The Photoplay Or the Pickaxe: Extras, Gender, and Labour in Early Hollywood Author(S): Denise Mckenna Source: Film History, Vol

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The photoplay or the pickaxe: extras, gender, and labour in early Hollywood Author(s): Denise McKenna Source: Film History, Vol. 23, No. 1, Art, Industry, Technology (January 2011), pp. 5-19 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/filmhistory.23.1.5 . Accessed: 15/06/2011 09:03

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The photoplay or the pickaxe: extras, gender, and labour in early Hollywood

Denise McKenna

hen he published his history of the unioni- by Keystone over a three month period in 1917.3 zation of Hollywood in 1941, Murray Ross Despite evidence that film work attracted men in Wwas struck by the “general belief that extra great numbers, the male extra has been overshad- work is a feminine occupation”, despite the owed by the image of young women thronging the greater number of men working as extras.1 The iden- studio gates for a chance to break into the movies. tification of women with extra work traces back to the The ascendance of the extra girl was made early years of the film industry, with the “extra girl” possible by several factors: the developing connec- emerging as a distinct type in the 1910s. Public tion between the motion picture and its female audi- fascination with the young women who sought fame ence; public interest in the plight of working women; and fortune in motion pictures resonated with the gendered associations with non-skilled labour; and studio system’s growing reputation as a fantastical recurring scandals that situated the female extra at space that transformed dreams into reality. At the the heart of decadent studio practices. Shelley same time, the intense interest in the extra girl could Stamp suggests that the intense focus on the would- raise awkward questions about studio culture and be actresses arriving in Los Angeles revealed deep screen labour: What happened to these young anxieties about women’s economic and sexual inde- women in their quixotic quest for fame? How were pendence during the 1910s, and at the same time they treated in the studios? And what happened if obscured the substantive contributions that women they failed?Apowerful combinationofprurientspecu- made to the film industry in many different areas.4 lation and social anxiety greeted the apparent on- The fantasy of a process by which anyone slaught of movie-struck girls who descended on Los could break into the hierarchy of silent screen acting Angeles in ever-increasing numbers. was fostered by the necessary anonymity of the But the lure of motion picture work was never on-screen extra, whose main purpose was to provide limited to women. Extra work’s appeal to men and background for a scene. The promise of fame under- women from all walks of life was often celebrated in scored the success stories of famous film stars who early accounts of the film industry in Los Angeles, began their careers as extras, undermining the cau- and by the 1920s many more men worked as extras tionary tales that warned of the perils of motion than women. Citing data from the Central Casting Bureau, Ross notes that between 1926 and 1941 the Denise McKenna received her doctorate from the number of men employed as extras was nearly dou- Cinema Studies Department at New York University ble the number of women.2 While there is no corre- and currently teaches at the University of California, sponding source of data for the 1910s, a snippet of San Diego. Her dissertation is called The City That Made the Pictures Move: Gender, Labor, and the Film information from Mack Sennett’s payroll sheet shows Industry in Los Angeles, 1908–1917. that twice as many men as women were employed Email: [email protected]

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picture work.5 These tales were most often directed that followed the behind-the-scenes adventures of at women, and were often couched as warnings to “Ella, the Extra Girl”.9 Reportedly based on real inter- the movie-struck girl that the on-screen fantasy did views, Kingsley’s series offered a glimpse into the not necessarily translate to real life. Yet these warn- everyday life of the studio – on the one hand deflating ings about the film industry existed in tension with a the spectacle of studio life with Ella’s homespun wealth of material that celebrated the growing film wisdom and on the other reinforcing the variety and world.6 As Stamp has argued, appealing to women glamour of film work. As a character, Ella plays was central to the film industry’s drive for cultural against the extra girl type; she is respectably married legitimacy during this period – although expanding and down-to-earth, enjoys her work as an extra, and female patronage posed certain challenges and ex- is successful because she is realistic about studio posed a contradictory understanding of femininity. life. Most importantly, she consistently downplays For instance, attempts to lure the movie-struck girl any desire to be “discovered”, one of the central into the theater in order to bolster cinema’s social and tropes of the contemporary extra girl narrative. Al- economic standing often had less to do with moral though she moves up through the ranks of extras, uplift then with the appeal of adventure serials, “white Ella’s sense of achievement is more profoundly tied slave” films, and other subject matter not considered to her husband’s successful transition from delivery- traditionally “ladylike”.7 In addition to courting a fe- man to working actor. male audience in the theater, women were often the These “interviews” with Ella reinforce the con- primary focus of attention in stories about the film nection between extra work and women’s work. At industry, which ranged from the latest scandals and the same time, they rewrite the image of the delu- behind-the-scenes exposés to more sedate topics sional and transient extra girl into a character who such as skin-care and fashion advice. This rich and reconciles domestic responsibilities with a satisfying wide-ranging discursive field consistently reinforced work life. However, the salacious association be- the association of women with the motion picture. tween women and screen work was dramatically Like the movie-struck girl, the extra girl literalized the highlighted in the early 1920s, most famously in the association between the motion pictures and an scandal surrounding “Fatty” Arbuckle’s trial for the expanding female fan base, but the extra girl narra- death of Virginia Rappe, an actress and model tive takes her to the studio gates. Both “girls” were whose fate became a cautionary tale for the moral bound up with an emerging mythology of moviemak- hazards of working in Hollywood. Heidi Kenaga ing’s powerful appeal to women; but while the movie- traces the impact the Arbuckle scandal had on the struck girl was a national phenomenon, the extra girl treatment of female extras through the expansion of was a character produced in and by the emerging the Hollywood Studio Club and the organization of studio system in Los Angeles. the Central Casting Bureau, established to alleviate the exploitation of extras. Earlier efforts to address Movie madness and the popularity the problems associated with female extras had of extra work been more haphazard. The Hollywood Studio Club By the mid-teens, the extra girl was already estab- opened in 1916 as a resource for women arriving in lished as a type – a character inspired by her love of Los Angeles looking to break into the movies. But as movies, her confidence that she is as pretty as Mary Kenaga argues, expanding the Hollywood Studio Pickford, or the desire for an easy life – who travels Club in the mid 1920s provided more than just a to Los Angeles to break into motion pictures. After “redemptive space” for the women it housed; it was her arrival, however, the extra girl narrative moved in another attempt to transform the image of the ex- a more sinister direction. Local newspapers detailed ploited extra girl into a respectable “studio girl”. More charges against directors and managers who took importantly, updating the Studio Club helped the advantage of screen hopefuls, recasting the extra girl industry retool its own image into that of a “benevo- as the latest incarnation of the fallen woman.8 lent” employer.10 At the end of the decade, Grace Kingsley, The shift of the motion picture industry to Los entertainment staff writer for the Los Angeles Times Angeles in the early 1910s, and the growth of perma- and early observer of the film industry in Los Angeles, nent studios in the area, coincided with the public’s offered an antidote to the negative associations be- increasing fascination with all things film-related, giv- tween women and extra work in a series of articles ing the city and the film industry a joint interest in

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Fig. 1. Lasky Studio “Engagement Dept” registration card for “Adrian Hope”, supposedly used by an undercover reporter researching a series of articles on Hollywood extra work. From H. Sheridan-Bickers, “Extra Ladies and Gentlemen”, Motion Picture Magazine (August 1917): 92.

making studio life appear respectable and transpar- nals, such as the Los Angeles Times and Sunset ent. The public’s understanding of the film extra Magazine, which boasted about the film industry as consolidated around the figure of a hopeful young another tourist attraction in Southern California.12 woman, with attention focusing primarily on the sex- Amazed by the sweeping appeal of motion ual economy of the growing studio system. The stars, pictures, Grace Kingsley observed in 1914 that the directors, and even the films themselves may “movie madness” drew extra applicants from the have gained social standing as the decade pro- “very air and earth”, and not just the pool of resting gressed, but the extra girl eluded respectability. stage veterans. Even more remarkable to Kingsley Local newspapers and magazines provide than the numbers of people looking for extra work some insight into the way that film work was charac- were the types of people applying to the studios: terized and how attitudes towards such work There is one wealthy old man who insists he changed during the 1910s. For instance, in 1911 per could be the greatest moving picture character diem film work was seen as a benefit to actors who man in the business if they’d give him a were tired of stage life and wanted to settle down chance; wealthy society women come in their permanently to live healthier and easier lives in Cali- limousines and leave their names, and some- fornia. Aside from the physical benefits, these per- times they are hired for the sake of their formers were reportedly very well paid at a rate of $3 clothes; bank clerks, law students, stenogra- a day (plus lunch), with the possibility of $5 if they phers, doctors, ‘everybody’s doin’ it.” Then received a minor role.11 Such generous pay could be there are the freaks, dwarfs, hunchbacks, seen as a deliberate lure to entice actors to leave the every sort of deformed person, willing to trade relative security of the theatrical hub of New York and on their misfortunes this way. There are a great risk the trip to Los Angeles. The growing presence of many professional people of the stage who actors and extras in Los Angeles proved to be both come from the East for their health [and] a a source of concern and celebration in a city caught minister and a teacher, both of whom have between maintaining its association with its romanti- worked in the Lasky pictures because of their cized Hispanic past and cultivating a more modern truth to type.13 identity. Actors and extras became part of the city’s colorful backdrop in booster newspapers and jour- Kingsley’s somewhat bemused attitude to-

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ward movie applicants reveals a certain discomfort association with sexual display on stage and the with cinema’s democratic appeal, although it is still imagined excesses of their lives offstage combined more generous than other accounts of film’s phe- to create a figure that was both an erotic object and nomenal appeal. Indeed, Kingsley produced her list social problem.15 The notion that former chorus girls of “unbelievable” applicants to counter the prevailing were lining up at the studio gates aligned other assumption that only “bums” and “lazy people” were female applicants with the most socially disreputable drawn to the film industry. The idea that extra work members of the theatrical world. By way of contrast, paid $3 a day, which had circulated in early reports those young men who found positions in the studio designed to appeal to theater actors as well as foster as “Roman soldiers” were not only classified as more the economic respectability of film work in Los Ange- than mere “spear bearers” (theatrical nomenclature les, had been established in relation to stock players for extras) but also aligned with more dignified his- with theatrical training. However, it was common torical traditions than those associated with the cho- practice from the earliest days of production in Los rus girl. Angeles to pull “types” off the street for use as At the same time that local newspapers were background characters. Lining up at the studio gates making sense out of studio culture and the growing for a position, although slightly more systematic, still ranks of film workers in Los Angeles, “How to Make affirmed the happenstance nature of the selection It” articles emerged as a distinct genre in entertain- process based on appearance, and no doubt ment reporting.16 The Motion Picture Story Magazine shaped the perception that extra work was not only ran a regular interview column called “Chats with a side-job for actors but also a legitimate entry point Players” in the mid-teens, and later added the regular for aspiring novices. feature “How I Became a Photoplayer.” Not only Extra work’s appeal to the masses inspired satisfying the public’s interest in the stars’ personali- occasional quasi-anthropological explorations into ties and lifestyles, but also mapping various trajecto- Los Angeles’s ever-expanding film factories. In 1913, ries for success, suggestions for “how to make it” an article in the Los Angeles Times described the were as varied as the publications that printed them. mixed crowd of day workers that appeared every day While the focus tended to be on women, male stars outside the studio gates. The applicants were sorted and their success stories were popular subjects as into categories that ranged from ambitious, career- well. In such interviews actors often emphasized their minded young men to working class refugees, and training and commitment to hard work, and being an from failed chorus girls to the down-and-out. While extra often figured as a direct path from anonymity to acknowledging that different “types” had a certain fame for men and women alike. Although most of screen use-value and intimating that extra work drew these interviews stressed the players’ professional numerous applicants from the working classes, the stage background, occasionally they related the article also suggests that the qualities of the appli- happenstance manner of their start in motion pic- cants can be more subtly defined by gender. Serious tures. In these cases the actor’s “discovery” often young men who are humble enough to start at the depended on how well their appearance conformed bottom as “Roman soldiers” are characterized as to a type, or to the possession of a certain skill, like professional and allowed a reasonable chance for the ability to ride a horse. Wallace Reid, for instance, success. Former “chorus girls” with only a few weeks credited his career to “curiosity and an ability to experience, however, who “think they should be able swim”.17 to step into motion pictures and play leads from the Numerous cartoons poked fun at what was start”, are criticized for over-inflated ambition.14 Sin- really required of Photoplayers – not talent, but a gling out former chorus girls also marks female ap- fearless disregard for personal safety. In an article plicants in a sexualized way. As the cultural prototype with the promising title, “How Famous Film Stars of the “gold digger”, chorus girls were associated Have Been Discovered”, Grace Kingsley claimed with avaricious licentiousness and hedonism. Even that such popular players as Mae Marsh, Mary Pick- more damning to the chorus girl’s reputation were ford, Arthur Johnson, Henry Walthall, Owen Moore, the prostitutes who worked the streets around the Florence Lawrence, Barry O’Neil and the Gish sisters theater district in New York and who often claimed to all first appeared as extras.18 Details about how indi- be unemployed chorus girls. Already morally sus- vidual stars started may have been somewhat idi- pect for trading on their youth and beauty, their osyncratic, but one theme that emerged in the “how

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 1, 2011 – p. 8 The photoplay or the pickaxe: extras, gender, and labour in early Hollywood FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 1 (2011) 9 to make it” articles was the importance of working under a director who is able to “discover” the extra’s “undreamed of talents”. This discovery narrative, while not excluding male aspirants, connected more profoundly with the extra girl because it echoed the already popular myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, retold in numerous forms throughout the nineteenth century.19 Although the Pygmalion myth’s narrative structure was reworked and reformulated, what remained constant was the trope of discovery in which a man with vision trans- forms a young woman into something more beauti- ful, more talented, or more desirable than she was before.20 One of the last nineteenth century incarna- tions of this narrative was George du Maurier’s wildly popular 1894 novel Trilby, in which artist’s model Trilby O’Farrell is discovered by the evil mesmerist Svengali, and under his spell becomes a theatrical sensation.21 As a precursor to the extra girl phenomenon, Trilby established the narrative parameters for the public’s understanding of female performers whose success was the product of their manager’s (or director’s) talent and vision.22 By the teens, the discovery narrative invoked in both Pygmalion and Trilby was an already gendered trope, one that was reanimated in the stories of extras who became motion picture stars. Beyond offering a cultural touchstone for describing the artistic process, the discovery narrative also provided a framework for understanding the phenomenon of young women leaving home to look for work in motion pictures.23 Like Galatea molded out of stone or the pliant Trilby, the extra girl was a character defined by her relationship to the creative forces that were forging the film industry, and emerged as a seductive reminder of the power of motion pictures to pull talent out of an anonymous crowd and give it a name.

Wages, women, and the working class Waiting – to get a job, to begin a scene, or simply to be discovered – was one of the defining charac- teristics of extra work and fueled the popular impres- motion pictures; however, there is evidence that men Fig. 2. “How to sion that extra work was easy. This ease was also preferred screen work to manual labour. In 1915, Become a confirmed by the very name “extra”, which replaced Los Angeles’s Municipal Employment Bureau re- Photoplayer”, Motion Picture the theatrical terminology of “supernumerary” or ported that out of 700 men who applied for a job, only Story Magazine “spear bearer”, and which associated extra work with thirty-two stated a preference for steady work while (May 1913): 116. the superfluous or unnecessary. Anecdotal evidence the rest preferred the occasional spot with a motion based on the types of stories that circulated in news- picture company.24 The Employment Bureau had papers and magazines suggests that young women been established at the end of 1913 to help the city sensed the possibility of an easier life working in cope with a rising unemployment crisis brought on

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35,000 were unemployed, although the perennially conservative Los Angeles Times maintained that only about 3000 men with families were in difficulty and that another 2,000 were the usual winter unemployed.26 As part of their free job placement service, in 1915 the Employment Bureau took orders from local motion picture managers for “mobs”. Each man was paid $1 a day, plus dinner and transport expenses.27 Some of these men may have been supplied from one of the work camps established throughout the city to cope with the influx of unemployed men. Seasonal transients in particular may have been attracted by the benefits of wages rather than the barter system of labour for goods offered by the city. Com- pared to city beautification projects, which required planting trees or breaking rocks for road work – jobs routinely assigned to unemployed men – the appeal of working as a film extra was understandable even at only $1 a day. Such a wage, however, did not meet subsistence standards according to the CLC, which had been established by the City Council in 1913 to investigate labour conditions in Los Angeles. Based on their own research, the CLC set the subsistence wage at $2 a day; $4 a day for a “breadwinner” with one dependent. The CLC found that the lowest wages were earned in canneries, laundries, department stores, clothing factories, dry goods stores, and restaurants, although jobs identified with women were the poorest paying. The CLC reported that 70% of laundry workers and 64% of department store employees made less than $2 a day.28 Experienced sales women could expect to make $8 a week (for a 6 day/8 hour a day work week), while clerks made as little as $5 a week.29 There were male dominated occupations that were also as poorly paid. In 1910, Fig. 3. Dressing by a nationwide recession.25 The Employment Bu- drivers for local breweries made only $3 a week, while rooms for extras reau was also supposed to help with recurring peaks the many Mexicans who worked on street railways at the Fox studio. in seasonal unemployment, a feature of California’s could expect to make only $1 a day. Upholsterers From H. economy where agricultural and fishing industries and carpenters were amongst the poorest paid Sheridan-Bickers, “Extra Ladies and usually laid off employees over the winter months. skilled labourers and made around $3.50 a day, Gentlemen”, Displaced workers would often migrate to cities look- although this was still a better wage than found in dry 30 Motion Picture ing for temporary employment, but over the winter of goods and department stores. For many workers Magazine 1913–14 California was hit unusually hard. In Los already living precariously at or below subsistence (August 1917): Angeles, estimates as to how many people were standards, work as a film extra may have appeared 96. unemployed varied widely, depending on the as a reasonable option, a legitimate alternative to source: the labour friendly Citizen claimed that un- much more physically demanding occupations. employment was at 15,000 in August, while the more Even a dollar per day could make the difference for sensational Record suggested that 20,000 men and many workers who needed to supplement their 10,000 women were seeking work. By the end of wages between regular periods of employment. 1914, the Central Labor Council (CLC) asserted that There were, however, strings attached to find-

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 1, 2011 – p. 10 The photoplay or the pickaxe: extras, gender, and labour in early Hollywood FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 1 (2011) 11 ing film extra work through the Employment Bureau. transience of extra work for men and women alike If the applicant stated his preference for motion pic- was already linked to the impermanence that char- ture work over “steady jobs, which include real la- acterized women’s labour in general. bour”, he was kept on the rolls for only that kind of The connection between extra work and employment.31 The Employment Bureau’s punitive women was further reinforced by the material practi- reduction in options was designed to dissuade “able calities of dealing with the unaccustomed influx of bodied men [from] rejecting legitimate labour”, rele- single women in Los Angeles looking for work at the gating film work to the margins of acceptable work studios. Unlike other major cities, Los Angeles had for men. This attempt to direct the applicant’s options not historically appealed to female job seekers and did not seem to have any effect, and movie work was only in the 1910s did women newcomers finally out- so popular that no jobs were cancelled in 1916.32 If number men.36 Shifting demographics heightened some commentators were uncomfortable with “extra local tensions over the problem of single women in girls” who fantasized about becoming stars, they the city, which often focused on the rapidly expand- were equally flummoxed by working-class men who ing film studios where women were employed in preferred extra work to more “legitimate” occupa- great numbers and in many different capacities. Con- tions. Ambivalence toward extra work can be traced cern over the treatment of women working in the in responses to extra work’s appeal to the working studios spiked in the wake of a scandal over immoral classes, and between 1911 and 1916 extra work’s hiring practices, and local clergy called for an inves- reputation shifted considerably. Compared to the tigation into the treatment of female employees. In young men whose desire to work as Roman soldiers response, film studio representatives such as Jesse was an acceptable start to a career, the men from Lasky, David Horsley and D.W. Griffith reached out the Employment Bureau were seen as “idle”, and so to local officials and business groups, and also pub- anxious and unruly that they “crowd and jostle” for licized their efforts to protect women working as only a day or two of work.33 These working-class men extras.37 Griffith’s studio was opened up to local are not characterized as looking for a career but for investigators who praised the “morally perfect” con- an easy break from “legitimate” or real work, sug- ditions they found under Griffith’s leadership and the gesting how class-based bias shaped attitudes to- motherly supervision of a house chaperon.38 But ward extras, and film work in general. Their interest filmmakers did not rely on snippets of good publicity; in extra work was disdainfully attributed to a “histri- the industry and the city forged an alliance through onic” streak, effectively feminizing these men the Los Angeles Police Department when women through an association with hysteria, while mocking working in various studios were appointed as City references to their desire to be “stars” equates men Mothers.39 As representatives of the City Mother’s from the Employment Bureau with the delusional Bureau, women were tasked with supervising female aspirations of extra girls who dreamed of an easier extras working in the studios, intercepting missing life.34 girls, and with interviewing prospective employees to Extra work, because of its heterogeneous ap- make sure they had adequate funds and resources peal and the practical need to cast both men and to live in Los Angeles. Like the Studio Club, which women, effectively collapsed the gendered division was founded around the same time to provide hous- of labour that most often clearly defined other occu- ing and services to women working in the studios, pations. Despite the numbers of men who worked as the film industry’s affiliation with the City Mother’s extras, as a type of labour it was more evocatively Bureau was rationalized as an attempt to prevent linked with women through the movie-struck girl who delinquency and to guide young women through the dreamed of being discovered, but also because of perils of urban life.40 the nature of extra work, which required no special A former extra, Lucile Brown, who had become training and was most often temporary. The notion a casting agent or “type expert”, was appointed as a that women only worked on a temporary basis until City Mother in early 1916, complete with an official they got married and had children had long informed badge and blue uniform. Dubbed the “monarchette” the way women’s work was perceived, profoundly of the Reliance lot, Brown was put in charge of all impacting workplace attitudes towards “female” oc- things “feminine” in the studio, including sixty cupations that justified relegating women to posi- “steady” girls and four hundred extras.41 The studios tions that were temporary or easily replaceable.35 The quickly found a more effective way to publicize their

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Fig. 4. Mrs. same time it situated working women at the center of Lucile Brown, debates over the studios’ employment practices.44 “through whom Such connections materially reinforced the notion applications are that women working in the studios were a problem to made for film assignments at be solved and regulated, and further bolstered the Reliance studio.” associations between extra work and female appli- Los Angeles cants. Tribune (30 January 1916). The extra underclass Studio scandal and the use of stars as City Mothers spectacularized the “femininity” of extra work, but the extra also assumed a female face during the 1910s through associations with unskilled labour, transience, and low wages, all of which were historical hallmarks of women’s labour. Although extra work was humorously lauded for remunerating “colorful types”, or those with disabilities and distinctive appearances, for the working-class aspirant – either male or female – extra work was often described as an escape from real work. In these instances, extra work appeared as an illicit refuge from the type of physically demanding labour that otherwise defined the working-classes. In addition to being understood in relation to extra work’s logic of impermanence, male and female extras were increasingly bound together by a common discourse that linked extra work with idleness and disrepute. As Lawrence Glick- man points out, the ideology of working class man- hood depended on the “related virtues of physical strength and moral responsibility”, particularly the ability to function as a provider.45 Offering wages below subsistence level, extra work could not be considered adequate for a responsible family man. Wage labour posed different problems for working- class women. The fact that extra women were paid for their labour set them on a parallel trajectory with the prostitute, a link that was reaffirmed in stories that exposed the suspect sexual economy of studio life.46 good citizenship, however, and a few months later Indeed, the perception that extra work was a morally Paramount star Anita King was appointed as a City questionable occupation for women only strength- Mother. Professionally, King had already demon- ened the gendered associations that defined extra strated her abilities as an emissary for the industry labour as “feminine” and increasingly obscured the on her well-publicized adventures, driving cross- presence and participation of male extras. And as an country alone to promote Paramount Pictures.42 King occupation, the passivity and ease of extra work was assigned to work in a special capacity under the contradicted the expression of physicality and re- director of the City Mother’s program, Aletha Gilbert, sponsibility that defined working class masculinity, and made numerous official appearances offering explaining the contemptuous suspicion toward un- cautionary tales about the hardships of film work.43 employed men who preferred the photoplay to the King’s new-found moral authority and her high-pro- pickaxe. file appointment glamorized the alignment of the film Despite the industry’s assiduous attempts to industry, civic leaders, and local reformers at the court middle-class respectability during the teens,

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 1, 2011 – p. 12 The photoplay or the pickaxe: extras, gender, and labour in early Hollywood FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 1 (2011) 13 filmmakers had a lot to gain from extra work’s wide ent strategies emerged for coping with both produc- appeal and its accessibility to working-class appli- tion costs and the burgeoning number of people cants.47 When Los Angeles began block-booking involved in making feature length films. Organizing extras for mob scenes through the Municipal Em- and controlling the crew, cast, writers, and directors ployment Bureau, it effectively turned the city into a rationalized film production and created areas of middle-man for the film industry at the same time it specialization and institutional hierarchies that im- provided some economic relief to both the unem- pacted hiring practices and wages as well as how ployed and the city itself. In sending men out for movies were filmed. As Janet Staiger observes, one “snaps” (off-season theater work), the Employment of the first means of controlling the variables in indus- Bureau institutionalized extra work as a form of un- trial production was through the regulation of em- employment relief and further fostered a relationship ployment.53 This need for control was dramatized by between film companies and the city. The Bureau Mary Pickford’s contract negotiations with Famous may also have contributed to keeping studio wages Players in 1915, which gave her $2,000 a week for in check. Trade Unionists in Los Angeles complained ten pictures a year and half the profits from her that the Bureau sent men into jobs without notifying productions. The following year, after a season of them that they were replacing striking workers, a increasing salaries for stage stars lured to the film practice which may have had serious ramifications world, Pickford renegotiated her contract and her for extras attempting to organize.48 Labour leaders weekly rate was raised to $7,000.54 While stars were also argued that local boosters assiduously courted demonstrating their importance to the film industry new industries, residents, and workers not just to with demands for ever-increasing salaries, the studio improve the economy but as a means to control the system became rationalized according to gendered local workforce.49 Drawing a constant surplus of hierarchies of skill and salary. Those at the bottom, workers to the city kept costs down by depressing the stock players and extras, were plentiful and re- wages, which made Los Angeles a desirable location placeable. So while producers were fighting a battle for employers, and was a business practice that also with stars and their salaries in the 1910s, the constant benefited the film industry. influx of excess labour and the absence of strong Reports in Variety suggest that the overall la- union organizations in Los Angeles put film compa- bour condition in California had a negative impact on nies in a position to dictate the terms of pay for just stock players who came to Los Angeles looking for about every other position within the studio. employment during the theatrical off-season. In early Although film studios had rapidly expanded 1915, it reported that there were “too many extras” in control over their workforce, there were moments of Los Angeles, and that there were more “picture su- protest from the studio’s underclass. Sporadic at- pernumeraries” looking for work than at any other tempts to organize resulted in occasional work stop- time.50 Anyone considering a move West was warned pages but had little long-term impact. For extras, to “stay away from the Coast” as there were more whose very status was defined by their anonymity applicants than positions and “hundreds of picture and interchangeability, the ability to negotiate was people” were already out of work.51 The $3 day once almost non-existent.55 Reports in the Los Angeles promised to theater actors willing to travel to Los Times linked extra agitation with the disruptive influ- Angeles was no longer guaranteed, undermined by ence of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a the availability of cheap labour in Los Angeles. For particularly feared labour organization. The IWW had theater actors looking for snaps over the winter of been blamed for the Wheatland Hop Riot near Sac- 1915 and 1916, two problems converged: the Mu- ramento in 1913 and its members were often por- nicipal Employment Bureau using extra work to take trayed as violent and destructive agitators.56 The the unemployed off its roles, and the increasing IWW’s connection with the film industry began as acceptance, even desirability, of movie work. While early as 1914, when members of the IWW tried to problems for regular stock players looking for extra organize extras at Universal, demanding a pay raise work were compounded by the larger unemployment from $1 to $2 or $3 a day.57 It is clear, however, that problems in Los Angeles, the influx of applicants for such demands had little impact. A year later, extras film work benefitted the film industry during a period working on D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance made $1.25 a of rapid growth and institutional upheaval.52 day, plus transportation and lunch; a meal that could As movie making became big business, differ- mean a great deal to those who were living close to

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Fig. 5. Disappointed extras at the Fox studio. Sign reads, “All Casts Are Filled/No More People [illegible]/To-Day.” From H. Sheridan-Bickers, “Extra Ladies and Gentlemen”, Motion Picture Magazine (September 1917): 83.

breadline subsistence.58 Yet pay was not guaranteed for all extras, both men and women. Recognizing that at even $1 a day and abuse of the powerless and extras alone lacked the ability to seriously impact easily replaceable extra sometimes led to even lower production, Union organizers called for “all wage wages. After receiving only fifty cents for two days of earners” in motion picture production, distribution work, ninety-three men appeared at the State Labor and exhibition to unite. Two strikes were declared – Bureau in 1916 and demanded that the L-Ko Film one at Universal and another at Griffith – protesting Company pay them an additional $2.50 a day in back conditions for the “poor slaves who are seeking pay. Half of the men reported that they had accepted temporary employment”.61 Despite this attempt at a the film work from an agency in Los Angeles with the cohesive strike, the new union’s efforts were thwarted “distinct understanding” that they would be paid $3 by the fractured nature of production, which kept a day.59 extras constantly moving amongst different compa- In addition to poor pay, extras complained of nies. They were further undermined by increasingly poor working conditions. In 1916, extras attempted rationalized production practices that stratified work- to organize a new union in order to improve condi- ers and studio design that housed extras separately tions that were described as “chaotic”, “abomina- in their own building.62 Industry leaders also consis- ble”, and “appalling”.60 The newly organized tently denied that there were any labour problems in International Union of Photoplayers of America com- the studios. They painted a harmonious picture of piled a list of demands that touched on unpredictable studio life, aided by the utopian optimism of film trade hiring practices, poor working conditions, and the journals and the Los Angeles Times, which either lack of employee rights. Overall, the new union de- minimized or demonized local strikes.63 Denying the manded that extra labour be systematically reformed significance of these strikes erased the appearance

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 1, 2011 – p. 14 The photoplay or the pickaxe: extras, gender, and labour in early Hollywood FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 1 (2011) 15 of discord between management and labour at a deferred and aligned extra work with a fantasy of time when industry leaders were trying to impress city success, not with a radicalized underclass of work- officials and local business leaders with their eco- ing-class agitators. nomic importance. At the same time, effacing conflict Hollywood’s industrial infrastructure was built also effectively silenced strikers by denying them any upon the inability of workers to unite, which had a opportunity to debate or negotiate.64 long term impact on motion picture production. As Despite the public fascination with the extra girl labour historian Danae Clark observes about the and studio culture, the brief rash of strikes called for studio system in the 1930s, “studios were more by the new union had actually been sparked by the concerned with promoting star images than with treatment of male extras who refused to pose nude.65 acknowledging or improving the working conditions If the preference for “easy” extra work overturned of actors”.67 Clark argues that film studios encour- assumptions about working class masculinity, it is aged a fetishistic attachment to the star’s body by clear that appearing naked contradicted what work- erasing any evidence of its production, effectively ing men accepted as appropriate labour. For extras, distancing screen work from the individual per- calling a strike was one way of asserting control over former. However, this process was not seamless. their everyday lives, but it also marked a moment in Disputes over how to define acting as labour were which extra work could have been identified with a the core conflicts between actors and management more radical and politicized identity. As Alan Tracht- during the studio era.68 These conflicts usually enburg points out, Nineteenth Century collective ac- played out between the individual star and studio tion was linked with working-class identity when the management, but how was management supposed strike emerged as a defining aspect of working class to deal with the unruly body of film extras? During the life, both strategically as a weapon of political agency 1910s, the conflict over screen labour also played out and symbolically as a public challenge to the em- between the extras and the studios, as each side ployer’s authority.66 Unionization in any form chal- attempted to demarcate the boundaries that defined lenged the film studio’s economic autonomy in Los the film extra. Film companies needed both men and Angeles, but also posed an equally dangerous threat women extras, and as filmmaking expanded in Los to the film industry’s image. Union agitation aligned Angeles it underwent the same kind of scrutiny as did the studios with working-class identity and radical other industries: how did one become a star, how did politics at a time when the film industry was still one get a start, what kind of work was it, and to whom working to establish itself as a respectable cultural did it appeal? The emerging understanding of extra institution and attempting to expand its appeal to a work as women’s work was fostered by the public’s middle-class audience. In addition to the benefits of fascination with working women and the culture of sunny weather and multifaceted topography, anti-la- motion picture production, while the de-profession- bour business practices in Los Angeles provided the alization of extra work, from off-season snap for film industry a relatively safe haven from union domi- trained actors to starting point for would-be stars, nated cities in the East and also provided the political cleared the way for the extra girl’s dominance. As a and economic support necessary to control labour labour structure was being organized during the unrest. The strikers’ inability to attract attention out- teens, the film industry learned the importance of side the local labour paper contained the threat that controlling its workforce and also the importance of a striking studio underclass posed to the industry, controlling its workforce’s image. although it did not distance extra labour entirely from As the extra girl came to stand in for a largely the working-class associations. However, these anonymous workforce, she became a star of a differ- strikes are significant because they highlight how ent order: abstracted from individual identity, she effectively early Hollywood’s underclass was disen- became a modern allegory for screen labour. With franchised. Furthermore, the strikes signal how the the extra girl, the studios could manage a persona ascendancy of the extra girl worked to the film indus- that had the potential to impact production and prof- try’s advantage. The extra girl offered the industry a its. To the industry’s advantage, the extra girl repre- much more manageable image of early Hollywood’s sented a sublimation of labour through her underclass than its male population. Her disruptive association with the discovery narrative that cast her potential was muted by the quest for fame, which in a passive role – she was waiting to be discovered defined the extra girl’s image in relation to a dream – not working, and certainly not striking, to improve

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her life. Though tainted by concerns about working Although labour control through surplus was not a women and the dangers of studio life, the “extra girl” management strategy that could contain Mary Pick- effectively alienates the extra from screen labour by ford’s ever-increasing salary, it was eminently appli- reducing a heterogeneous and disruptive body to a cable to the unruly extras who were defined by their “star image.” The sad stories of appalling conditions superfluity, not their willingness to work. Effacing were mitigated by the fabulous success stories of the labour from the extra’s screen performance effec- fortunate few who survived the system. As an alle- tively neutralized the extras’ claims to compensation, gorical figure, the extra girl represents the most po- or demands for a living wage. During a period in tent dream the industry offered: the dream of which film studios were crafting their institutional succeeding in Hollywood. Only after this dream was structure and also their public image, the extra girl exploded by the public’s outrage over the Arbuckle emerged as both the representative of and rationale scandal in the early 1920s, and the extra girl became for a type of labour whose worth could be dis- associated with an abusive system, did the film in- counted. Though such “serious” young men as the dustry begin to systematically address concerns promising Roman soldier might still respectably look about extras.69 for a career in Hollywood, the gender and class The problems associated with the extra girl, politics of film labour concerned not only the extra’s primarily the sexual economy of the casting couch, body on the screen but also the management of defined extra labour to such an extent that it ob- working bodies behind the scenes, impacting labour scured the difficulties that all extras dealt with, such and management relations at a critical moment in the as unregulated working conditions and irregular or industrial formation of early Hollywood. inadequate wages. Despite these difficulties, studios could depend on the popularity of motion pictures to draw screen aspirants to their gates. The industry Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank also greatly benefitted from Los Angeles labour prac- Richard Allen, Mark Lynn Anderson, Mark Garrett Cooper, Eric Hoyt and Shelley Stamp for comments on tices that maintained a surplus of workers, helping to earlier versions of this essay. control wages and undercut the threat of strikes.

Notes

1. Murray Ross, Stars and Strikes (New York: Columbia Adrienne L. McLean “‘New Films in Story Form’: University Press, 1941), 75. Movie Story Magazines and Spectatorship”, Cinema Journal 42.3 (Spring 2003): 3–26. 2. Ibid. The Central Casting Bureau opened in 1926. 3. Mack Sennett Collection, Folio 1154, Margaret Her- 7. Shelly Stamp, Movie Stuck Girls,9. rick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and 8. Denise McKenna, The City That Made the Pictures Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA. Despite the popularity Move: Gender, Labor, and the Film Industry in Los of Sennett’s Bathing Beauties, the number of men Angeles, 1908–1917 (Ph.D. Dissertation: NYU, needed to make Keystone Cop comedies helps 2008), 124. See also Stamp, “It’s a Long Way to explain such numbers. Filmland”, 344. 4. Shelley Stamp, “It’s a Long Way to Filmland”, in 9. See Grace Kingsley, “Ella, the Extra Girl: She Tells Charles Keil and Shelly Stamp (eds), American Her Chum About a Regular Sparklers Among the Cinema’s Transitional Era: Audience, Institutions, Star. Extra Girl and Her Views”, Los Angeles Times Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, (16 February 1919): III, 1. The series continued 2004). While drawing on Stamp’s pioneering schol- through the end of the year. In 1923, Mack Sennett arship, my related argument engages the same offered another wholesome version of the movie- period with a slightly different focus. struck girl’s trip to Los Angeles in The Extra Girl, which 5. Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History follows the humorous misadventures of Sue (Mabel of American Movies (New York: Vintage, 1994): Normand), who wants to take Hollywood by storm 74–77. See also Stamp, “It’s a Long Wayto Filmland”, but gets diverted to the prop room and ends up 340–345. happily married. 6. Shelley Stamp, Movie Struck Girls: Women and Mo- 10. Heidi Kenaga, “Making the ‘Studio Girl’: The Holly- tion Picture Culture After the Nickelodeon (Princeton, wood Studio Club and Industry Regulation of Female NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); see also Labour”, Film History 18.2 (2006): 120–139.

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11. “Film Batteries Wink and Things Do Move”, Los Beginning of the Best Seller System”, Journal of Angeles Times (12 March 1911): II, 1. Popular Culture 11.1 (Summer 1977): 71–74. See 12. See, for instance, Al G. Waddell’s “With the Photo- also Avis Berman, “George Du Maurier’s Trilby players”, Los Angeles Times (12 March 1913): III, 4. Whipped Up a Worldwide Storm”, Smithsonian 24.9 Also, “Making the World’s Greatest Film Here”, Los (December 1993): 110–117. Angeles Times (15 May 1911): II, 1; “Los Angeles, 22. This connection was reinforced by theatrical man- Great Backdrop for the World”, Los Angeles Times agement practices and contract law, particularly (14 January 1912): V, 19; Rufus Steele, “In the Sun legal disputes between female performers and their Spot”, Sunset Magazine 34 (April 1915): 690–699; male managers. See Lea S. VanderVelde, “The Gen- Grace Kingsley, “Movie Stars who Scintillate in Los dered Origins of the Lumley Doctrine: Binding Men’s Angeles”, Los Angeles Times (1 January 1916): III, Consciences and Women’s Fidelity”, The Yale Law 71; “On the New Rialto”, Sunset Magazine 36.1 Journal 101.4 (January 1992): 775–852. Vander- (January 1916): 42–47. Velde also discusses the importance of the “Svengali paradigm”, which associated female talent with a 13. Grace Kingsley, “How Famous Film Stars Have Been visionary male and further emphasized the proprie- Discovered”, Los Angeles Times (18 October 1914): tary bond between female talent and management. III, 2. 23. The phenomenon of working women who lived apart 14. Waddell, “With the Photoplayers.” See also Roy from their families at a time when women were Sommerville, “Breaking IntoMotionPictures”,Picture primarily defined in relation to domestic life was a Progress 1.7 (July 1915): 6–7. Other articles are more nationwide concern and inspired numerous civic direct, simply warning young women, “don’t come.” programs and initiatives. See Joanne Meyerowitz, For example, William Allen Johnston, “In the Motion Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chi- Picture Land”, Everybody’s Magazine 33.4 (October cago, 1880–1920 (Chicago: The University of Chi- 1915): 445. cago Press, 1988). 15. Susan A. Glenn, Female Spectacle: The Theatrical 24. “On the Screen: Unemployed Prefer Snaps”, Los Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge and London: Angeles Times (3 March 1915): II, 12. Harvard University Press, 2000), 188–200. 25. Louis B. Perry and Richard S. Perry, A History of Los 16. See Richard de Cordova, Picture Personality: The the Angeles Labor Movement, 1911–1941 (Berkeley Emergence of the Star System in America (Urbana: and Los Angeles: University of California Press, University of Illinois Press, 1990); see also Stamp, 1963), 12. “It’s a Long Way to Filmland”, 336–340. 26. Ibid., 8–9. 17. “How I Became a Photoplayer”, Motion Picture Maga- zine (January 1915): 76 27. “On the Screen”, Los Angeles Times (3 March 1915): II, 12. 18. Kingsley, “How Famous Film Stars Have Been Dis- covered”, Los Angeles Times (18 October 1914): III, 28. Perry and Perry, A History of the Los Angeles Labor 2. Movement, 117. 19. The classical story of the sculptor, Pygmalion, who 29. Ibid., 46. fell in love with the statue of a woman he carved out 30. Grace Heilman Stimson, Rise of the Labor Movement of ivory, appeared in many forms in poetry, painting, in Los Angeles (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University theater, and the novel. It proved popular on film as of California Press, 1955), 304–310. These are wage well, first appearing on the screen in 1898 and scales for 1910–1911. allowing Georges Méliès to take advantage of film’s malleability to explore the fantastical aspect of a 31. “On the Screen”, Los Angeles Times (3 March 1915): statue coming to life. English language versions II, 12. Unemployed women also used the Bureau, appeared again in 1911 and 1938, the last directed but there were far fewer women than men, and their by Anthony AsquithandLeslie Howard,andfamously applications were handled in a separate office. based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 stage play 32. “Public Bureaus Find Places for Thousands”, Los Pygmalion. Angeles Times (27 August 1916): II, 14. 20. Gail Marshall also examines the various manifesta- 33. Ibid. tions of the “Galatea-aesthetic”, from poetry to the 34. For more on the relationship between women and music hall, and specifically links Victorian actresses hysteria, see Elaine Showalter, “Hysteria, Feminism, with the Galatea myth. See Actresses on the Victorian and Gender”, in Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Stage: Feminine Performance and the Galatea Myth Porter, G.S. Rousseau and Elaine Showalter (eds), (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, Hysteria Beyond Freud, (Berkeley: University of Cali- 1998). fornia Press, 1993). Tania Modleski also provides a 21. See L. Edward Purcell “Trilby and Trilby-mania, The succinct summation of the relationship between hys-

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teria, theatricality and femininity in The Women Who Workersandthe Making of Consumer Society (Ithaca: Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory Cornell University Press, 1997), 35–45. (London: Routledge, 1988): 35. 46. Ibid. For more on the discourse about sexual exploi- 35. Alice Kessler Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage tation, female extras and film work see Stamp, “It’s Earning Women in the United States (New York: a Long Way to Filmland”, 343–345 and Sklar, Movie Oxford University Press, 1982), 153. See also Angel Made America, 76. Kwolek-Folland, Engendering Business: Men and 47. Developing a middle-class audience was part of the Women in the Corporate Office, 1870–1930 (Balti- film industry’s strategy to create a new mass audi- more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994) and ence for film. See Tom Gunning, D.W. Griffith and the Sharon Hartman Strom, Beyond the Typewriter: Gen- Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at der, Class, and the Origins of Modern Office Work Biograph (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 1900–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 87–90. See also Eileen Bowser, History of American 1992). Cinema, 1907–1915 (New York:Scribner, 1990);Lary 36. Barbara Laslett, “Women’s Work in Late-Nineteenth May, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Century Los Angeles: Class, Gender, and the Culture Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (New York: of New Womanhood”, Continuity and Change 5.3 Oxford University Press, 1980); Nan Enstad, Ladies (1900): 417–441; Frank L. Beach, “The Effects of the of Labor, Girls of Adventure: Working Women, Popular Westward Movement on California’s Growth and Culture, and Labor Politics and the Turn of the Twen- Development, 1900–1920”, International Migration tieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, Review 3.3 (Summer 1969): 20–35. 1999). 37. For more on the film industry’s campaign to improve 48. Perry and Perry, 12–13. its image in Los Angeles, see McKenna, The City That Made the Pictures Move, 106–145. 49. Ibid, 11. 38. “They’re Not All Bad”, Los Angeles Record (1 January 50. “Too Many Extras”, Variety 37.13 (27 February 1915): 1916): 3. 22. 39. Margaret Saunders, A Study of the Work of the City 51. “Coast Bad for Film Players; Little Regular Work Mother’s Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Depart- There”, Variety 39.9 (30 July 1915): 14. ment. Masters Thesis, University of Southern Cali- 52. Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film (New fornia, 1939. York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 40. For more on the founding of the Studio Club, see 1968), 159–170 [originally published 1939]. See also Kenaga, “Making the ‘Studio Girl’”. Benjamin B. Hampton, A History of the Movies (New 41. “Lured by Hope of Fame and Fortune Girls Storm York: Covici, Friede Publishers, 1931), 159–196; and Studio”, Los Angeles Tribune (30 January 1916): I, Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The 3. Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915–1928 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 42. Curt McConnell devotes a chapter to Anita King’s 64–94. cross-country drive in “A Reliable Car and a Woman Who Knows It”: The First Coast-to-Coast Trips by 53. Janet Staiger, “Dividing Labor for Production Con- Women, 1899–1916 (Jefferson, NC; London: trol”, Cinema Journal 18.2 (Spring 1979): 16–25. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2000): 100–131. 54. Benjamin Hampton, A History of the Movies,148 43. “New Play in Waiting”, Los Angeles Times (26 April 55. Ann Chisholm examines the anonymous nature of 1916): III, 4. Her cautionary tales may have been extra work as a necessary absence in film production undermined by her account of her travels across the in “Missing Persons and Bodies of Evidence”, Cam- country, which demonstrated the privileges film work era Obscura 15.1 (2000): 122–161. provided, such as travel, financial independence, and fame. 56. George Mowry, The California Progressives (Chi- cago: Quadrangle Books, 1963): 195–198. 44. “Screen Actor a Social Worker”, Los Angeles Record (29 March 1916): 3. Gilbert was Los Angeles’s first 57. Steven J. Ross, Working Class Hollywood: Silent Film city mother. King herself acknowledged that her and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton, NJ: position was created because of recent concern over Princeton University Press, 1998), 62. “movie morals.” It does not seem to have been a 58. Sean P. Holmes, “The Hollywood Star System and merely nominal appointment, although it is not clear the Regulation of Actor’s Labor, 1916–1934”, Film how long her official appointment lasted. See also, History 12.1 (2000): 100. Holmes relates a story from “Judge Plans to Protect Screen-Struck Girls”, Exhibi- Griffith’s assistant director, Joseph Henabery, who tor’s Herald (15 April 1916): 29. remembered seeing an old man sitting beside the 45. Lawrence B. Glickman, A Living Wage: American canvas fence that surrounded the set; every day he

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 1, 2011 – p. 18 The photoplay or the pickaxe: extras, gender, and labour in early Hollywood FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 1 (2011) 19

would share the lunch with his wife by passing food in the Early U.S. Motion Picture Industry”, Film History under the fence. 2.2 (1988): 121–131; and “Toward a Worker’s History 59. “93 Men Seek$2.50 Each for Film Work”, Los Angeles of the U.S. Film Industry”, in Vincent Mosco and Janet Tribune (14 January 1916): 11. Wasco (eds), The Critical Communications Review, V.1: Labor, The Working Class, and the Media (Nor- 60. “Men Who Refuse to Work Before the Camera in wood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corp., 1983), 47–59. Nude, For One Dollar Per Day in Hot Sun, Meet, Organize and Pass Resolutions”, The Citizen (24 65. “Men Who Refuse to Work Before the Camera in March 1916): II, 1. See also Shelley Stamp, “It’s a Nude.” One strike was called for at D.W. Griffith’s Long Way to Filmland”, 341. studio. It seems likely that the male extras who refused to pose nude were working on Intolerance, 61. “Movie Meeting”, The Citizen (30 March 1916): I7. with its elaborate Babylonian sequences that re- 62. Mark Garrett Cooper, “Work Space: Universal City”, quired largenumbersof extras, many ofthemscantily paper presented at the Women and Silent Screen clad. Conference, Guadalajara, June 2006. See also Mark 66. Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Garrett Cooper, Universal Women: Filmmaking and Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill Institutional Change in Early Hollywood (Urbana: Uni- and Wang, 1982), 89. See also Ava Baron, Work versity of Illinois Press, 2010), chapter 3. Engendered: Toward a New History of American 63. “Motion Picture Actors Strike Over Company Pay- Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991) and days.” Los Angeles Times (3 June 1916): I, 7. See Johanna Brenner, “On Gender and Labor History”, also “Unionites’ Plan to Shackle Film Workers Flat Monthly Review 50.6 (November 1998). Failure”, Los Angeles Times (20 August 1916): II, 1; 67. Danae Clark, Negotiating Hollywood: The Cultural Robert Gottlieb, Thinking Big: The Story of the Los Politics of Actor’s Labor (Minneapolis and London: Angeles Times, Its Publishers, and Their Influence on University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 19. Southern California (New York:G.P.Putnams’s Sons, 1977); and Stimson, Rise of the Labor Movement in 68. Ibid., 22. Los Angeles, 358–361. 69. Heidi Kenaga, “Making the ‘Studio Girl’”. See also 64. For more on the failed efforts to unionize Hollywood Kerry Segrave, Film Actors Organize: Union during the 1910s see Murray Ross, Stars and Strikes; Formation Efforts in America, 1912–1937 (Jefferson, Michael C. Nielson, “Labor Power and Organization NC: McFarland, 2009), 22–31.

Abstract: The Photoplay or the Pickaxe: Extras, Gender, and Labor in Early Hollywood, by Denise McKenna

During the 1910s, the extra girl emerged as a type of “star” whose persona was defined by the always ambivalent narrative associated with extra work: that the discovery of unknown talent or screen charisma could equal fame and fortune. This essay examines the emergence of the extra girl as the representative of the film industry’s anonymous underclass, whose rise as a figure of fascination and concern deflected attention from the heterogeneous appeal of extra work. Despite scandal and controversy, the extra girl represented a much more manageable image of Hollywood’s underclass than the chaotically diverse and potentially radical masses that were also glimpsed at the studio gates. In describing the cultural politics of extra labor, the essay focuses on the de-professionalization of extra work, narrative tropes that helped define extra labor as a feminine occupation, and attempts to manage labor problems with extras in Los Angeles’s burgeoning film studios.

Key words: Motion Pictures (labor issues); Los Angeles Municipal Employment Bureau; Hollywood Studio Club; Women in Motion Pictures; “The Extra Girl”

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