Variety (Jan 1949)

Wednesday, January 5,. 1949 Forty itftiwl P^^SfSMSir Aitt^vertwy PICTURES 2S Some Wild Publicity Esapades In The Wilder Days of the Silents By MIKE CONNOLLY Hollywood. I said, had been receiving threaten^ Bebe Daniels went speeding j wg letters and .he had to protect througii the sleepy little town of i her. Santa Ana, at 50 miles an hour. | Stages of .success in Hollywood: The year was 1921. The star bird bath, fish pond, swimming pool was deliberately daring the cops with alternating hot and cold water to nab lier, as a. publicity stunt tor paramount's "The Speed Girl," in which she toplined and which was being released by Par that year. The gendarmes caught up with her, as planned, and she drew a 10-day jail sentence. ■ Miss Daniels got daily breaks ju every paper in the country during her incarceration. The s'ory was kept alive from day to da^ by hav Ing other Par stars bring her pho Harold Lloyd topped 'em all by installing an eleclrit walerl'all with a 200-foot drop. Lottie Pickford threw a Christ- mas party that went rather badly. In the confusion someone was ac- cused Of throwing a potted tree that weighed 400 pourids, C. C Julian, the oil man, drove i ered into the Chief's office around town in an orchid: ROUs that the Rolls people tried to buy back from him. They couldn't Hollywood Today Owes Plenty To The Pioneer Picture Publicists By ALFRED COHN Hollywood. I reporters were ushered into her | bination; actor-press agent job at One day early in the year 1915,1 presence by the salaaming Al l $5 a day way back in 1911. Dick a tall young man followed by *a | ^^"6, her personal press represen-I really antedated Bill Keefe. When I tative. It was quite some time be>ihe quit to hfelp foiiixd Ito^ s"*?'?^'''I fore anyone printed the story that I pioneer agent firm, he was suc- visaged Negroes entered the Los she was just a stage-struck gal j ceeded by Pat Dowling, fresh out Angeles City Hall and proceeded from Cincinnati named Theodosia 1 of Stanford. Willis' partner was irt tViA nffifo <if thB Phiof i^f Pn. I Goodman who had come to the big Gus Inglis. The firm of Willis & to tne ottiee 01 the cmet ot fo- i .^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^^ to Inglis supplied "talent but—get lice. The tall, young man then fi„d herself selected from the line this!—they only took 10% of their vanished as the delegation was ush* ■ of extras for stardom. Try to get [client's salaries for fine wecJcs* and The away with anything like that in! Rave them publicity too,' for freci half dozen ' dignified,. these enlightened days! Of course, every once in a while the smartest nograph machines, frilly curtains ^.^a he"sig t of h'eTr drgnified to cover up the unsightly - bars ot ^unk of machinery giing Holly wood. ;■: her cell; rocking chairs, electric fans and other luxuries. She turned the jallhouse into a country Rudolph Valentino got him.self a bulb-typc horn, when he was ^l">..«l!.L^"J""^?.J°°in"^^^^ making;"Cobrr,'V^bkr^xre„ded I spokesman of the group then ad-1 ' dressed the chief. The burden j ^ity editors have their armor of of his talk was that a motion pic- j cynicism dented, but nowadays no ture was about to be shown that' intelligent publicity guy will court evening at Clune's Auditorium ; pination by tossing knuckle balls m the direction of a ^city desk. Press apentry as Pi'acMced: in the had to give her an extra cell for the overflow But that, alaSi was 1921. Things are diHeifent today. Big business that it is, the film industry is hauv ■pier with- conformists than with ciit-up actors. Par, the same studio that arranged through its press agents for Miss Daniels', brush with the Santa Ana cops, now frowns -on. such practices* Yes, things ar^ .diiierent toddy. Conformists weren't wanted 'way back when, Jthe files show. A ' decorous actor was as out o£ place in the hills of Hollywood as liigrid Bergman in a seven-day western. And then, all of a sudden, stories started to appear relating the hap- py home lives of the town's sturdy citizens; Qvernight the hooligans became burghers and squires, and Times ani Life appeared on the scene to expose as phony the pub- licity stunts that previously had from the driver's seat^ down-the fender, and over the spare ■ and bumper. When the Great Lover honked the contraption the snake- head at.the end of the tube opened its mouth and rattled its tongue. Twenty-two years after his death, tourists are still gaping at his fabu- lous home. The Falcon's Lair, and at his monument in Hollywood Cemetery. Louii^ B. Mayer, who demonstrat- ed this las', Dec. 4 that his head- line-swiping abilities are keen as ever by a dramatic elopement With Lorena Dankei-i had license plate 1-M-l in the old days. The then Mrs. Mayer had l-M-2; thing of the past. It has given way to more dignified means of obtain- (now the Philharmonic) which was calculated to start something seri- ous; incitement to riots, even a race war,'among .other things. The„ . ,• <. -j i ' , .T,,! ing space for clients or product. Chief was impressed and asked for | Today's efforts can be more cor- details, Well, according -to the rcctly designated by the term spokesman,, the subject of the dy- i "public relations." And instead of namite-ladcn vehicle xvas "The ^^'"^^ viewed with suspicion In ,, ,., ., X .newsrooms, the publicist. IS re- Clansman' which, in Its stage gg^ded as an ally and phoned formi had appeared at the Mason | without hesitation if his client be- Opera House not so long before, comes involved in a news event, without causing any bloodshed He always comes clean and throws whatever. As the delegation dc- , himself on the mercy of the court, parted, the stringy young man And it has paid off—in .spades, handed each member a $5 bill and 1 a few hours later a sign went up Torn G^raghty and Georige dlijlois: Proctor, who had come from New York papers to learn screen \vritr ing at the feet of Bill dcMille, were also arderit Screamers, as vi'ere Carlyle " Rbbinsor!, Chaiflie Chaplin's press mail Frj;da^^^^ Zeldman, originally employed as good old days is pretty much a Keefe's assistant who became Doug .Griffith's Pacemaker Fairbanks': Boswell when the senior Doug deserted Griffith; Paul (Scoop) Conlon who had received his baptism of printer's ink as a punk news collector on the Los AnKeles Times. Scoop now ranks as the senior freelance'P,a, in what we. used to call the "colony.'' And, of course, there were other- erst- while local newshands such as Ivan (Ike) St. Johns, Mike Boylan and Tom Reed. StrickUng and Brand Fix and Politics Two of the later recruits from I the downtown pacers wore Howard numbers^ Mayer; \Vas ;alsb chairman of the: Republican fce'ijlral Gom- , mittee and a frequent White Hou.se been taken as gospel by thb avtd visitor, in addition to being deputy at the theatre. "Closed by the j Chief of Police." 1 The great majority of Hollywood ^trickling and Hafry Brand_^who This was the first publicity stunt: tub-thumpers and bellringers were [^'"t,?".'/ ?f. .9^^«f 9' ever pulled in behalf of a Holly-! originally recruited from the Los ■ P"R'l<'"^, *<''^^^ »^ost Orhportant; Those were the days when" you , wood product. The perpetrator Angeles newspapers. Bill Keefe's i P'^"*''; "arry came from the sports fought over the plates with the low was Bill Keefe, erstwhile Los An- first salary from Griffith was .'560 | "J??^"!"^"* % "^^ Express, as. public. I News-Wise Stars The purpose of this story isn't to disparage today's glamor list. fire warden of Beverly Hills, com- plete, with siren. geles reporter, now publicizing D. W. Griffith's masterpieces. As every student of history knows, the picture (which, by virtue of a court order, went On exhibition the fol- lowing night), became known later weekly, twice what he was getting i „ Arch Reeve and Jerome as a reporter. Looked like a pretty I ^^^l^- Howard was an office boy soft touch. Tom Ince, who always °" the same paper and he joined kept an eve on the maneuvers, next '""S'nal Metro at really the invaded the newsrooms and en- ticed Ken O'Hara to see tliat he Kot I I had the pleasure of sharing Jim Tully knocked out John Gil-1 as "The Birth of a Nation." but Bill adequate recognition. Cecil do-1 an office in downtown Los Angeles bert in tront of the Vine Street Brown Derby. Gilbert got himself There are .still plenty of stars who ^ iQ.day stretch in the Beverly know i(ow to be their own best press agents, including such fig^ ures as Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, Clark Gable, Lana Turner and .Joan Crawford. It should be Hills jail: when he showed up to register a complaint against some* body and lorgot who it was. When Mayer got him released after 24 hours he still couldn't remember noted, however, that some of these i ^^hat his beef w are holdovers from earlier days. | pin-pointing the exhibitionism of The percentage seems to be in,ti,e era, Wilson Mizner said, "A ._ favor_oi-thc-oldtimers;— j trip through-Hollywood is-like-a FLASHBACK trip through a scwei in a glass- John Barrymore married Dolores bottom boat." Costello arid the newspapers were Then came the morals clauses/ still screaming for copy two weeks On second thought, maybe our f after the ceremony. Later Barry- present-day recalcitrants aren't so more went on a cruise with his|bad after all. ex-wife, Miciiael Strange, and her new husband, in addition to John's and Michael's daughter* Diana. The - eightrcolumn spreads were legion. The Profile tended his legend care- fully. He and Myron Selznick staged a-dilly of a duel on the lawn of the Ambassador in 1928 that was great copy too. , Wally Reid drove north, picking • up five cases of eggs in San Jose en route, and took an eighth floor suite in San Francisco's Palace Ho- tel, from the window of which he pelted the pedestrians. Fatty Arbuckle lengthened the chassis and drive shaft of his Stand- ard a full 30 inches. It was so long he couldn't park it. Gloria Swanson was chauffeured to a Grauman's Chinese picmiere seated on a throne specially built atop ber car. . ■Tom Mix arrived at the same shindig in a white stage coach, drawn by six white horses. Mix ' also had a white Stuz with, hand- tooled leather fittings. It had horns built into the front. He owned 180 suits', among them a gross, of white serge outfits with which he wore black patent leather hand- tooled boots and 10-gallon som-j breros with black patent leatlierj bindings. He would put on a shoot- ing exhibition in public at the drop of a hat. , Mae Murray's chauffeur and foot- man wore white dusters with fouiv '. inch baby blue cuffs, lapels,, but- tons and piping, to match the glam- orous one's Rolls Royce. Miss Swan- • sooi miffed, ordered two Rollses. Miss Murray topped Miss Swan.son with a third.Total outlay for Miss Murray's stable of three: $60,000. Douglas Fairbanks could always insure a headline when thfngs were duU by applying at the Beverly Hills police station for a permit to carry a gun. Miss Pickford, he Keefe's good bit of work had its reverberations for years there- after. Negro groups had it banned in Chicago, Ohio, Kansas and other communities. So far as I know, it hasn't played Kansas yet. But had experience as a- theatrical press agent. Then the , three got together and organized the Scream- ers, Hollywood's first movie social group. Their regular meeting from then on, the movies were on | place was a spot on the beach at their way. i the mouth of Santa Monica Can- There has never in the history i yon. They took in the few trade of the films, or the theatre, been 1 Press representatives and their such a buildup of a star as that chief interest in life had its foun- " - - ^datiQn ..Jn:^the ,±eer._whiclu Eddie. Maier's brewery furnished. Event- ually they became the Wampas, famous for their;baby stars. . accorded - T-heda—B«fa—some—30 years ago. Drenched in mysticism, she was a direct descendant of Pharaohs or Ptolemies or perhaps Vishnu; she breathed incense, the spirit of the occult, the enigmas Mille hired Ken McGaffey who had with Durling, there being no offic* buildings in Hollywood at the time, my job beiri^ western etiiior of Photoplay M.-jgazine. We both de- serted that, field to become press agents, Durling going with Lewis J. Selznick . after a hitch in the Army, and my job being press rep- resentative (that's what it said on , the door) fo^, Mar.V : Pickford. It Was the first time: Mary had a press agent of 'That^^was^ durfflg" IHe w and mine "wasT a einch iob. I could, if so inClihed,. hoa.st about having made Mary the I first honorary colonel of an Ameri- Others in that group were . .~. , . _ ., . , . , Richard Willis who had talked Al 1 "^'^^t d"""^ that war, which of the esoteric, when google-eyed Christie, into giving him a corn- established auite a trend. I did get credit for same, the regiment be- ing the 143d Field Artillery, but as g matter of fact, the regiment also had a pre.ss agent, and as I recall it, he fathered the idea. The climax I came when Mary reviewed an en- tire division, the 40th at Camp, I Kearny. The nice thing about I press agenting personalities like I Mary, Doug Fairbanlts and Charlie I Chaplin in those days was that I they were cinch jobs with little to do in the way of Underwood- pounding or "planting." Such stars : were more than persotialities; they were public institutions: In other words, they were News. ROBERT SIODMAK ".Macter of My«tcr!«s" has to his credit "The Killera," "D4rk Mirror," "Spiral Staircase," ^'Criss-Cross," "Cry of the City," and has just completed *7The Great Siltne)■'^ for Metro- I Schnlberg, Stromber g, Et Al. | 'I'he list of flacks who became scenarists and producers would be a long one, beginning with Ben Schulberg who was the first pub- licity man for Famous Players. It would include such names as Hunt j Stromberg who once exploited 1 Tom Ince's products; Bennie Zeld- man; Larry Weingarten who helped make Jackie Coogan famous; Pete Smith , who pioneered many Para- mount publicity ventures; Hal |Wal]is who aided the Warner Freres over many rough spots to say nothing of the two Bills, Pine ■ and Thomas of a much later period.!- Summing it all up, the change in . motion picture publicity has par- alleled that in the field of author- ship., The brawling bravos of Grjib Street have been succeeded - by eminently respectable folk in the higher income brackets. With the change, naturally has gone some- thing of the old gusto. But did not; William Shakespeare himself in his more/ mature ye^rs become a landed gentleman?