Woman (George Sanders)
1949 Samson and Delilah (Victor Mature)
1950: Copper Canyon (Ray Milland)
1951 My Favorite Spy (Bob Hope)

In total, Hedy Lamarr appeared/starred in 35 films. In the early part of her career, she generally was cast in exotic roles, most notably Tondelayo in 1940’s White Cargo. The only well-above average films associated with her are her first, Algiers (with the famous line (“Come with me to the Casbah!”) and her own personal favorite, Samson and Delilah, directed by C.B. DeMille. Nonetheless, her films were, for the most part, box-office successes and kept the public coming back to see her in films for nearly 15 years.

Her private life was filled with ups-and-downs, to say the least. Six times married and divorced, her most famous husbands were former co-star John Loder and screenwriter Gene Markey, known more for having also been married to Myrna Loy and Joan Bennett than for any particular screenplay.

Hedy’s greatest contributions however, had nothing to do with acting: she literally changed the world through her brilliance as an inventor. Her scientific mind had been bottled-up by Hollywood but Howard Hughes (then a movie producer/director) helped to fuel the innovator in Lamarr, giving her a small set of equipment to use in her trailer on the set. While she had an inventing table set up in her house, the small set allowed Lamarr to work on inventions between takes. Hughes took her to his airplane factories, showed her how the planes were built, and introduced her to the scientists behind the process. Lamarr was inspired to innovate as Hughes wanted to create faster planes that could be sold to the US military. She bought a book of fish and a book of birds and looked at the fastest of each kind. She combined the fins of the fastest fish and the wings of the fastest bird to sketch a new wing design for Hughes’ planes. Upon showing the design to Hughes, he said to Lamarr, “You’re a genius.”

Lamarr was indeed a genius as the gears in her inventive mind continued to turn. She once said, “Improving things comes naturally to me.” She went on to create an upgraded stoplight and a tablet that dissolved in water to make a soda similar to Coca-Cola. However, her most significant invention was engineered as the United States geared up to enter World War II.

In 1940 Lamarr met George Antheil at a dinner party. Antheil was another quirky yet clever force to be reckoned with. Known for his writing, film scores, and experimental music compositions, he shared the same inventive spirit as Lamarr. She and Antheil talked about a variety of topics but of their greatest concerns was the looming war. Antheil recalled, “Hedy said that she did not feel very comfortable, sitting there in Hollywood and making lots of money when things were in such a state.” After her marriage to Mandl, she had knowledge on munitions and various weaponry that would prove beneficial. And so, Lamarr and Antheil began to tinker with ideas to combat the axis powers.

The two came up with an extraordinary new communication system used with the intention of guiding torpedoes to their targets in war. The system involved the use of “frequency hopping” amongst radio waves, with both transmitter and receiver hopping to new frequencies together. Doing so prevented the interception of the radio waves, thereby allowing the torpedo to find its intended target. After its creation, Lamarr and Antheil sought a patent and military support for the invention. While awarded U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 in August of 1942, the Navy decided against the implementation of the new system. The rejection led Lamarr to instead support the war efforts with her celebrity by selling war bonds.

Lamarr’s patent for her frequency hopping device expired before she ever saw a penny from it. Estimates of its current value start at $30 billion. While she continued to accumulate credits in films until 1958, her inventive genius was yet to be recognized by the public. It wasn’t until Lamarr’s later years that she received any awards for her invention. The Electronic Frontier Foundation jointly awarded Lamarr and Antheil with their Pioneer Award in 1997. Lamarr also became the first woman to receive the Invention Convention’s Bulbie Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award. Although she died in 2000, Lamarr was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the development of her frequency hopping technology in 2014. Such achievement has led Lamarr to be dubbed “the mother of Wi-Fi” and other wireless communications like GPS and Bluetooth.

Lamentably, Hedy Lamarr spent the last years of her life living in penury in Casselberry, Florida, where was twice arrested for shoplifting. Her name eventually came back into headlines when, in 1974, Mel Brooks gave actor Harvey Korman the name “Hedley LaMarr” in his classic Western spoof Blazing Saddles. In many scenes, cast members would refer to Korman’s character as “Hedy Lamarr,” to which he immediately - and angrily - responded “That’s Hedley.” Ms. Lamarr eventually sued Mel Brooks for an undisclosed sum and settled out of court.

Annie and I are delighted to name our newest family member after a truly gifted, unique and beautiful creature. We are happy to report that she is already beginning to respond to her new name, and like her “ancestor” of old, is not at all adverse to applause . . .

Could autographs be far behind?

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Rosebud

February 28, 2021 / Kurt F. Stone

On March 17, 1941, just a couple of days after the world premiere of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, novelist/movie critic John O’Hara (often referred to as “The Rodney Dangerfield of American literature”) wrote a review of the movie for Newsweek Magazine. O’Hara began his review in the following manner:

It is [with] exceeding regret that your faithful bystander reports that he has just seen a picture which he thinks must be the best picture he ever saw.

With no less regret, he reports that he has just seen the best actor in the history of acting.

Name of picture: Citizen Kane.

Name of actor: Orson Welles.

Reason for regret: you, my dear, may never see the picture.

O’Hara’s reasons for the last line were multitudinous; it said as much about Hollywood’s feelings for the then 26-year old Welles, as it did about the Hollywood establishment itself.

[George] Orson Welles (1915-1985) claimed that the first words he ever heard while still in the cradle came from Dr. Maurice Bernstein (the Welles’ family physician), who proclaimed the infant a prodigy, “a genius in the making.” It turned out, of course, to be true. (Years later, Welles would immortalize the good doctor by naming John Foster Kane’s business manager “Mr. Bernstein” in Citizen Kane. (The character, whose first name was never mentioned, was played by the venerable character actor Everett Sloane.)

Julius Caesar with Orson Welles and Martin Gabel as Cassius. — *Julius Caesar* with Orson Welles and Martin Gabel as Cassius.

By his mid-teens, Orson Welles had convinced the manager of Dublin’s Gate Theatre that he was an important American actor, and starred in several of that legendary theatre’s productions. After about a year, he returned to America before his 19th birthday and created both the “Mercury Theatre on the Air” on radio and Broadway’s “Mercury Theatre,” the former of which scared much of the East Coast with his Halloween broadcast of H.G. Welles’ (no relation) “War of the Worlds.” Welles also became radio’s “The Shadow,” and went on to both produce and star in a modern-dress version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (as an anti-Fascist, anti-Mussolini drama); it turned out to be one of the 20th century’s most compelling versions of a Shakespearean play. He also produced and starred in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, William Gillette’s Sherlock Holmes and Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, among many, many others. And mind you, by this time he was barely twenty.

Working alongside his producer, future Oscar winner John Houseman, Welle’s Mercury Theater even had its own “Declaration of Principles,” - a statement which vowed that the company would cater to patrons “on a voyage of discovery in the theater,” who wanted to see “classical plays excitingly produced.” Fans of Citizen Kane will recognize in this the “Declaration of Principles” that John Foster Kane created for his first newspaper . . .

Not surprisingly, Hollywood came courting. What was surprising, were the terms that RKO Studios offered the younger-than-young Welles: $150,000.00 ($2.8 million in today’s money) for each of two films of his choice, for which he could act as producer, writer, director and screen star, as well as having virtual complete control of the final film Prior to this earth-shattering contract, the studio chiefs maintained nearly complete control over a film’s destiny, including its script, casting, production budgets, assignment of technical staff, and the editing of the footage into a final print.

Nonetheless, no one, save Charlie Chaplin (who was using his own money) had ever received such an offer; heretofore, writers wrote, directors directed, producers produced and actors acted. But there was just something about Orson Welles. Even before Welles and his Mercury Theatre troupe detrained at the Pasadena Station, people in Hollywood were dubious, envious and wickedly jealous of the boy genius. As one biographer would note, “Welles radiated the physical presence of a movie idol long before he set foot in Hollywood.” Resentment and distrust were compounded when Welles arrived in Hollywood proper, sporting a beard [left over from his aborted production of Five Kings – an ambitious compilation of five of Shakespeare’s plays about British monarchs that Welles still hoped to produce after he completed a stint in Hollywood] . . . the beard served to alienate some . . . and amuse others. According to an article in The Hollywood Reporter, “Errol Flynn sent Welles the perfect Christmas gift for a whiskered actor: a ham with a beard attached to it.”

Upon his arrival at RKO studios, Welles - accompanied by his future cinematographer Gregg Toland - went over virtually every square inch of the lot, with Welles drinking in every facet of film-making. When asked by the press what he thought about the studio, Welles likened it to “the best electric train set any kid ever had!” At night, he began contemplating his first film . . . but what would it be? His first inclination was an adaptation of British writer Eric Ambler’s Journey into Fear (which Welles would make right after “Citizen Kane.”) The studio turned him down flat: Welles’ proposed budget for Journey was around $1 million; his contract permitted no more than $500k per picture. Welles countered with Nicolas Blake’s espionage thriller The Smiler With a Knife. This too was rejected due to cost. In the meantime, Welles also watched plenty of films plenty of times. These included John Ford’s Stage Coach, Charles Chaplin’s City Lights and a minor 1933 film, The Power and the Glory, whose screen writer, Preston Sturges, would become the next great writer/director/producer. This picture, which starred a young rising Spencer Tracy and former silent superstar Colleen Moore, told the story of a man’s life . . . beginning with his funeral and then working backwards to his extreme youth. Welles loved the “life-told-in-reverse” concept; it eventually became the storytelling lynchpin of Citizen Kane.

Screen writer Herman Mankiewicz (whose grandson Ben is a host on Turner Classic Movies), who was recovering from a severely broken leg was sent away from Hollywood with John Houseman and a secretary to begin work on a screenplay originally entitled “American,” then “John Citizen, U.S.A.” Mank officially went on the RKO payroll ($1,000 per week) on February 19, 1940. While Mank wrote and Houseman kept the isolated screenwriter from drinking, Welles was back in Hollywood doing his initial pre-production work with cinematographer Toland. What Welles and Toland came up with was a work of sheer genius. Many of their scenes would be shot with ceilings. For the most part, no one used ceilings . . . that’s where lights are hung. So instead, they shot upwards, often digging holes in the floor for the camera to be encased. They were able to film what appeared to be immense gatherings, while through ingenious movie magic, there were actually only had 15-20 people in the scene. The most famous of these are shots of Kane’s campaign speech . . . which contain only a few players in any individual shot; the overall impact is one of thousands of people appearing in a whirlwind of action. The ‘audience’ in the meeting hall is actually a matte painting, pricked with holes so light would shine through and give the illusion of motion to the ‘crowd.’”

Then too, there is the brilliant scene where Kane’s 2nd wife, Susan Alexander (played by Dorothy Comingore) is about to make her operatic debut: the screen seems filled with mobs of frenzied people from the staff and company of the opera production; the impact is achieved by carefully plotting the rushing of actors across the stage at five different distances from the camera – some only a few feet from the lens, blacking out the scene. What seems like hundreds of people filling the frame is no more than twenty; the resulting visual impact of the intricately choreographed small groups of actors provided a far more stylized look to Citizen Kane than would more traditional surgings of teeming mobs. Susan appears to be performing before a full house; in reality, there is no one in front of her. By shooting from behind the diva into the lights, the mind of the cinema-goers fill in the house through suggestion . . . thus saving tens of thousands of dollars.

Deep Focus Photography at it’s Very Best

But the most fascinating thing Welles and Toland did in Citizen Kane was to employ a cinematic technique called “deep focus photography,” in which front, mid-range and back set could be filmed clearly all at the same time. Generally, when someone is right in front of the camera and speaking to someone at a distance, the moment the person being spoken to responds, they become the clear-eyed focus of the camera while the one who originally spoke becomes blurred. In deep-focus, everyone remains in focus. In fact, there is one scene in Citizen Kane which, although adding little to the story, is used in order to show off what Toland and Welles were doing. This is the scene where Welles is about to sign over his corporate ownership rights to the bank. Kane (Welles) gets up from the table where Mr. Bernstein and their longtime banker, Mr. Thatcher (played by George Coulouris) are seated. Kane walks and talks until he reaches the back of the room . . . which is far more distant that at first it appears to be . . . and then returns to the table. The only reason for this set-up is to show the magic of deep-focus. By far, the greatest - and most difficult - of all deep-focus shots came when Kane broke into his wife Susan’s bedroom soon after she had tried to commit suicide. Even the still shows the door, Kane and the bottle of poison in perfect focus . . . a prodigious feat of cinematography.

This use of deep-focus was as much a product of good timing as anything. From Toland’s point of view, Citizen Kane was not only well-timed artistically, but technically as well. New developments in both lighting and film – in particular the release of Kodak’s new Super XX black-and-white film stock in 1938 – opened vast new horizons for cinematographers, allowing them to shoot with less light and achieve greater contrast and depth to the image. And although the movie-goer does not necessarily understand what they are seeing, it nonetheless leaves a lasting impression.

In addition to writing, directing and rehearsing his cast, Welles was also the star of the film, which meant often having to be in make-up by 3:00 in the morning. During the making of Citizen Kane, the makeup department created a total of seventy-two assorted face pieces for Kane – among them sixteen different chins alone – as well as ears, cheeks, jowls, hairlines, and eye pouches . . . aging him from twenty-five to seventy-eight. In one of the film’s most famous scenes - showing the dissolution of Kane’s marriage to Emily across the breakfast table - Welles decided that it would be best to film the scenes in reverse. He reasoned that it take far less time to strip away a layer of makeup and wigs - going from oldest to youngest - than doing the opposite. As such, Welles and Ruth Warrick were able to accomplish this vignette in a single day’s shoot. (n.b.: Welles always wore a prosthetic nose whenever he was on-screen or on-stage; he felt that his own was too small for his face.)

One question the public asked when they first saw Citizen Kane was where Welles had found all the great unknown actors who filled the various major roles: people like Joseph Cotten (Jed Leland), Agnes Morehead (Mary Kane), Ruth Warrick (Emily Norton Kane), George Coulouris (Walter Parks Thatcher), Ray Collins (“Boss” James Gettys), the aforementioned Everett Sloane (Mr. Bernstein) and Paul Stewart (Raymond, Kane’s butler) . . . all of whom would go on to long careers in Hollywood. The answer is simple: Welles merely moved his Mercury Theatre players out west to RKO.

Charles  Foster Kane and Susan Alexander — Charles Foster Kane and Susan Alexander

Herman Mankiewicz and John Houseman originally thought about modeling their main character on millionaire inventor/pilot/filmmaker Howard Hughes, but soon settled on publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. Unlike Hughes, who was too young and not exciting enough in real life, Hearst presented a character and appetites were truly larger than life. The public never had to be told that Charles Foster Kane was based mostly on Hearst, nor that Kane’s other-worldly estate “Xanadu” was undoubtedly based on Hearst’s castle (which the magnate simply referred to as “the ranch”) in San Simeon. Did it then follow that Susan Alexander, Kane’s second wife whom he tried desperately to turn into a operatic diva, was modeled after Hearst’s longtime mistress, movie actress and former Ziegfeld Girl Marion Davies? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Personally, I have always seen Susan as an amalgam of at least 3 famous (or infamous) 20th century courtesans:

Ganna Walska (1887-1984), who was married to publishing heir Harold McCormick (fourth of her six husbands), got him to finance an opera career for her; problem was, she couldn’t sing a lick;
Kodak chairman Jules Brulatour (who also founded Universal Pictures) funded his 2nd wife Dorothy Gibson’s film career, and then his 3rd wife Hope Hampton’s aspirations in grand opera; Hampton, like the fictional Susan Alexander, did not fare very well. Hampton married several other multi-millionaires and became known as ““The Duchess of Park Avenue”

(A future “Tales from Hollywood & Vine, tentatively entitled Who Was Susan Alexander? is already being researched and outlined. It should be ready for posting within the next 8 weeks.)

It goes without saying that Hearst was furious with both RKO in general and Orson Welles in particular. He decided that if Welles and RKO released the picture, he would destroy them. No one, he bellowed, had the right to satirize, demean or make a fool of either him or his beloved Marion. At one point, Hearst attempted to buy up the rights to Citizen Kane with the idea of destroying the master print. Welles threated to sue RKO; RKO told Hearst to take a hike.

Welles did, however, relent on one scene in which he had Susan Alexander, Kane’s increasingly alcoholic second wife have an affair with another man. Hearst was livid; he adored Marion, and even though he never divorced his wife to marry Miss Davies, he refused to have anyone suggest - even on film - that Marion was anything but faithful to the man she frequently and lovingly referred to as “Old Droopy Drawers.” This is not to say that Marion was a vestal virgin. Back in 1924, word got around Hollywood that Marion was carrying on with Charlie Chaplin. On one occasion, when Charlie and a bunch of Hollywood bigshots went out on Hearst’s yacht, the Oneida, Hearst caught Chaplin and Miss Davies canoodling in the latter’s cabin. Chaplin escaped, went out on deck and hid under the tarp of a life saving boat. Hearst, armed with a pistol chased Chaplin and fired at a man standing in front of him. It turned out that the man he hit was not Charlie Chaplin, but rather famed producer/director Thomas Ince, who actually looked quite a bit like the silent comedian. Ince died several days later at his Beverly Hills home from his gunshot wound. Louella Parsons, the Hearst writer covering Ince’s death, reported that the director had died from a heart attack. For her loyalty to Hearst, Parsons was rewarded with a lifetime contract and eventually became Hollywood’s most fearsome gossip columnist. And as long as W.R. Hearst lived, Parsons would do his bidding . . . up to and including panning any picture produced by RKO or Orson Welles. This had a lot to do with the financial failure of Citizen Kane.

In the end, Charles Foster Kane died alone, surrounded by his art and at a loss for friends or mourners. As the collectibles and detritus of an opulent life are consigned to a furnace, the one question asked (by a young, uncredited actor named Alan Ladd) is what did his dying word - “Rosebud” mean? We discover during the final frame that it was the name emblazoned on a cheap sled he had been given as a child. So perhaps it was an expression of longing for his age of innocence - the last time he had felt truly happy or secure. So far as the story of Charles Foster Kane goes, that works about as well as anything. However, in the backstory that is Citizen Kane, “Rosebud” does have a purpose and a meaning. According to those who knew Hearsts and Davies well “Rosebud” was Hearst's term of endearment for Davies’ pudenda, to employ medical terminology, or “honeypot” to a bit raunchier.

Today, Citizen Kane is largely considered to be the greatest film ever made. And although it failed at the box office and received less than stellar distribution in its first year on the circuit, it did receive 8 Academy Award nominations, won for best original screenplay (Welles/Mankiewicz), and earned the praise of many, many respected critics, including John O’Hara, whose pithy remarks opened up this post.

But Welles, Hollywood last spectacular wunderkind wound up having the last laugh. Despite a 40-year career as an actor, writer director and producer, he would have many ups-and-downs, gain a ton of weight and spend much of his time raising funds for his next picture. But throughout it all, that initial contract with RKI remained a living, breathing entity. When, in 1986 Turner Entertainment Company, which had obtained the home video rights to Citizen Kane in 1986, announced with much fanfare on January 29, 1989 its plans to colorize Welles’ masterpiece, there was an immediate backlash with the Welles estate and Directors Guild of America threatening legal action. Turns out, the contract which Welles had signed with RKO back when he was no more than a youngster, gave him - and his heirs - the rights to the film. As such, no changes could be made without the express written consent of Welles, his children, grandchildren or assignees.

Rosebud!

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categories / The Hollywood Brat

Round Up the Usual Suspects

December 02, 2020 / Kurt F. Stone

Hello Dear Friends:

It’s been some time since I last sent out a “Tales From Hollywood and Vine” blog. This doe not mean that I’ve ceased being your favorite “Hollywood Brat.” Far from it! In addition to spending an inordinate amount of time vetting COVID-19 research protocols and writing tons of political essays, I’ve also become part of a new film venture: EDIFY. There is a new online lecture service called “EDIFY,” sponsored by Florida Atlantic University . . . one of the places I do film classes. Months and months ago they asked if I would create a filmic version of one of my “Behind the Silver Screen” lectures . . . complete with yours truly and lots of clips and photographs. They came to me first as sort of a test case to see if it their idea could work. I said yes and then went to town on a lecture about the making of “Casablanca.” Well, after months of filming and editing, its up and running!

I am delighted to inform you first. You can find it online at edify.fau.edu Once you get to the site, you can go to “about,” and “subscribe” and then on to my lecture. Please note, this is a subscription site that contains dozens upon dozens of lectures in a whole host of disciplines. A subscription is a mere $10.00 a month, and you can cancel at any time you wish.

I hope you will get a chance to see my lecture. It was a pleasure to make and - in my humble opinion - turned out really well. If you have any questions or difficulties, you can always contact the creators of this website at edify@fau.edu or give the office a call at 561-297-3185.

Please let me know if you get a chance to see my lecture . . .

KFS

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February 2, 1914

August 02, 2020 / Kurt F. Stone

August 2, 2020

February 2, 1914

Sir Charles Spenser Chaplin in my library

The other day I officiated at the funeral of a dear friend. At the time of her passing she was 106, and had been, up until a few days before her death, about as healthy as anyone I knew. Selma shared a birthday with “Madame,” my mother Alice . . . except that Selma was precisely 10 years older than mom. Every February the 8th, she (Selma) would ask to be remembered to “that young lady” and send along her birthday wishes. Like Madame, Selma was a fine, fine artist; she worked largely in oils where Madame spent a lifetime as a gifted pointillist . . . pen and ink being her “weapon” of choice. Unlike Mom, Selma was never an actress, but like mom, was a gifted dancer.

In preparing for Selma’s service, I did quite a bit of research . . . most of it dealing with the year 1914. In the year of her birth, Woodrow Wilson was president, the only Roosevelt most Americans could identify was Theodore, and Babe Ruth had yet to hit his first home run. (For baseball aficionados, that year, the all-time record for home runs was one Roger Conner (1857-1931) who held the all-time record: 138 dingers. In February 1914, one could purchase a 3 bedroom home through the Sears catalog for $825.00; the vast majority of American veterans had served during the Civil War, a Ford Model T cost $440.00 (approximately $11,231 in current dollars) and the most popular movie star in the world (at least as of February 1st of that year) was a zaftig Jewish maiden named Theodosia Goodman, who who acted under the name “Theda Bara.” (Mom would parody Miss Bara about 45 years later in a sketch called “We Never Learned to Twalk (sic).”

On February 2, 1914, a mere 6 days before Selma’s birth, the world be forever changed. For on that day, a 25-year old Cockney vaudevillian named Charles Spenser Chaplin was first seen on screen in a 1-reel short ironically entitled “Making a Living.” Appearing sans baggy pants, tight threadbare coat, derby hat and over-sized shoes (which wouldn’t come about until his next picture, “Kid Auto Races in Venice”). Film reviewers immediately understood that the first genius of the screen had arrived. The anonymous reviewer for Motion Picture World wrote about the unnamed actor in Making a Living: “The clever player who takes the role of the nervy and very nifty sharper (Chaplin) in this picture is a comedian of the first water, who acts like one of Natures’s own naturals. . . . “

One week later - on the very day Thelma was born - came Chaplin’s second picture: a half-real short entitled “Kid Auto Races at Venice.” In this picture, Chaplin somehow managed to throw together the costume that would almost immediately make him the best-known, most beloved character on planet earth. In this split-reel film (the other half being an educational short called Olives and Their Oil), Charlie, a stranger from “Who Knows Where,” makes his first appearance as “The Tramp.” He laughs with the children at the auto race, mimics them, and flies into rages which soon pass. Already, reviewers sensed that this as yet unnamed actor was someone very, very special: the reviewer for The Cinema wrote “Kid Auto Races struck us as about the funniest film we have ever seen. When we subsequently saw Chaplin in more ambitious efforts, our opinion that the Keystone Company had made the capture of their career is strengthened. Chaplin is a born screen comedian; he does things we have never seen done on the screen before.”

“Kid Auto Races at Venice” (February 8, 1914)

By May 13, of that year, Chaplin had made an additional dozen pictures for Keystone. On May 4, 1914, Keystone released the first film written, directed by - and starring - Charles Chaplin: “Caught in the Rain.” Within 3 months, “The Little Fellow” - as Chaplin would forever after refer to him - had learned just about everything he would ever need to know about the art/business of cinema. He would never entrust any aspect of a Chaplin film to anyone else for the rest of his career. By the time Caught in the Rain hit the theaters, his initial director at Keystone, Henry "Pathé", Lehrman had left Mack Sennett, understanding full well that Chaplin already knew far, far more about the art of cinema than the Ukraine-born Lerhman (1881-1946) could ever hope to know. Within two more years, Chaplin (whom Sennett paid $150.00 per week in 1914), would be making $10,000 per week (plus a $150,000.00 signing bonus) for a contract to write, direct and star in films for Mutual. Within another year, he would be making more than $ 1 million a per as a founder and major stockholder of United Artists. (n.b. In 1919, upon hearing that Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and the revered director D.W. Griffith had gone into business for themselves forming a company they called “United Artists" in order to protect their work and control their careers, Richard Rowland, then head of Metro Studios, famously remarked that "the lunatics have taken over the asylum". That’s where this witty bon mot came from.)

After making “The Kid” (Chaplin’s full-length picture for U.A., he would take more and more time between pictures, turning out such immortal classics as “The Gold Rush,” “The Circus,” “City Lights,” “Modern Times,” “The Great Dictator” and “Limelight,” among others. Over the years, reviewers, while frequently castigating and finding fault with his politics (decidedly progressive) and personal life (he had a penchant for marrying younger women) never ceased to acknowledge his God-given brilliance as a filmmaker.

On occasion, I would chat with Selma about Chaplin, whom she considered a consummate genius. She fully understood that to be an artistic genius did not necessitate being either a saint or a paragon of virtue. Without question, Sir Charles Chaplin left an indelible legacy as a cinematic artist, world-class director, peerless composer, first-rate writer and clown. I hope that the next generation will come to understand that Chaplin was and is to cinema what the Beatles were, are and ever shall be to Rock ‘n Roll, and Dickens to literature: the best there ever has been. And unlike just about any other person in the history of the so-called “Seven Arts” (Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Literature, Music, Performing and Film) Chaplin was the only whose brilliance was universally proclaimed on day one - February 2, 1914 - a mere 144 hours before my friend Selma’s birth.

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Budd Schulberg: Mostly Unknown But Still the Best of the Best

May 10, 2020 / Kurt F. Stone

Except for dyed-in-the-wool movie buffs and multi-generational “Hollywood Brats,” the name “Schulberg” is largely forgotten or unknown. But one need not be either of the two - a dyed-in-the-wool movie buff or a Hollywood Brat - to be familiar with the films “On the Waterfront,” “The Harder They Fall,” or “A Face in the Crowd,” or the novels “The Disenchanted” or What Makes Sammy Run? the latter likely the greatest Hollywood novel ever written. Born in 1914, Seymour Wilson “Budd” Schulberg was the son of B. (Benjamin) P. (Percival) and Adeline (Adler) Schulbeg). His father, who started out as a movie publicist (he was the fellow who tagged Mary Pickford “America’s Sweetheart”) rose to become one of the most powerful men in the business in the 1920’s as head of production at Paramount Studios. He also discovered Clara Bow, perhaps the most popular movie star in the history of motion pictures. Budd’s mother, Adeline (1895-1977), who divorced his father when he left her for starlet Sylvia Sidney (Sofia Koskow [1910-1999]) went on to form one of the largest and most powerful talent agencies in Hollywood. Young Budd went to Dartmouth, where he was assigned the near-impossible task of tagging after writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, trying to keep the famous writer sober during the writing of a the film called Winter Carnival. Schulberg eventually turned that episode into one the best-selling novels of 1950, entitled The Disenchanted.

Shortly after graduating from Dartmouth, Budd Schulberg returned to Southern California, where he found employment as a “gofer” for director Cecil B. DeMille. In his time with the legendary showman, young Schulberg got a first-row knowledge of the industry into which he had been born. In 1941, the then 27-year old Budd Schulberg wrote and published a novel that is still in print nearly 80 years later: What Makes Sammy Run?” Recognized by many (myself included) as hands down, the greatest Hollywood novel ever put to paper (and to Broadway and television), What Makes Sammy Run? tells the story of Brooklyn-born Sammy Glick who, through a mixture of guile, dishonesty, naked ambition and unbridled chutzpah, works his way up from being a teen-aged copy boy for a cheap New York tabloid to the top-of-the-heap as a highly successful Hollywood producer. Along the way, he uses people like expendable sheets of Kleenex, plagiarizes the work of others and, despite making millions and remaking himself as anything but a Lower East Side Jew, can never find happiness, security or satisfaction.

Despite its huge readership and long, successful run – and numerous revivals - as a Broadway musical – What Makes Sammy Run has never been made into a movie. Yes, there have been two television versions made long, long ago:

First it was presented as a live television drama starring José Ferrer on April 10, 1949, on Philco Television Playhouse;
On September 27 and October 4, 1959, on NBC Sunday Showcase, Larry Blyden starred as Sammy Glick in a two-part television broadcast on NBC-TV Also Blyden’s costars were John Forsythe, playing Sammy’s “Bosworth” Al Manheim, Barbara Rush as Kit Sargent, one of Sammy’s writers, and Dina Merrill as Laurette Harrington, the unobtainable Blue Blood Sammy desires as a bauble for his bracelet.

Even before What Makes Sammy Run hit the bookstores in 1941, most of the major players in the film industry had read its galley proofs . . . and had concluded that it would never be turned into a film. Why? Because these moguls - most of whom were Eastern-European Jews - thought the novel would be fatal fodder for all the well-bred anti-Semites who firmly believed that these moguls were all part of a conspiracy to undermine American morals and the greater good. In Goldwyn: The Man Behind the Myth, author Arthur Marx revealed that Sam Goldwyn offered Budd Schulberg a lot of money to not have it published because Goldwyn felt that the author was "doublecrossing the Jews" and perpetuating anti-Semitism by making Sammy Glick so venal. In 2001, DreamWorks paid more than $2.5 million to acquire the rights to the novel from Warner Brothers for a proposed movie version starring and/or directed by Ben Stiller. Nothing ever came of it. When asked several years ago if he thought What Makes Sammy Run? would ever be filmed, Steven Spielberg told an interviewer that in his opinion it never would be because it was “too anti-Hollywood.

There has long been a question about who Budd Schulberg used as his model for Sammy Glick. Although no one knows for certain, and the author never said who he based Sammy on, many believe it was Brooklyn-born writer/producer Jerry Wald (1911-62), best known for producing “Mildred Pierce,” “Key Largo,” and “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” and writing “They Drive By Night,” “The Roaring Twenties” and “Brother Orchid.” According to his nephew (and my lifelong friend) Alan, whose father, screenwriter Malvin was Jerry’s younger brother, Sammy couldn’t have been based on Jerry . . . his uncle was simply too nice and, unlike the fictional Sammy, Uncle Jerry was widely respected. Sammy could never have won a Thalberg Award (given by the Academy’s Board of Governors to “creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production”), Jerry did . . . in 1948.

Like many Hollywood writers, directors and actors, Budd Schulberg was a leftist. And, like many Hollywood leftists, he found himself having run afoul of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In order to keep from being blacklisted, Budd Schulberg, like others in the same dire straits, decided to “name names” before the committee. What the committee was after was more an act of contrition than learning about heretofore unknown members of the so-called Communist Conspiracy. Schulberg did go before the committee, but did not reveal a single name they were unaware of. Another Hollywood lefty who did the same thing, director Elia Kazan, would find himself employable but reviled. Somehow, Budd Schulberg escaped that additional punishment; both his reputation and employability would remain intact. Ironically though, writer Schulberg and director Kazan would find themselves working together as writer and director on two of the very best films of the 1950’s: On the Waterfront (1955) for which both won Academy Awards, and 1957’s A Face in the Crowd, one of the very best political movies ever made in Hollywood.

A Face in the Crowd, is based on Schulberg’s short story Your Arkansas Traveler from his 1953 collection Some Faces in the Crowd. Starring Andy Griffith (in his first film), Patricia Neal, Lee Remick, Walter Mathau and Anthony Franciosa, tells the story of an Arkansas drifter named Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes who becomes an overnight media sensation. As he becomes drunk with fame, fortune and power, industrial tycoons and political power-brokers start flocking his way, getting him to endorse their products, school their candidates in how to come across as “just plain folks”;' within the blink of an eye, he becomes a narcissistic, ego-maniac. As he is on the verge of creating out of whole cloth the next POTUS (played by Marshall Neilan, who in real life was a famous director of the silent era) “Lonesome’s” train to glory is derailed by the woman who created him in the first place: After his weekly television show (called “A Face in the Crowd”), the woman (played by Patricia Neal) keeps the sound going during the credits. Lonesome, who has finished the show with his now famous sign-off “The family that prayers together stays together',” is unaware that everything he says can be heard by his fans and acolytes coast to coast. They hear him deriding and contemptuously mocking both Senator Fuller, the man he is molding for President, and the so-called “Fighters for Fuller” a bunch of idiots. He brags says that they are all so stupid that they actually believe whatever he says about America, morality, and religion . . . all the while swigging a bottle of booze and laughing it up with the hillbillies who make up his backup band.

In the time it takes for Lonesome to get from the studio to his penthouse where he is about to throw a black tie banquet for Senator Fuller, an entire nation has come to understand that their idol is nothing more than a fraud. He arrives home only to discover that his advertisers had left him, his fans have abandoned him, and he is about to be unemployed. Even his manager (played by Anthony Franciosa in one of his earliest roles) has sold a new crooner to the advertisers to replace the Arkansas Traveler. The film ends with Lonesome screaming out “MARCIA! MARCIA! MARCIA!” at the cab carrying the woman who created him, now traveling off into the future . . .

Many say that Budd Schulberg “borrowed” the demise of Lonesome Rhodes - the mike that remained plugged in - from the legend of “Uncle Don” Carney, a popular children’s radio show host. Don Carney broadcast 5, sometimes 6 days a week on radio station WOR in New York City from 1928-1947. His kiddie show included segments called the "Healthy Child's Club" and the "Talent Quest,” and always ended with him telling his young fans “Good night little friends . . . good night.” It was a wholesome show, to say the least. According to legend, one night at the conclusion of a broadcast Carney thought he was off the air and exclaimed, "There! That ought to hold the little bastards"—but his microphone was still live, and his comment was broadcast to his radio audience. The legend goes on to state that public outrage caused Carney's termination from radio. For years, people truly believed that Schulberg mimicked this in order to bring down Lonesome. Turns out, the Uncle Don episode was an urban legend which persists to this very day. . .

In addition to arguably written the greatest Hollywood novel of all time, Budd Schulberg may well have also written the most politically prophetic screenplays of all time. And to a great degree, What Makes Sammy Run? and A Face in the Crowd share a great deal. They both have central characters who have public personae at odds with their private selves and highly acquisitive, ego-driven personalities that push them ever higher . . . regardless of who they step on. Both works are, at best, black satires on the medial; both present dire warnings about mass media and the power it has to shape a gullible public. Ironically, during the height of Glen Beck’s on-air career, radio and sports host Keith Olbermann started calling him “Glenn ‘Lonesome Rhodes’ Beck.” While it didn’t do that much harm to Beck’s on-air success (that would take place, but be largely of Beck’s own making), it did wonders for sales of A Face in the Crowd.

Budd Schulberg would continue writing books and screenplays until age 93, his last credit being for 2007’s Nuremberg: The 60th Anniversary Director’s Cut. Budd Schulberg died two years later of natural causes at age 95. During his long life he was married 4 times (most notably to actress Geraldine Brooks) and fathered 5 children.

Budd Schulberg may be gone, but he is definitely not forgotten. Simply stated, he was is and always shall be one of the most important writers of the past 80 years.

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categories / Hollywood Bios

Baby Peggy: The Last Silent Star

March 16, 2020 / Kurt F. Stone

Long before Shirley Temple, arguably Hollywood’s greatest and most talented child star; even before “The Jackies” - Cooper and Coogan, there was Peggy Jean Montgomery . . . known to the world as “Baby Peggy.” Born in San Diego, California on October 29, 1918, Baby Peggy’s father Jack worked as a cowboy before entering the movie business as a stunt man and stand-in for the great Tom Mix. At 19 months, Peggy was “discovered” while visiting her father at Century Studios, located in Hollywood at 6101 Sunset Blvd. A director named Fred Hibbard (neé Moishe Fishbach) cast her in a short (“Brownie’s Little Venus”) alongside “Brownie the Wonder Dog.” When it proved to be a success, she was signed to a long-term contract. From 1921 to 1924 Peggy appeared in nearly 150 comedy shorts for Century. These films, the vast majority of which are now lost, often parodied popular films of the day with Peggy satirizing popular stars of the day. In 1923, Peggy began to appear in dramatic features for Universal Studios. These films were “A” pictures, dubbed “Universal Jewels,” the studio’s designation for its top-flight productions. Baby Peggy became so popular that even before moving on to Universal, she was receiving more than 1.2 million fan letters a year. She had 5 full-time secretaries who did nothing but send autographed photos to her legions of fans.

In addition to her films - the most famous of which was 1924’s “Captain January” - remade a dozen years later starring Shirley Temple - she had a line of dolls, dresses, books, sheet music, stuffed animals and even milk. Universal sent her on national promotional tours. In 1924 she served as “mascot” for the Democratic National Convention and was photographed standing next to then-New York Gubernatorial candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Before turning 5 she was earning more than $30,000 a week, 52 weeks a year. Sadly, Baby Peggy’s parents - like those of Jackie Coogan, who had shot to international fame at age 6 starring opposite Charles Chaplin in the 1921 feature film The Kid - Peggy’s spent virtually every penny their daughter earned, putting virtually nothing away for the family’s breadwinner.

Play Captain January”

(When Jackie Coogan became old enough to control his own finances, he learned, to his horror, that his parents had, like Baby Peggy’s parents, spent almost every penny of the millions their children had earned during their time on the silver screen. Coogan learned, much to his astonished chagrin, that his parents had purchased mansions, jewels, employed a coterie of servants and invested in a Rolls Royce dealership, leaving their son with virtually nothing. Coogan fought back, hiring a lawyer and eventually having enacted into law The so-called “Coogan Law,” which forced parents of children who were actors to put aside a minimum of 15% of their gross earnings into sheltered accounts. Moreover, no child could be employed until the parent(s) had given certified proof of an account opened specifically for that purpose. That law is still on the books today . . .

In 1925, the 7 year old’s career came to a sudden and screeching halt when her father (who also served as her manager) cancelled her contract with Universal Pictures over a salary dispute. As a result, Peggy was essentially blacklisted from the industry. Peggy was somewhat successful in vaudeville, which paid her but a fraction of what she had been earning in films. After playing a couple of small uncredited parts in pictures made in the mid- to late-1930s, her performing career came to an end - much to her parent’s dismay and Peggy’s relief. For like many child stars, it was not something she enjoyed . . . much less understood. As Peggy explained to an interviewer many, many years later:

“I remember when I was 4, I was in bed at night and I was thinking how I was always aware that people who were my fans loved that little girl on the screen. But it wasn't me. That wasn't who I was. The real me was the little girl I went to bed with every night. I remember reading something Jackie Coogan told a reporter about the days after his star had faded: ‘If I went into a restaurant and I was not surrounded by people asking for my autograph, I felt alone and unwanted.’ When I read (Coogan) saying that, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Anything that came as praise, he couldn't deal with it. He couldn't accept it. He was waiting for that child, Jackie, to come back. The real identity that he had, he suppressed.”

Fortunately for Baby Peggy, she chose that ‘second child’ - the identify of the real Peggy Jean Montgomery. In another interview, Peggy (by then long known as “Diana Serra Cary”) said “Later, I made peace with her [Baby Peggy]. That's what every child actor should do. I'm so grateful I made that choice.

Cary would go on to become a well-respected freelance writer, the author of the memoir Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy? a fascinating look at the Hollywood her father knew (The Hollywood Posse: The Story of a Gallant Band of Horsemen Who Made Movie History), a well-received biography (Jackie Coogan: The World’s Boy King: A Biography of Hollywood's Legendary Child Star) and a seminal work about the “Hollywood Child Star Era” (Hollywood’s Children: An Inside Account of the Child Star Era.) Unlike almost every child star whose career (and in many instances, their very lives) fell apart when they reached a certain age, Baby Peggy/Diana Serra Cary lived to be 101; she died less than a month ago in Gustine, California on February 24, 2020. And, as a gift to herself, she celebrated her 99th birthday by publishing her first - and only - novel, The Drowning of the Moon, “a vast panoramic novel whose major characters are drawn from the aristocracy of 18th-century Mexico.”

For all the supposed glitz, glamour and fame that comes with being a successful actor, there is also a ton-and-a-half of heartache, insecurity and utter rejection. If there is one thing I’ve learned growing up around actors, writers, musicians and the like, its that once the curtain goes down or the lights go dim, you’re back to square one. Talent, looks, intelligence and luck are certainly important. The most telling ingredients, however, are sell-knowledge and the ability to accept rejection. Baby Peggy certainly had these latter qualities where so many, many other child actors did not. Perhaps that is why she succeeded so grandly at such an early age, had an enormously successful career which lasted only 5 or 6 years, and then went on to live an even more highly successful and gratifying life for an additional 95 years. She is the last of the silent movie actors . . . she who at one time was one of the very best.

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categories / Stars of Yesteryear