“I want to be good:” morality, faith, and female spectatorial pleasure during World War I

ABSTRACT

In this article, I draw on a handful of personal fan collections created in the first decade of the star system to examine how schoolgirls of faith engaged Hollywood cinema as a visual vernacular that helped them externalize ‘extreme states of personal being’, including grief, disgust, and arousal. Working through what I term ‘a cinephilia steeped in the distrust of pleasure’, I argue that some moviegoing girls turned to private scrapbooking and film reviewing to sort out embattled feelings arising while coming of age in the United States at a time of social upheaval, war, and epidemics.

KEYWORDS:

• Early Hollywood
• female fans
• audience reception
• feminist film historiography
• personal archives
• scrapbooks

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Fourteen teenagers make entries in this scrapbook; thirteen introduce themselves with female names, and one with a male name, ‘Stephen’. However, it bears reminding that it was not uncommon for girls to take up male nicknames among their peers. This scrapbook is part of a personal collection.

2. For more on women’s personal recollection and film reception see Stacey (1994), Hastie (2007), and Anselmo (2019).

3. “Mary Pickford, The Most Popular Girl in the World, Chosen by ‘Ladies’ World’ Readers”. 1915. The Ladies’ World, April, cover.

4. Courier (Camden, New Jersey). 1921. March 7.

5. ‘Letters to the Editor’. 1920. Motion Picture Magazine, March, 7.

6. Brooke (1917) and ‘An Unusual Close-Up of Marguerite Clark’. 1917. The Photo-Play Journal, November, 15.

7. For a thorough survey of the industry address of female pleasure and policing early Hollywood cultivated during the 1910s, see Stamp (2000).

8. Medora Espy’s personal papers are housed at the Washington State Historical Society (WHSH) in Tacoma, WA. This collections amasses loose papers, diaries, photographs, and correspondence, including letters from Medora’s mother, Helen Espy. All of Espy’s materials quoted here are from the WHSH collection. See also Stevens (2007).

9. Espy. 1915. Diaries. November 29. In The Galley Slave (1915), Bara is cast against type. She plays an Italian artist’s model named Francesca, who is victimized and later mistreated by a scoundrel husband. This casting choice aligns with Bara’s reported decision to move away from her vampire-typecasting and show her versatility at other roles, a plan as short-lived as unsuccessful with audiences.

10. Espy. 1915. Diaries. February 3.

11. ‘The Eagle’s Mate’. 1914. The Moving Picture World, July 18, 487, italics mine.

12. ‘Manufacturers Advance Notice’. 1914. The Moving Picture World, July 4, 81.

13. ‘Manufacturers Advance Notice’, 81.

14. Espy. 1914. Correspondence, May 17.

15. Espy. 1915. Correspondence, October 13, original emphasis.

16. Espy. 1915. Correspondence, July 5.

17. For more on female cinephilias instantiated during the silent era, see Maule and Russell (2005).

18. Paramount Magazine. 1915. March, 2.

19. Espy. 1914. ‘Observations and Thoughts’. Diary, August, italics mine.

20. Espy. 1914. ‘Observations and Thoughts’.

21. Espy. 1914. Diaries, July 12.

22. Espy. 1915. Correspondence, October 13, original emphasis.

23. Espy. 1915. Diaries, August 10.

24. Espy. 1915. Diaries, March.

25. Espy. 1914. ‘Observations and Thoughts’. Diary, August.

26. Espy, Helen. 1915. Correspondence, October 15.

27. Espy, Medora. 1916. Correspondence, May 16.

28. Espy, Helen. 1916. Correspondence, May 18.

29. Espy, Medora. 1914. Loose clippings, italics mine. Widely reproduced in syndicated papers, Frank Crane’s ‘On The Death of a Good Woman’ can be found, for instance, in North Dakota’s Fargo Forum And Daily Republican.1914. August 13, 18.

30. ‘Film Reviews: “The Foundling”’, 1914. Variety, January 14, 19.

31. Espy, Medora. 1916. Diary, January 16.

32. Espy, Medora. 1916. Correspondence, January 11.

33. Espy, Helen. 1916. Correspondence, January 14.

34. Topping, Constance Margaret. Personal Papers: Diaries and Scrapbooks, Beinecke Library, University of California, Berkeley. Her diaries continue less assiduously into the 1930s and no scrapbooking happens after 1920.

35. Topping. 1916. Diary, June 28.

36. Topping. 1915. Scrapbook, December; and Scrapbook. 1916. April 20.

37. In Birth of a Nation, Gish’s character is violently pursued by an unwanted suitor but saved from forced deflowering, while Marsh’s character kills herself rather than being ravaged by a blackface performance of a rogue soldier.

38. Topping. 1917. Diary, August 27.

39. Topping. 1917. Diary, February; and Diary. 1917. June 25.

40. Topping. 1918. Diary, July 26.

41. Topping. 1918. Diary, November 15.

42. Topping. 1916. Diary, italics mine.

43. The term ‘spirituelle’ is employed by Griffith himself. See Griffith (1923). For more on this film type see Hennefeld (2018).

44. Topping. 1920. Diary, March 10 and 11.

45. Topping. 1918. Diary, April 24. In various entries, Topping colloquially describes attending films starring Pickford as if they were visits to a friend, such as ‘went to see Mary Pickford at the Strand’ (October 9, 1915), or ‘off to see Mary Pickford with mama’ (March 25, 1916).

46. For more on film ephemera functioning as affective units in fan reception, see Desjardins (2006).

47. For more on the history of scrapbooks and women’s usage see Tucker, Ott, and Buckler (2006), Helfand (2008) and Garvey (2012).

48. Majors, Thelma Laird Lauer. Scrapbooks of Magazine Pictures of Lillian and Dorothy Gish. Billy Rose Collection, New York Public Library-Performing Arts, New York City.

49. Reinhart, Theresa. 1913–1915. Scrapbook. The scrapbook is presented by Doug Loudenback in his personal blog: ‘The Reinhart Legacy Part IV – Theresa’s Scrapbook’. 2009. July 29. http://dougdawg.blogspot.com/2009/07/reinhart-legacy-part-4-theresas.html

50. The remaining movies include The Brute (1914), Aristocracy (1914), The Warrens of Virginia (1915), A Gentleman of Leisure (1915), The Wild Goose Chase (1915), and Officer 666 (1915), a medley of feature-length society dramas and high-jinks comedies.

51. ‘A Good Little Devil’. 1914. Variety, March 1, 23.

52. Promotional brochure for Fanchon, The Cricket compiled in Reinhart’s scrapbook.

53. ‘Help Wanted’ promotional poster, 1915. Moving Picture World, June 3. Compiled in Reinhart’s scrapbook.

54. Seen on November 30, 1914.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Diana W. Anselmo

Diana W. Anselmo is a feminist film historian. She is the author of A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives in Early Hollywood (University of California Press, 2023), and myriad articles on media historiography and female audiences.