Introduction

NOTES INTRODUCTION 1. Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust (New York: Bantam, 1959), 131. 2. West, Locust, 130. 3. For recent scholarship on fandom, see Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, 1992); John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1995); Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing (New York: Routledge, 1994); Janice Radway, Reading the Romance (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1991); Joshua Gam- son, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley: Univer- sity of California Press, 1994); Georganne Scheiner, “The Deanna Durbin Devotees,” in Generations of Youth, ed. Joe Austin and Michael Nevin Willard (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Lisa Lewis, ed. The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media (New York: Routledge, 1993); Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander, eds., Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture, Identity (Creekskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 1998). 4. According to historian Daniel Boorstin, we demand the mass media’s simulated realities because they fulfill our insatiable desire for glamour and excitement. To cultural commentator Richard Schickel, they create an “illusion of intimacy,” a sense of security and connection in a society of strangers. Ian Mitroff and Warren Bennis have gone as far as to claim that Americans are living in a self-induced state of unreality. “We are now so close to creating electronic images of any existing or imaginary person, place, or thing . so that a viewer cannot tell whether ...theimagesare real or not,” they wrote in 1989. At the root of this passion for images, they claim, is a desire for stability and control: “If men cannot control the realities with which they are faced, then they will invent unrealities over which they can maintain control.” In other words, according to these authors, we seek and create aural and visual illusions—television, movies, recorded music, computers—because they compensate for the inadequacies of contemporary society. If we scratch the surface of this “culture of 190 ★ MOVIE CRAZY unreality,” however, we will see an audience that is not desperate, passive, and gullible, but concerned, active, and skeptical. See Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo–Events in America (New York: Atheneum, 1975), 3, 240; Richard Schickel, Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity (New York: Doubleday, 1986); Ian Mitroff and Warren Bennis, The Unreality Industry (New York: Carol Publishing, 1989), 6, 9. CHAPTER ONE 1. Eileen Smith to Florence Lawrence, March 13, 1911, Florence Lawrence Collection (FL), Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC); Tessie Cohen, Decem- ber 26, 1911, Bison Archives. 2. “They Can’t Fool the Public,” Photoplay, June 1922, 110. 3. Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 104, 162, 125. 4. Edward Wageknecht, The Movies in the Age of Innocence (New York: Ballantine, 1971), 20; Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 128. 5. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 118, 201-2. Although the film was actually advertised as “Reproduction of the Corbett and Fitzsimmons Fight,” many audiences seem to have ignored or misunderstood the title’s implications. 6. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 205-6. 7. New York Dramatic Mirror, May 7, 1898, quoted in Robert Allen, Vaudeville and Film 1895–1915: A Study in Media Interaction (New York: Arno Press, 1980). 8. Barton Currie, “Nickel Madness,” Harper’s Weekly, August 24, 1907, 1246- 7; “The Random Shots of a Picture Fan,” Moving Picture World, October 21, 1911, 198. 9. Tom Gunning, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991). Also see Joyce Jesionowski, Thinking in Pictures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). 10. Va r ie ty, April 3, 1909, 13; Moving Picture World, June 19, 1909, 834; both quoted in Gunning. 11. “Tricks of the Moving Picture Maker,” Scientific American, June 26, 1909, 476-7. 12. “How Miracles are Performed in Moving Pictures,” Current Literature, September 1908, 329; William Allen Johnston, “The Silent Stage,” Harper’s Weekly, November 13, 1909, 8-9. 13. George Ethelbert Walsh, “Moving Picture Drama for the Multitude,” Independent, February 6, 1908, 206. 14. Moving Picture World, September 21, 1907, 29; Marjorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus (New York: Avon Books, 1973), 21. 15. Both Richard DeCordova and Anthony Slide find little evidence that the policy of anonymity was instituted by actors. As Slide has written, “Did these so called legitimate actors really care that much (about their reputa- NOTES ★ 191 tions)? I doubt it. The majority of actors who accepted screen roles were thankful not only for the work, but for the fame it promised them.” Other accounts, however, insist that the policy was initiated by actors concerned with their reputations. In 1910, Moving Picture World explained that “Actors are glad to play the parts, but all of them try to shield their identity. They have an undisguised impression that the step from the regular productions to the scenes before the camera is a backward one.” As silent film actress Viola Dana agreed, “You never let it be known that you did the ‘flickers’ in the summertime just to make a few dollars.” According to Linda Arvidson, director D. W. Griffith’s wife, the motivation behind the Biograph studio’s policy of secrecy was the fear that stardom would lead to higher salaries. For these conflicting accounts, see Richard DeCordova, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 77-8; Anthony Slide, Aspects of Film History Prior to 1920 (Methuen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1978), 3; “Photographs of Moving Picture Actors,” Moving Picture World, January 15, 1910; Linda Arvidson, When the Movies Were Young (New York: E. P.Dutton, 1935), 187. 16. To Florence Lawrence, May 26, 1911, FL, NHMLAC; “The Motion Picture Field,” New York Dramatic Mirror, January 15, 1910, 13. 17. On the shift from histrionic to verisimilar acting styles, see Roberta Pearson, Eloquent Gestures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 18. Eileen Smith to Florence Lawrence, March 13, 1911; Mabel Hilton, Novem- ber 24, 1911; from Portland, Oregon, December 7, 1911; all FL, NHMLAC. 19. Edith Crutcher to Lawrence, April 14, 1910; Mrs. T. L. Wheelis, December 21, 1911; FL, NHMLAC. 20. J.R.ManningtoLawrence,July30,1911;ElmerJones,January31,1912; Vertical File 211, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS); May Woelfel, February 16, 1910, NHMLAC. 21. Stephen Horsky to Florence Lawrence, April 15, 1910; Leland Ayres, December 7, 1909; FL, NHMLAC. 22. Etta Ward to Lawrence, 1916, FL, NHMLAC. 23. “The Motion Picture Field,” New York Dramatic Mirror; Moving Picture World, May 14, 1910, 825. 24. Moving Picture World, March 12, 1910, 365. To his death, Laemmle insisted that he had no hand in the publicity stunt. Laemmle claimed that the report of Lawrence’s death was planted by a rival organization, the Edison Film Trust; he simply used the opportunity provided by the false announcement to publicize the actress. But the aggressiveness with which Laemmle pursued publicity for Lawrence suggests that the film executive had planned the scheme from the start. For Laemmle’s own account of the event, see John Drinkwater, The Life and Times of Carl Laemmle (NewYork:G.P.Putnam, 1931), 140. 25. “The Imp Leading Lady,” Moving Picture World, April 2, 1910, 517; Rose Saalmueller to Lawrence, April 11, 1910, FL, NHMLAC; A. W. Dustin to Lawrence, March 7, 1910, Vertical File 211, AMPAS; Florence Lawrence with Monte Katterjohn, “Growing Up With the Movies,” Photoplay Maga- zine, February 1915, 144; Drinkwater, Life and Times of Carl Laemmle, 141. 192 ★ MOVIE CRAZY 26. Edith Crutcher to Lawrence, April 14, 1910; Elsie Miller, July 11, 1910; Virginia Kramer and Helen Wood, August 31, 1911; all FL, NHMLAC. 27. George Armstrong to Lawrence, August 30, 1911; Dick Shields, March 6, 1916; FL, NHMLAC. 28. Advertisement for the IMP studio, Moving Picture World, February 26, 1910, 323. 29. Advertisement for the IMP studio, Moving Picture World, February 3, 1912. 30. “Observations by our Man About Town,” Moving Picture World, September 9, 1911, 706; Lux Graphicus, “On the Screen,” Moving Picture World, October 8, 1910. 31. Cyril W.Beaumont, Fanny Elssler (London: C. W.Beaumont, 1931), 26; Neil Harris, Humbug:TheArtofP.T.Barnum(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), ch. 5; Ivor Brown, “Edwardian Idols of My Youth,” in The Rise and Fall of the Matinee Idol, ed. Anthony Curtis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974), 33; David Carroll, The Matinee Idols (New York: Arbor House, 1972), 15. 32. My conclusions about theater fans are drawn from dozens of books and articles, including “A Personal Interview with ‘The Virginian,’” Theater, October 1906; “Letters to Actors I Have Never Seen,” Theater, October 1904, 182; “Noted Young Men of the American Stage,” Cosmopolitan, December 1900, 421; “The Brutality of the Matinee Girl,” Lippincott’s, December 1907, 687; Frederick Wemyss, Twenty Six Years in the Life of an Actor and Manager (New York: Burgess and Stringer, 1847); William Wood, Personal Recollec- tions of the Stage (Philadelphia: H. C. Baird, 1855); Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1946), ch. 5. 33. See Gaylyn Studlar, This Mad Masquerade (New York: Columbia, 1996), ch. 3, for stories of fans who tried to see their idols in person. 34. “Letters to the Spectator,” New York Dramatic Mirror, November 11, 1911, 28; “Inquiries,” Moving Picture World, December 2, 1911, 738. Frank Woods later claimed that “Is Broncho Billy married?” was “the first question ever asked by any publication about any film player.” See Photoplay, December 1917, 108. 35. Most writing on theatrical stars had also avoided the personal. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century,publishers issued a wave of books devoted to the major roles and performances of popular actors.

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