CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG TALKED MOVIE BUSINESS - IMPRESSED AND INSPIRED GLORIA SWANSON : THEY BOTH ESTABLISHED THEIR OWN MOVIE PRODUCTION COMPANIES

We continue with the entwinned story of Gloria Swanson and Clara Kimball Young.

Excerpt page 70 : (Gloria Swanson had begun her relationship with the man who became her second husband Herbert Somborn and they went out to dinner with Clara Kimball Young.)

Their first dinner with Clara Kimball Young had been an eye-opener for Gloria.  Not only was their hostess a gracious, amusing woman, and her candle-lit dinner for four exquisite; she, Herbert and Harry Garson, the general manager of Equity Pictures (the distribution company for Clara's movies), talked about movies on a level Gloria had never heard before. Clara's story paralleled Gloria's insofar as marriage was concerned. James Young and Clara Kimball, soon to be his bride, had come from a Salt Lake City stock company to appear in Vitagraph pictures, and before long both were making $1000 a week. As with Gloria and Wally (The actor Wallace Beery) problems had started when Young's ascent didn't match his wife's'.  Clara's breakthrough picture had been My Official Wife in 1914, in which Leon Trotsky had been an extra  Success had brought her other offers from Vitagraph's rivals, and she had accepted a contract from World Films, managed by the ambitious Lewis Selznick, who had made her a star in Trilby, Camille, and The Common Law (three movies), sophisticated pictures dealing with feminine martyrdom.  Her women admirers were legion, and here she was talking distribution deals, stock issues, mortgages, and billboards because movies could show cars, clothes, curling irons, whatever, the hostess turned toward Gloria and said, "He's absolutely right,  Don't you think so, Miss Swanson?"

Gloria Swanson went on to marry Herbert Somborn and have a daughter with him, but the marriage ended badly. She'd decided for Somborn and gave up Marshall "Mickey" Neilan. Mickey had directed Clara Kimball Young for a Harry Garson tear jerker. (Clara married Garson eventually.)

Excerpt page 73 :

For Gloria, the (her) marriage became a cram course in economics and contract law... Persistent long-distance phone calls during the Alexandra suite honeymoon had forced Herbert to admit he was, momentarily, in some difficulty. For different reasons, Selznick and Powers had turned against Equity pictures. Selznick, who was worth sixty million dollars, lived in a seventeen-room Park Avenue apartment, and made fifty films a years, was in a new scrap with his rivals. To make sure they rented all their movies, regardless of quality, film companies resorted to 'block booking." In order to get pictures with big box-office stars, theater owners had to accept a block of less profitable moves. New, Selznick was breaking away from the practice and offering the new Clara Kimball Young features separately at considerably higher rentals. They made everybody else less saleable suffer, and Selznick's relations with his rivals were at a low point. Exhibitors didn't want to be caught in any high-power crossfire and simply refused to book Eyes of Youth.

*** Because Gloria saw how Clara had been treated after breaking from the then-existing Studio System she was a bit afraid to found her own company.

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GATHERED

 

CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG : PROLIFIC ACTRESS - SECOND TO FOUND HER OWN "NAMESAKE" MOVIE PRODUCTION COMPANY : MISTRESS OF LEWIS J. SELZNICK

 

Clara Kimball Young as painted by Rolf Armstrong.

Cover of May1920 Photoplay Magazine. Also appeared in Motion Picture news same month.

CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG

Clarisa Kimball

Edith Matilda Clara Kimball

1890 - 1960

Axel Madsens book about Gloria Swanson and Joseph P. Kennedy lead me to Clara Kimball Young, who I'd never heard of before. Though I found some information about her in his book, for this month's reportage about this famous Hollywood Silent Screen Era actress, I had to do further research.

Clara Kimball Young began her stage acting career as a three-year-old child who toured with her parents who were also actors and grew up on the road. Clara Kimball came by her name Clara Kimball Young name through a first marriage, in 1910, when she was about 20, to James Young, an actor who'd appeared on Broadway and director who is said to have launched her career. They were both signed by one of those upstart movie making companies, The Vitagraph Company of America, in 1912. So maybe it was that company that launched both of their careers. She appeared in more than 150 films, beginning in 1909,  mostly in the silent film era, before her screen retirement in 1943. She was at the peak of her fame from 1915-1917 according to polls that were taken in those years.

Perhaps we will never know exactly how it began or when, but Clara became involved with Lewis Selznick in business and personally. Film making and distribution early on emerged from a number of upstart companies that competed, but also sometimes bought each other out or made deals. A company called the World Film Corporation was established in 1914 by Selznick and a partner. World Film Corporation distributed independently produced films (the term independently fits the efforts of so many of those upstarts) and had offices in New York City. It became the company that distributed the movies that starred Clara Kimball Young. 

Today she is honored as a pioneering woman in Hollywood not only because she acted in so many mostly silent films and was considered to be the most popular actress of 1914 but because she was the second woman to found her own namesake production company, second only to Mary Pickford. (Pickford, with a group of others who called themselves United Artists.) Her company, the Clara Kimball Film Corporation, was established in 1916, at that peak in her fame. Selznick partnered with her on that project.

Lewis J. Selznick is one of the early shakers-and-movers of the early years of Hollywood, one of several men of Jewish eastern-European heritage who came to America seeking a new way of life and a fortune. Born in 1870 of Russian-Jewish heritage, he was about twenty years older than Clara. At the age of 26, he had married Florence Sachs, with whom he had four children. (One of them, David, followed his father into the movie business and is renown in his own right.) Initially settling in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, he owned jewelry stores. He retained them when he got involved in the movie business, and apparently he gifted Clara with jewelry quite a bit. For when it was over between them, when she was 'ruined' by him, it was said that she was reduced to selling her jewelry.

Something to be careful with, I think, is the way a woman's will to independence or to have a business in which she can earn more money, might be attributed to a man or men in her life.  In those times this was, unfortunately, often enough true. I feel sure that there were some people who thought she was daring for even considering having her own Production Company.

Apparently, while married to James Young, she was already involved with Lewis Selznick, for a passage from Madsen's book, which I'll soon post, is that she fell in love with a co-star, Harry Garson, and out of jealousy Selznick revenged. (But the book doesn't say that she married Garson! - Which she did in 1920.) Garson was an actor but also a film producer and director. The implication is that she ended her marriage with first husband James Young to be with Garson, and therefore, that she saw no point in continuing with Selznick, if ever there had been a chance he would leave his wife and their family to marry her. 

Another take on this, and perhaps her personal life was this complicated, is that her relationship with Selznick was considered to be volatile and the cause of her first divorce, as, according to the Turner Classic Movies Fan site dedicated to her, "She became involved in a much publicized affair with Selznick, culminating in a 1916 divorce suit accusing her of alienation of affection. James Young finally obtained a final decree on April 8, 1919 on grounds of desertion." (But she marred Garson and stayed married to him until 1927.)

Clara's third marriage in 1928 was to Dr. Arthur Fauman. They stayed married until his death in 1937. Widowed at 57 years old, Clara didn't remarry again. She had never had any children.

Or did she?

I tried to track this down as to where the information came from, but a Rudolph Valentino fan site called Mad About the Boy on Facebook references an authorized biography. It was written by Joan Wester Anderson and was titled Forever Young: The Life, Loves, and Enduring Faith of a Hollywood Legend and was published in 1999 or 2000. Because Valentino and Clara Kimball Young starred together in a film, there's some interest in her on that fan site. According to that post on the Valentino fan site, to quote:

"During her active career, she was not known to have any children. However, in a 1999 authorized biography, it was confirmed that Young gave birth to a biological daughter, Judith "Judy" Young, on November 6, 1935. The child's father was reportedly actor Clark Gable, with whom Young had a brief affair."

(So she had a child she kept secret though married to Dr. Arthur Fauman?)

"To preserve her public image, Young temporarily placed the baby in an orphanage shortly after birth and initially claimed she had adopted her. Judith later took the last name Lewis after Young married Tom Lewis." 

Tom Lewis?  Did this person mean Lewis Selznick? As Clara did not marry a Tom Lewis...

I tracked the book down and it turned out this was misinformation.  Anderson wrote the book about another actress, Loretta Young!

All right!

Let's look into Clara Kimball Young, who was once one of the most popular actresses of the Hollywood Silent Film era and does have a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!

Missy

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FLORENZ ZIEGFELD HELPED LAUNCH MANY WOMEN'S CAREERS

 

The film came out in 1936 and featured a large and well loved cast of 

characters, in particular the leading men William Powell, Luise Rainer, and actress Myrna Loy.

It suggested the life of Florenz Ziegfeld, 

as a man who womanized, made a fortune but lost it, 

and who helped launch many a showgirl's career.

Ziegfeld girls often went on to pursue modeling, acting, 

and marrying or mistressing rich men.

Several of them have been featured here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO.

When it came to actresses, it was Mary Pickford who established United Artists, along with others. Clara Kimball Young was the next, and by 1916 many actresses had the same idea. They wanted more control over their careers, to expand, and to prosper.

EXOTIC

 

PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE : SUGAR BABY ICON : SHE ADMITTED TO BEING MATERIALISTIC : WAS THAT THE PROBLEM?

Peggy Hopkins Joyce was and is considered to be the icon of the Gold Digger, a woman who seduces men to marry her, men who have money, is insincere or without love for them, divorces, and then moves on to her next conquest. But it seems to me that the flamboyant Peggy was in her youthful bloom when she succeed to do so and that, although some men do the same, and without apology, few women can get away with it. 

I say that as more than one woman friend of mine has found herself married for money or traded in by her husband/partner when a richer woman wanted him. The ruthlessness of such maneuvers can be heartbreaking.

Peggy was honest about her materialism and perhaps because she projected some humor about it and herself, it wasn't held against her too much. It was part of her personae. She claimed her reputation. Some say she was "The Original Material Girl." Some say she was an inspiration for Marilyn Monroe of Diamonds Are A Girls' Best Friend fame for her depiction of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Years went by and Peggy went without marriage, and without children, though we have no idea how many men came into her life or left it between marriages or if she ever wanted to be a parent.

Peggy was born in 1893 as Emma Marguerite Upton. She had two marriages later in her life.

Peggy's fifth marriage was to a man named Anthony Easton, an engineer. They married in 1945 and were married until about her sixth marriage in 1953 was to Andrew Glifford Meyers, a retired banker and she died of cancer in 1957 still married to him. I wonder if she ever went by Mrs. Easton or Mrs. Meyers.

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DELICATE

 

PAT POWERS ATTEMPTED TO LAUNCH PROTOGEE PEGGY HOPKINS JOYCE'S MOVIE CAREER

Excerpt page 131:  Joe (Joseph P. Kennedy) could not have picked a better time to make his debut as a movie mogul. The years 1926-1927 were one of the most prosperous periods in Hollywood history; almost every one of the 740 films made each year was a box-office success.  Movie-going had become a worldwide obsession. There were over 50,000 movie theaters around the world, more than a third of them in the United States and Canada.  Annual receipts in North America alone came to more than $120 million.

With Pat Powers, Joe plotted to fold the ailing Producers Distribution Corporation into Associated Exhibitors with the view of merging the fused entity with FBO to make an even bigger company. Joe was on the financial periphery of Pat's efforts to launch Peggy Hopkins Joyce, riding high on the success of his uninhibited and lavishly rich version of The Merry Widow, Erich Von Stroheim declined to take part in furthering of Peggy's screen career. Instead Micky Neilen (who Gloria Swanson had given up on in order to marry Henri de la Falaise) undertook the mission. The result was The Skyrocket, a thinly disguised retelling of Neilan's torrid affair with Gloria Swanson.

Excerpt page 164:  Soon after The Merry Widow was finished, Stroheim agreed to have lunch at the Ambassador with Pat Powers and the canny Irishman's new protégée, Peggy Hopkins Joyce. Powers wanted to launch the former Ziegfeld beauty as a film star. Stoheim, however, was still smarting from his experience with Mae Murray and was in no mood to start another ex- Broadway hoofer;s screen career.  Instead he hypnotized Powers with a project of his own, a double feature to be called The Wedding March and The Honeymoon that he would write, direct, and star in himself, and that would make tons of money for whoever financed it.  As he explained to Pat and Peggy, the appeal of his project was that it could be shown in two parts, tobe screened with an hour's intermission...

Missy here : As was and is often the case, a woman's career depends on being the protégée of a man, some patronage, and if he fails, so does she.

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