While wandering through an antique mall in the middle of nowhere, I came across a beat-up bookcase crammed into a corner nook. As I walked toward it, a book caught my attention right away: The Movie Picture Girls. The faded brown cover showed a man cranking an old silent-movie camera while two young girls appeared in cameo portraits above him; it was clear that this was a girls’ adventure book about the movies.
The cover lists the author as Laura Lee Hope, who, according to the back insert, was also the author of The Bobbsey Twins series. The copyright date is 1914, an interesting juncture in film history when the industry was in the process of exiting the East Coast to make Hollywood its new company town. If Laura Lee Hope sounds like a too-perfect name for an author of young women’s fiction, then you won’t be surprised to learn that the name was too good to be true. Laura Lee Hope is the collective pseudonym for several writers who worked for the Stratemeyer Syndicate, a company that specialized in producing juvenile literature. Stratemeyer’s books were originally published by Grosset and Dunlap, though various series were reprinted by other publishers over the next several decades. Among the writers who penned The Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, and The Moving Picture Girls were owner Edward Stratemeyer, Howard Roger Garis and his wife Lilian McNamara Garis, and Stratemeyer’s daughter, Harriet.
HARRIET STRATEMEYER WROTE ALMOST 200 BOOKS IN HER CAREER.
Stratemeyer and his stable of writers adhered to a strict but winning formula: Each series featured two or more spunky but good-hearted adolescents who solved mysteries, fixed problems within their families or communities, experienced adventures, and/or engaged in flirtations with the opposite sex. Each entry in the series contained a fast-paced, linear plot that concluded happily. As with juvenile fiction today, young readers identified with the everyday problems of the adolescent protagonists while living vicariously through the characters’ extraordinary adventures.
The Moving Picture Girls, or First Appearances in Photo Dramas was the first in a seven-volume series that was published from 1914 to 1916. In the opening novel, Hosmer DeVere, a prominent theatrical actor, strains his voice and has to drop out of the play A Matter of Friendship. Hosmer is a widower with two teenage daughters, 17-year-old Ruth and 15-year-old Alice. The DeVeres’ neighbor, Russ Dalwood,is a projectionist at the local movie house with ambitions to become a cameraman or director for the Comet Film Company. Russ suggests to Ruth that her father could act in “photoplays” for Comet, because he doesn’t need to use his voice. But, Ruth dismisses the idea because her father “thinks the movies are so—so vulgar!”
THE BOOK DOES A GOOD JOB CAPTURING 1914-ERA FILM PRODUCTION, BUT THE ILLUSTRATOR DID NOT GET THE LIGHTING QUITE RIGHT. THE ARROWS POINT TO HIS VERSION OF A STUDIO SKYLIGHT AND ARC LAMPS.
I like the way that The Moving Picture Girls reflects prevailing ideas about the movies, or reveals typical production practices in pre-Hollywood cinema. Most film histories maintain that many theater actors believed the flickers were beneath them. Some felt that pantomiming in short spurts in front of a camera was not dignified for stage actors. According to Alexander Walker in Stardom: The Hollywood Phenomenon, many actors in the flickers did not want their names to be revealed to the public because they did not consider acting in movies to be a legitimate profession. Walker could have used Hosmer DeVere’s words to prove his point. When the DeVeres discover their money is running low, and the rent is overdue, Ruth breaks down and tells her father about Russ’s suggestion to appear in the movies. Hosmer is adamant about his refusal: “I would not debase my profession,” he says.
Film histories, such as Richard DeCordova’s Picture Personalities, speculate that this attitude toward moving pictures by actors began to change when the Pathe Company released their films d’art. These were filmed versions of stage plays starring the greatest European actors of the day—Albert Lambert, Severin, Sarah Bernhardt. The Moving Picture Girls verifies this assertion during a conversation in which Russ defends the movies to Ruth. He tells her that her father should not feel denigrated to be in the movies, because great actors like Sarah Bernhardt have appeared in them. In the same conversation, Russ mentions that Andrew Carnegie had just made a major speech in front of the cameras “with a phonograph attachment” so people could see and hear him. I was surprised at this early effort to marry sound and image, which occurred a decade before Warner Bros. began experimenting with sync sound.
THE TEXT MENTIONS ARC LAMPS, BUT THE ILLUSTRATOR’S FLAT BLACK LIGHTS SEEM TO BE MERCURY-VAPOUR LIGHTING AS SEEN IN THIS PHOTO OF BIOGRAPH STUDIO, c. 1914.
With the threat of eviction, Hosmer decides to try acting for the movies at the Comet Film Company, and he discovers he likes it. The cast and crew at Comet reflect the types of people involved in the movies just before the industry relocated to the West Coast. Wellington Bunn is a former Shakespearean actor who feels he is above the material he is given to perform by Frank Pertell, the enterprising owner of Comet. Comic actor Carl Switzer is German and speaks with a heavy accent, which doesn’t matter in 1914 because films were silent. Pearl Pennington and Laura Dixon are former vaudeville performers who grow jealous of the DeVere girls after they are asked to try their hand at acting. Hundreds of vaudevillians gravitated to the movies from the teens through the early talkie era, making an impact on performance styles, particularly in comedies and musicals.
THE SKYLIGHTS IN A TYPICAL EAST-COAST STUDIO WERE MUCH LARGER THAN THE ILLUSTRATOR IMAGINED.
The Moving Picture Girls also describes the process of making silent movies. Inside the studio, several movies are made simultaneously. Because sound is not recorded, the director calls out directions and instructions to the actors while the camera is rolling. Many of the most interesting scenes captured by Russ, who eventually graduates to cameraman, occur by accident when something unexpected happens during filming. Dramas are referred to as parlor scenes; genre movies with action are called outdoor pictures.
The Moving Picture Girls spawned six additional novels. The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm, Or Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays follows Ruth and Alice to a rural community, where more than one mystery lurks down on the farm. In The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound, Or the Proof on the Film, the DeVere Sisters travel to Elk Lodge to make several winter pictures. For The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch, Or Great Days Among the Cowboys, Ruth and Alice head West by railroad to work on a new movie project about life in the Wild West. In The Moving Picture Girls at Sea, Or A Pictured Shipwreck that Became Real, Hosmer and the girls head out to sea to make a movie about a shipwreck. You can guess what happens from the very literal title. In The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays, Or The Sham Battles at Oak Farm, Mr. Pertell and the film company return to Oak Farm to film a Civil War drama.
Someday I hope to run across a copy of The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms, Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida in which Ruth, Alice, and Russ travel to the interior of the state to shoot movies. Ruth and Alice begin to feel nervous after reading that two girls are missing from Lake Kissimmee, which is the film company’s ultimate destination. When this book was written, the Jacksonville-St. Augustine area was a major center of film production. Several established film companies opened winter studios in Jacksonville, or sent production units to Florida to shoot during the winter months. Under the Palms reflects Florida’s status as a production center during the mid-teens.
According to the Internet, acquiring the entire Moving Picture Girls series in good condition is difficult. In all honesty, my copy of the first novel is in fair—not good—condition, but I am thrilled with my unexpected treasure.