Beach Time Books: A Summer Silent Reading List!

It’s June–June! June already! And now that lazy days on the beach or in a hammock are in sight (at least a few of them, I’d hope!), maybe you’re thinking of what books you’d like to take along. Since you’re here on Silent-ology, that of course means: silent film-related books!

Need some suggestions? Here’s a handy-dandy list I put together just for you! My criteria were: nothing too ponderous (yes The Parade’s Gone By is an eternal recommendation, but it’s a hefty boy for a beach bag), the writing has to be easy to get into, I’ve genuinely enjoyed it, and it must pair well with hammocks.

7. My First Time In Hollywood by Cari Beauchamp

This intriguing anthology was put together by the late, respected historian Cari Beauchamp. Over 40 silent era folks share their reminisces of when they first got off the train in the rustic young town of Hollywood, their accounts organized by the year they arrived. Actors, directors, writers, and gossip columnists are all represented, from Marie Dressler to Lionel Barrymore to Gloria Swanson (even Will Hays!). Everyone’s tale is just a little different, but everyone’s united by a passion for the budding film industry.

An excerpt from the piece by Mary Pickford, who was in Hollywood by 1910:

Our studio consisted of an acres of ground, fenced in, and a large wooden platform, hung with cotton shades that were pulled on wires overhead. On a windy day, our clothes and curtains on the set would flap loudly in the breeze. Studios were all on open lots–roofless and without walls, which explains the origin of the term “on the lot.” Dressing rooms being a non-existent luxury, we donned our costumes every morning at the hotel. Our rehearsal room was improvised from a loft which Mr. Griffith rented in a decrepit old building on Main Street. A kitchen table and three chairs were all there was of furniture. Mr. Griffith occupied one of the chairs, the others being reserved for the elderly members of the cast. The rest of us sat on the floor. Surveying his squatters one day, Mr. Griffith announced he needed a split or half a reel.

“Anybody got a story in mind?” he asked. (Beauchamp, ed., pp. 15-16)

6. Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild by David Stenn

Breezy, absorbing, and deftly capturing Clara’s outgoing personality, Stenn’s popular biography hooked me right away. It’s well-researched and includes plenty of detail without getting too bogged down in names, backstories and dates. After reading it I felt like I really knew Clara. It does get gossipy at times (in fairness, her life was a soap opera) and I’m a bit “iffy” on the choice of having her comment throughout the narrative in phonetic Brooklynese. But all in all, it’s a solid beach time read.

Excerpt:

Seven years earlier she had written to Motion Picture‘s Answer Man about her favorite stars. Now the favorite star herself, she tried to make the dreams of her own fans come true. [Studio publicist] Teet Carle remembers one Saturday morning when Clara, who was not scheduled to shoot that day, dropped by the studio on her way to Long Beach where, she said, she intended to sell popcorn. “Maybe you guys wanna come and get a picture of me,” she added as an afterthought.

Bewildered, Carle asked Clara what she was talking about. She showed him a fan letter from a boy whose parents sold candied popcorn from a booth on the Long Beach pier. Both parents were ill, and the boy had written Clara because “if you came down, I know I could sell enough popcorn to pay their doctors bills.”

It was Clara’s first free moment since she had received the letter. She was on her way.

Carle couldn’t believe it. “She would have gone there all alone and been mobbed. People would have torn her clothes off! That was what made Clara so wonderful, yet such a problem; she never realized she was a star. I used to say to her, ‘Clara, stars don’t do what you’re doing!'” (Stenn, pp. 135-6.)

5. King of the Movies: Francis X. Bushman by Lon and Debra Davis

I’ve reviewed this fabulous book before and am happy to recommend it again! Bushman was your quintessential virile, charming beefcake of a leading man and was one of the 1910s most popular matinee idols. He had affairs, spent money like it was going out of style, and was vain as a peacock to the end of his days–and I enjoyed every single page. Much of the book uses clips of Bushman interviews, bringing his outsized personality and sense of humor vividly to life. Give it a read, you won’t be disappointed!

After Francis’s estrangement from Josephine, Beverly moved into his gaudy apartment at 435 Riverside Drive. This ten-room suite, overlooking the Hudson River, was staffed with two maids and a valet. Naturally, this apartment was rampant with animals: sixteen Great Danes, five hundred caged finches, three huge incubators full of eggs in one of the bathrooms, and fifteen hundred exotic birds that flew throughout the rooms.

“I had a gardener come in and plant big trees in the corner of the living room,” Bushman said. “In another corner was a waterfall flowing into a stream which ran through the room. It was flanked by little trees and had a bridge going across. Cost a lot of money, but it was beautiful. The owner of the Colosseum Apartments was an Italian named Charles Paterno. If he hadn’t been fond of me, it never would have been allowed, see. But the reporters wouldn’t come up to see the place when I invited them to because they thought it was all a goddamned lie!” (Davis, pp. 117-8.)

4. The Keystone Kid: Tales of Early Hollywood by Coy Watson Jr.

This is one of the most charming early Hollywood memoirs you never hear about, and that’s a shame. Coy Watson Jr., of the Watson clan who lived right by Sennett’s Keystone studio, grew up watching films being made practically on his doorstep. His father became a special effects man and Watson Jr. and his siblings ended up appearing in over a 1000 films in total, from early silents to talkies. He warmly recounts their many memories of early Hollywood’s more personable days, his narrative infused with nostalgia and the clear love he had for his family.

Sometimes the entire neighborhood would turn out standing around watching. The director would talk to women on the porch of a house and ask them to wave when “the fat man on the motorcycle” went past…Most of the folks got a big kick out of acting in scenes and laughing at each other. A week later they’d be down at the theater on Sunset Boulevard to see the finished picture, hoping to see themselves on the screen…

One day, Hampton Del Ruth’s company was shooting scenes near our barn on the Sennett lot next door to our house. Gloria Swanson was the star and while waiting between scenes, Gloria’s dress became wrinkled. Dad told her to see Mom. She knocked at our back door and asked, “Goldie, can I press my skirt?”

“Sure, Gloria, come in.” Mom set up the ironing board and Gloria pressed her own skirt with a two-pound iron heated on the stove top. Gloria knew my mom, and of course my dad, who was a prop-man on many of Gloria’s pictures in her earliest days. All the movie people in Edendale knew and helped each other. It was that close-knit relationship that helped start the movie business. Like family, they worked together. (Watson Jr., pp. 106-8).

3. Room 1219: The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Shook Hollywood by Greg Merritt

Let’s face it, true crime is a huge genre nowadays. But instead of reading about lurid murders and kidnappings, why not learn more about this infamous episode of Hollywood history? Several books have been written about the Arbuckle case–most of them more fiction than fact–but this is the most well-researched and trustworthy tome to date. There’s still a lot of room for research and I don’t agree with all of Merritt’s theories, but as a whole it’s well done and fair to both Arbuckle and Rappe–if a little melodramatic in spots.

In one-on-one conversations, Arbuckle was prone to shyness, but he came alive when performing before a group–whether in a vaudeville theater, on a movie set, or at a party. He knew how to command an audience, regaling all with humorous showbiz tales, clowning about with a drink in one hand and cigarette in the other, and fox-trotting to jazz records on the Victrola. “Roscoe liked nothing better than playing host to all comers,” Buster Keaton recalled.

Arbuckle jokingly announced he would leap out of one of 1220’s two windows if anyone there would join him. “If I would jump out of the twelfth-story window, they would talk about me today, and tomorrow they would go see the ball game. So what is in life after all?”

Ain’t we got fun? (Merritt, p. 12.)

2. Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara by Eve Golden

The silent screen’s most iconic vamp deserved to have a smashing biography, and historian Eve Golden really stepped up to the plate. Theda’s image can seem bizarre to us today, but never fear, it was pretty bizarre back in the 1910s too–as Golden was able to capture with her perfect blend of good research and wry humor. I really enjoyed it and can’t help thinking that the saga of Theda and Her Two Crazy Publicists would make a very amusing biopic!

To make sure his film and his star made a splash, William Fox started laying plans while A Fool There Was was still shooting. He hired two newspapermen from The New York World whose enthusiasm approached dementia. Al Selig and John Goldfrap began setting the groundwork for the most lavish, ludicrous, and successful publicity campaign the country had ever seen. Eighty years later, many of these outrageous Selig/Goldfrap fables are still represented as genuine film history…

…It was left to the unknown female star to sell A Fool There Was. Fox and his minions decided that “we had every type of woman on the screen except an Arabian; our publicity director felt that the public would like an Arabian…then the PR director said. ‘Now, let’s not settle on this until we see if it will go over. Let me invite the newspapers to an interview and see if they will swallow this.'”

That’s how the famous hoax press conference in Chicago came about… (Golden, pp. 37-9.)

1. Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn

Yes, that novel, with mystical heroines writhing on tiger skins and all. I doth declare that Three Weeks is one of the most amusingly florid and annoyingly readable century-old romance novels I’ve ever perused–and I’ve read practically none–and by George, if you think your beach day will be complete without it then think again, chickens. This is one of the “It” novels of the early 20th century, written by the oracle of Itness herself, Elinor Glyn, who Herself baptized Clara Bow the official It Girl. What more need I add?

Paul bounded forward, but she raised one hand to stop him.

“No! You must not come near me, Paul. I am not safe to-day. Not yet. See, you must sit there and we will talk.”

And she pointed to a great chair of Venetian workmanship and a wonderful old velvet which was new to his view.

“I bought that chair in the town this morning at the curiosity shop on the top of Weggisstrasse, which long ago was the home of the Venetian envoy here–and you bought me the tiger, Paul. Ah! That was good. My beautiful tiger!” And she gave a movement like a snake, of joy to feel its fur under her, while she stretched out her hands and caressed the creature where the hair turned white and black and the side, and was deep and soft.

“Beautiful one! Beautiful one!” she purred. “And I know all your feelings and your passions, and now I have got your skin–for the joy of my skin!” And she quivered again with the movements of a snake.

It is not difficult to image that Paul felt far from calm during this scene… (Glyn, pp. 77-8.)

It’s a mere 7 suggestions, but I think they’re ones you’ll enjoy!

Do you have any silent-related books you’d add to the list? Please comment below!

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