Photoplay Magazine

Photoplay magazine was the nation’s premiere movie fan magazine, “fan” being a relatively new term to describe those who were fanatic about moving pictures. It was established in 1911 and became the most influential magazine in the film industry. Originally its cover shots of stars were the work of artists. Only after color photography had advanced sufficiently were photos used. Here is the first issue cover:

 

During the 1920s the magazine claimed to have 2.5 million readers, although its circulation was considerably lower, in the hundreds of thousands. It ceased publication in 1980. I like looking at the issues from the Roaring Twenties for clothing styles, advertisements, figures of speech, and hairstyles that I can use in my writing.

 

Hollywood Airports in the Twenties

Hollywood had several airports in the Roaring Twenties, all private. This one belonged to Charlie Chaplin–

 

 

Here’s one that belonged to Cecil B. DeMille–

  

 

As you can see, they were tiny–little more than runways that the film moguls used for personal transportation and to film movie scenes and aerial shots. There was no idea of terminals, not until 1927 when the first (supposedly) airplane ticket office and waiting room was built in Dearborn, Michigan.  

Chaplin’s and DeMille’s airfields long ago disappeared, eaten up by urban expansion. 

Los Angeles Cracks the Top Ten in the Twenties

I was surprised to find out that the Twenties was the decade when the West finally had a city large enough to be included in the Top Ten. Before the Twenties, the ten largest American cities by population were all located east of the Mississippi River. During the Twenties, Los Angeles broke into the top group with over half a million people. It made the Top Five in 1930.  Since then, as the population shifted westward, many more western cities have joined the ranks of America’s largest, starting with Houston and Dallas, but not until 1960 and 1970.  There were many reasons for the population shift to the south and west, but one of the most important was the invention of air-conditioning.

Los Angeles did not feel as crowded as most eastern cities because the houses and buildings were relatively spread out and there were few high rises. 

Boing! Boing!

Pogo sticks bounced into the Roaring Twenties as one of the decade’s most popular fads. Although there are a some often repeated stories about the origins of the pogo stick, no one is really sure who first came up with the idea or how. The first person to make them in America was George Hansburg. It seems Gimbels Department Store ordered a bunch from Europe and when they arrived ruined, asked Hansburg if he could design a sturdier version. He patented his design in 1919 and began making them that year. Almost at once, pogo sticks took the country by storm.

With a keen eye for marketing, Hansburg taught the performers at the Ziegfeld Follies how to jump, and the pogo had its stage introduction. After that, New York Hippodrome chorus girls performed whole shows on pogos. Soon contests were held—who could jump the longest? Who could do the craziest stunts?

The fad declined after the Twenties, but pogo sticks never disappeared. They have recently returned in a new guise, the Flybar, a super pogo stick that springs higher and farther than the original models.

Just What is a Cake Walk?

The Cakewalk was popular in the Twenties—and in other decades before and after. Webster’s Dictionary defines it as “a black American entertainment having a cake as prize for the most accomplished steps and figures in walking; a stage dance developed from walking steps and figures typically involving a high prance with backward tilt; an easy task.” 

The Cakewalk seems to have begun in the days of slavery, when black folks strutted along in a fanciful manner in imitation of formal white dancing. Supposedly the name comes from the custom of the master awarding a cake to the couple who put on the best performance. The dance came back around in the twentieth century when white folks started to imitate the black version.

Below are a few short clips of cakewalks in the early twentieth century, featuring both black and white dancers. Who’s imitating whom? By now, it’s hard to tell.

And here are some more great images:

Inventing Teenagers

“Teenager” is a word I had to avoid in my novel set in 1924. The first known use of the word in print did not come until 1941 in–of all places–an issue of Popular Science magazine. But this all-American word has British parents.  

The word “teens” has been documented as far back as 1673. Phrases like, “A young girl in the teens” or “Her daughter who was by this time come into the Teens,” appear in the late 1600s and early 1700s, but not the word “teenager.” Note that “teen” is NOT a shortened version of “teenager,” since “teen” came first by over 250 years.

And “teen age” was first used as an adjective in 1921, as in “all teen age girls of the city are cordially invited to attend . . .” But not “teenagers,” who weren’t invented until the 1940s during World War II. 

Makeup in the Twenties

During the decades prior to the Roaring Twenties, makeup was associated with actresses and prostitutes – professions many people considered identical. No self-respecting woman would wear makeup. The more daring might have cautiously applied a small amount that wouldn’t be noticed. Which rather defeats the purpose, don’t you think?

Ever heard of Maximilian Faktorowicz, the makeup artist who immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1904? Yes, you have. Like so many immigrants, simplified his name on arrival. He became Max Factor. Factor had worked with European ballet troupes and stage actors, but when film studios began moving to Hollywood in the 1910s, he gambled on moving to California to work with film actors. 

This was not as easy as it sounds, because traditional stage make up (grease paint) was too heavy to be used by motion picture actors. He had to invent his own products—at first, creams and powders—that would work for the film industry. His clients included most of the leading actresses and actors of the silent film era and early talkies, including Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, Mary Pickford, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Norma Shearer, and Joan Crawford. He opened his own beauty salon in Hollywood.

Not until 1927 did Max Factor begin to market his products nationally. By then, the prejudice against makeup was softening, thanks to silent screen pioneers like Mary Pickford and Clara Bow who were seen as respectable women. People credit Factor with coining the word “makeup” (which replaced the more formal “cosmetics”), but that word had been around since 1821, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. I think it would be more accurate to say that he brought the word makeup into widespread usage.

I mention Max Factor briefly in my novel, so had to research his life and products, but found him to be a remarkable person.

Early Black Actors Paved the Way

Let me share this article from the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 31–I saw it reprinted in today’s Richmond Times Dispatch. The author is Susan King. It is timely, with the Academy Awards coming soon. Or read the original with photos at

www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-classic-hollywood-20110131,0,6115700.story

In an interview with the L.A. Times 20 years ago, Sidney Poitier, the first African American superstar and the first to win the lead actor Oscar (for 1963′s “Lilies of the Field”) discussed the extreme prejudice and hardships faced by African American performers in the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s.

“The guys who were forerunners to me, like Canada Lee, Rex Ingram, Clarence Muse and women like Hattie McDaniel, Louise Beavers and Juanita Moore, they were terribly boxed in,” Poitier said then. “They were maids and stable people and butlers, principally. But they, in some way, prepared ground for me.”

Here are three pioneering African American actors who strove to break cinematic stereotypes, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. (In an irony, no minorities were nominated for major awards for this year’s Oscars, which will be presented on Feb. 27 during Black History Month).

Nina Mae McKinney (1912 or 1913 to 1967)

The exquisite singer-actress left her South Carolina home at 13 and moved to New York where she got a role in the popular Broadway revue, “Blackbirds of 1928.” Director King Vidorsaw her in the chorus and cast her in his 1929 film, “Hallelujah,” the first all-black sound musical made by a major studio. McKinney stole the film as the seductress Chick, causing a sensation with her “Swanee Shuffle” dance.

MGM signed her to a five-year contract but didn’t know what to do with the beautiful young black actress since most African American actresses were relegated to servant or “Mammy” parts. She appeared in only two films, 1931′s “Safe in Hell” and 1935′s “Reckless,” though her scenes were cut and all that is left of her “performance” is supplying Jean Harlow‘s singing voice.

Like Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker before her, she left for Europe where she was dubbed the “Black Garbo.” When World War II broke out, she returned to the U.S., married jazz musician Jimmy Monroe, sang in clubs and made a few more films, most notably 1949′s “Pinky. In the 1950s she moved to Athens, Ga., where she performed as the “Queen of the Night.” She returned to New York in the late 1960s but didn’t perform again. Her death of a heart attack in 1967 mostly went unnoticed.

Louise Beavers (1902-1962)

Just like most black actresses, Beavers found herself relegated to playing maids, servants and even slaves (in real life she had been a maid to actress Leatrice Joy). But she did get a chance to shine in a serious role in 1934′s “Imitation of Life” with Claudette Colbert. In the melodrama, Beavers played Delilah Johnson, a housekeeper-cook whose employer (Colbert) transforms her into an Aunt Jemima-esque celebrity. But Delilah has problems with her light-skinned daughter who wants to pass for white. It was the first time in mainstream Hollywood cinema that the problems of an African American character were given as much heft as her white counterparts.

Sadly, “Imitation of Life,” however, didn’t improve the quality of her roles. Beavers may not have liked the parts she was given, but she remained one of the busiest black actresses in Hollywood, appearing in such films as 1942′s “Holiday Inn” and 1948′s “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.” In the 1950 biopic “The Jackie Robinson Story,” she gave a lovely performance as the baseball player’s mother. She starred on TV in the 1950s sitcom “Beulah.” She died of a heart attack in 1962.

Canada Lee (1907-1952)

When his boxing career ended in 1933 after a blow to his eye caused a detached retina, Lee turned to acting in 1934. His first major stage role was Orson Welles‘ 1936 “Voodoo Macbeth”; they reunited for Welles’ 1941 stage production of Richard Wright’s “Native Son.”

Lee was cast in Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1944 thriller, “Lifeboat” as Joe, a torpedoed ship’s steward. Lee gave a warm, passionate performance — he refused to speak in the “dialect” forced upon African American actors. He was even better in 1947′s boxing classic “Body and Soul,” as a boxer with a brain injury who is hired by the fighter who ended his career to be his trainer.

A vocal civil rights activist, he was a member of several left-wing groups and was labeled as a Communist during the Hollywood blacklist. Though he wouldn’t name names in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he did call a news conference to say he wasn’t a party member. Lee went to South Africa with Poitier to make the 1951 film, “Cry, the Beloved Country,” but Hollywood still wouldn’t hire him. In a letter to Walter White of the NAACP, Lee wrote “I can’t take it anymore. I am going to get a shoeshine box and sit outside the Astor Theatre. My picture is playing to capacity audiences, and my God, I can’t get a day’s work.”

The stress became too much for Lee, who suffered from high blood pressure. He died of a heart attack at the age of 45.

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Cops without Phones: Communications in the Roaring Twenties

After learning the appearance, location, and use of telephones in the Roaring Twenties, I stumbled into a related question: How did police officers communicate with each other and with their headquarters while on duty? I needed to know how my policemen characters handled this.

Of course, police stations had telephones by the Twenties, but policemen didn’t. The first two-way police radio wasn’t introduced until 1934 (in Boston), so they didn’t have radio contact with one another either. They could–and did–borrow a phone from a business or private home if one were nearby, but that was unreliable.

Washington DC circa 1912

 

Call boxes provided the police with a direct line to headquarters. These lines did not go through the usual commercial switchboard, but connected directly to the station house. They were first installed in Washington, D.C. in 1883 (not long after telephones were invented) and proved popular with the policemen and public alike. Soon Chicago, Detroit, and Boston had them.

Because my novels are set in Hollywood, I focused on the Los Angeles police department’s communications. The LAPD installed call boxes in 1903. Before that, officers had to go to headquarters on foot with a message, or headquarters had to send a runner to find them. Call boxes let officers check in at intervals, using a key to unlock the box. Later—probably in the Thirties—dial telephones replaced the direct lines. And much later, walkie-talkies made call boxes obsolete.

Chattanooga, uncertain date after 1909

How to Make A Phone Call in the Roaring Twenties

The world’s first telephone exchange began operating in 1878 with 21 subscribers. The switchboard, claimed one early account, was constructed of “carriage bolts, handles from teapot lids and bustle wire,” and only two conversations could be handled simultaneously, with six connections necessary to make each call. Until 1913, you could only be connected with people on your same exchange. If there was a competing exchange in town operated by another company, you couldn’t call those people from your exchange. Each exchange was given a neighborhood name, like Crestwood or Hollywood. Each telephone was given two, three, or four numbers to go with the exchange name. Crestwood 43, or as time went on, Crestwood 445 or Crestwood 4457, depending on the number of subscribers in the system.

By the 1920s, an exchange could accommodate up to 100,000 numbers. In those years, making a phone call involved picking up the receiver, asking the operator to connect you to a particular number, waiting for her to plug it in, then waiting for the ring to bring someone to the other phone. The operator would hang up after she made the connection . . . or not. If you had a party line–and most did–others could listen in to an ongoing conversation if they happened to pick up. They might also break in to ask that you hurry. Like Facebook, you didn’t always know who was listening in and couldn’t be assured of privacy. There were seldom more than ten on a party line, and each household had its own distinctive ring based on long or short, like two shorts and a long. The first ring tone options!

Direct dialing was introduced in 1921 but took many years to implement. Even in the 1950s, two thirds of all phones were on a party line. With the advent of the rotary dial phone, pictured above, and direct dialing, numbers were consolidated to the first three letters of the exchange name. In larger cities, Crestwood became CRE plus the 4-digit number. In smaller towns, it might be just two letters, CR-4457.  It was a long-held belief that a 7-digit number was too difficult for most people to remember, hence the resistance to all-numerical phone numbers. But in the 1950s, 7-digit numbers were phased in everywhere without terrible hardship: CR2-4457. (Although I remember in the 1970s in at least one small Ohio town, you could dial a neighbor directly with only final the 4 numbers.)