Tales from the Archives

One of the reasons I started this blog was to combine my interests in film and writing. Today I get to throw my love of history into the mix. This summer I have been volunteering at the Philadelphia Archdiocesan Historical Research Center: http://www.pahrc.net. I hope to become an archivist and will be starting grad school in the fall. The PAHRC has a treasure trove of interesting historical materials relating to the Catholic Church as well as secular interests. My job has been to go through Parish Monthly Calendars to sort them, do an inventory of what months/years we have, and put that inventory into a digital database. When I started at the archives earlier this summer I would have never imagined that I would find anything relating to film history since I knew I would be going through Church calendars. However, I was able to discover some interesting  unlikely sources which shed a fascinating light onto the public perceptions of film in the 1920s, mostly from a Catholic point of view.

The earliest film related find I made was a series of advertisements on the back of Parish monthly calendars from late 1921. While the above ad is not the same one I came across, it is very close. The ad was trying to convince Catholics to invest in a film company which would create movies by Catholics, for Catholics. This is quite interesting as it shows that even though the medium of film was still pretty young, Catholics felt that it was important to have movies showing a positive portrayal of their religion and beliefs. The company being advertised was called "Creston Feature Pictures, Inc." and the ad goes on to say that two films, "St. Joan of Arc" and "The Scapular," would be put into production.  I did some searching online and I can't find any evidence that these films were actually made. However, I did find that Creston Feature Pictures made at least two films: Mother Machree (1922) and Knight of the Eucharist (1922).
Here are some links and a picture describing Knight of the Eucharist:
Creston Feature Pictures, Inc
Mother Machree
Knight of the Eucharist

An article inside a May 1924 parish monthly calendar entitled "The Menace of the Movies" is about how movies would do no harm regardless of their content, as long as the viewer is religious. I was surprised to find that despite the inflammatory title, the article is not against movies themselves. The article says that any person with the correct morals would not be negatively influenced by inappropriate films. Here is an excerpt: "As to moving pictures, not all films are bad... be not unmindful of the danger of too great intimacy in a darkened theater as the cause of the fall rather than to the mere picturing of human life upon the screen." It is interesting that the atmosphere of the theater was considered more likely to lead people to sin than the material in the films!

Another calendar article dating from December 1924 called "As the movies picture us" is about how foreign "pagan" lands get the wrong view of America and Catholics from U.S. films. The article says that films were felt to undermine the work of Catholic missionaries because of "celluloid dramas that convince the beholder that American men and women are adorers at the shrine of Venus, Bacchus, or of the Golden Calf." I have no idea what movies were portraying contemporary Americans as worshiping Roman gods and idols, but I must admit I am curious. Unfortunately the article did not list any titles of offending movies. It is also interesting to see that American films already were very popular to international audiences.

                                                             Jacqueline Logan

An article from July 1925 titled "Easy divorce for Movie Queens discusses a wedding and three divorces involving people from Hollywood. While the main point of the article is how  frequent marriages and divorces like these are "not wholesome," the article almost reads like a celebrity tabloid. Los Angeles is described as "Movieland" and the article seems to be unintentionally drumming up interest in these actors and directors instead of outright condemning them.  Although I don't have the article to post, its tone is more similar to a film publication that something coming from a Church (except two lines about how these quick divorces are morally bankrupt). This is a bit of a tangent, but while doing some research for this post I came across some old box office magazines that have been digitized which you can check out here:
http://www.boxofficemagazine.com/the_vault

                                                                 

Getting back to the article, it does give us some names which I was able to look up. Jacqueline Logan was the actress who got married, and she appears to be the most well-known amongst the names listed in the article. Logan's most famous role was that of Mary Magdalene (pictured above) in Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 film, The King of Kings. Logan was also known for being one of the film people on board William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924 when film director Thomas Ince died.
IMDB

Wikipedia

Actress Marjorie Daw is listing as having divorced film director and actor A. Edward Sutherland. According to IMDB her nickname was "The Girl with the Nursery Rhyme Name" which referred to the nursery rhyme "See Saw Margery Daw." I thought nicknames were supposed to be shorter than your real name!
IMDB
Wikipedia

After divorcing Daw, Sutherland was married to actress Louise Brooks for a few years.
IMDB
Wikipedia

Art Acord, an actor who mostly appeared in Westerns, was also a rodeo champion in real life. Acord is listed as getting a divorce from his wife, Edna. Acord's nickname was "The Cowpuncher King." While this immediately conjured up images of him punching cattle, it turns out that a cowpuncher was another name for a cowboy. Not as awesome as I thought but still pretty badass! Sadly, most of his films are lost today.
Here is a short clip of him in Cecil B. DeMille's The Sqaw Man (1914) as the cowboy in the white shirt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b16R-jy55ss
IMDB
Wikipedia

The final divorce mentioned is that of "Eula Mantecon" who went by the stage name "Alice Trevor." However, I was unable to find any actress with either of those names.  When searching on IMDB I did find an Olive Trevor who was in some silent films from this period. I couldn't find much information about her either, and unless she is still alive at 112 years old, her date of death is not on IMDB. That said I am guessing that "Alice" was a misprint and that she is indeed Olive Trevor. Since I couldn't find a picture of her online I included a picture of a film that she was in, $50,000 Reward (1924), starring actor and stuntman Ken Maynard.
IMDB
http://www.fandango.com/olivetrevor/filmography/p186528

The most recent film related discovery I made came from the back cover of a December 1941 parish monthly calendar. While the back covers of these calendars usually featured local businesses such as grocery stores and eye doctors, this one was different as it included an ad for the 1941 movie Honky Tonk starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner. This ad was only printed for one month and I haven't found anything like this before or since. It feels out of place and is unusual so I wonder why this movie ad was placed here. Was there a mix-up when the calendars were printed? Was the ad supposed to show up in another publication? Did a parishioner have something to do with the film? Or was someone just a really big Clark Gable fan? I guess I'll never know, but it is an intriguing mystery.

IMDB
Wikipedia

I hope that this article was as interesting to read as it was for me to research and write! If I happen to come across some more fascinating tidbits of film history I'll make a follow-up post.  Sorry that this post was a bit late, I should be back on to my regular schedule now.