1927 and the Rise of Modern America

by Charles Shindo

  Ruth, Dempsey, and college football all benefited from the modern media and from Americans’ desire for and ability to support spectator sports, yet all relied very heavily on traditional elements (Ruth’s wayward youth, Dempsey’s raw power and emotion, and college football’s adherence in name to amateur athletics) for their popularity. In this sense, they each utilized the media much as Herbert Hoover did, promoting his self-reliant volunteerism and using publicity to become celebrated. They each in their own way allowed Americans to celebrate the traditional while engaging in the modern. The flip side of fame was the infamy garnered by Nan Britton, Ruth Snyder, and Judd Gray, as well as by other momentary celebrities who also used the media to gain notoriety but found that their modern stories of extramarital affairs, illegitimate children, and murder positioned them as warnings against modernity. Since everything about their stories was modern, they did not possess the ambiguity found in Hoover and the sports figures, and they therefore did not resonate with the public as positively or powerfully. In the end, Britton, Snyder, and Gray did not have the respectability that a connection to traditional values imparted to the public. Celebrities in the newly emerging industries of motion pictures, jazz music, and radio sought out the kind of respectability that came from a connection to traditional values.

  Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford canoeing at Pickfair. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  “Amos ’n’ Andy” talking on the phone. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  CHAPTER 4Seeking Respectability: Modern Media and Traditional Values

  RESPECT AND DISRESPECT: The new industries of motion pictures and radio sought to gain public recognition and respectability. In Hollywood, the wholesome image of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, as well as their leadership in the industry through their participation in the newly created Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, helped accelerate the development of film technology and artistry, as well as the audience for movies. Radio too boomed as a business by promoting its benefits to education, industry, and democracy. Both industries, however, gained their respectability at the cost of disrespecting African Americans. Hollywood’s big hit of 1927, The Jazz Singer, perpetuated the stereotypes of blackface entertainment, and radio’s expansion and regulation by the federal government drove ethnic- and race-based stations off the radio dial. Like Hollywood, radio capitalized on blackface comedy with shows like Amos ’n’ Andy, performed by white actors Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll. The success of these industries resulted from the exploitation of and discrimination against African Americans.

  Just as Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey each brought a measure of respectability to professional sports, as well as earning large fortunes for themselves and the industry, other industries also sought respectability as a means of self-promotion. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford brought respectability to the film industry and to Hollywood through the cultivation of a wholesome lifestyle. The creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also added to the respectability of the industry, as did films with such serious subjects as the Great War and religion. As with Ruth and Dempsey, it was the ability to take advantage of modern opportunities while maintaining traditional values (or at least the air of traditional values) that raised the image of the movie business. Jazz musicians used record sales and radio airplay to bring respectability to what many deemed distasteful music, though much of the respectability would be won by white musicians instead of the African Americans from whose culture the music developed. Respected African American artists sought to distance themselves from the jazz culture by seeking to bring the African American experience to the same level of cultural expression as existed in mainstream American culture. Much of the motivation for the Harlem Renaissance derived from this desire to be respected as artists. Likewise, the developing radio industry touted its potential to enlighten and educate the masses by bringing informative and culturally sophisticated entertainment to Americans’ living rooms. Each of these cultural industries sought respectability as a means of economic success, but each received more than financial wealth.

  Each industry became central to the way Americans viewed themselves and to the way others viewed Americans. Indeed, Fairbanks and Pickford generated more wealth than any sports figure of the decade, and it was their vision of America that was sold worldwide to an eager audience. In the film industry—more than in professional sports or even for journalistically created celebrities like Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray—fame could rest on perception and image more than on ability or actions. Yet Hollywood, as industry, image, and ideal, was perhaps more evocative and representative of what people thought of America in the 1920s than any other idea. In Hollywood an unknown could become a star, with all the fame and fortune that stars received, simply by being in the right place at the right time. The randomness of the process reinforced ideas about the role destiny played in the creation of a motion picture celebrity, even though in reality the process was, even in its formative years, a coldly calculated business venture.

  respectability and religion in hollywood

  The modernity of the medium found respectability in its most traditional stars, Fairbanks and Pickford. While the “new woman” antics of Clara Bow (both on- and off-screen) demonstrated the limited revolutionary aspects of the Hollywood film industry, the family atmosphere of Pickfair (the Beverly Hills home of Fairbanks and Pickford), along with the squeaky-clean characters played by both actors, brought elements of traditional values to Hollywood. The public viewed Fairbanks and Pickford as Hollywood royalty, and in return, the couple dutifully accepted the responsibility of promoting the film industry. Writer Allene Talmey acknowledged this duty when she wrote in her 1927 book Doug and Mary and Others that “Doug and Mary are, of course, the King and Queen of Hollywood, providing the necessary air of dignity, sobriety, and aristocracy.” The air of dignity came from Fairbanks and Pickford’s upholding of traditional family values (despite the fact that they had divorced their respective spouses to be with each other) and was illustrated by the close ties they maintained with family members, especially their parents and siblings. The sobriety was apparent in Fairbanks’s teetotaling ways (supposedly as the result of a boyhood pledge to his mother). A dinner at Pickfair, without wine, usually ended with a movie screening at which guests were served Ovaltine and peanut brittle. And the air of aristocracy came from the couple’s hobnobbing with the Duke and Duchess of Alba, Lord and Lady Mountbatten, and the King and Queen of Siam, all of whom were guests at Pickfair, and from several grand tours of Europe where Fairbanks and Pickford were hosted by royalty and the rich and famous. But ultimately, the responsibility they held most dear was to the industry that made them famous. “Gravely they attend movie openings, cornerstone layings, gravely sit at the head of the table at the long dinners in honor of the cinema great, Douglas making graceful speeches, Mary conducting herself with the self-abnegation of Queen Mary of Britain. Cornerstone layings, dinners, openings are duties; they understand thoroughly their obligation to be present, in the best interests of the motion picture industry.”1 Indeed, Fairbanks and Pickford perfectly illustrate the duplicitous nature of Hollywood, in that they were more than the characters they played, more even than actors playing specific roles. They both were business forces creating economic empires, first separately, then together as business partners (with Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith in the creation of United Artists), and later as husband and wife. Yet it was Fairbanks’s boundless optimism and Pickford’s virginal sweetness, not their business acumen or even their acting ability, that made them the “most popular couple in the world.”2

  The characters they portrayed reinforced the image they presented of their private lives. Pickford fluctuated between her child roles (Pollyanna, 1920; Little Lord Fauntleroy, 1921; Tess of the Storm Country, 1922; Little Annie Rooney, 1925; and Sparrows, 1926) and her attempts to break out of the little girl persona and portray someone her own age or close to it (The Love Light, 1921, in which she plays a woman ca
ught in the tragedy of the Great War; Rosita, 1923, in which she plays a Spanish dancing girl; and Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, 1924, a historical drama set in England). The child roles did considerably better than the adult roles, and when she went directly to her fans and asked readers of Photoplay to suggest roles she should play, they overwhelmingly suggested such child roles as Cinderella, Anne of Green Gables, Alice in Wonderland, Heidi, the Little Colonel, and Sara Crewe. The magazine selected one prize-winning letter for publication; it pleaded with “My Dear Little Mary” to stick to characters between ten to fourteen years old. “These particular roles are your greatest opportunities for showing us what a wonderful actress you really are by your ability to create and preserve an almost perfect illusion.”3 The “perfect illusion” was not only that of a woman in her thirties playing an adolescent but also the illusion of a perfect child who always made the right decisions and always held fast to traditional moral values. It did not matter if the character was rich or poor, white Anglo-Saxon or immigrant, or even male or female; all these characters shared a strong moral fiber and triumphant virtue.

  In My Best Girl (1927), Pickford plays Maggie Johnson, a stock girl at Merrill’s five-and-dime. Maggie also cares for her father, who works as a postal carrier and comes home tired each night, and her mother, who spends her days going to the funerals of people she does not know. She also has to watch out for her sister, who, unlike hardworking Maggie, spends her nights going out on the town with Nick Powell, a man of questionable reputation. At work Maggie trains Joe Grant (played by future Pickford husband Charles “Buddy” Rogers), who she thinks is from a working-class family like her own when in reality he is the son of the store’s owner and thus heir to the Merrill fortune. Joe is proving himself in business by starting at the bottom and working his way up on his own merits rather than on his name. From the start we know that Maggie and Joe are the bearers of morality in the film. Maggie and Joe fall in love, but the combination of the Merrill family’s expectations and Maggie’s sister’s careless lifestyle leads to a courtroom brawl that lands on the front page, forcing Mr. Merrill to send Joe off to Hawaii “until this scandal blows over” and to offer Maggie $10,000 to never see Joe again. Not wanting to ruin Joe’s career, Maggie tries to convince him that she was after the money all along and that she never loved him, but Joe sees through her act, and with both families’ changes of heart, Joe and Maggie rush to catch the boat to Honolulu and live happily ever after.

  In the film, Pickford was not a child, but she nevertheless maintained the same innocence and virtue as in her child roles by being poor and virtuous. Maggie exhibits none of the extravagance of her sister, whose stylish clothes contrast with Maggie’s modest outfits, nor does her family display the kind of lavish life that is seen in the Merrill household, especially on the part of Joe’s mother and fiancée. Joe, too, engages in hard, decent work and treats Maggie with the utmost respect. The film as a whole upholds the traditional values of family, respect for parents, and romantic love and of work as superior to unearned profit. These values were present in all of Pickford’s films and are part of what made her “America’s Sweetheart.” Audiences and fans believed that Pickford’s private life also reflected these values, and in many ways it did. Both Pickford and Fairbanks were very aware of the image they portrayed both on-screen and off, and both did their best not to deceive their fans. Pickford did often place the needs of her family over Fairbanks’s wants. She canceled or postponed several European trips because of her ailing mother, Charlotte, or her frequently scandal-laden siblings Lottie and Jack. The couple even moved into Charlotte’s house near the end of 1927 and cared for her during her last four months of life. Even Pickford’s and Fairbanks’s divorces and quick marriage barely diminished fans’ beliefs about the virtue and wholesomeness of the couple. In fact, most fans interpreted the events as illustrating the obstacles Fairbanks and Pickford had overcome to be with the true love of their lives. While America loved Pickford and Fairbanks separately as movie stars, they loved them even more together as the king and queen of Hollywood. My Best Girl was not Pickford’s only screen appearance of 1927; she also had a very small cameo role in The Gaucho, starring her husband.

  Fairbanks had, by 1927, solidified his position as the swashbuckling hero of such period epics as The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925), and The Black Pirate (1926). In The Gaucho (1927), he added a sense of religious importance to his steal-from-therich, give-to-the-poor characters. Playing the most wanted man on the Argentine pampas, “the Gaucho,” he displayed a much darker character than in most of his films. Not only is the Gaucho a criminal for his own gain (unlike Robin Hood), but he also drinks heavily, smokes constantly, and tries to seduce the virginal “Girl of the Shrine.” Yet, as always, Fairbanks’s character is moral, even though he is an outlaw. The villain, the usurper Ruiz, is immoral, as evidenced by his willingness to take the wealth of the shrine (wealth meant to help the poor) for himself. Yet the Gaucho has to pay for his transgressions against the higher morality of religion. As a result of banishing a leper, telling him to “find someplace to kill yourself,” the Gaucho is himself infected and runs off to kill himself. Rescued by the Girl of the Shrine and the healing waters she protects, the Gaucho is visited by an image of the Virgin Mary (played by an uncredited Mary Pickford) and vows to rescue the holy city from the clutches of the evil usurper Ruiz. Once he recaptures the city in the name of the church, he settles down with his gypsy woman (played by Lupe Velez). The outlaw Gaucho has been converted to wholesome morality.

  While in The Gaucho Fairbanks is cast as a much darker character than in his other films, what is especially telling is the inclusion of religion as the ultimate moral arbitrator. Film actors and makers were not considered religious moralists, and the greatest criticism of the film industry came from religious groups, especially the Catholic Church. Not only were such groups concerned about the content of movies, but they were also concerned about the actions of those in the industry. The early 1920s had been plagued by scandals, including Mary Pickford’s 1920 Nevada divorce, which was challenged by the state’s attorney general after Pickford had already married Fairbanks, and the 1921 Fatty Arbuckle scandal, in which the rotund film comic was acquitted of causing the death of Virginia Rappe, a guest at a party he hosted, but which stirred widely circulated rumors about casual sex and drug use in Hollywood. These rumors were reinforced by the sudden death of actor Wallace Reid in 1922, caused by drug addiction, following the death of director William Desmond Taylor amid allegations of drug use, sex, and murder that ruined the careers of movie comedienne Mabel Normand and Mary Pickford look-alike Mary Miles Minter. These scandals attracted the attention of the U.S. Congress and raised the specter of federal censorship. Following the lead of professional baseball, which had undergone its own scandal with the 1919 “Black Sox” fixing of the World Series, industry leaders hired William H. Hays, postmaster general of the United States, President Harding’s campaign manager, a Presbyterian elder, and a Republican, to head the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA, also known as the Hays Office). Hays did not institute censorship, but he did assist filmmakers by reviewing projects and suggesting cuts that would help a film stay clear of local censors across the country, as well as acting as a promoter of good values in Hollywood.

  Including religion was one way to promote good values in film, as evidenced by Fairbanks’s use of it in The Gaucho, but one of the biggest films of 1927 was more overt in its religiosity, Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings. DeMille had earlier established himself as a leading director of biblical epic films with The Ten Commandments (1923), and religion had also been the focus of 1925’s big film Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. But with The King of Kings, DeMille saw himself as creating more than another film based on a biblical story. “To give the peoples of the modern world the same opportunity to see the wondrous life-drama of Jesus
as was given to the citizens of Judea nineteen hundred years ago has been the object of my endeavors in making The King of Kings.” DeMille continued by admitting that “my purpose is, of course, dramatic entertainment,” not just any run-of-the-mill leisure-time entertainment but, rather, “drama in its highest sense as defined in the immortal apothegm of Aristotle.” To achieve this lofty goal, De-Mille consulted religious leaders during the preproduction phase of the project and imbued the production with an air of religious significance by assembling “representatives of more than thirty religious sects and beliefs” to open production with “a service and a prayer.” In addition to claiming that this religious gathering was the first time in history that representatives of the “Buddhist and Mohammedan faiths . . . had ever appeared together in public,” he also asserted that all these leaders had a firm belief “that the motion picture medium possessed the power to carry the story of Jesus to millions who might not otherwise be sympathetic to it, or who would find difficulty in grasping it because of racial or linguistic reasons.”4