“She’ll go a long way”: David Bret, Joan Crawford (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006), 9–10.
The dressing rooms were large: Clarke, Featured Player.
Earl Lindsay wanted the dancers: Ibid., 17.
“I only changed it”: Ibid., 27, 28.
Sitting Pretty opened at the Fulton Theatre: Program notes, April 8, 1924, and June 9, 1924, Billy Rose Collection.
In the program notes: Ibid.
It was a musical revue: Gerald Bordman, American Musical Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 333.
“The business of America is business”: Meltzer, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?, 4.
“the hoofiest chorus”: Newspaper clipping, n.d., Billy Rose Collection.
audience applauding them throughout: Alexander Woollcott, Sun.
Hopwood (“the Playboy Playwright”) wrote: Jack F. Sharrer, Avery Hopwood: His Life and Plays (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1989).
It was Hopwood’s play: Ibid.
“high spot”: Waters, Variety, April 30, 1924.
Ruby appeared onstage: Keep Kool program, Morosco, June 2, 1924.
mannequin wearing an evening gown: Caption for photograph of Dorothy Van Alst, newspaper clipping, n.d.
Keep Kool was more than three hours long: Gordon Whyte, Billboard, May 31, 1924.
“too good to be missed”: Mr. Hornblow Goes to the Play, Theatre Magazine, April 24, 1924.
A block south of the Morosco: Sitting Pretty program, April 1924.
After the show Ruby’s sisters: Vaslett to author, September 2, 1999.
During the summer Keep Kool moved: Keep Kool program, July 7, 1924.
by the fall it had moved again: Earl Carroll Theatre program, September 26, 1924.
Among them was Dorothy: Mansfield to author, April 13, 1997.
they were both from Flatbush: Ibid.
Ruby had confidence: Ibid.
“one of the famous kuties”: National Police Gazette, August 30, 1924.
Nothing surprised people: June Merkent to author, February 2000, 1–2.
Florenz Ziegfeld agreed with the assessment: Gordon Whyte, Billboard, May 31, 1924.
In October 1924: Dorothy Van Alst, notes on the tours of her career. It is usually said that Stanwyck was in the summer edition of the 1924 Follies. That is untrue. She was on tour with the 1923 Follies that Ziegfeld kept out on tour through 1925. Nils Hanson; Programs, January 25, 1925, Buffalo.
Ruby was a principal in the show, earning: Salary file, week ending March 21, 1925, Billy Rose Collection. All figures courtesy of Nils Hanson.
a weekly salary of $50: Roughly $660 in 2013 dollars.
The Follies road show with Keep Kool in it: Newspaper clipping, n.d.; telegram to Dorothy Van Alst; both courtesy of Robert Gale/Dorothy Van Alst archive.
Dorothy Sheppard didn’t want to leave: Mansfield to author, August 20, 1999.
The number builds to Van Alst: Review, Dorothy Van Alst Papers, courtesy of Robert Gale. Other biographers have said that Ruby Stevens appeared in this number; she did not.
After opening in Detroit, the show toured: Nancy Bernard Levy, who traveled in Keep Kool, to author, March 21, 1998.
months to Cleveland, Buffalo: Dorothy Van Alst, oral history, courtesy of Robert Gale.
“But I’m a Christian”: Levy to author, March 21, 1998.
Ruby had a “problem”: Levy to author, March 21, 1998.
Gay Paree opened in Atlantic City: Apollo Theatre program, August 3, 1925.
It starred Billy B. Van, Chic Sale: David Ewen, Complete Book of the American Musical Theater (New York: Holt, 1959), 124.
Earl Lindsay hired Ruby and Mae: Mansfield to author, August 27, 1999.
Six: The Prevailing Sizzle
Gay Paree was conceived: Gilbert Gabriel, New York Sun, n.d.
“continental revue”: From an ad.
The show was fast paced: Review by Ashton Stevens, newspaper clipping, n.d.
The chorus of Gay Paree danced the American crawl: Burns Mantle, review, New York Daily News, n.d., 22.
“There are girls and girls”: Gilbert Gabriel, review, New York Sun, August 19, 1925.
It was the first time in the history: Burns Mantle, New York Daily News, September 9, 1923.
Fay’s rare timing, control: Colgate Baker, New York Review, August 12, 1919.
Artists and Models was instantly sold out: Ibid.
“the most original”: Judge, September 13, 1923.
Michael Arlen’s play The Green Hat: The Critic Says, 1925, 9.
Its caricature of well-mannered: The Vortex program notes, October 19, 1925, 30.
Nils Granlund put together: Granlund, Blondes, Brunettes, and Bullets, 129, 130.
Dorothy, whose mother was: Walda Mansfield to author, April 1997.
She liked the idea: Clarke, Featured Player, 19.
When the girls thought: Randall Malone to author, March 21, 2001.
“They were both beautiful girls”: Screenland plus TV-Land, 1964.
But she loved the work: Cleveland Amory, newspaper clipping, May 28, 1967.
Sally O’Neil called Billie: Elizabeth Wilson, “Joan Crawford Projections,” Silver Screen, October 1936.
On Sundays, Ruby, Mae, and Dorothy slept: BS, in Jane Ardmore, TV Radio Mirror, May 1967.
During the service: Ibid.
Dorothy was content: Mansfield to author, April 13, 1997.
regularly went to Schrafft’s: Dana O’Connell to author, February 11, 1998.
In 1923 chorus girls: Dana O’Connell, in Ziegfeld and Ziegfeld, Ziegfeld Touch, 94, 95.
The triumvirate went out together: BS, in Jane Ardmore, TV Radio Mirror, May 1967.
LaHiff’s Tavern was the kind: Clarke, Featured Player, 23, 24.
Hellinger was thought to be the first: Bishop, Mark Hellinger Story, 63.
Winchell’s column, Your Broadway and Mine: Green and Laurie, Show Biz, 217.
a newspaper for the “masses:”: Neal Gabler, Winchell (New York: 1994), Alfred A. Knopf, 60.
Winchell and Hellinger were so linked: Ibid., 70.
Ruby, Mae, and Dorothy knew they could go: BS, in Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, November 1937.
“La Hiff and his waiter Jack Spooner”: “B Stanwyck,” Today and Yesterday, 1949(?).
“Down and out fighters”: BS, in Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, November 1937.
“our chance to step up”: Clarke, Featured Player, 23, 24.
Ruby was ambitious: Ibid.
Ruby was the most disciplined: Malone to author, February 9, 2001.
Dorothy wanted to make money: Mansfield to author, April 1997.
Ruby told Dorothy about the death: Mansfield to author, 1997.
“You seem as if”: Mansfield to author, April 1997.
“an enemy, not a friend”: Adela Rogers St. John, Photoplay, January 1936.
Ruby didn’t want to hear: Malone to author, February 9, 2001.
“Ruby would finish books”: Ibid.
It was clear that Ruby thought: Ibid.
Ruby admired that: Gene Vaslett to author, November 2, 1999.
One Christmas the whole family: Vaslett to author, September 16, 1999.
The Everglades Café was transformed: Abel Green, review, Variety, October 7, 1925.
“Bootlegging, speakeasies”: Clarke, Featured Player, 23.
“Something was happening”: Ibid.
He knew she was fifteen: Ibid.
“hopping from one [supper club]”: Ibid., 143.
At other times Ruby and Mae went: Malone to author, February 9, 2001.
To Mae the gangsters were nice: Malone to author, March 5, 2001.
They got to the Everglades Café: Barbara Stanwyck, “Moving Day,” Photoplay, January 1949.
“We worked like dogs”: Ibid.
Ruby learned discipline: Paul Rosenfield, Calendar, Los Angeles Times, April 5, 1987.
It didn’t fit that well: Judith Stevens to author, May 19, 1999, 8.
> He took his lit cigar: BS, in Walter Ramsey, Modern Screen, May 1931; Judith Stevens to author, May 1999.
“Ruby was tough”: Malone to author, February 9, 2001.
She was becoming more: Ibid.
“This is it”: Ibid.
She had a childlike gentleness: Ibid.
“wangle it”: Clarke, Featured Player, 24.
“I wouldn’t have known that”: Ibid.
“We were harum-scarum”: S. R. Mook, Modern Screen, October 1934, 96.
“She was the Duchess”: Clarke, Featured Player, 24.
Seven: On Being Actresses, Not Asstresses
became protective: Walda Mansfield to author, April 1997.
A year before he opened: Anatol Friedland obituary, New York Herald Tribune, July 25, 1938; New York Times, July 25, 1938.
“Whatever he did”: Mansfield to author, April 24, 1997.
Malcolm at twenty-one: Gene Vaslett to author, October 17, 1996.
and out of the heat: Gene Brown, Show Time (New York: Macmillan, 1997), 79; $100,000 in 1926 was the equivalent of $1,283,000 in 2013 dollars.
After nine months of trying: Vaslett to author, October 1999.
Each time Ruby came to visit: Vaslett to author, October 17, 1996.
Gene was thrilled: Vaslett to author, November 17, 1999.
“My sister thinks”: Shirley Eder to author, 1997.
Maud’s son, Albert, would: Vaslett to author, November 9, 1999.
As spring turned into summer: Dorothy Van Alst, scrapbook, courtesy of Robert Gale.
While working for: Mansfield to author, April 13, 1997.
He had the reputation: Ibid., 743.
De Haven had built: Slide Interview-Silent Picture, no. 15 (Summer 1972)—or, at the Club Airport Gardens, Los Angeles Times, April 2, 1933.
Dorothy was tempted: Mansfield to author, April 13, 1997.
Ruby made it back to shore: Mansfield to author, August 27, 1999.
At the end of the 1926 summer: Ibid.
By late summer, theaters: Brown, Show Time, 79.
In the first week: August 6, 1926.
When they arrived: BS, in Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, November 1937.
“This made all the difference”: BS, in Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, November 1937.
Without Mack’s knowledge: Renée Harris to Hedda Hopper, September 3, 1947, Hedda Hopper Collection, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In any biographical sketch of Stanwyck’s life it has been written that it was Willard Mack who hired Stanwyck, Clarke, and Sheppard. It has also been written that Mack found the three women through the intervention of Billy LaHiff, who supposedly went over to Mack, then dining at LaHiff’s Tavern, and suggested the three women. Also an incorrect story.
By 1920, Van Loan: H. H. Van Loan, How I Did It (Los Angeles: Whittingham Press, 1922), 129.
“with human frailties”: Willard Mack, “The Writing of Plays,” n.d., Shubert Press Office, Shubert Archive.
The realism of his characters: Ibid.
“their ways of living”: Ibid.
“handsome, wonderful actor”: Clarke, Featured Player, 26.
Cherryman, then twenty-nine: John Harkins, Morning Telegraph, November 9, 1926.
“George Nash was the villain”: Clarke, Featured Player, 25.
When the script: Ibid.
Bill Mack wanted to rehearse: Mansfield to author, April 24, 1997.
Miss Rambeau had forcefully: “The Eternal Triangle,” 1918, Star Company.
By 1926, Belasco: Samuel Spewack, The Broadway Revolution, no. 6, “David Belasco,” January 2, 1930.
Belasco had started: H. I. Brock, “Belasco, Magician of the Theatre,” New York Times Magazine, July 21, 1929.
By 1915, Belasco was: “Mr. Belasco and a Passing Matter of Footlights,” New York Times Magazine, February 2, 1930.
By using manually operated: “Belasco Found Varied Lights a Big Problem,” New York American, March 10, 1919.
Another housed the: Earl Sparling, New York World Telegram, n.d.
And then, finally: Sidney Skolsky, New York Sun, March 19, 1928.
Mack had Ruby read: Rex Reed, New York Daily News. April 13, 1981.
“I kept wondering”: BS, in Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, November 1937.
“Go to the zoo!”: BS, in Adele Whitley Fletcher, Lady’s Circle, March 1969.
“He sounded as though”: Rex Reed, New York Daily News, April 13, 1981.
“bravest of all”: John Greenleaf Whittier, “Barbara Frietchie.”
“took up the flag”: Ibid.
play was fresh: Bill Everson notes for Barbara Frietchie.
“Jane Stanwyck won’t do”: BS, in Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, November 1937.
Cowl was due to: Brown, Show Time, 82.
with Philip Merivale in a debut play: Ibid., 62.
“As one man”: Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, November 1937.
Later, when Ruby signed: BS to Rex Reed, 1981.
Mrs. Harris cast and staged: New York Telegraph, December 6, 1926.
She’d learned from her brother: Ibid.
Henry Harris was from: Silas B. Fishkind, “A Woman Unafraid,” newspaper clipping, n.d., Shubert Archive.
Shortly before Harris: Gerald Bordman, The Oxford Companion to American Theatre (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 292.
The Harrises’ journey abroad: New York Times, April 11, 1912, 1.
Mrs. Harris broke an arm: Lord, A Night to Remember, 12.
On the fourth day out: Ibid.
Women and children were loaded: Ibid.
Henry Harris, then forty-five years old: Fishkind, “Woman Unafraid.”
The boat sat forty-seven: Lord, A Night to Remember, 82.
Renée (listed on the ship’s manifest as Irene): Passenger list Titanic; Robert Landry, obituary, Variety, September 1969, 118.
Following a long period: Lord, The Night Lives On, 172.
One of the first to be presented: Ibid.
Renée Harris became a theatrical: New York Telegraph, December 6, 1926.
Mack was tough and demanding: Joseph W. Phillips, “As Willard Mack Rehearses a Play,” Shubert Press Department, Shubert Archive.
acted in more than 130 plays: Julia Chandler, “The Belasco I Know,” Mid-week Pictorial, July 13, 1929, Shubert Archive.
Mack’s notion of realism: Joseph W. Phillips, “Willard Mack Talks About the Theater,” n.d., Shubert Archive.
Mack believed that his new play: Willard Mack, “The New Realism of the Stage,” Shubert Archive.
Established standards had been thrown: Ibid.
“It is a way”: BS, in Adele Whitley Fletcher, Lady’s Circle, March 1969, 64.
“It was a big nothing”: Clarke, Featured Player, 25.
“the girl who has”: Ibid.
Mrs. Harris told Mack to rewrite: Renée Harris to Hedda Hopper, September 3, 1947. Hedda Hopper Collection, Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
“You’ve got a great”: Clarke, Featured Player, 25.
Bill Mack left for New York: Harris to Hopper, September 3, 1947.
Renée Harris worked with: Ibid.
“I was no actress”: Rex Reed interview, April 13, 1981.
“dynamic”: Harris to Hopper, September 3, 1947.
Mack called several times: Ibid.
“proceeded to go”: Ibid.
During the remainder: Paul Rosenfield, Calendar, Los Angeles Times,
Toward the end: James Gregory, Movie Digest, 1972.
“It’s no use”: Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, November 1937.
“dead right”: Ibid.
“I told him I was”: Ibid.
Mack had seen temperament: S. R. Mook, Modern Screen, October 1934, 96.
Then he hammered: James Gregory, Movie Digest, 1972.
teaching Ruby how: Paul Rosenfield, Calendar, Los Angeles Times, April 5, 1987.
how to sell: Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, November 1937.
“Mostly he taugh
t me”: Rosenfield, Calendar, Los Angeles Times, April 5, 1987.
Mae and Dorothy worked: Clarke, Featured Player, 26.
After rehearsals: Mansfield to author, April 24, 1997.
“Everything about him”: Lincoln Center Tribute, Film Comment, March–April 1981; New York Times, August 11, 1928.
He’d traveled to Los Angeles: New York Times, August 11, 1928.
The cast rehearsed: William French, Screen Play, June 1936, 22.
“When I came out”: Ibid., 59.
“didn’t recognize”: Ibid.
Then Dot sinks her head: The Noose, script act 3, Billy Rose Collection.
“didn’t say a word”: Clarke, Featured Player, 26.
“a simple melodrama”: Pittsburgh Post, October 11, 1926.
“I did it”: James Gregory, Movie Digest, 1972.
“It’s noisy back stage”: Samuels, “In Search of Ruby Stevens.”
The Noose was being compared: New York Times, October 21, 1926.
“realistic as a metronome”: S. N. Behrman, Tribulations and Laughter (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972), 39, 38.
was a big hit: Brown, Show Time, 80. Lee Tracy’s understudy was James Cagney.
“melodrama of a slightly old”: New York Times, October 21, 1926.
He assured them that: Ibid.; New York World, October 21, 1926.
“the most authentically teary”: New York Telegram, October 23, 1926.
Another time Ruby heard: BS, in Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, November 1937.
They were sure: BS, in Margaret Lee Runbeck, Good Housekeeping, July 1954.
“We both had these terrible”: Edwin Kennedy, in Ruth Waterbury, TV Radio Mirror, December 1966.
“he was wrong there”: Axel Madsen, Stanwyck (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 27.
She and Rex began to spend: Vaslett to author.
Its competition during: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes opened September 28, 1926; Brown, Show Time, 80.
In November, Gertrude Lawrence: Oh, Kay! opened November 8, 1926; ibid., 81.
Ethel Barrymore was playing: The Constant Wife opened November 29, 1926; ibid.
When The Captive opened: It opened September 29, 1926; Ibid., 80.
“unprecedented . . . a study”: Bourdet, Captive, back of jacket.
“profoundly wrought”: New York Morning Telegraph, n.d.
Marion Davies was unfazed: Leonora Hornblow to author.
Articles condemning The Captive: Hornblow to author, January 11, 2000.
The Society for the Suppression of Vice: Leider, Becoming Mae West, 152.
A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 Page 104
