resources

BOOKS & ACADEMIC JOURNALS

Louise Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood: Expanded Edition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
Axel Madsen, The Sewing Circle: Hollywood’s Greatest Secret: Female Stars Who Loved Other Women, Secaucus: Birch Lane Press, 1994.
Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Joshua Zeitz, Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2007.
Marlis Schweitzer, “‘The Mad Search for Beauty’: Actresses’ Testimonials, the Cosmetics Industry, and the ‘Democratization of Beauty,’” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 4, no. 3 (July 2005): 255-292.
Marsha Orgeron, “Making ‘It’ in Hollywood: Clara Bow, Fandom, and Consumer Culture,” Cinema Journal 42, no. 4 (Summer 2003): 76-97.
Diana Anselmo-Sequeira, “Screen-Struck: The Invention of the Movie Girl Fan,” Cinema Journal 55, no. 1 (Fall 2015): 1-28.
Helen Zoe Veit, Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
Maria A. Slowinska, “Consuming Illusion, Illusions of Consumability: American Movie Palaces of the 1920s,” Amerikastudien/American Studies 50, no. 4 (2005): 575-601.
Robert Gottlieb, Garbo, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021.
David Stenn, Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild, New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000.
David E. Kyvig, Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004.

podcasts

You Must Remember This, produced by Karina Longworth. This show is incredible, and a great place to hear all sorts of stories about the early decades in Hollywood.

ONLINE SOURCES

Julie Buck, “ Gloria Swanson,” Women Film Pioneers Project: Columbia University Libraries, 2013, accessed November 5, 2023.
“Mary Pickford,” Mary Pickford Foundation, accessed November 5, 2023.
“The Rise of Hollywood and the Arrival of Sound,” Digital History: University of Houston, 2021, accessed November 5, 2023.
Suzanne Wasserman, “Theda Bara,” Jewish Women’s Archive, 1999, accessed November 5, 2023.
“Lupe Vélez,” Wikipedia, accessed November 5, 2023.
“Max Factor and Hollywood,” FIDM Museum & Library, Inc, accessed November 5, 2023. https://fidmmuseum.org/2017/02/max-factor.html
“Dolores del Río,” Wikipedia, accessed November 5, 2023.
Sara Alpern, “Helena Rubinstein,” Jewish Women’s Archive, 1999, accessed November 5, 2023.
“Gloria Swanson,” Wikipedia, accessed November 5, 2023.
James Bennett, “Helena Rubinstein,” Cosmetics and Skin, April 2023, accessed November 5, 2023.
“Harlem’s Fabulous Nina Mae ‘The Black Garbo’ McKinney,” Harlem World, accessed November 5, 2023.

Susan Ware, “Modern American women, 1920 to the present,” American Women’s History: A Very Short Introduction, March 2015, accessed November 5, 2023.
Earnest McBride, “Evelyn Preer: Oscar Micheaux’s Black Queen of the Silver Screen,” The Jackson Advocate, April 5, 2022, accessed November 5, 2023.
“Clara Bow,” Wikipedia, accessed November 5, 2023.
Nadra Nittle, “Forgotten Black Women of Early Hollywood Take Center Stage at CAAM,” PBS Socal, July 17, 2017, accessed November 5, 2023.
“Colleen Moore: The torch of Flaming Youth,” Recollections, accessed November 5, 2023.
“Joan Crawford,” Wikipedia, accessed November 5, 2023.
Christel Schmidt, “Mary Pickford,” Women Film Pioneers Project: Columbia University Libraries, 2013, accessed November 5, 2023.
Lea Stans, “Colleen Moore, America’s Favorite Flapper,” Silent-ology, March 5, 2018, accessed November 5, 2023.
“Greta Garbo,” Wikipedia, accessed November 5, 2023.
Gerald Jerry Sisser, “Movie Going 1920s,” Hancock Historical Museum, accessed November 5, 2023.
“List of Highest Grossing Films of the 1920s,” Idea Wiki, accessed November 5, 2023.
Tim Dirks, “The History of Film: The 1920s: The Pre-Talkies and Silent Era,” FilmSite, accessed November 5, 2023.
Terry Hoover and Saige Jedele, “Going Hollywood: Movie Fan Magazines,” The Henry Ford Museum of Innovation, February 27, 2014, accessed November 5, 2023.

The Roxy made a night out at the movies a luxurious experience.

The Roxy Theater, one of New York City’s greatest lost palaces,” *New York Tours by Gary*, November 28, 2011, accessed November 8, 2023.

episode transcript

Keep in mind that I edit a bit as I record, so this may not match the audio exactly. And please forgive my typos: there are bound to be some.

It’s 1927 in New York City, and you are standing with your friends outside the Roxy Theater, waiting to see Wings, one of the biggest films of the year. A romance about two WWI pilots competing for the same woman, starring “It Girl” Clara Bow? Yes, please!

It’s your first time at the Roxy, which only just opened. It seats 6,200 people, making it the largest theater in the world. It is one of the many show-stoppingly lavish movie palaces of the period, built by film studios and designed for full orchestras to accompany their silent films. These palaces make the viewing experience a luxurious night out for filmgoers, but not one that’ll break the bank. After you pay your 25 cents for a ticket, you glide into the Roxy’s palatial lobby, which boasts enormous chandeliers, marble columns, and exquisitely furnished salons. Soon, attentive ushers begin leading you to the auditorium, reminding you that there are absolutely no snacks allowed inside the air-conditioned theater. You find your plush red seat and settle in as the lights go down, the projector flickers to life, and the orchestra begins to play.

Going to the movies is one of 1920s America’s favorite pastimes. And we are coming to worship our stars. By 1925, 50 million people are going to the movies every week: that’s about half of the nation’s population. And though theaters, like so much many places in this era, are segregated, going to the movies is one of the few leisure activities that’s popular across all social classes, enjoyed by socialites, bootleggers, and factory workers alike. Most who go to see them are under the age of 35, and most of them are women. We ladies love our films, and the stars who dominate them. The actresses of the era had a huge impact on the American woman’s imaginations, their tastes, their buying habits, even their morals. Hollywood’s actresses, and the character types they play, influence how we express and understand ourselves.

Today, we’re going to dive into this iconic symbol of the 1920s, and the ladies who came to define them. We’ll find out more about the movies of the era, their young female stars, and find out just how they influenced so many. Grab your girlfriends, your fan mag, and don’t forget your ticket…It's movie night! Let’s go traveling.

THE RISE OF FILM

Before we talk about the silent starlets of the 1920s, we’ve got to talk a bit about the history of film itself. No one person invented cinema. But back in 1891, Thomas Edison (of the telegraph and lightbulb) manufactured something called a Kinetograph, or motion picture camera, and the Kinetoscope, a motion picture viewer that allowed a single viewer to watch it. France’s Lumiere brothers were the first to show projected moving pictures to a paying audience in 1895. The popularity of these very short films, and the industry they spawned, grew from there. By the early 1900s, nickelodeons were all the rage. These 15-to-20-minute interconnected film reels, often featuring people dancing, trains, planes, or cars moving at great speeds, vaudeville acts, newsreels, and animated shorts. Just a nickel would buy you an hour’s worth of nickelodeons.

But then a film came along that changed the moving picture game entirely. D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, was about the Ku Klux Klan restoring peace to the South after the Civil War. Unfortunate subject matter aside, this three-hour silent, black-and-white extravaganza was the first real blockbuster movie, and it established many of the baseline features of modern cinematography. Thus, films leading up to the 1920s were usually 90 to 120 minutes long and featured dramatic action, elaborate sets, and a fairly new phenomena: movie stars. The ‘20s saw a number of “firsts” in film: the first western, the first sci-fi film, and the first two-color Technicolor film. But the industry was already undergoing some massive changes. Most films in the early 1920s were silent (accompanied by music played live in the theater). These featured intertitles, or pieces of printed text that appeared on film to indicate setting or dialogue. It was common for audiences to cheer, shout, and hold conversations during films – it was a more rowdy, communal experience. The actresses who really excel in silent movies have to have a commanding physical presence and a whole lot of expression – enough to show the audience what she’s feeling.

Colleen Moore knew how to show as well as tell.

“Colleen Moore in We Moderns, 1925,” *Wikimedia Commons*, accessed November 8, 2023.

But then along came sound films, or “talkies,” which were introduced in 1925. In 1926, Fox added a soundtrack directly onto a strip of film using their MovieTone system, which would become predominant. In 1927, Warner Brothers built the first sound studio, and produced the first feature length talkie and musical, The Jazz Singer. Although it only had about 350 words of dialogue and 6 songs, it became the highest grossing film of the year, and revolutionized the industry. A year later, Walt Disney debuted the first speaking cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Sound films really change our filmgoing experience – audiences are now expected to be quiet so others can hear the dialogue, which makes viewing a more private affair.

By 1927, talkies have become so popular that movie attendance jumps to 100 million Americans a week. Studios and theaters had to be converted to sound at great expense. By the late 1920s, studios often made two versions of films so they could be released at both sound and silent theaters. By 1930, the silent movie had all but disappeared, and some of the era’s biggest movie stars went with them. Although stars like Joan Crawford and Gloria Swanson were able to make the transition to sound, some with heavy accents have a much harder time.

What sorts of movies are we going to see in the 1920s? Most silent films can be classified into types or genres – with instantly recognizable storylines, settings, costumes, and characters. Popular genres include westerns, swashbucklers, historical costume dramas, war films, romances, biblical epics, crime capers, slapstick comedies, and melodramas. The demand for new films is so great that studios are churning out around 800 a year. Most aren’t very good, simply because they are produced so quickly and manufactured in assembly line style. They largely bank on the popularity of the film’s star rather than, say, well-written material. Often, its female star who brings starry-eyed viewers to the theater. They have a kind of sway over audiences, and American culture, than women have before.

WOMEN STEAL THE SPOTLIGHT

In the 1920s, actresses are the beating heart of our movies. There are more famous actresses than there are actors. Female movie stars are often billed ahead of their male counterparts because studios know audiences have really come to see their favorite female star. As one of the era’s most famous, Gloria Swanson, once boasted, “All they had to do was put my name on a marquee and watch the money roll in.” These women are idols to be watched, icons to be worshiped. Actresses have a quasi-religious connection with their audience, who view them as accessible heroines who belong to the public. Men want to be with them, and women want to be them. Shopgirls copy them, and housewives escape through them. “They copied my clothes,” Colleen Moore once said. “No longer did a girl have to be beautiful to be sought after. Any plain Jane could become a flapper. No wonder they grabbed me to their hearts and made me their movie idol.” They teach American women how to behave, how to dress, how to flirt, how to style their hair, and even how to kiss. “No wonder the girls of older days before the movies were so modest and bashful,” one college gal says. “They never saw Clara Bow…I think the movies have a great deal to do with the present day so-called ‘wildness’. If we didn’t see such examples in the movies, where would we get the idea of being ‘hot?’ We wouldn’t.”

These women had a kind of power, financial success, and independence that few women can achieve in the 1920s. But stardom also comes with a strict set of rules and expectations, very little privacy, and a kind of pressure that proves deadly for some.

THE HOLLYWOOD MACHINE

But before we meet some of our movie starlets, let’s take a look at the Hollywood studio machine. There are over 20 studios by the end of the decade, although the Big 5 (MGM, Paramount, RKO, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Brothers) hold 70% of the national box office profits. Although Paramount is on the East Coast, most of the big studios are in California; 4 out of 5 films worldwide are coming out of Hollywood. And while the movie industry becomes famously exploitative of its women, as well as a patriarchal sausage fest, in the beginning, it’s a place where women compete on roughly equal terms with the men. They direct, produce, and write scripts, as well as acting. Between one-third and fully half of early screenwriters were women. Elinor Glyn, best-selling author of the 1910s and ‘20s, was offered good money to come to Hollywood and write what were called “scenarios” for the big screen. In 1920, she was making $10,000 a picture, and she directed some of those films herself.

In the 1920s, Hollywood’s film industry is infamous for scandal – mysterious murders, grisly suicides, sordid affairs, rape cases, and drug habits. In fact, when a young Clara Bow told her mother she was going to Hollywood to become a movie star, her mother said, “You’re goin’ straight to hell. I’d rather see ya dead.” Hollywood’s reputation gets so bad for public relations that in 1922, the studios establish a self-imposed censorship board, called the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. This group will be responsible for the Hays Code in the 1930s, which regulates the content of every film in America and bans everything from interracial dating to lustful kissing on screen.

For our 1920s film stars, though, this censorship board affects them most deeply in the form of their studio contracts. Every film star’s contract had a morals clause, which says that a star’s private conduct can’t bring her public disrepute or offend the public’s sense of decency. It allows studios total control of every aspect of their star’s lives. As the head of publicity at MGM remembers, “We told stars what they could say, and they did what we said because they knew we knew best.”

Movies are about selling a lifestyle - a glamor. “All the adventure, all the romance, all the excitement you lack in your daily life are in Pictures,” one 1920s advertisement shouted. “They take you completely out of yourself into a wonderful new world…out of the cage of everyday existence.” Studios aren’t afraid to completely reinvent their stars. In fact, they often give them new names and make up their bios wholesale. Take Theda Bara, the screen siren who many refer to as The Vamp. Her studio told the public that this sex icon is a man-eating seductress from Arabia, who is often carried around by Nubian footmen. A powerful image, certainly, but complete fabrication. She was from Cincinnati, and happily married, and didn’t eat any men…that we know of. As the studios shape these star personas, the create a fantasy of female glamour and empowerment that defines what female stardom—and by extension, female identity—might mean.

Theda Bara, posing as Cleopatra, was the 1910s ultimate bad girl.

A promotion shot from the silent film “Cleopatra” in 1917. Accessed from Wikimedia Commons on February 2, 2024.

The stars’ private lives are intertwined with their public personas, so they have to think carefully about their choices. Mary Pickford, though universally adored, found herself trapped in a horrible marriage partially because she worried the scandal of a divorce would ruin her image. Studio bosses cover up affairs with shotgun weddings, arrange cover up romances for homosexual stars, and schedule abortions in Tijuana and tell the press it was an appendectomy. Controlling their star’s public images is all part of the Hollywood game…and its stars mostly have no choice but to play it.

Image control includes policing actresses’ bodies. Menstrual periods are tracked on a posted chart, wisdom teeth are pulled to get the “sunken cheeks” look, and breasts are lifted with surgical tape. A starlet has to look the part both on and off the screen. As the savvy Joan Crawford told one interviewer, “If you're going to be a star, you have to look like a star, and I never go out unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star. If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.”

Most actresses have weight limits written into their contracts; one studio reserves the right to terminate a contract if an artist ever exceeds 130 pounds. The magazines report that Theda Bara eats nothing but two baked potatoes a day with milk, and that Gloria Swanson subsists solely on a diet of herbal tea, seaweed, and organically grown vegetables. Their fans follow suit, hoping to look as thin as their favorite stars. The Hollywood 18 Day Diet, which promises to help you lose a pound a day, becomes popular. It seems to involve eating little more than toast, citrus fruit, and eggs to the tune of 500 calories a day. “Diet!” wrote Photoplay magazine of the slimimng craze. “It has put one world famous star in her grave, has caused the illness of any other, has wrecked careers and has become, laughably through its practice in Hollywood, the Great American Menace!” And it creates a kind of pressure for both stars and their fans that leads to serious medical trouble. In 1928, at just 18 years old, actress Molly O’Day was threatened with the loss of her contract if she couldn’t fit into the dress size the studio chose for her. In desperation, she turned to doctors who promised an operation “for the removal of surplus fat” at Los Angeles’ Queen of Angels Hospital. Hollywood’s first weight loss surgery was performed as a desperate last resort.

An article about Hollywood dieting from Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1929), accessed from Archive.org on February 2, 2024.

We know that these actresses have some serious star power. So why put up with such rigid restrictions? Mostly because they have no choice. The studios have all the power, thanks to the standard 7-year contract they invented. While stars are locked in for the long haul, those contracts allow studios a chance every six months to either terminate the relationship or renew it for an increased salary. Stars are financially rewarded if they behave.

Unsurprisingly, this means that actresses are often exploited, especially if they are just starting out. Clara Bow’s agent pays her $750 a week, and then loans her out to studios for over $3,000 a week, keeping the profits for himself. He often double books her, so much so that she appears in 14 movies in 12 months. She works from 6 am to midnight, 6 days a week, and eventually collapses from exhaustion. “There was no other occupation in the world,” film star Louise Brooks remembered, “that so closely resembled enslavement as the career of a film star.” Despite such conditions, actresses like Clara make careers for themselves, and their contributions were recognized accordingly. The first Academy Awards take place in 1929, and in 1927, 10 stars are invited to place their hands in wet cement outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theater for the first time, including Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, and Mary Pickford.

it takes a certain type

Image control is happening on screen, too. Actresses of the 1920s embody a narrow band of stereotypical roles that studios continue to offer them. Just as there are certain genres or “types” of movies, studios decide there are certain “types” of women as well. These can be separated into roughly two categories: let’s call them the Virgin and the Whore. We have the sweet-as-pie heroine you can’t help but root for: the rural sweetheart, the cheerful tomboy, the virginal martyr, the doting wife, the loving mother. And then we have the wilder end of the spectrum: the flapper, the vamp, the exotic beauty, the she-devil, and the man-eating seductress. Most actresses are cast in the same roles over and over, and their personalities and offscreen lives often dictate the roles they play. The glamorous Pola Negri is almost always cast as the exotic beauty, while the fun-loving Colleen Moore is almost always a flapper. A few stars were given the opportunity to showcase their range, or eventually become so powerful that they can choose their own roles. For the most part, though, they are relegated to a specific type, forced to make “formula” films that have them playing the same woman.

Hollywood isn’t interested in making films about smart, fierce, ambitious women in the 1920s. That goes against prevailing notions about women’s “proper” roles. Studios think that people are unlikely to pay to see a film that doesn’t end with a wild girl being tamed by marriage. It’s all well and good for a flapper to get up to mischief on screen, so long as she ends up a wife. Movie heroines in the 1920s are not allowed to sacrifice love for their career. They can pursue a career, but only if, by the end, it takes a backseat to a happily ever after with their new husband. Despite the free-wheeling image of the flapper in popular culture, Victorian values and the triumph of “conventional” virtue prevails in the silent films of the 1920s. Even the scandalous onscreen vamps and flappers never really challenge the status quo. They simply give it a little sex appeal. At their very wildest, actresses like Clara Bow will pose in satin and flirt with a married man onscreen, but by the time the credits roll, they’ve always been redeemed by an appropriate beau offering his hand in marriage. Or, in films like The Careless Woman, Foolish Wives, The Lure of the Night Club, or Wickedness Preferred, women aren’t the heroines at all, but the villains. They commit infidelity, larceny, and even murder, and all meet with horrible ends. These women serve as cautionary tales and a warning: Good girls don’t do such things. They get married.

Ironically, considering the messages their onscreen personas are sending, these actresses consistently chose careers over marriage. They are unapologetically ambitious career women who embrace fame, money, power, and sex. As Joan Crawford said, “You have to be self-reliant and strong to survive in this town. Otherwise you will be destroyed.” Many of these silent film stars are known for being cunning businesswomen with too many notches on their bedposts to bother counting, and they relish it. Let’s meet some of these women – the actresses whose faces are on every bedroom wall and theater screen in the 1920s.

big stars, big drama

Like nearly all of the silent film stars of the era, Mary Pickford was born into a poor family, and became an actress through sheer force of will. “My career was planned, there was never anything accidental about it. It was planned, it was painful, it was purposeful.” Born Gladys Marie Smith, she made her stage debut at 6 years old to help support her family. At the age of 12, she approached a theater producer and introduced herself by saying, “I am an actress, but I want to become a good one.” Impressed, the producer changed her name to Mary Pickford and cast her in a lead role, where she soon caught the eye of famed film director, D.W. Griffith. After Mary’s first day on set, Griffith was so pleased with her that she was able to negotiate a pay raise, doubling her salary. She would appear in over 50 films in 1909 alone.

Mary Pickford knew how to work it behind the camera as well as in front of it.

“Mary Pickford, circa 1916,” *Wikimedia Commons*, accessed November 8, 2023

By 1912, Mary was the first bonafide movie star, having made a name for herself by playing child-like characters on screen… the virginal, rural sweetheart archetype was her bread and butter. Her signature blonde ringlets made her easy to recognize, and audiences adored her in her cheerful, self-reliant, underdog roles, like that of Judy, the spunky orphan inDaddy Long Legs. Fans quickly dubbed Mary “America’s Sweetheart,” and by 1916 she was the first millionaire film star. By the 1920s, Mary was the undisputed Queen of Hollywood. She had already successfully negotiated a record-breaking salary of $10,000 a week, but now she is determined to use her power to gain more control over her films. She joins the two biggest male film stars of the day, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, and actress Lilian Gish to create the independent production company, United Artists, a move designed to stop studio exploitation and give actors more money, control, and, as Mary said herself, “Freedom. It’s a heady wine, and having tasted it, you find it impossible to go back to working for someone else.”

She would soon set up the Mary Pickford production company as well, allowing her to copyright all of her productions, guaranteeing her 50% of the profits, a massive salary, and full creative control of her films. It also allows her to broaden her range. She proves that she can switch effortlessly from comedies to dramas, from tomboy child to elegant lady. She often challenges herself by playing multiple roles in the same film. Uniquely for the era, she can choose her own scripts, hire her own costars, and act as her own producer and director. The founder of Paramount remarked, “Mary had her hand in everything, writing scripts, arguing with directors, making suggestions to other players… and her ideas were helpful,” with her cameraman adding, “She knew everything there was to know about motion pictures.”

Mary isn’t the industry’s only savvy businesswoman. Gloria Swanson became a star at Paramount for a string of successful romance films, in which she often plays the temptress. She brings in so much money for the studio that, in 1923, she negotiates a new contract that gives her an astronomical $6,500 per week. Her image as of a glamorous fashion icon: her extravagant headdresses of peacock feathers are often as important as the movie’s plot is. Her hairstyles, hat-styles, and skirt lengths inspire millions of women to follow her lead. In 1925, she joined United Artists as one of the film industry's pioneering women filmmakers, and creates her own company, Gloria Productions. And at the first annual Academy Awards, Gloria receives the Best Actress nomination for her 1928 film, Sadie Thompson, which she produces herself.

A studio promotional image of Gloria Swanson from her film Indiscreet (1931).

Accessed from Wikimedia Commons on February 2, 2024.

Gloria was unapologetic about her ambition. “I have decided that when I am a star, I will be every inch and every moment a star.” In a 1922 spread about Gloria, one magazine writer wrote, “Either you are fascinated by her… or you don’t like her at all.” Unlike Mary, who is universally adored, Gloria is divisive…and that’s why many women love her. She is a glamorous diva, gives outrageous quotes to fan magazines, and isn’t afraid to make a bold claim. She once told Motion Picture magazine, “I not only believe in divorce, but I sometimes think that I don’t believe in marriage at all…After all, marriage is just a game. The more elastic the rules, the less temptation there is for cheating. I think that divorce should be made more easy, instead of more difficult.” Mary Pickford may have been the first woman to make a million dollars in Hollywood, but Gloria Swanson is the first one to do the same and spend it loudly. In 1924, Photoplay magazine reports that Gloria spent $25,000 that year on furs, $50,000 on gowns, and $10,000 on lingerie – all this at a time when the average annual income was around $3,500. “In those days they wanted us to live like kings and queens…” she remembered of the studios, “so we did. And why not? We were in love with life. We were making more money than we ever dreamed existed, and there was no reason to believe that it would ever stop.”

Pola Negri, too, is something of a character, and like Gloria, she is often typecast in the exotic beauty role. Born Barbara Apolonia Chalupiec in Lipno, Poland, she works hard to make it into the Imperial Academy of Ballet, then eventually made the transition to film. Her first, Slave to Her Senses, in 1914, really capitalized on her sexuality and beauty. Later films like In Passion, One Arabian Night, and Gypsy Blood continue the trend. Her fans love to read tales of her extravagant and glamorous lifestyle. She has a white Rolls Royce upholstered in white velvet and dresses her chauffeur in an all-white uniform. She keeps a pet tiger on a leash and parades him down Sunset Boulevard, wrapped in chinchilla and draped in jewels. She even starts the fad for painting your toenails fire engine red. But she also makes staying single seem glamorous. “I do not believe in marriage,” she said. “It is not for me. I am independent. Freedom comes before anything.” And that lifestyle, that choice, was a radical one to the women who loved to come to her movies.

Poa Negri in a rather spicy promotional image with Rod La Rocque for *Forbidden Paradise* (1924)

Accessed from Wikimedia Commons on February 2, 2024

But not everyone is willing to make a show of their private lives to keep their audiences coming. Take Greta Garbo, whose beauty is so otherworldly that she is often cast as the exotic beauty and the temptress. In 1926, she starred in a film called The Temptress, after which she complained, “I do not want to be a silly temptress. I cannot see any sense in getting dressed up and doing nothing but tempting men in pictures.” Garbo made her name in the Swedish film industry before catching the eye of MGM, who brings her to Hollywood in 1925. It was clear right away that Garbo had something special, with one MGM employee writing, “I’ve been watching that new girl work. I don’t know what it is that she has but I do know that everyone on the lot who can get away from whatever he is supposed to be doing goes to watch her.”

Part of Garbo’s mystique is her privacy. Although most actresses comply with their studio’s incessant publicity requests, Garbo avoids industry functions and fan mags. She often spends time alone, wears men’s clothes, never marries, rarely gives interviews, and never signs autographs. Part of the reason why, no doubt, is that she’s bisexual at a time when that’s a difficult thing to be. We now know that she had an affair with Louise Brooks and a long-time romance with Mercedes de Acosta. Garbo’s star power and sheer courage allow her to negotiate for that privacy. After a gruelling 4-month filming schedule and the death of her sister, she refuses to make another film, and despite the fact that MGM threatens to deport her. Garbo stays home, hires a lawyer, and disappears for 6 months, only returning to work after she wins a larger salary, the right to veto roles, and was no longer expected to do interviews or endorse products.

Greta Garbo wasn’t interested in talking to you about her love life. Or anything, really.

Garbo in *Flesh and the Devil* (1926) with John Gilbert. Accessed on February 2, 2024.

The exotic beauty as temptress is one popular female archetype, but there is also a darker sort of seductress called the Vamp. The term “vamp” first originated with Theda Bara, who made a career playing femme fatale roles. Between 1915 and 1919, she starred in 40 films with titles like Sin, Destruction, The Serpent, and Cleopatra, in which she played wicked sex goddess types who lured men to their ruin. Her studio, Fox, leaned into the image, telling fan magazines that Theda Bara was an anagram for Arab Death, and that she was the daughter of a French artist and his Arabian mistress (which does sound sexier than saying she was born in Cincinnati.) Fox continually billed her as the “wickedest woman in the world,” and many local boards condemned her films for being too “scandalous.”

By the 1920s, the vamp mantle is being passed to two new starlets: Louise Brooks and Clara Bow. They become famous playing wild, sensual seductresses, often in movies that are all about the flapper. Louise got her start as a semi-nude dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies; when she was 18, she signed with Paramount and made a number of films, but her role in Pandora’s Box made her a star. Part of her vamp appeal is her scandalous personal life: she is known for taking both male and female lovers, and in 1925, she sues a photographer to prevent his publishing some racy nude photos. Louise’s acting isn’t nearly as influential as her look, though – her sleek black bob causes a massive sensation. After Photo Play magazine wrote, “She is so very Manhattan. Very young. Exquisitely hard-boiled. Her black eyes and sleek black hair are as brilliant as Chinese lacquer,” thousands of women run to the salon to ask for the “Louise.”

Everyone wanted the Louise haircut. She was the Jennifer Aniston of the 1920s.

Accessed from Wikimedia Commons on February 2, 2024.

Clara Bow grew up extremely poor in Brooklyn, dropping out of school in 1921 to pursue her dreams of being a star. She had a hard time at first, fielding all sort of rejection. As she wrote later, “there was always something. I was too young, or too little, or too fat. Usually I was too fat.” In 1922, she sent her picture into Brewster magazine’s national Fame and Fortune acting contest. She nailed several screen tests, won the contest, and was sent off to Hollywood. She spent several years being loaned out to studios to play smaller roles, but in 1926, Paramount cast her as the lead in the film, Mantrap. The film was a smash hit, with one critic writing, “Clara Bow! And how! What a mantrap she is! And how this picture is going to make her!.” Audiences fell in love with Bow’s vibrant energy, and Paramount got to work capitalizing on her new fame. In the next two years, she’d star in 14 movies, all of which were formula films whose plots revolved around Clara being Clara. Audiences came to see her be herself, so she and her characters were often interchangeable.

The characters Clara played were usually wild, sexy flappers, and she embodied the sexual freedom of the modern new woman both on screen and in her personal life. She was a bit of an outcast in Hollywood, with her heavy accent and vulgar vocabulary. She told one magazine columnist, “Marriage ain’t woman’s only job no more. A girl who’s worked hard and earned her place ain’t gonna be satisfied as a wife. I know this… I wouldn’t give up my work for marriage. I think a modern girl’s capable of keepin’ a job and a husband.” Clara was well known for her many public affairs - “The more I see of men, the more I like dogs,” she quipped – her drunken exploits, and her reckless driving. She personified what the New York Times would later call, “the giddier aspects of an unreal era, the Roaring Twenties.”

Clara Bow became a star in Mantrap, but she became “the movie star of all movie stars” in 1927 thanks to her role as Betty Lou in the film, It. It had begun as a novel about sex appeal by British screenwriter Elinor Glyn. She took it to Paramount, who agreed to make It a film, but only in exchange for Elinor labeling their new star, Clara Bow, as the It Girl. Elinor agreed (in exchange for $50,000), and Paramount’s publicity department were thrilled their star would have such a catchy new nickname. Elinor soon embarked on a lecture tour and announced, “Of all the lovely young ladies I’ve met in Hollywood, Clara Bow has ‘It.’ ‘It’ is an inner magic, an animal magnetism.” When the film eventually premiered, opening week grosses doubled that of every other movie in every city across America except Manhattan. It was a box office smash hit, with one Variety critic writing, “This Bow girl certainly has that certain It for which the picture is named, and she just runs away with the film.”

It starred Clara as Betty Lou, a salesgirl who lusts after her rich boss, the owner of the department store in which she works. Betty sells lingerie, but throughout the film, she proves even more adept at selling herself, aggressively pursuing her boss, and eventually marrying him. How did she manage to snag such a wealthy catch? By having “it” of course! In the film’s opening title cards, the audience learns that “it” is: “that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With IT you win all men if you are a woman– and all women if you are a man. IT can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction… IT is that peculiar quality which some persons possess, which attracts the opposite sex. The possession of IT must be absolutely unself conscious and must have that magnetic “sex appeal” that is irresistible.” And Clara was irresistible. By 1928, she recieved 8,000 fan letters per week, more than double any other Paramount star. Many were simply addressed to the It Girl. Budd Schulberg remembered, “Clara Bow became not just a top box-office star but a national institution…Millions of followers wore their hair like Clara's and pouted like Clara, and danced and smoked and laughed and necked like Clara.”

Clara Bow had sex appeal, and the film It presented a world in which it was acceptable for women to be fully in control of their own sexuality. In fact, rather than being punished for her sexually forward behavior, Betty Lou is rewarded for it, landing the wealthy husband by the end of the film. In fact, many of Clara’s films, like Mantrap, It, or Get Your Man, involved her playing sexually independent characters taking on aggressive roles in romantic courtship, turning society’s norms upside down. On screen, Clara unapologetically acted out female sexual agency and they loved her for it. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “She was the girl of the year, the ‘It’ girl, the girl for whose services every studio was in violent competition. This girl was the real thing, someone to stir every pulse in the nation.”

Having “It” made Clara one of the first sex symbols in America. Ironically, the It Girl didn’t even like the idea of “it,” and she hated the pretentious Elinor Glyn. When Elinor told Clara to stop chewing gum and swearing, Clara refused and took to calling her “that shithead.” When asked, “Miss Bow, when you add it all up, what is ‘It’?” she replied, “I ain’t real sure.” And yet, her fame only made Paramount work her harder, and the pressure mounted for Clara to live up to her new sex symbol status. Buddy Rogers wrote, “She tried to be vivacious, she tried to be fascinating, she tried to be clever, and she just worked her body and mind and soul to death.” Clara wearily told one interviewer, “a sex symbol is always a heavy load to carry, especially when one is very hurt, tired, and bewildered.”

While Louise and Clara play more sexualized flappers, Colleen Moore and Joan Crawford find fame by playing a more wholesome, free-spirited variety. Although Joan is now considered the quintessential flapper, she only breaks out in 1928’s Our Dancing Daughters. For most of the 1920s, it’s Colleen Moore, with her Dutch-boy style bob, who is considered the epitome of flapperdom. Colleen’s big break came as a flapper in 1923’s Flaming Youth. F. Scott Fitzgerald, ever humble, would later boast in Motion Picture magazine, “I was the spark that lit up Flaming Youth, Colleen Moore was the torch. What little things we are to have caused all that trouble.” Colleen stars in many flapper films, all of which feature her as a spunky working girl who appears modern but who always keeps herself just on the right side of virtuous. When asked to describe her flapper characters, Colleen said, “She likes her freedom, and she likes to be a bit daring, and snap her cunning, manicured little fingers in the face of the world; but fundamentally, she is the same sort of girl as my grand-mamma was when she was young!”

diversity, or lack thereof

The majority of silent film stars in the ‘20s are white; when someone of another race is needed in a movie, it’s not uncommon for a white actor to slap on black or yellow face. A few women of color do make it in Hollywood. Sadly, most are reduced to playing roles defined wholly by racist stereotypes.

Dolores del Río was born to an aristocratic Mexican family. When her mother told her, “No daughter from a good family ever became an actress,” Dolores replied, “Very well then. I will be the first.” After her 1925 debut, Dolores becomes a leading lady and is often billed in sexualized, exotic lover roles, which frustrates her. But she considered one of the most beautiful stars of the era, with playwright George Bernard Shaw writing, “the two most beautiful things in the world are the Taj Mahal and Dolores del Río.” Dolores is friends with Frida Kahlo and Greta Garbo, has an affair with Orson Welles, and goes on to become one of the most important figures in Mexican cinema. Lupe Vélez hails from Mexico, and she also finds fame playing stereotypically exotic, hot-tempered women. Her wild unpredictably is part of what makes her so beloved. As one studio exec once said of her, “when she puckers up her lips, it’s impossible to tell if she is going to kiss you, bite you, or spit on you!” Her colorful offscreen life is just as wild, earning her the nickname “the Mexican Spitfire.” She has high-profile affairs with Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, and Gary Cooper. Her relationship with Cooper is quite famously rocky (he required stitches after an incident in which she chased him around with a knife), and it eventually got so bad that he lost 45 pounds and his studio sent on a vacation. Whilst he was boarding the train, Velez showed up and shot at him. Poor Cooper definitely needed a vacation after that.

Dolores del Río didn’t do anything by halves.

Accessed from Wikimedia Commons on February 2, 2024.

Whilst Latina actresses of the 1920s are relegated to playing exotic lover roles, black women are mostly cast as mammies, maids, or domestics. Few big movies are interracial, and studios don’t like to hire people of color. Nonetheless, there are independent black filmmakers creating movies for black audiences in the ‘20s, and their films are often successful, despite not having nationwide releases. Evelyn Preer is the leading lady in 10 such films by noted black director Oscar Micheaux. Her work eventually catches Paramount’s interest, and Evelyn appears in three of their films. Then she walks out of her contract, as she refuses to perform in blackface, or act in roles that she felt demeaned her race. Nina Mae McKinney also ends up leaving Hollywood due to a lack of opportunities for black actresses. Nina was first discovered by white Hollywood director King Vidor while performing in a chorus line. King had decided to make the first mainstream studio film with an all-black cast, and he hired Nina to be his leading lady. Starring in the 1929 sound film, Hallelujah!, Nina became the first black actress to hold the leading role in a mainstream film, and the first black performer to sign a long-term contract with MGM. Hallelujah! is a success, and yet Nina won’t be cast in any other major roles. She’s too beautiful to play a maid, they decide, but they also can’t cast her as a glamorous leading lady, because interracial romances are banned under the Hays Code. Instead, Nina goes to Europe to perform in cabarets and finds so much success there that she never comes back.

Anna May Wong didn’t always love the roles she was asked to play, but she made a splash regardless.

Publicity photo of Anna May Wong from *Stars of the Photoplay*, 1930. Accessed from Wikimedia Commons on February 2, 2024.

And then there’s Anna May Wong. Born in Los Angeles to first-generation Chinese American parents, she grew up loving the movies and using them as a way to escape the racist bullying she often faced. She becomes the first Chinese American woman to feature in the movies, and a fashion icon. But she, like so many other non-white women in the films in the ‘20s, grew frustrated by the stereotypical and sometimes demeaning roles the studios force her to play.

THE 1920s GOSSIP RAG

The public’s hunger to find out more about their favorite stars inspires the first celebrity gossip mags. Magazines like Photo Play, Picture Play, Motion Picture, and Screenland are filled with stories and photos of stars, making fans feel like they really “know” them. They offer film reviews, answer questions about how movies are made, and of course share gossip about stars’ love lives. They endlessly debate and poll their readers about which actor is the most handsome or which actress is the most fashionable. No in-depth expose or interview is too personal. Reporters ask female stars a host of what they must find inane questions. “They wanted to know if I liked tall men or short men,” Gloria Swanson complained. “How often I ate dessert, what my favorite breed of dog was, if I dyed my hair, what my favorite color was, if I got depressed on rainy days, what my favorite flower was, if I considered myself stuck up, if I thought So-and-so was a nice dressed, if I ever obeyed silly impulses.”

Most issues come with full-page photographs of their cover star, designed to be cut out and hung on the wall. They include all the intimate details about movie stars that fans clamor for: what color their eyes are, what perfume they wear, and who they’re dating. Much of it is happily provided by the studio’s publicity department. These details make the stars seem more real, but it also solidifies them as market commodities – their celebrity permanently strips them of any semblance of a private life. Indeed, reading movie magazines enables fans to get as close as possible to their onscreen role models. In fact, some magazines offered advice columns, penned by the stars themselves, and give fans studio addresses so that they could send their favorite actress a letter or three.

The readers of these magazines, many of which have a circulation of at least half a million, are mainly white, unmarried teenage girls from the working and middle classes. Their obsession with movies and their stars become something of a nationwide joke. Much like our culture poked fun at the Twilight-loving teenage girl and her obsessive fandom, people in the 1920s complain about the budding flapper girls who they think are way too invested in film. These girls scream with delight in the theaters, bobbed their hair to look like Louise Brooks, spent their allowance on short skirts to look like Colleen Moore, and get grounded for staying out too late to see the latest Garbo film. Nobody knows the dark side of fandom better than Mary Pickford. When she marries Douglas Fairbanks, the ultimate celebrity couple is mobbed on their honeymoon. Mary is bodily pulled out of their open car, and Douglas ends up gallantly carrying his new wife on his shoulders, so she won’t be trampled.

Table of Contents for the January 1927 issue of Photoplay magazine, featuring reviews of Hotel Imperial and Midnight Lovers, photos of Clara Bow and John Gilbert, the winners of the latest contest and an article on “screen sirens.”

“Photoplay Magazine, vol. XXX1, no. 2” *Internet Archive,* January 1927, accessed November 8, 2023.

Studios actively encourage audiences’ participation in fandom as a way for young women to interact with their famous role models. They’re the ones who select the name Joan Crawford for Lucille LeSeuer in Movie Weekly’s “Name the Star” contest. They see films as a way to express agency, independence, and individuality, and they enjoy seeing film stars act out some of their fantasies on screen. They, too, want to live adventurous, romantic lives. Movies help the 1920s teenage girl discover her herself and sexuality, as they imagine themselves in situations where they aren’t just housekeepers or mothers. The magazines promised that you, too, could be like Clara Bow, if you dressed like this, and cut your hair like that.

Most significantly, though, these magazines also ran contests like, “win a tour to a movie studio,” or even, “become the next movie star.” Film stars are special, but you can be one, too. After all, a young Clara Bow had become a star by entering a magazine acting contest. She is a symbol of possibility, and a reminder that your Hollywood dream might come true one day. Thousands of girls write into movie magazines, recognizing the film industry as a place to gain financial independence and fame. One girl wrote eagerly to Photo Play, “Please send me full particulars as to how to become a moving picture star. I am a young girl of sixteen years of age and am greatly interested in being a star. Do you think there is any chance for me?”

MODELING THE STARS

Silent film stars have a huge impact on the beauty industry in America.. Cosmetics, which were once considered scandalous, have become a more affordable indulgence, and our movie stars are making us covet them in a whole new way. Film stars are the ultimate expression of modern womanhood; if they’re wearing makeup, then we can too, Women want Clara’s pouty bow shaped lips, Joan’s expressive eyebrows, and Gloria’s sultry, dark eyes. Advertisers know this and exploit it, with one Pond’s ad reading, "Actresses and dancers, whose skin must always be at its loveliest… get from Pond's Vanishing Cream just the effect they have always wanted.”

Clara Bow’s makeup look inspired a generation of flappers to get their drama on.

“Clara Bow with a compact, 1928,” The History of the Flapper, Part 2, The Smithsonian Magazine, February 7, 2013, accessed November 8, 2023.

Advertisers in the 1920s often use actress testimonials to convince women that they, too, can look just like their favorite stars, often implying that part of the endorser’s fame, beauty, and wealth is linked in some way to the product being offered. Full-page ads in Photo Play, Vogue, or Ladies Home Journal are too good of a promotional opportunity for actresses to pass up. So Mary Pickford became the face of Pompeian beauty products, and Gloria Swanson advertises Maybelline mascara. By 1925, we’re spending approximately 6 million dollars a day on beauty products. “Women are not going without cosmetics, even if it takes the last spare change from their pocketbook to buy,” one alarmed magazine article reported. Indeed, all you need is a dime to buy a tube of mascara; a dime and you can look like Gloria Swanson too!

The increased desire for cosmetics is about the stars, but also their massive advertising campaigns, many of which argue that women have an obligation to make themselves as beautiful as possible. Beauty mogul Helena Rubinstein is firmly in this camp, writing, “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.” Helena and her fierce rival, Elizabeth Arden, often boast of their Hollywood clientele. Rubinstein, who works with Theda Bara and Pola Negri, declares smugly, “These celebrated women have discovered the truism that although it is a good policy to be as beautiful as you can, it is the better policy to be more beautiful than you are. They take their beauty troubles to the woman who knows, and they have come to me.”

Unfortunately for Helena, many stars are also going to Hollywood makeup artist Max Factor. In the early years of film, actors applied their own cosmetics, usually theater greasepaint, which didn’t last long or look very good under the harsh lights of a film set. Max Factor revolutionized movie makeup in 1914 with his Supreme Greasepaint, a flexible formula that came in 12 shades and an easy tube applicator. Then, he released Color Harmony face powder, in a variety of shades designed to suit certain combinations of hair colors and skin tones. By the 1920s, Factor’s products are widely used on film sets, and stars like Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, and Clara Bow are all devoted clients. He is credited with creating Clara’s bow shaped lip and Joan Crawford’s smeared, overdrawn lip look.

*Gloria Swanson in a Maybelline ad in Screenland magazine, circa 1919.*

“Gloria Swanson, Cosmetics Ad,” *Wikimedia Commons*, November 1919, accessed November 8, 2023.

In 1920, Max introduced Society Makeup, a cosmetics line intended for everyday use, to be sold to the general public. Before 1920, most women referred to beauty products as cosmetics, but Max popularized the term “makeup,” based on the idea of making up one’s face. Max leans into his Hollywood background, securing an arrangement with studios that required stars to endorse Max Factor’s products in testimonials. His first ads were not in women’s magazines, but movie magazines, and women would order his products thinking, “I can have Max Factor delivered from Hollywood right to my front door step in Kansas!” At movie matinees, Max Factor salespeople would set up beauty counters in theater lobbies. They’d make up women, raffle cosmetics kits, and offer personal beauty recommendations tailored to the individual gal. Unsurprisingly, Factor’s makeup becomes wildly popular. If you want to look like a film star, Max Factor is your brand.

CONCLUSION

These leading ladies often had fame, riches, and a sort of glamor few 1920s gals could dream of. But it all came with unimaginable pressures: To always look and embody perfection. To always ensure they meet the expectations of their fans. To ensure they stay on the right side of their studios, despite the frustrations and limitations they put on their actresses. For some stars, that pressure becomes more than they can bear. And yet they become some of the most recognizable icons of the 1920s: the women the average girl is most likely to adore, to idolize, to want to copy. They were buying tickets to watch their favorite actresses, buying fan magazines to read about their favorite actresses, and buying makeup to look like their favorite actresses. Meanwhile, these film stars were navigating a cutthroat industry, forging careers by playing archetypal characters, and wielding their fame to gain sexual and financial freedoms their fans could only imagine for themselves.

credits

All music (other than the theme song and the intro music, which features the intro music from the 1927 film Wings) in this episode of the Ted Lewis Collection, which includes jazz music from the 1920s and 1930s, accessible via Archive.org.

Screen Queens: Movies of the 1920s and the Women Who Made Them Sparkle