Bringing Up Oscar: The Story of the Men and Women Who Founded the Academy

by Debra Ann Pawlak

  During his tenure with Goldwyn, he was recognized as one of the screen’s leading scenarists. He even had advice for beginners:

  … Characterization in pictures is becoming more and more important. It is not sufficient that a story shall merely classify its principals by name and occupation, as amateurs generally do.

  It is absolutely essential that movie characters be endowed with as much humanity, as much individuality and personality as are the people whom you meet in every-day life and feel you know well. Failure to do this is fatal.

  But Carey Wilson had not yet reached the top of his game. That would come later by way of an adolescent actor named Mickey Rooney and a French prophet from the Middle Ages known as Nostradamus.

  Besides teaming up with Meredyth, Wilson would eventually work with another writer, Benjamin Floyer Glazer, who was an expert at translation. Born in Ireland, at Newry, County Down, a suburb of Belfast, on May 7, 1887, his parents, Reuben and Rebecca, were originally from Russia. Reuben, who sometimes used the name Robert, was a picture frame maker while Rebecca bore eight children. The three eldest, Martha, Morris and Edith came along in Russia with Benjamin and Bessie following in Ireland. The Glazers immigrated to the United States in the fall of 1889 where their three youngest children, Eugene, Herbert and Rose, were born in Philadelphia.

  Known to his family and friends as Barney, Glazer attended the University of Pennsylvania Law School and passed the bar in 1906. He remained in Philadelphia where he practiced law for several years and married a local girl, Alice Pulaski. Of Polish and German descent, she was the daughter of Frank and Rachael Pulaski. Alice’s brother, Jack, was a well-known reporter and drama critic for Variety. Originally hired in the publication’s early days by founder Sime Sullivan, Jack remained with Variety for more than thirty years.

  Glazer himself preferred the pen to the legal life. He, too, became a newspaperman writing for The Philadelphia Press, but ultimately made his name by adapting foreign plays into English. As early as 1912, he traveled to St. Ives, a picturesque seaside village in Cornwall, where he spent the summer translating Der Meister originally written by Viennese playwright Hermann Bahr. Glazer’s version, The Master, debuted on the American stage in 1916. The play starred theater actor Arnold Daly. Glazer, with his usual wit, described his search for just the right performer:

  One actor who had left his fiftieth birthday behind him, decided that the title role was too old for him. Another invited me down to his country home to rewrite the play under his direction. A third was afraid that he was too short to play the part; whether in talent or in stature he did not specify. A fourth contended that it was a subordinate role because it failed to enlist the sympathy of the audience.…

  Glazer’s biggest hit came five years later with his adaptation of Liliom, first penned by Hungarian dramatist Franz Molnar. Critics gave Glazer high marks for preserving the original spirit of the story and capturing the Hungarian terms with similar English slang. The play was so popular that Metro Pictures based a movie on it called A Trip to Paradise (1921) giving Glazer the first of his many on-screen credits. He and Alice soon left the east coast behind in exchange for the Hollywood hills where, at the stroke of Glazer’s pen, the legendary love affair of Garbo and Gilbert waited to ignite.

  But scenarists like Frank Woods, Bess Meredyth, Carey Wilson and Benjamin Glazer weren’t the only film scribes who took their jobs seriously. Title writers were another dynamic group who carved their niche in the world of silent celluloid. Specializing in subtitles, these professional penmen had the power to enhance a good movie, save a bad one, or make an awful film even worse.

  Title cards or intertitles were comprised of printed text that once filmed were then edited into the midst of a movie’s action. They were developed to assist the audience in understanding the characters’ conversations, move the story along and provide additional narrative information for clarity purposes. A clever intertitle inserted at the proper place and time was sure to stir up an emotional tear or elicit a hardy guffaw from the audience. Some moviegoers, however, grumbled that they didn’t patronize flickers in order to read.

  Title writer Gerald Duffy had a not-so-unique problem with one intertitle he worked on for Mary Pickford’s movie Through the Back Door (1921). It was up to him to convey to the audience that the action was taking place in a New York hotel where Mary might be eloping and her mother might be considering a divorce. Seventeen words later, he came up with the following:

  If it were not for New York hotels where would elopers, divorcees, and red-plush furniture go?

  Title writing was a challenge for any wordsmith and the work soon became specialized. Each title card had to be short, to the point and inserted exactly between the right frames. Too many words meant there wouldn’t be enough time to read them; not specific enough and they caused confusion; timed too late or too early, they made no sense. As films became longer and storylines more involved, the need for well-written title cards grew even more essential. According to Frank Woods:

  The sub-title should be in complete harmony with the story and should never divert interest from the story. It should never be obtrusive. It should be there only because it belongs there. Therefore all sub-titles should be couched in language that harmonizes with the story. Every word should be weighed. Nothing should ever shock the spectator out of his interest in the picture by its incongruity, extravagance or inanity. Too much in a sub-title is as bad as too little—like seasoning in a pudding. The function of the sub-title is to supplement and correct the action of the picture, to cover lapses in the continuity, and to supply the finer shades of meaning which the actor has been unable to express in pantomime.

  Famous for his razor-sharp sub-titles, Joseph White Farnham, one of Hollywood’s elite ‘Titular Bishops’, was a man of few words—just enough to fit on those fleeting title cards. Before he became one of filmdom’s most revered writers, however, he was a military man. Born in New Haven, Connecticut on December 2, 1884, his father, George Frederick Farnham, was a clothing salesman. His mother, Anna, was born in New York to German immigrants who settled in America during the 1850s. Farnham also had an older sister, Lois.

  In 1911, he began his writing career as a columnist at the New York Morning Telegram using the pen name Gordon Trent. Eventually, he became the advertising manager of the newspaper’s newly formed picture section. From news writing, he went to the All-Star Feature Corporation where he worked as a publicity director and manager. While working for the film company, Farnham gave actor Dustin Farnum his first movie role in Soldiers of Fortune (1914), as well as actress Dorothy Dalton her first screen appearance in Pierre of the Plains (1914). Farnham also managed the first film starring stage great Ethel Barrymore.

  After his stint with the All-Star Feature Corporation, he joined the Connecticut Coast Artillery Corps. Two years before the United States entered into The Great War, Lieutenant Farnham received orders sending him to France where fighting had begun. He was assigned to work on war pictures in conjunction with the Carnegie Peace Foundation due to his filmmaking experience.

  Just before leaving the States, he secretly married his sweetheart, Alma Rose LeCourt, daughter of Emil and Rose Lowenthal, on February 6, 1915. Alma, born in South Orange, New Jersey in 1888, was a prize-winning horsewoman. She competed not only in New York and Maine, but also in Paris and Budapest. She had planned to study art in Italy upon retiring from her equestrian career, but World War I hampered her lessons. The young couple kept their marriage under wraps for more than a year.

  After military life, Farnham found work at the Frohman Amusement Corporation owned by brothers Gustave and Daniel Frohman. There, Farnham was in charge of production and sales. Originally, the Frohman Brothers numbered three and were well-known New York theatrical producers. They founded their film company intending to make movies based on various plays that they owned. Charles, the youngest brother, was lost at sea on May 7, 1915 when a German U-boat torpedoed the luxury liner on wh
ich he was a passenger. The RMS Lusitania went down taking 1,198 victims with her including the fifty-eight-year-old Frohman. The headline news stunned the world and ushered in America’s involvement in World War I, but for the Frohmans, the tragedy morphed into a very personal disaster. Despite their loss, remaining brothers Gustave and Daniel continued running the film company after their brother’s death, perhaps as a way of memorializing his life and years of hard work.

  While taking care of business at the Frohman Amusement Corporation, Farnham was also elected president of the Screen Club—the early filmmakers’ version of New York’s prestigious Lambs’ and Friars’ Clubs. Unfortunately, the Screen Club, a once-prominent group, founded by actor/director King Baggot in 1911, was now floundering. The three prior club presidents were successful movie men, but not such good business managers. Trying to keep up with the Lambs and the Friars, their excessive spending on fancy offices and lavish parties left the organization in financial shambles. Nor did it help when many influential members deserted New York for Hollywood.

  Farnham, a charter member and officer of the Screen Club, was a well-respected businessman throughout the fledgling film industry. The monumental task of salvaging the group was left to him, but even he couldn’t work miracles. The final blow came when former landlords sued the club for unpaid rent. The short-lived but extravagant-prone association came to an end and Farnham joined the defectors leaving New York for Hollywood.

  By 1918, he wrote his first intertitles for the film Once to Every Man (1918) starring Jack Sherrill, a popular player who also worked for the Frohmans. As Farnham continued composing title cards, he soon realized that he was good at putting complicated ideas into brief phrases or sentences. More significantly, he grasped their importance. Farnham once discussed the art of writing title cards:

  Many people believe that writing titles is an easy task. They are badly mistaken.… Look down the [theater] row in which you are seated and you will find, especially at the beginning of a picture, that various people like various kinds of subtitles. You may like something subtle but the man next to you would fail to understand anything like that and prefers broad humor. The next person in the same row may like irony, the next satire, the next sarcasm. Every one of these people must be considered by the picture producer—and must be catered to.…

  Most successful title writers try to give a variety of titles to each picture. He appeals to every type of audience and he picks out a few surefire ones that can’t help but set everybody laughing. If he baffled you continuously with titles you would not like it. If he made them too difficult to understand you would be attending a guessing contest instead of being entertained …

  While Farnham was on his way to being ordained one of Hollywood’s nine exalted Titular Bishops, Bess Meredyth, Carey Wilson and Benjamin Glazer were honing their own writing skills preparing for a future when movies would talk. D.W. Griffith and Frank Woods teamed up with Keystone Cop creator Mack Sennett and producer Thomas Ince to form Triangle Films along with Harry Aitken and his brother, Roy.

  Despite its cutting edge techniques and epic imagery, the release of Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) caused rioting in several major cities, including Philadelphia and Boston, due to its racial overtones. Other places like Chicago and Denver banned the Civil War story entirely. For the first time, a movie was more than just a romp across the screen. Flickers had been replaced with thought-provoking imagery and a story that made people think stirring up real emotion beyond a fleeting feeling of entertainment. Birth of a Nation roused fervor over film and people across the country were finally paying attention to this new medium.

  Chapter Five

  THE SILENT TYPES

  While Birth of a Nation (1915) was making headlines, curious words like “aviation,” “automobile” and “income tax” tiptoed into daily conversation. Names such as Woodrow Wilson, Henry Ford and Pancho Villa captured the headlines. The Panama Canal opened for business and the Boston Red Sox gained a new starting pitcher—Babe Ruth. Mexico fought its own bloody Civil War as the Ford Motor Company produced its one-millionth car. After more than 300 years in the driver’s seat, Russia’s House of Romanov, with a little help from their detractors, was self-destructing. Major unrest loomed across Europe and the world was an intimidating place sliding into the modern era faster than anyone realized.

  Ordinary citizens, however, had more immediate concerns like earning a living, feeding their families and avoiding the constant threat of deadly diseases such as influenza, polio and tuberculosis. They needed a break from their daily routines and worries—a moment to catch their breath. For a paltry sum, films provided that temporary distraction. Moviegoers knew that purchasing a show ticket meant procuring an escape, no matter how brief, and they gladly welcomed each getaway. As actor Milton Sills once explained in a 1927 article he wrote titled The Actor’s Part:

  The motion picture enables the spectators to live vicariously the more brilliant, interesting, adventurous, romantic, successful, or comic lives of the shadow figures before them on the screen.… Here are men and women of the kind they would like to be; here is the kind of conduct they would elect to make theirs if they could.… The film offers them a … made-to-order reverie …

  Sills also believed that attending a movie beat downing drinks at the corner saloon no matter how you looked at it, and no doubt many abandoned children and saloon-widowed wives agreed. An intellectual, Sills did not take kindly to fools. A well-educated philosopher, he certainly understood the concept of movie actors and why the public was so drawn to them. The players, with their on-screen antics, difficulties and lifestyles, were the focal point of the audience’s experience. Embraced by average movie fans, these thespians, who were once shunned by their contemporaries, suddenly became extraordinary heroes, magnificent lovers and captivating clowns. Milton Sills, himself a popular actor, knew what he was talking about.

  Milton George Gustavus Sills hailed from Chicago’s upper echelon. Born on January 12, 1882, he was the first son of successful mineral dealer William Henry Sills and his banking heiress wife Josephine Antoinette Troost. Younger brother Clarence William joined the family seven years later in 1889. Sills recalled that as a youngster, he enjoyed the usual pastimes—shooting marbles, spinning tops and brandishing a baseball bat. Although he classified himself as a “lazy student,” in reality Sills was no slouch. After graduating from Hyde Park High School in 1899, he received a one-year scholarship to college, an extremely rare thing in those days. He studied calculus, psychology and philosophy at the University of Chicago where he also joined the prestigious Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He spoke four languages—French, German, Italian and Russian, which allowed him to read the classics by masters such as Tolstoy the way they were originally written. In addition, Sills was a member of the university’s drama club—just for the fun of it.

  After earning his Bachelor of Arts degree, he remained at the school working as a researcher and then as a professor fully intending to obtain his doctorate. He also penned articles for local publications to make extra money. His scholarly life took an unexpected turn, however, when he crossed paths with Scottish-born theater actor Donald Robertson who happened to visit the university in 1905. There to guest-lecture on Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, Robertson met Professor Sills. He thought that the prof and his handsome looks might well be appreciated on the stage.

  Behaving totally out of character, the serious Sills abruptly abandoned the intellectual life for the not-so-cerebral footlights. He had been bitten by the stage bug. He joined Robertson’s professional touring troupe and three years later found himself in New York where he was an instant success. Several noted producers such as David Belasco and Charles Frohman all wanted to hire him. For the next six years, Sills worked steadily on Broadway and also toured with several key theatrical companies.

  While working in The Servant in the House, a play written by British lawyer Charles Rann Kennedy, he met costar Gladys Wynne, an Englis
h player. Her sister, Edith, was a famous stage actress, as well as Kennedy’s wife. Gladys became more than just a professional counterpart. After taking Sills home to make sure her father approved, she married him in London on May 6, 1910. The couple had one child, a daughter named Dorothy Gardine whom Sills affectionately referred to as “My Kiddie.”

  By 1914, Sills was still working on stage, but thought he could do better and itched for a change. Looking for something different, he gladly accepted producer William A. Brady’s offer to work in the movies. He took on the brief role of Corthell in a film called The Pit (1914), which was based on a novel by Frank Norris. At thirty-two years old, Sills once again met success head-on—this time on-screen. Handsome in a classic way, Sills went on to work as a leading man much to moviegoers’ delight. After making several films with Brady, Sills struck out on his own. For the next ten years, he did something no other major movie actor dared to do—he freelanced.

  Disassociating himself with any one company, Sills maintained his popularity and worked continuously for most of the major studios. He made one successful film after the other starring opposite such big names as Geraldine Farrar, Lois Wilson and Enid Bennett. He even appeared with famed ballroom dancer Irene Castle in a fifteen-part serial called Patria (1917). Although he claimed to like Castle, he often referred to the serial as “penance” for his many sins. Perhaps the serious Sills found Patria a bit brainless.