Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood

4. The “Girls Who Play”: The Short Film and the New Woman

chapter four The “Girls Who Play” The Short Film and the New Woman T he New Woman appeared on the screen in the 1910s primarily in two forms: as a serial queen—one of the “girls who play with death”—and as an irreverent comic spoofing the conventions upheld by the guardians of public morality.1 Short one- and two-reelers in the form of suspenseful cliffhangers and brief comedies not only survived as added attractions in the age of the feature film, but at mid-decade they proved at least as popular as the features. Largely freed from expectations of uplift attending feature films, short films could explore the sensuous, rebellious , and athletic traits associated with the generation of young women sitting in the movie theaters.2 In a new genre, the serial thriller, strong, selfreliant heroines mastered pistols and Packards, wrestled criminals and wild beasts, and saved their fathers and boyfriends from certain death. To a degree not seen in longer films, women initiated the fun in short comedies by eluding chaperones, visiting cabarets, flirting with strangers, and making fools out of bosses, boyfriends, and husbands. Quick-witted and independent , New Woman heroines and comediennes ran away from home, donned scandalous clothing styles, and defied authority. Significantly, many of these New Woman–style heroines were the product of female producers. More than any other genres of the silent era, the serial and short comedy of the 1910s suggest that women filmmakers, as a group, contributed to an alternative vision of gender onscreen. But by 1922, when censors rejected the New Woman–style serial heroine and the slapstick comedienne, female directors and producers of short films disappeared as well.3 <= The term New Woman first applied to women in the middle classes who ventured into the public sphere, such as female reformers, women in business , college students, and athletes.4 But as we have seen, by the beginning of the twentieth century many young working-class women had also ventured into the public sphere, both to work and to enjoy the new mixedsex venues of amusement parks, dance halls, and nickelodeons, where they flaunted new styles and new behaviors.5 As Ben Singer convincingly argues, they probably also read the work of yellow journalists who regularly wrote of courageous women, such as housewives who fought off intruders, and “plucky girl reporters” who scaled bridges, drove speeding cars through city streets, and dressed as men to sample urban places deemed off-limits to respectable women.6 This daring New Woman also appeared in stage melodramas, setting a direct precedent for the daring onscreen heroine. Always on the lookout for action-filled sequences, filmmakers regularly plundered the blood-andthunder melodramas of the nineteenth century for their action-filled climaxes of crimes, murders, and rescues. One of the most popular of these plays was Under the Gaslight, which premiered in 1867 and may have been the origin of the venerable last-second rescue of a victim bound to the railroad tracks. In Under the Gaslight the victim is male, the rescuer female, the latter allowed to breach nineteenth-century gender constrictions by the legitimate need to save her family.7 As stage melodramas grew more and more sensational, requiring real horses, trains, water, explosions, and burning buildings, the athleticism demanded of women expanded as well. Edna, the Pretty Typewriter (1907) required the heroine to “jump from the roof of a building to the top of a moving elevated train” and then leap from one speeding car into another.8 Since the first professional film actors and directors hailed from the stage, it is no accident that they brought the tricks of sensational melodrama with them. Films mimicking the female heroics of the stage melodrama appeared in a few pre-1908 films such as The Girl from Montana (Selig, 1907), in which the pistol-packing star saves her boyfriend and captures a band of horse thieves.9 By 1911 a subgenre soon to be exploited countless times by serial producers began with Griffith’s The Lonedale Operator (Biograph, 1911). The Lonedale Operator resembled Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903), except the telegraph operator at the Lonedale railroad station was a woman. Notably, she was every bit as brave in the face of armed robbers as Porter’s 104 “Girls Who Play” male hero. A year later Biograph’s A Girl and Her Trust again concerned a brave female railroad telegrapher attacked by robbers. In this case the heroine threw herself onto a boxcar to catch the thieves, leading to a suspenseful chase.10 But the moving picture that most clearly presaged the serial film was Kalem’s The Girl Spy (1909). The story concerned the true exploits of Belle Boyd, a Confederate girl who disguised herself as a soldier to spy on the North. Written as a single film by Gene Gauntier, who also starred in the leading role, The Girl Spy became a two-year series as a result of popular demand. Complaining that she was “tired of sprains and bruises and with brains sucked dry of any more adventures for the intrepid young woman,” Gauntierfinally“marriedheroffandendedthewar.”Thatshouldhavebeen theendofthegirlspy,but“Notso!”AccordingtoGauntier,populardemand forced the addition of A Hitherto Unrelated Incident of the Girl Spy (Kalem, 1911).11 Anotherexampleofthefascinationwithfemaleathleticismthatattended the New Woman and her translation to the screen occurred in 1907. That year Boston police arrested Australian swimming champion Annette Kellerman for sporting a form-fitting bathing suit on a local beach. Both athletic and feminine, risqué and wholesome, the tremendous appeal of the Kellerman -style suit began a cycle of diving girl films, which exploited the suit’s obviousattractionswhileemphasizingphysicalfitnessasanidealforwomen. Mabel Normand donned a Kellerman suit in Biograph’s How She Triumphed: An Argument in Favor of Physical Culture (1911) and The Diving Girl (1911), before becoming the premier New Woman–style comedienne, and future serial queen Ruth Roland displayed her diving ability while wearing a Kellerman suit in Ruth Roland, Kalem Girl (Kalem, 1912).12 Ruth Roland, Kalem Girl offered a patchwork of vignettes to illustrate the athleticism of this future serial star. The film begins with Roland in a fashionable silk dress, driving a convertible, and entering her dressing room at Kalem, where she smells a vase of fresh flowers and is attended by a maid. After highlighting her fashionable femininity, the bulk of the film advertises Roland’s tomboyish athleticism through a series of shots: Roland pummeling a punching bag in a men’s gymnasium, wielding a rifle outdoors and holding up evidence of her hunting skills (ducks), catching a huge fish on a lake, riding a galloping horse on a beach, canoeing in a sailor suit, diving three times off a tall pier in her Kellerman suit, and taking off in what looks like an open airplane. The film ends with Roland once again in feminine dress, rejecting the offers of three wealthy suitors.13 The Short Film and the New Woman 105 <= Although the serial queen appealed to male viewers, she was created with a female audience in mind.14 Until 1912 it appeared that only the exhibition branch of the industry specifically catered to women. Even The Girl Spy, for all its feminist overtones, was simply one of several local stories Gauntier “borrowed” while her Kalem unit worked on location in the Deep South.15 The first filmmaker who publicly created a film especially for women was, somewhat ironically, Thomas Edison. When McClure’s, publisher of Ladies ’ World magazine, approached Edison about “a plan whereby the moving picture could be worked in conjunction with the [serialized] story,” Edison agreed to take part.16 Although technically a series, Edison’s What Happened to Mary (1912) is considered by most scholars to be the first movie serial. The hallmarks of an early serial were the deliberate continuation of characters and collaboration between filmmaker and publisher, in which episodes appeared simultaneously in print and on the screen. Edison-McClure’s What Happened to Mary pioneered both of these motifs, which clearly played to the female audience through its association with Ladies’ World and its character of “Mary,” played by Mary Fuller. “Mary” was an ordinary girl, a nineteenyear -old in “an old print gown” who was not so very different from the average young woman in the theater, that is, of course, until she discovered the truth about her past: as a baby, she was left on a doorstep with a note promising $1,000 to her guardian if she was married off successfully. Realizing that her stepfather planned a distasteful marriage for her, Mary decided to take fate into her own hands and boarded a train out of town, intending to gain her rightful inheritance for herself. With this simple act “Mary” began the trend of proactive serial heroines that would distinguish the genre for almost a decade.17 When the loosely connected stories forming What Happened to Mary proved to be an enormous hit, imitators immediately sprang into action, copying both the continued-story format and the independent heroine. A few months after Mary debuted, Selig and the Chicago Tribune collaborated on a chapter play entitled The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913). The first true cliffhanger serial, The Adventures of Kathlyn tested the credulity of spectators with the story of a young American woman who inherited a throne in India. Like Mary, Kathlyn was a “girl without fear.”18 Confronting lions, tigers, and sexually aggressive natives, Kathlyn exhibited, according to the intertitles , “not a sign of that natural hysteria of women.”19 Even more popular than What Happened to Mary, The Adventures of Kathlyn inspired a “Kathlyn” waltz, cocktail, hairstyle, and hat.20 Over the next two years serials flooded 106 “Girls Who Play” movie screens across America. The fantastic popularity of Pathé’s Perils of Pauline (1914) anticipated the enormous profits of The Million Dollar Mystery (1914), which earned well over that amount at the box office. By early 1915 managers of the largest theaters in Elizabeth, New Jersey, put serials on the regular weekly program, and Indianapolis reported that “serial pictures seem to be the big drawing cards in all the houses.”21 In 1916 Pearl White, the serial star who began her career in The Perils of Pauline, handily beat out Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish in a fan magazine contest to determine the most popular moving picture star.22 At the center of serials of the 1910s was a woman of action, a woman who “saved the hero’s life nearly as many times as he rescued her.”23 The Perils of Pauline began when Pauline, the adopted daughter of a rich industrialist , spurns the proposal of his biological son, Harry. She wants to become a great writer before settling down. To help her get the experience she needs, the father promises Pauline a trip around the world. Suddenly, however, he dies. He has willed Pauline half of his fortune but only if she lives long enough to wed Harry. Otherwise the fortune will go to the father’s villainous secretary, Owen. Owen spends the next nineteen chapters trying to do awaywithPaulinebeforeshewedsHarry.AtrustingPaulineassistsOwen’s many attempts to trap her, not the least by continuing to put off Harry while she engages in adventures to enrich her writing career, from ballooning, to movie acting, to racing thoroughbreds and automobiles. Harry does indeed come to the rescue time after time, but Pauline does quite well rescuing herself on occasion.24 Universal’s answer to Pauline, the similarly intrepid Lucille Love, Girl of Mystery (1914), proved her mettle while being “wrecked in an airplane, shanghaied aboard a ship, shipwrecked in the South Seas,” and “washed up on an island peopled with beast men.” Lucille usually rescued herself. “Never before in anybody’s picture,” declared Universal historian I. G. Edmonds, “has a hero—defining the word as the one who gets the girl —had so little to do.”25 The serial queen of the 1910s was clearly not the virginal heroine of a D. W. Griffith film. She was a New Woman fantasy—athletic, courageous, intelligent, and popular. But the film industry handled this new character with apprehension. This attitude stemmed partly from the experimental nature of “playing to the ladies.” Faced with an unprecedented number of female patrons, and surprised at the sudden popularity of the serial queen, the industry rather clumsily attempted to refine the serial heroine to appeal to more genteel, “feminine” tastes. Informed by trade journals that women were interested in clean movies, free from violence, sex, and vulgarity, some The Short Film and the New Woman 107 filmmakers logically concluded that a gentrified serial heroine would be even more popular than the stunt-driven, wild-animal wrestling Kathlyn and Pauline.26 To this end Reliance publicized Our Mutual Girl (1913) as “strictly a women’s series.” A Pygmalion tale of a rural girl launched into New York society, Our Mutual Girl featured high society, prominent suffragists , a female senator, and even an appearance by Otto Kahn, of “the famous banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.” Through fifty-two episodes Our Mutual Girl learned how to dress in the latest fashions and mimic the “little mannerisms and personalities” necessary to gain acceptance into the “smart set.”27 Despite these attractions, Our Mutual Girl did not cause much of a stir; it certainly did not turn Norma Phillips, its star, into a household name. Nevertheless , two years later Reliance paid respected authors George Randolph Chester and Lillian Chester $25,000 to write Runaway June (1915), a serial that deliberately avoided “the chase element and blood and thunder.” Reliance launched an enormous publicity effort, including advertising campaigns in the Ladies’ Home Journal and Saturday Evening Post and a national beauty contest giving winners from each state a free trip to California aboard a “woman’s special train.” But Runaway June was not a runaway success.28 Danger, action, and suspense provided the nuts and bolts of a successful serial , precisely the “chase element and blood and thunder” missing from Runaway June. The few highbrow serials that did succeed at the box office, like The Ventures of Marguerite (Kalem, 1915) and Who Pays? (Balboa, 1915), did not eliminate villains and gunplay.29 It was clear that the rough-and-tumble serial heroine made for box-office success, but this presented a dilemma for the film industry; the combination of strong, assertive women and violence was as dangerous as it was appealing . Consider the provocative plight of Kathlyn Williams in The Adventures of Kathlyn (Selig, 1913): You will see her bound by fanatical natives on top of a great funeral pyre with the flames creeping ever nearer her helpless form. You will see her tied with thongs in a tiger trap as human bait for the bloodthirsty beasts of the jungle. You will see her swim for life to escape a maddened water buffalo in the black waters of the Bengal River. 108 “Girls Who Play” In fact, time after time, in scene after scene, Kathlyn takes her life in her hands and walks grimly up to the very jaws of death in order to portray with life-like realism the scenes necessary to make The Adventures of Kathlyn.30 Or consider episode 13 from a later Pearl White serial, The Lightning Raider (Pathé, 1918). When Pearl sees her enemy place a vial of germs in white roses ready for delivery, she determines to become a “rescuing angel” and secures a list of intended recipients. She finds that the first bouquet adorns the table at “The Yearly Banquet for the Society for Anthropological Research.” Six or seven male academics with pince-nez and beards anticipate Professor Absolom’s paper on “The Inferiority of the Female Brain Cavity.” Just as the professor begins, “From the natural timidity of the female, I deduce—,” White bursts into the room, pistol in hand. As the men look on in fear, she grabs the flowers, rummages through them searching for the vial, and keeps the gun pointed at the academics. She does not find the vial but laughs at the frightened men as she runs outside.31 Torn between exploiting the lurid (and lucrative) aspects of the serial heroine and offending both potential middle-class audiences and cultural authorities, the film industry attempted to contain the sexual and feminist qualities of the serial heroine. Industry insiders accomplished this containment in two ways: through contrived motivations onscreen and through ameliorating publicity for the star offscreen. Onscreen, an absurdly large number of serial heroines were orphaned heiresses whose guardians were inept or corrupt, thus granting them the means and the moral imperative to begin their adventures. Freed from parents and guardians through no ambition of their own, the serial heroines had no choice but to bravely forge onward. In addition serials sometimes portrayed the perils of the serial heroines as just deserts for their excessive independence. In episode 1 of The Ventures of Marguerite (Kalem, 1915), for example, the heroine’s curiosity entices herintothevillains’trap:“Wewerefamiliarwithyouradventurousdisposition , my dear, and our little affair at the restaurant was simply a subterfuge to get you here!” Feminine assertiveness did not always go unpunished.32 Offscreen, publicists carefully balanced the independence of the serial star with womanly interests. As presaged in Ruth Roland, Kalem Girl, studio publicists wanted audiences to believe that these athletic New Women really performed their daring onscreen stunts (and many did), but they also wanted to reassure the public that the serial heroines happily observed the bounds of feminine propriety.33 When a Photoplay reporter first met Kathlyn The Short Film and the New Woman 109 Williamsin1914,heexpectedto“findadashing,mannishwomanarrayedin more or less masculine attire” but instead saw before him “a decidedly womanly lady, quietly but tastefully dressed and one whose charm is increased by a beautifully modulated voice.”34 The attempt to describe serial heroines as feminine without diminishing their aura of athletic prowess and bravery approached the schizophrenic in the 1910s. A Photoplay writer reported in 1915 that Helen Holmes of The Hazards of Helen (Kalem, 1914–17) liked “pretty gowns” but added that she could “burst the sleeves of any of them by doubling up her biceps.”35 A writer for Motion Picture News claimed that Ruth Roland—star of the serial Who Pays?—rides “a horse as if she were born in a saddle. She runs an automobile. She boxes, fences, plays tennis, football, and baseball. She swims, swings Indian clubs and bowls. She is a crack shot with rifle or pistol, and has won a number of prizes at archery.” But he also described her as “adorable,” “dainty,” “sweetly vivacious,” and “exquisitely feminine.” In fact, she was “all girl.”36 <= The New Woman comedienne received the same treatment. “She rides like a Centaur, swims like a fish,” and has “muscles as strong and springy as coldrolled steel,” wrote one critic of Mabel Normand, but that same critic also described her as a “compelling” beauty.37 In the work of Mabel Normand, the wholesome athleticism of the serial heroine and her tendency to find trouble blended with the flirtatious rebellion of the working girl. While no other comediennes came close to matching Normand’s popularity, other studios tried to copy “Keystone Mabel,” creating a multiplication of New Woman–style comedies starring sassy working girls, disobedient daughters , and flirtatious wives. Like the serial heroine, the New Woman slapstick comedienne challenged traditional gender roles. Slapstick purposefully violated the bounds of refined middle-class behavior, finding humor in the daily chaos of an urbanizing , heterosocial society, where both men and women inhabited the public realm of work and leisure, where strangers could and did wink at each other in the park, and where the forced intimacy of city life often meant watchingmenandwomenflirt,argue,andevenresorttoblows.Morepointedly , it allowed female characters to reduce male authority figures—bosses, boyfriends, husbands, and policemen—to an equal or lower level.38 Office workersacrosstheUnitedStates,forexample,nodoubtenjoyedFayTincher as “Ethel” the stenographer, who brought pandemonium to the office with her garishly striped dress, spit curl, and chewing gum in a series of films pro110 “Girls Who Play” duced for Mutual. City dwellers and rural townsfolk alike enjoyed Louise Fazenda’s Universal comedies, which usually found her playing a rebellious farm girl trying to elope against the wishes of her father.39 Forcriticstheviolationofconventionalfemininebehaviorwassometimes too much. “Deliver us, O Lord, from the woman who attempts comedy,” invoked one motion picture critic in 1914. Notably, however, this critic made an exception for Mabel Normand.40 Before Normand, female comediennes (versus those who played the “straight” role) were typically unattractive and abrasive.41 Henry Jenkins dubbed the anarchistic style of physical humor “New Humor,” and it was particularly controversial when women performed it. Laughing out loud was a sign of a lack of self-control among the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie. By the beginning of the twentieth century a “New Humor” emerged out of the rich context of urban, interethnic life and was developed on the vaudeville stage. Even newspapers began to carry comics and humor columns for the first time, multiplying readership sometimes by half. Women, once again lumped under the rubric of the middleclass matron, were assumed, since they were morally superior to men, to be without a sense of humor. Some astute observers noted that for a dependent married woman, laughter could be construed as criticism of male superiority and was best kept confined. Thus the humorous woman was the antithesis of the refined beauty, which was assumed to be the goal of all women. When humorous women emerged on the vaudeville stage, they were seen as dangerous “wild women,” threatening the sanctity of the middle-class home.42 The beautiful Mabel Normand embraced the New Humor. According to Mack Sennett, the head of Keystone Studios, Normand essentially played herself. When asked what made Normand funny, filmmaker Hal Roach replied that “you knew that if a guy kicked her, she’d kick him back.”43 In most of her films Normand appeared as a working-class girl in a tattered dress who loved to play practical jokes and have a good time.44 In comedy after comedy, from Mabel’s Dramatic Career (1913), Mabel at the Wheel (1914), Caught in a Cabaret (1914), Mabel Lost and Won (1915), and Mabel, Fatty, and the Law (1915), Normand deftly defied authority, met the physical challenges and humiliations of slapstick, and still remained an attractive, respectable , American girl. A former model for Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the idealized woman of the turn of the century, Normand was literally a Gibson Girl thumbing her nose at middle-class conventions.45 In Mabel’s Married Life (1914), codirected by Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin, Normand and Chaplin begin the film as a calm, mannerly couple, relaxing The Short Film and the New Woman 111 in a public park; but after Normand suspects her husband of flirting with another woman, she becomes incensed, and Chaplin has to pull her from the other woman’s throat. Miffed, Chaplin storms off to a local bar and returns home drunk to find what he thinks is another man in his apartment. Chaplin takes a swing at the suspect, and the “man” swings back, but the stumbling Chaplin soon realizes that his nemesis is a punching dummy and that he’s been had by his wife. Normand, hearing the blows, comes running out of the bedroom in pajamas to laugh at her foolish husband.46 Normand’sfreedomtocreateheronscreenpersonaemergedfromthesame collaborative filmmaking that created the star-producer of the longer feature film.47 AtKeystoneStudios,allemployeeswithinaproductionunit—actors, director, and crew—hammered out ideas for scenarios, which were turned intoscriptsbythewritingstaffandsubmittedtoMackSennettforapproval. Even after approval each unit was free to improvise within certain limits during the shooting. As we have seen, this kind of collaboration made everyone in the unit a kind of generalist and a potential filmmaker, and it was not unheard of for writers or actors to find themselves directing or supervising a unit.48 Yet such fluidity might also set up a conflict of authority within the production unit, and as woman director, Normand was particularly vulnerable . Mabel Normand’s nemesis was the inexperienced Charlie Chaplin. With only a few months of directing experience under her own belt, Normand supervised the twenty-four-year-old Chaplin in a film starring both of them: Mabel at the Wheel (1914). Chaplin wrote in his autobiography that he “doubted her competence as director” because she was “only twenty, pretty and charming, everybody’s favorite.” In one scene, where Normand hosed down a street to cause the villain’s car to skid, Chaplin wanted to insert his own bit of business: to accidentally stand on the hose, look down the nozzle in a puzzled manner when the water stopped, unconsciously step off the hose, and get squirted in the face. “But she shut me up quickly,” he recalled. “‘We have no time! We have no time! Do what you’re told.’ That was enough, I could not take it—and from such a pretty girl.” Chaplin replied , “‘I’m sorry, Miss Normand, I will not do what I’m told. I don’t think you are competent to tell me what to do.’”49 Chaplin blamed his difficulties on Normand’s youth, gender, and even her attractiveness, but he experienced the same problem with Henry Lehrman , his first director at Keystone. Chaplin didn’t understand that his vaudevillian gags took too long for the fast-paced world of filmmaking. Sennett stood behind Normand during this incident, intending to fire the 112 “Girls Who Play” temperamental Chaplin by the end of the week, but Chaplin’s first films were popular. Chaplin stayed at Keystone long enough to begin directing his own films, which proved humbling.50 Since Normand was engaged to Sennett during her Keystone career, one might cast a jaundiced eye at her activities behind the camera, but both contemporary critics and historians laud Normand’s competence as a filmmaker. When Sennett left Biograph to form Keystone in 1912, he took Normand not only to be Keystone’s leading lady but to help run the studio. According to Photoplay writer James R. Quirk, Sennett was “the first to proclaim her capabilities as a creator of situations and the important part she has played in the tremendous task of organizing the forces of the company.”51 As soon as demand necessitated a second production company, Sennett entrusted it to Normand’s supervision, and by December of 1913 Normand began directing her own films.52 In 1916, even after Chaplin and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle arrived at Keystone, critic Julian Johnson gave Normand the credit for “bulwarking of all the Keystone comedy with her own slender shoulders ,” claiming that “Normand knows more about screen comedy, and has made better screen comedy, than any woman actively photographed.” Years later, film historian Kalton Lahue argued that the films Normand directed alone “were far superior in construction to those in which [Sennett] appeared or directed.”53 <= No other woman in comedy achieved Normand’s popularity or her power behind the screen, but it was not unusual for the serial heroine of the 1910s to both write and coproduce her own starring vehicles. One of the most ubiquitous serial queens was Helen Holmes, daughter of a Chicago railroad official and friend of Normand’s from their prefilm modeling days. Normand secured Holmes her first acting job at Keystone, but it was as the star of Kalem’s The Hazards of Helen, a long-running serial about a railroad telegrapher , that Holmes gained fame.54 The seemingly endless 119-chapter serial began with a scenario penned by Holmes herself, entitled “The Girl at the Switch.”55 During a 1916 interview Holmes told a journalist that “if a photoplay actress wants to achieve real thrills, she must write them into the scenario herself,” because male writers will not have a woman perform stunts “they wouldn’t do themselves.” Holmes continued to write many of the scenarios in which “Helen,” the brave railroad telegraph operator in the far West, proved herself able to run a train as well as any man. Indeed, “Helen” even overcame sexual discrimination on the job in episode 13, in The Short Film and the New Woman 113 which Helen, “the night [telegraph] operator at Ferndale,” bravely fought thieves only to find herself fired because she was a woman. She is informed via telegram that “Effective to-day: Male operators only will be assigned to Ferndale Station on account of recent robbery.” At that moment Helen spots the crooks jumping a freight train. Determined to catch them, she climbs a bridge and drops down onto the top of the moving train, engaging one of the crooks in hand-to-hand combat. As Helen grapples with the crook, he falls into a river, but Helen pursues him and successfully wrestles him to shore. The episode ends when Helen triumphantly reclaims the stolen cash from the crook’s pockets.56 At the height of the Hazards success in 1915, Helen Holmes and her director -husband, J. P. McGowan, left Kalem and the Hazards. They set up an independent film production company and enjoyed complete creative control under their own “Signal” brand.57 At Signal, Holmes and McGowan made a string of extremely successful railroad serials beginning with The Girl and the Game (1915). In this serial the brave “Helen” saves her boyfriend and father from a train wreck, saves her boyfriend from a burning locomotive , saves the railroad from financial ruin, recovers the payroll from thieves, saves her boyfriend and a male friend from another train wreck, rescues a male character from a lynching, captures ore thieves, saves two men from a mine cave-in, recovers more stolen money, and uncouples a freight train to prevent a “terrible wreck.”58 While Helen Holmes starred in railroad thrillers, Grace Cunard created mystery serials for Universal. A former Biograph actress under D. W. Griffith, Cunard wanted creative control from the beginning of her film career . After teaming up with Francis Ford (the elder brother of the soon-tobe -famous director of westerns John Ford), she joined Universal.59 At Universal Cunard and Ford enjoyed a production unit of their own and a great deal of latitude. Cunard wrote all the scenarios and shared directorial duties with Ford in a collaborative partnership typical of early filmmakers.60 After Cunard and Ford had made several successful one- and two-reelers, Universal chose their unit to develop the studio’s answer to Pathé’s instantly successful Perils of Pauline. Cunard and Ford revamped a two-reel western entitled Lucille Love, Girl of Mystery, and turned it into a fifteen-chapter installment play. Episodes were churned out mere days before release, but in spite of the inconsistencies of this hastily planned serial, Lucille Love, now a spy story, was an enormous hit.61 The success of Lucille Love led to a serial-making career for Cunard and Ford that came to full flower in The Broken Coin (1915), one of the most 114 “Girls Who Play” popular serials of the decade. Cunard, who thought that “ingenue parts” were “insipid,” wrote the part of newspaper journalist Kitty Gray for herself . The adventures begin when Gray gains possession of a half-coin that, when matched with its partner, would reveal the location of a fortune. Universal studio head Carl Laemmle good-naturedly played her editor, and he unleashed a mountain of publicity for The Broken Coin, including a twentytwo -page press book, “teaser” ads in newspapers, souvenir buttons, mirrors, postcards, and, of course, broken coins.62 Wearing several hats—leading actress , writer, codirector, coproducer, and film editor—Cunard now earned a four-figure salary every week, based on her $450 a week actor’s pay, plus a 25¢ bonus for each foot of finished film, and 10 percent of the net profits for writing and codirecting.63 By 1916 Cunard and Ford were Universal’s biggest box-office draw. During 1916 and 1917 they embarked on The Purple Mask, one of the most implicitly feminist serials of the decade.64 The Purple Mask was the alias of debutante Patsy Montez, who traded in her party dress for a leotard, tights, shorts, mask, and cape to lead the Apaches, a band of male crooks, through the mansions and gutters of Paris. The Purple Mask stole from the rich and gave to the poor, especially wronged women. In one episode the “Mask” steals an expensive necklace from a bride and sells it back to the groom, giving the money to the mother of his illegitimate child. In another episode Patsy and her gang recover a fortune gathered through a “nefarious practice”; they then use the money to “establish a home for unfortunate girls.”65 <= Between 1915 and 1916 women filmmakers made some of the most popular imagesonthescreen:NormandatKeystone,CunardatUniversal,andHolmes at her own Signal company. All were one- to two-reelers, and unfortunately, the changing status of the short film and the changing mode of production made it much harder for these women to continue working within the larger studios after 1916. Given their heightened status, first-run exhibitors, who managed increasingly ornate theaters, became cautious about what kinds of films they exhibited.66 Slapsticks and serials came under special scrutiny.67 In an article giving advice to freelance writers, Captain Leslie T. Peacocke informed his readers that the problem with the movies was that they were controlled by uneducated “financial potentates” with little taste, who entered the film business “when any sort of production was avidly seized by a public greedy to be amused.” The public was “more discerning now,” and the “old time thrill—the falling over cliffs, the automobile accidents; the The Short Film and the New Woman 115 fighting in barrooms and over stairs . . . have lost their power to thrill.”68 The serial and the slapstick comedy, drawing cards at even the best houses a year or so earlier, were relegated to the second-, third-, and fourth-run markets. If they appeared in major theaters, it was only at the children’s matinee.69 Serial makers responded immediately to these changes in exhibition by turning once again to gentrification in the hopes of gaining a foothold in the first-run theater’s regular program. An “evening’s entertainment,” after all, included not only the feature but also an array of short films. Surely a highbrow serial could take its place among the added attractions at even the best theaters.70 George Kleine was one of the first to pursue this strategy with Gloria’s Romance (1916). Kleine hired Broadway star Billie Burke to star as “Gloria,” along with the same production team responsible for the wildly successful Million Dollar Mystery. With a budget six times larger than that of Million Dollar Mystery, Gloria’s Romance seemed a sure bet, and some firstrun theaters paid $1,000 a week just for the privilege of renting it. But despite high production values, good venues, and a Broadway star, Gloria’s Romance failed at the box office.71 A few months later Louis B. Mayer tried to launch a highbrow serial, The Great Secret, with financial backing from Boston investors. He convinced two major stars, Francis X. Bushman and Beverly Bayne, to play the leads. But outside of Boston The Great Secret, which premiered in January 1917, was not a great success.72 By 1919 the term serial was so firmly associated with the cheaper theaters that J. P. McGowan, now at Universal, suggested that his latest serial be called a “thirty-six-reel feature.”73 While the highbrow serial appeared to be a contradiction in terms, it was virtuallyguaranteedthatpatronsofafirst-runtheaterwouldseeashortcomedy .Unlikeserials,shortcomediessuccessfullysplitintohighbrowandlowbrow in the mid-1910s—highbrow representing genteel comedies, which were exhibited in first-run theaters, and lowbrow designating slapstick comedies, which were, like the serial, relegated to the cheaper theaters.74 The most famous proponents of highbrow comedy were Lucille McVey Drew and Sidney Drew, who began producing the “Mr. and Mrs. Drew” comedies immediately after their marriage in 1914.75 Working out of their own unit at Vitagraph, the Drews specialized in what came to be known as the “polite” or “refined” domestic comedy, or in current terminology, the situation comedy.76 The Drews managed to be funny without throwing pies, taunting the police, or getting into fistfights, and they were “always well dressed.” Unlike the Keystoners, the Drews found humor in the small misunderstandings afflicting the financially comfortable: the wife with 116 “Girls Who Play” “Foxtrotitis,” the “man whose pride of ancestry makes him an insufferable bore,” the woman with a closet full of clothes but Nothing to Wear.77 Fox-trotting aside, Mrs. Drew was not a New Woman. Indeed, the gentle Drew films never really challenged traditional institutions of any sort. This was apparently fine with Lucille McVey Drew, for it was she who produced and directed the Mr. and Mrs. Drew comedies; Sidney Drew allegedly preferred drinking Manhattans. This unequal division of labor was a little strange, not because of Mrs. Drew’s gender but because of her relative inexperience. Her husband belonged to the Drew-Barrymore theatrical clan, and when he left the stage for the screen in 1911, he brought with him a wealth of dramatic experience as an actor and producer, quickly becoming a director at Vitagraph. Why he gave up these duties is a mystery. Perhaps his theatrical experience working with his famous mother, the actress-manager Louisa Lane Drew, instilled in him a respect for women’s abilities. Being significantly older than Mrs. Drew, he may have been taking it easy. Or, perhaps, alcoholism impaired his ability to work.78 Nevertheless, Sidney Drew articulated the agenda of the Mr. and Mrs. Drew comedies: to provide sophisticated comedy for the literate middle classes. Drew assailed the majority of filmmakers, claiming they regarded “motion picture patrons as fools,” possessing “the mental equipment of a child seven or eight.”79 One of Sidney Drew’s last films as a solo director before his marriage was the extraordinary A Florida Enchantment (Vitagraph, 1914), in which women happily become sexually aggressive men by swallowing a magic seed, immediately leering at other women, groping at them, and even kissing other women passionately on the lips.80 But as a member of “Mr. and Mrs. Drew,” Sidney Drew would never make such a controversial film. Through their refined domestic comedies the Drews became the epitome of highbrow comedy-makers, providing the ideal product for first-run theaters . In 1918 Metro, their distributor, advertised that just by showing the Drew comedies an exhibitor could improve his theater’s reputation.81 Even the notoriously strict head of the Pennsylvania Board of Censors, who found all other comedies reprehensible, gave the Drews his hearty approval.82 The segregation between highbrow and lowbrow comedy exerted a conservative influence on American comedy production. In the light of new exhibition practices comedians refined their antics for a better-heeled audience . Harold Lloyd shed his broadly drawn “Lonesome Luke” character to become “a middle-class, white-collar worker whose only comic prop was a pair of glasses.” He also moved from shorts into feature films. In 1920 Fatty Arbuckle left his own Comique company to make features for Paramount. The Short Film and the New Woman 117 Hal Roach even toned down the slapstick in comedy shorts starring Will Rogers, Laurel and Hardy, and Our Gang to make them palatable for firstrun audiences.83 What was also being removed was the subversiveness endemic to slapstick, which allowed comediennes like Mabel Normand to assaultthegenderstatusquo .Thegentrificationofhighbrowcomediesandthe relegation of serials and slapstick to the cheaper theaters was a blow to the New Woman onscreen, yet it was not fatal, and the short film did not need the first-run theater to be lucrative. Films featuring the New Woman–style heroines and comediennes now being made for the subsequent-run theaters and matinees continued to make money—a lot of money. They made enough money, and cost enough money, for studio heads to begin taking them quite seriously. In 1916 Photoplay estimated that whereas the average feature cost between $5,000 and $25,000 to produce, the cost of making a serial ran between $100,000 and $500,000. Although the serial figure may have been closer to between $45,000 and $80,000, the price was still quite steep. The reason for these higher costs was obvious. A typical feature was only five reels long; a serial could be fifteen to thirty-six reels long. The era of scrambling to finish serial installments days before release was over; producers, anxious about their investment, required that the whole plot be worked out from start to finish before the cameras began rolling. Given the greater demands of holding a thirteen-chapter serial together, only the most reliable and talented writers, directors, and stars would do, and salaries rose accordingly . Even after the negative was “in the can,” serials posed far greater risks than feature films because they cost so much more. “An enormous amount of money is risked,” noted one contemporary, “and there is no chance to even up if it fizzles.”84 Little wonder, then, that Pathé allegedly spent $500,000 on newspaper and billboard advertising to support the six serials it released in 1916.85 The reappraisal of the serial’s worth changed the mode of production. Central producers absorbed the responsibilities previously allowed to director -producers; it was the central producer who assigned scripts to directors, chose the cast, and kept tabs on costs. New specialists on the studio lot, such as continuity writers, editors, location scouts, and wardrobe personnel, further eroded creative control from the former director-producer.86 Short-film producer-directors, such as Helen Holmes and J. P. McGowan , Grace Cunard and Francis Ford, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, and to a certain extent Mabel Normand, responded to the efficiency experts and 118 “Girls Who Play” the concomitant loss of creative control by leaving the established studios forindependentproduction.Observingchangesinexhibitionaswellasproduction , many of them also attempted to make the move from the short-film world of physical comedies and stunt-driven serials into more genteel feature films. But unless allied to a strong financing and distributing company, these independents were generally financial disasters. The first salvo launched against the new mode of production came from Grace Cunard and Frances Ford. Cunard and Ford left Universal in 1916 after “a fatal clash with that new habitue of the studios—scientific management .” Universal’s biggest stars at the time, they were enticed to return to the studio after a compromise, inspiring Photoplay to proclaim, “Score one for art overefficiency.”However,ontheirverynextproject,ThePurpleMask(1916– 17), Ford and Cunard were put under the supervision of Carl Laemmle’s nephews, the Stern brothers, who “constantly interfered with production.” After completing The Purple Mask the Cunard-Ford filmmaking partnership ended. Cunard continued working for Universal, appearing in Elmo the Mighty (1919), a serial starring Elmo Lincoln, but she never directed or produced again. By contrast Francis Ford went on to enjoy a long filmmaking career, working for a short time as a director at Universal and then leaving for independent production in 1918, thus replicating the pattern in which male partners enjoyed long careers after their female partners “retired.”87 Although Cunard never became an independent, Helen Holmes and Helen Gibson—two of the top serial queens of the 1910s—launched their own companies between 1915 and 1920. Helen Holmes may have chafed at bureaucracy as much as Grace Cunard. Even after creating the long-running Hazards of Helen, Kalem required Holmes to send all scenarios to Kalem’s East Coast office for approval before shooting. In 1915, while still churning out Hazards, Samuel S. Hutchinson, president of the American Film Company , a partner in the Mutual distributing organization and investor in small independents, approached Holmes and McGowan, offering them financing , distribution, and creative control. It was this offer that allowed them to create their own company. They accepted and made several successful serials (as well as features, which were less successful) under their own Signal brand between 1915 and 1917.88 When Signal closed at the end of 1917, despite its financial success with The Girl and the Game and its other serials, Photoplay announced that “Helen Holmes is tired of dodging locomotives and wants to go in for more thoughtful stuff.” Yet the likely reason for the breakup of Signal was marital The Short Film and the New Woman 119 discord. By the early fall of 1918 Holmes and McGowan filed for divorce.89 By the next summer J. P. McGowan was working for Universal as a director , assigned to upcoming serial star Eddie Polo, and Helen Holmes was on the East Coast, where independent producer S. L. Krellberg created the S.L.K.SerialCorporationforher.90 S.L.K.madehighbrowserials,providing “mysteryandromance”ratherthanrailroadstunts.InTheFatalFortune(1919), S. L. K.’s first release, Holmes played a newspaper reporter “drawn from one adventure into another” among opulent settings from New York mansions. But despite its allegedly “hair-raising situations” and luxurious settings, the typecast Helen Holmes did not do well in the role of a “girl reporter.”91 In 1920 Holmes decided to take matters into her own hands, forming the Helen Holmes Production Corporation and signing a financing and distribution deal with Warner Brothers. Holmes entered the agreement with the understanding that she would be making serials, but the cash-strapped Warners convinced her to star in a feature, The Danger Trail (1920), to raise enough revenue to finance her serial productions (the reverse of an earlier trend, whereby the profits of cheaply made serials were used to finance features ). When Holmes finally got started on her first serial, The Tiger Band, Warners asked her to advance $5,000 to smooth over production difficulties , and they dragged their heels in repaying her. Holmes had to take Warner Brothers to court to get the rest of her money. The Warner brothers asserted that Holmes caused her own problems by absenting herself from the set and refusing to ride a horse or get her gown wet, although they did admit her work stoppage was related to the $5,000 owed. Because her distribution agreement was tied up in litigation, The Tiger Band was released under states’ rights distribution, with little advertising or promotion. It did not do well. After the Warner Brothers fiasco Holmes gave up filmmaking but continued to act, mostly in character roles, where, in the words of Kalton C. Lahue, she “did little more than smile at the camera and execute an occasional stunt.”92 “Helen” Rose Gibson, who replaced Helen Holmes in Kalem’s Hazards of Helen in October of 1915, followed a career path that paralleled Holmes ’s—including a foray into independent production and financial disaster. Taking the stage name “Helen” to preserve the “reality” and continuity of the series, Gibson continued to succeed in railroad dramas after Hazards of Helen but decided in 1920 to star in features produced by her own company, Helen Gibson Productions, to be released through Associated Photoplays Corporation. Gibson began production on the provocatively titled No Man’s Woman. When the film was nearly finished, she signed a ninety-day note for $1,500 to complete the intertitles. When delivery of No Man’s Woman from 120 “Girls Who Play” Glendale to New York was delayed, Gibson lost everything, including her company. She never produced again.93 Although not quite as lucrative as the serial, the comedy short was also subject to the new efficiency experts. In 1916 Vitagraph fired most of its stock company and began the “jobbing” system, paying employees by production rather than yearly, and it introduced written contracts to protect itself from the power of the stars. It was at this moment that Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew fled to Metro.94 At Metro the Drews continued to produce short domestic comedies for $90,000 a year, becoming independent producers the next year for their own V. B. K. Corporation, distributed by Paramount.95 As independents, the Drews slowed production to one or two comedies a month, until Sidney Drew’s sudden death in the spring of 1919.96 According to one writer the “unprecedented demand for clean, wholesome comedies” led Lucille McVey Drew to continue making films.97 Less than a year after Sidney Drew’s death, the Pathé exchange sold what was to be a series of six to eight two-reel comedies made by McVey Drew based on the “After Thirty” stories penned by Julian Street, a popular short story writer for wide circulation magazines like Saturday Evening Post and Colliers. Despite working out of her own New York studio, and despite the apparent popularity of her first efforts, it is unclear if McVey Drew made more than the first two films, The Charming Mrs. Chase and The Stimulating Mrs. Barton.98 McVey Drew then began writing, directing, and producing a series of short domestic comedies for Vitagraph. Most promising was her direction of the Vitagraph feature film Cousin Kate (1921), starring one of Vitagraph’s biggest stars, Alice Joyce. Moving Picture World, in its column on promotion and exploitation, told exhibitors that “Mrs Drew’s clever work is as valuable to you in reputation as Miss Joyce’s well-founded popularity as a star.” Lucille McVey Drew’s filmmaking career, however, was also curtailed by early death. After an extended illness, she died in 1925 at the age of 35.99 The Drews’ brand of comedy and filmmaking continued briefly in the careers of Mrs. and Mrs. Carter De Haven, who filled the empty slot in the Paramount program after the untimely departure of the Drews. After making ten “newlywed” comedies for Paramount, the De Havens left to become independents, releasing comedies through First National. Although little is known of the participation of Mrs. De Haven behind the camera, it seems significant that the couple’s First National studio was in Carter De Haven’s name only. They made one feature film for First National distribution, Twin Beds (1920), a relatively risqué comedy concerning a drunken neighbor who mistakenly crawls into the wrong bed, but the Carter De Haven The Short Film and the New Woman 121 studio disappeared within a year. Within two years the De Havens were making short comedies for the Film Booking Offices of America, and they disappeared from filmmaking altogether by the mid-1920s.100 Even in lowbrow comedy actresses left the safety of the studios for independent production. Flora Finch, the skinny, nagging onscreen wife of John Bunny,wentindependentwithoutmuchsuccessin1917,asdidAliceHowell , Keystone’s unkempt “scrub lady,” who did little better.101 The most famous slapstick comedienne to go independent was Mabel Normand herself. In all likelihood changes in production methods also influenced Normand’s decision to leave Keystone. Normand enjoyed a great deal of creative control at Keystone between 1912 and 1915, but when Keystone merged with the Triangle Film Corporation in 1915, the autonomy enjoyed by the Keystone production units ended. Continuity scripts became mandatory, and the legendary improvisational style of Keystone production withered. Sennett himself, who had been a loose central producer of sorts, now became an administrator.Roscoe“Fatty”Arbuckle,searchingformoremoneyandmore artistic control, left Keystone the same year as Normand.102 The reason Normand gave the press for her departure was her desire to be taken more seriously as an actress. “I wanted better pictures,” she recalled. “I was getting tired of grinding out short comedies to bolster up programs in which other stars in other companies, as well as our own, were featured in pretentious films and were paid far more than I was.” After her Keystone contract expired, she created the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company in 1916 with Sennett’s fellow Triangle partner, Thomas Ince.103 In an interview many years later, Normand recalled only Sennett’s role in the making of Mickey, the first and only feature made by the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company. In her words Sennett “let” her do Mickey, “let” her have her own studio, and “let” her pick out her own director and cast. The truth behind the creation of the Mabel Normand Feature Film Company, however , was somewhat different. In 1915, after Normand caught Sennett in a compromising position with one of her closest friends, she disappeared from the screen. Although publicists told the press that Normand suffered from a mysterious ailment, at least one historian ascribes her disappearance to Sennett, who allegedly beat her in a drunken rage after she confronted him about the affair.104 After her “recovery” she left for Keystone’s Fort Lee, New Jersey, studio, thousands of miles away from Sennett. When her Keystone contract expired in May of 1916, she went back to Hollywood, this time with a new Triangle contract under Thomas Ince, “which recognizes her desire to play light dramatic roles.”105 122 “Girls Who Play” The quasi-independent Mabel Normand Feature Company, financially supported and guaranteed distribution by the prestigious Triangle organization , seemed secure, but Mickey, her first production, was cursed from the start. After Normand fired two directors, Sennett himself arrived to coproduce the film. Remarkably, their working relationship remained intact, but to ensure her independence, Sennett built “The Mabel Normand Studio” severalmilesfromKeystone.106 BythetimethatMickeywrapped,itwasseven reels long and cost between $125,000 (Sennett’s estimate) and $300,000 (Photoplay’s estimate) to produce.107 Even after the film was completed, its release was delayed when the director “kidnapped” the last two reels for nonpayment. Caught in the chaos of Triangle’s own collapse, Mickey sold for the paltry sum of $175,000. The Mabel Normand Feature Film Company dissolved, and her studio went to Sennett. When finally released in August of 1918, Mickey was road-showed by exhibitors in first-run theaters with its own original score. It proved a monstrous hit, eventually grossing $18 million.108 Looking back nine years later, a writer for Moving Picture World asserted that no other comedy had yet “made the same tremendous popular hit.” “Mickey became an epidemic,” he recalled. Mickey “hats, dresses, clothes, and pretty nearly everything else” filled thirty-seven storefront windows in one town alone.109 After Mickey, Normand never again attempted independent production. In 1917 she joined Samuel Goldwyn, where she became his most lucrative star in a long string of feature comedies and where she specialized in tormenting Abraham Lehr, the self-described “head of production and a sort of efficiency expert.” According to Lehr, Normand had “an amazing indifference to hours and routines and costs and system.” She would go out on the town nearly every night, arriving late for work the next morning, sauntering tardily across the set singing “some taunting song.” Even when she was on the set, Normand would hold up production by playing the piano and singing French songs with her director, Victor Schertzinger. When Lehr tried to change her director, she “threw a fit.” After a falling out with Goldwyn in 1921, Normand went back to work for Sennett, who was releasing comedy features through Paramount.110 <= While the New Woman–style comedienne faded from the short-film genre, because of the departure of Mabel Normand and the gentrification of the short comedy, the demand for the strong, self-reliant New Woman serial heroine received an unexpected boost in 1916 through the popular The Short Film and the New Woman 123 “war preparedness” serials such as The Secret of the Submarine (Mutual, 1916), Liberty, a Daughter of the U.S.A. (Universal, 1916), and Pearl of the Army (Pathé, 1916).111 The popularity of the self-reliant heroine increased even further when the United States finally entered the war. According to film historian Kalton C. Lahue working-class women and children on the home front appreciated the serials, which offered resourcefulness onscreen as a “sheer escape.”112 By 1919, at war’s end, trade journals trumpeted the exuberant claims made by Pathé and Universal—the two major firms that relied most heavily on serials—that the installment play would soon be wholeheartedly accepted by even the most opulent first-run theaters. Serials were far better in terms of production values and plot than was true before the war, and they even scored a few prestigious first-run venues during the war. But despite the high hopes among serial producers that at last they were on the verge of confirmed first-run acceptance, the war years proved to be an exception. By 1920 the serial was firmly entrenched in the subsequentrun theater and the children’s matinee.113 Universal and Pathé cornered this still-lucrative postwar serial market by sticking to the old blood-and-thunder format that appealed to the cheaper theaters. Postwar advertisements for Pathé serial star Ruth Roland claimed that she was the “dynamic favorite of the masses.” Universal’s Carl Laemmle banked on small-town and subsequent -run theaters, offering them a complete balanced program of serials, comedies, and B-grade features.114 Despite the changing audience, the New Woman serial heroine still sold movies,especiallyRuthRolandforPathéandMarieWalcampforUniversal. MarieWalcamp,whobeganhercareerin1916whenshewasdescribedas“a girl who grins at being abducted from a forty-mile-an-hour passenger train through the window and onto a galloping horse’s back,” sustained Grace Cunard’s New Woman style after the war. Walcamp’s greatest postwar success was The Red Glove (1919), directed by Helen Holmes’s former husband and serial-making partner, J. P. McGowan. Universal supported The Red Glove with an enormous publicity campaign, which included the claim that Marie Walcamp chose the story herself.115 Far more popular, however, was Ruth Roland, who began her career in early New Woman–style series before joining Balboa in 1914, where she starred in the unusually successful highbrow serial Who Pays? After Who Pays? Roland starred in The Red Circle (Balboa, 1915), in which she played a society girl cursed by a birthmark that caused her to lead a secret life of crime. Now a bona fide serial queen, Roland hit her stride during the war years in Hands Up (Pathé, 1918), in 124 “Girls Who Play” which she portrayed a journalist nearly sacrificed by a tribe of native Southern Californians.116 After Hands Up Roland was the biggest box-office draw in the world of serials. At this opportune moment she allegedly took the reins in The Adventures of Ruth (1919), a serial made by Ruth Roland Serials, Inc., and distributed by Pathé. Pathé had successfully handled her product since 1915 and knew that Roland was a box-office guarantee. In a full-page advertisement in Wid’s Film Yearbook for 1919–20, Roland stated, “I wrote the story—and personally supervised the taking of every scene. The Adventures of Ruth is my own—in pep, in class, in action—in romance! I know you will like it.”117 The Adventures of Ruth featured Roland as an heiress whose father was killed by the mysterious “Terrible Thirteen,” and Ruth must solve the murder. Roland did indeed conceive the story, but Pathé’s Gilson Willets wrote the scenario, and George Marshall directed. The Adventures of Ruth was followed by Ruth of the Rockies (1920) and The Avenging Arrow (1921), all made by Ruth Roland Serials, Inc., and released by Pathé.118 <= The New Woman–style heroine appeared to be doing well at matinees and in second-run theaters after the war. In fact, the New Woman–style heroine began to appear in that most masculine of genres—the western. Fay Tincher of Ethel, the gum-chewing-stenographer series, was successfully reinvented as a cowgirl in 1919 by comedy maker Al Christie. As “wild and woolly” lariat-looping “Rowdy Ann,” “fresh from the open range,” Tincher appeared in a series of western comedies such as Dangerous Nan McGrew and Go West, Young Woman. In these films she donned a ten-gallon hat, furry chaps, and a six-shooter. Also arriving in 1919 was newcomer Texas Guinan, who first appeared in two five-reel western thrillers (originally intended to be shorts) made by the independent Frohman Amusement Corporation.119 Guinan, who was nearly thirty and an actress of the old school of pantomime, seemed an odd choice for starring roles, but Frohman publicized her as a woman who “can handle a gun, roll a cigarette, and boss a mob of cowboys all at one fell swoop.” She thus fit the ideal of the western woman, “no less brave or daring than a man and at the same time portraying her womanly side.”120 In The Gun Woman (1918) Guinan played a dance-hall proprietor cheated out of her money by a con man. When the sheriff tells her that the con man has been terrorizing a nearby town, she confronts the villain, pumps a bullet into him, and concludes the film by rejecting the sheriff’s proposal. Billed The Short Film and the New Woman 125 as “the female Bill Hart” (referring to silent star William S. Hart) in The She Wolf (1919), Guinan shot two men to save a young woman from a false marriage .121 After making dozens of two-reel westerns, Guinan created Texas Guinan Productions in 1921. She planned to produce a series of two-reelers, as well as a few features.122 Like many actress-producers Guinan probably exercised choice over story and director—her choice for the latter being none other than Francis Ford, Grace Cunard’s former serial partner.123 But despite the announcement that her first two-reelers were receiving wide distribution, Texas Guinan Productions did not go far past its first releases, The Two-Gun Woman (1921) and I Am the Woman (1921). One historian attributed this failure to a lack of capital, alleging that Guinan and her partners incorrectly assumed that she would win a $200,000 lawsuit against a previous producer , Bulls-Eye. After closing her company in 1922, Guinan left for New York, where she enjoyed greater success as a nightclub entrepreneur, gaining fame for her greeting, “Hello Suckers,” a reference to the high prices she charged for watered-down bootleg liquor. In 1928 Guinan returned to the screen to star in Queen of the Night Clubs, but she generally left Hollywood behind.124 Difficulties in financing and distribution explain why, after World War I, New Woman–style independent filmmakers like Helen Holmes, Helen Gibson, Ruth Roland, and Texas Guinan went out of business, but these difficulties do not explain why the New Woman–style comedienne and serial heroinesoondisappearedfromthescreenaltogether.Althoughcomedieswere becoming more sophisticated, slapsticks were still being made, and even as the audience changed, the New Woman–style serial heroine still pleased audiences in films made by Universal and Pathé.125 Clearly there was an additional factor, outside of the audience and the studios, that led to the sudden disappearance of the New Woman from comedies and serials. Ironically, this factor turned out to be the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. <= Two apparently related developments stunned the movie business between 1919 and 1922: a sudden outcry against the movies by censorship advocates and a frightening decline in attendance. While a sharp postwar recession slowed box-office receipts, a frightened industry linked poor attendance with renewed criticism of the movies. In September of 1921 Moving Picture World surmised, as did many other observers, that the public was simply “shunning both themes and personalities it doesn’t like.”126 Because 126 “Girls Who Play” of their peculiar history in terms of content and audience, the serial and the slapstick comedy received the full wrath of reformers. What sparked a renewed censorship campaign were newspaper stories after the war that blamed a sharp increase in juvenile crime on the serial thriller—the staple of Saturday matinees.127 Although some judges realized young offenders found it convenient to blame the movies, the frequent claim by juveniles that they learned how to commit robberies and even cause train wrecks from seeing these crimes enacted on the screen made for frightening headlines.128 Within a matter of months a new censorship movement gained momentum, and the focus of criticism spread. Reformers turned their attention to all audiences exposed to crime films—not only children but the adult audiences who patronized the second-, third-, and fourth-run theaters.129 In the atmosphere of the postwar Red Scare the combination of such movies and the masses sent a danger signal, and reformers wanted “to do away with the possibility of display of low films in poorer sections.”130 According to Ellis Paxton Oberholtzer of the strident Pennsylvania Board of Censors, “The crime serial is, perhaps, the most astounding development in the history of motion pictures.” Serials were “meant for the most ignorant classes of the population with the grossest tastes,” and they flourished in “mill villages and in the thickly settled tenement house and low foreign-speaking neighborhoods in the big cities.”131 Female reformers even began blaming their working-class servants for the exposure of middle-class children to the serial. “How many mothers who send their children with their nurses for an afternoon of sunshine in the park know they are sitting in the darkened movie theater taking in a daring thriller?” asked Mrs. J. A. Storck of New Orleans, adding that “after all, it is to nursemaids that the thrilling serial really makes its strongest appeal.”132 For the New Woman serial heroine the postwar censorship movement provedparticularlytroublesome.Menincrimeserialsweredangerousenough; serial heroines, women who fought criminals and even became criminals themselves, were beyond the pale. To Oberholtzer the serial heroine was unnatural. “If I should travel the country over,” he proclaimed, “I should not know where to find women who conceal revolvers in their blouses.” To make matters worse, the trials and tribulations of the young, attractive serial queen at the hands of the villain were innately sexual. Although serials were mostly “shooting, knifing, binding and gagging, drowning, wrecking, and fighting,” Oberholtzer maintained, “always obtruding and outstanding is the idea of sex.”133 As cities across America banned the serial in 1921, the treatment of the serial heroine, particularly her being bound and tortured by The Short Film and the New Woman 127 the male villain, became a central offense. Some censorship boards “refused to permit even the laying of a hand upon a woman character.”134 As the censors winnowed out the dangers of the serial genre, they soon extended their net to lowbrow comedy, where once again they found the incendiary combination of sex and crime in a genre associated with children and the working classes. Indeed, slapstick was just as much to blame as serials for the alleged rise in juvenile crime, for “the policemen and every other officer of the law has been so much caricatured that by this time they must be beyond the bounds of young people’s respect.” Like the serial the slapstick comedy portrayed women in a dangerous manner: either scandalous in costume (the Sennett “Bathing Beauties”) or vulgar in behavior. According to Oberholtzer slapstick comedies were full of young women who “will put aside any delicacy of feeling which may have descended to them from their grand-dames, and will hazard their lives and limbs as well as their reputations to outdo the men in gross performances for creating laughter.”135 Although clubwomen were active in censorship campaigns before World War I, they assumed the dominant role in the postwar drive for movie censorship . While a few male reformers were quite vocal, clubwomen were the most important cultural authority challenging the movies after the war.136 Morris Ernst and Pare Lorentz, who published their study of film censorship in 1930, derided the clubwomen as “ladies at play” but acknowledged that “the movie producer is taking no chances. He doesn’t want to test their power. While he was doing it he would lose too much money.”137 Thanks to the lobbying efforts of clubwomen and female reformers, censorship bills aimed at eliminating crime films were introduced into thirty-two state legislatures between 1919 and 1922, and in January of 1920 three bills were introduced to Congress that proposed to bar films “purporting to show or to simulate the acts and conduct of ex-convicts, desperadoes, bandits, train robbers, bank robbers, or outlaws.”138 Faced with dozens of state censorship bills and a newly enfranchised majority , a truly frightened Hollywood wondered if women held the future of theindustryintheirhands.InNovemberof 1920MovingPictureWorldpublished a warning that highlighted the fact that women could now vote and that they and their children “comprise the major portion of our audiences. They have made motion pictures popular—not the men.” The article advised honesty. “The moment you hear censorship is coming up in your state, get in touch with the women, the women’s clubs and organizations. Tell them your story frankly; tell them the truth,” which was that “‘outlaw’ pictures” still existed but were only a fraction of the total output.139 128 “Girls Who Play” By the time this article appeared, the industry had already taken action . In June of 1920 the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI), a trade association that claimed to control 90 percent of the movie business, asserted that it would support the General Federation of Women’s Clubs and its efforts to protect children, and the association kept its word. In March of 1921 the NAMPI adopted a set of resolutions to show that the industry could and would cleanse itself without the help of state or federal censorship. Producers were expected to refrain from exaggerated “sex appeal,” white slavery, the underworld, drunkenness, narcotics, ridiculing authority, gratuitous violence, scenes that “are vulgar and portray improper gestures, posturing, and attitudes,” as well as salacious subtitles. Offenders were to be expelled from the organization.140 To underscore the industry’s seriousness, William A. Brady, president of the NAMPI, began a trip through the nation’s heartland in the fall of 1921 to convince women’s groups that Hollywood was doing a good job and to gain their cooperation in fighting state censorship—a tactic that was soon to be copied by Will Hays.141 For New York it was too little too late. In 1921 New York became one of the few states to create a censorship board. Notably, clubwomen demanded that a woman be named to the board, and they got their wish.142 Faced with reform from the inside and the continuing threat of state censorship, filmmakers were left with little choice but to comply. For the makers of slapstick comedies and serials, complying with the NAMPI resolutions necessitated drastic changes. In September of 1921 Hallroom Boys Photoplays, Inc., introduced a “censor-proof bathing girl comedy.” It announced that the new Hallroom Boys comedies series was “absolutely clean in every respect—sacrificing laughs if need be, if the scenes showed any tendency to become vulgar.”143 This announcement illustrated just how difficult it was to make a “clean” slapstick comedy. The portrayal of women in slapstick was now a minefield, and it was simply safer for men to play the broad physical comedy routines while women stayed in the background. The slapstick comedy, which once turned gender roles upside-down, became the domain of male clowns—Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, and Larry Semon; women played the straight roles or provided ornamentation . The women who starred in the New Woman comedies of the 1910s either disappeared or found other types of roles. Mabel Normand played in toned-down feature comedies for Goldwyn and Sennett. Louise Fazenda, the slapstick farm girl with the “obnoxiously homespun curl plastered in the middle of her forehead,” was fortunate enough to win good roles in feature dramas throughout the 1920s. Fay Tincher, the closest female The Short Film and the New Woman 129 star to Normand in both beauty and ability, became famous between 1923 and 1928 for her straight portrayal of the wife in the “Andy Gump” series (based on the newspaper comic strip) but failed to find work after the series ended.144 Serials were equally difficult to make in the new style. A 1922 screenwriter ’s guide noted that the new censorship policies made it nearly impossible to create a serial around a female heroine, “and the irony of it is that the feminine star is always the most popular.”145 By the time that the NAMPI resolutions were released, Universal and Pathé had already retooled the serial format.146 After the war both companies experimented with the idea of a male serial hero.147 In 1919 Universal released Elmo the Mighty, starring Elmo Lincoln; The Cyclone Smith Stories, starring Eddie Polo; and The Midnight Man, with James J. Corbett.148 Inspired by the jaunty Douglas Fairbanks, Pathé released Bound and Gagged (1920), a serial produced and directed by former Pearl White director George B. Seitz, who also starred in the serial as “a new type of serial hero—a young American, typically energetic and intrepid, whose utterly care-free attitude of mind and ability of body brought him face to face with situations he had no part in bringing about” but which, of course, he met with “thrilling heroism.”149 Like the slapstick producers, Pathé and Universal turned to the male lead after 1921 as a safer alternative to the serial heroine, whose “perils” were too easily construed as sexual. Two weeks before the NAMPI formally announced its resolutions, Pathé trotted out The Adventures of Bill and Bob, gentle nature comedies starring eleven-year-old Boy Scouts from Glendale who embarked on fishing and hunting expeditions. Uplifter Epes Sargent of Moving Picture World greeted this news happily, announcing that “Pathé has found something new in serials . . . There is no panting heroine hanging by her neck—or her heels—from one week to the next.”150 Six months later Universal announced its own “departure” in serial production, beginning with the “censor proof” Winners of the West, an educational thriller based on thelifeofJohnC.Fremont.“WearemakingWinners of the West,” announced Fred J. McConnell, head of the new serial exploitation department at Universal , “so that every censor and every parent will have to say: ‘I see no harm in showing this to children.’” Universal continued the masculine, “natural” theme with The Adventures of Tarzan (1921), which perhaps pleased New York censor Mrs. Eli T. Hosmer, who stated that she liked “thrills of an outdoor type because they are more educational.”151 These changes in serial policy did not immediately do away with the portrayal of the strong female serial heroine, for Ruth Roland continued to 130 “Girls Who Play” be Pathé’s leading attraction in serials made by her own company, although they were now characterized by what were described as “clean-clean-clean” outdoor themes. The Avenging Arrow (1921) was advertised as a “true-blue story of adventure and romance, without a shadow of the underworld in it.”152 But while Ruth Roland, a proven star and a relatively genteel heroine, enjoyed box-office success, her career wound down.153 When Roland closed her own company in 1922 to make serials supervised by Hal Roach, it may well have been because of Pathé’s move away from serial heroines.154 After the spring of 1921 neither Pathé nor Universal, the most important producers and distributors of serials, promoted a New Woman–style heroine. Instead, stuntman Eddie Polo, strongman Elmo Lincoln, “Cinema Colossus” Joe Bonomo, and the “censor-proof” Charles Hutchinson were promoted to stardom. The serial, which presented the most feminist characters of the 1910s, lost its complex plots and its New Woman heroines and turned instead to safe but cartoonlike male heroes such as “Tarzan” and Houdini.155 The NAMPI resolutions and the continuing threat of censorship in the state legislatures spelled doom for the New Woman onscreen, but in a case of spectacularly poor timing, her fate was sealed when Hollywood experienced a series of scandals that implicated, among others, comedienne Mabel Normand and serial star Juanita Hansen. The scandals began when slapstick comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was arrested for the rape and murder of actress Virginia Rappe at a wild party. After his first trial ended in a hung jury, women’s groups began demanding the removal of Arbuckle films from the theaters. A year later Arbuckle was acquitted, but the Arbuckle scandal proved what many had suspected for years—Hollywood was innately immoral . Meanwhile, in February of 1922, a month into Arbuckle’s second trial, director William Desmond Taylor was murdered in his apartment, and MabelNormandwasimplicated.156 Normandwasexonerated,butherreputation suffered irreparable damage at the hands of the sensationalistic press, which speculated at the time that Normand—whose penchant for high living and tasteless gags was covered thoroughly in the papers—was a drug addict (which was apparently true). A year later police arrested Normand’s chauffeur for murdering a man with Normand’s gun, and a year after that Normand was named in a divorce suit. Moralists demanded that Normand’s films be banned. This was effectively the end of Normand’s career; Normand ’s health declined rapidly, until finally tuberculosis and pneumonia took her life in 1930.157 She was thirty-eight years old. Just as the scandals broke in the winter of 1921–22, movie attendance fell precipitously, and Hollywood naturally believed that a disgusted pubThe Short Film and the New Woman 131 lic was engaging in an impromptu boycott. The film industry responded to the scandals of 1920 to 1922 by creating a new trade organization, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). In 1922 the MPPDA appointed former postmaster general Will Hays, an old-style Protestant from Indiana, to convince America and the world that Hollywood could reform itself. Although like its predecessor, the National Board of Censorship, the “Hays Office” ultimately proved too lax for some, at first a frightened Hollywood scrambled to prove that its potential for good outweighed its temptation toward evil.158 Unfortunately, the serial heroine and New Woman comedienne were in the crosshairs when the industry purged itself of controversial material. Anonymous mailings to the Hays Office, like the photo of Ruth Roland under which an angry writer scribbled “a teacher in the school of crime,” underscored their indictment.159 <= Ironically, the clubwomen who freed the impressionable working-class and juvenile audiences from the New Woman may have wondered what they had wrought. With the departure of the New Woman from the screen in comedies and serials there was little to counter the kinds of women portrayed in films pioneered by Cecil B. DeMille, purveyor of what Pennsylvania censor Oberholtzer called the “sex rot.”160 In the eyes of clubwomen the heroines of these “sex plays” may well have been far worse than the New Woman serial heroine, whose virginity, at least, was never in question. But there was little they could do about it. The dominant voice in film regulation reverted to the industry after the establishment of the Hays Office. The near-paranoia that killed the serial heroine and comedienne disappeared, but there was no one to resurrect her. The men who created her had gone on to other kinds of films, and the women who created her disappeared altogether .161 132 “Girls Who Play” ...