ROOTED

 

CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG : AMERICA'S FIRST FIRST LADY OF THE SCREEN BY GRETA DE GROAT - STANFORD UNIVERSITY

My research suggested that Greta De Groat was a primary modern researcher and writer about Clara Kimball Young. I found her page on a Stanford University website. I'll focus on the chapter called Enter Louis Selznick:

STANFORD : DE GROAT : CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG

Excerpt: Louis Selznick, an ambitious producer with an ultimately fatal habit of antagonizing powerful business rivals, saw a potential goldmine in Young. He signed her 1914 and immediately starred her as Lola, a woman who is transformed from a respectable young woman into a vamp who heartlessly destroys men after her dead body is resurrected without a soul. This was another hit which cemented Clara Kimball Young's position as a top star and James Young as a sought-after director. She was now one of the chief attractions of World Film Corporation, for which Selznick had become the vice president.

Meanwhile, Selznick and Young's personal lives were becoming intertwined. Mabel Normand later recalled James Young on the set in 1915, head in hands, saying "where I made my mistake was in ever inviting that fellow to the house." Selznick's wife had to endure the humiliation of escorting Clara to public events to squelch rumors, which apparently fooled no one. James Young ceased directing her films after The Heart of Blue Ridge (1915), and in 1916 sued Selznick for alienation of affection. Clara counter sued charging cruelty, and Selznick replied that the marriage was already in trouble before his appearance. James Young finally obtained a final decree on April 8, 1919, on grounds of desertion.

Excerpt: In February 1916, Selznick was ousted from World, but he had a surprise up his sleeve. As it happened, Clara Kimball Young was under contract, not to World, but personally to Selznick. His rivals had rid themselves not only of Selznick, but also of their most popular star. Within months World was reissuing most of her films.

Selznick lost no time in forming the Clara Kimball Young Film Corporation, with himself as president, and formed Selznick Productions to distribute her films and those of some other independent producers.

C 2026

Note that De Groat lists a good number of references and is open to new information about Clara. I checked Google Books for mentions of Clara and her name brings up mentions in movie business and fan type publications. 

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Research includes using Google, AI, Wikis, YouTube, etc.

CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG : SHE KEPT A DIARY FOR SEVERAL MONTHS IN THE YEAR 1921

Wow! There's a web site called DIARY FILE... And it's dedicated to preserving though digitalization, historical diaries and letters. 

Excerpt: At the time of the diary, she was thirty years old and actively shooting several films per year.  

DIARY FILE : CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG

Excerpt (Quoting from the diary itself, thus this was written by Clara herself.) about loosing weight.

With jockeys, show girls and movie stars, and light weight boxers, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness becomes a mere question of yielding to Shylock his pound of flesh. They are habitual defendants in the Court of Public Favor, charged with the heinous offense of overweight and, if judged guilty, they must pay the forfeit in flesh or retire from the limelight. No Party arises to plead on their behalf. “The Law allows it, and the court awards it.”

Read on!  In these excerpts Clara mentions filming with Harry Garson who she's involved with and who is directing her in a movie, as well as a good party at the Ambassador Hotel.

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Research includes using Google, AI, Wikis, YouTube, etc.

WHIPLASH CURVE

 

CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG IN THE MOVIE "KEPT HUSBANDS"

I was thrilled to find the full silent film entitled Kept Husbands which Clara Kimball Young starred in, which was posted by a YouTube station called The Film Detective. It's a story about the rich and the poor, and in the end the woman who started out poor returns to her steelworker husband.

 

Why is it that "Kept" is a term used about mistresses, women who are supported by men they are not married to, while "Kept" is not used for a wife who is entirely dependent on her husband for financial support?  A stay-at-home wife and mother - a 'homemaker' - a woman who is entirely dependent on her husband, is honored. It's tradition. It's conservative.  And today, it's rare to be either!

C 2026 Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

Research includes using Google, AI, Wikis, YouTube, etc.

MORE

 

CLARA KIMBALL YOUNG : REDUCED TO SELLING HER JEWELRY : LEWIS SZELNICK WASN'T HAPPY WHEN FELL FOR HARRY GARSON and MARRIED HIM

Excerpt from the book : In this book author Axel Madsen writes that actress Gloria Swanson, married to Herbert Somborn of Equity Pictures, and actor Rudolph Valentino were friends. Two years earlier, in 1919, he had made the movie Eyes of Youth with Clara Kimball Young.  

Here's a clip from the movie from a YouTube poster Imperio Retro  

Excerpt page 83: Getting to know Valentino was a pleasure for Gloria.  He too, was caught in a miserable marriage. His wife was the dancer Jean Acker. He was an excellent horseman, and on Sunday mornings he and Gloria rode together in the Hollywood Hills. .... They talked about Eyes of Youth, the picture he had made with Clara Kimball Young two years earlier. Rudy felt sorry for Clara. She had been Lewis Selznick's mistress for years.  The reason Selznick had pulled the financial rug from under Equity Pictures * was that Clara had fallen in love with Harry Garson.  It was Garson who had persuaded Clara to produce her own picture. Now she was reduced to selling her jewelry. The Studios wouldn't touch her.

Missy here : It may've been that the increasingly powerful Selznick decided that Clara would "never work in this town again." However, I think we need to look at the changes in the movie making business that effected everyone, from various business deals that eventually lead to larger, more powerful studios that put actors on contract, the Great Depression, and the technology that ended the silent film era in which Clara Kimball Young had found her fame and rapidly moved to movies with sound.

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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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Research includes using Google, AI, Wikis, YouTube, etc.

GATHERED