Film Actresses from Alabama before 1960 (1): Lois Wilson

One of the earliest actresses from Alabama to find success in Hollywood, Lois Wilson is probably unknown to most state residents today. Although born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on June 28, 1894, her family soon moved to Birmingham where she grew up. 

We can find some interesting information about the family in the 1910 U.S. Census. Her father is A.K. Wilson, a Canadian native. Her mother Constance was born in Pennsylvania. Also listed are three other daughters, all younger than Lois, and grandfather William Wilson. The family lived in the city's 15th Ward. 

She graduated from Alabama Normal College in Livingston, which is now the University of West Alabama. Apparently Wilson just missed the era of famed educator and reformer Julia Tutwiler, who directed the school from 1881 until 1910.

By 1915 Wilson was teaching school. We can assume her ambitions ran beyond that; she entered a Miss Birmingham contest sponsored by the Birmingham News and Universal Pictures. By winning she received a trip to Hollywood for an audition. After a brief period in Chicago, she won her first film role--a small part in a short, The Palace of Dust. She made four other films in 1915 alone. By the time she more or less retired from the movies in 1941, Wilson had acted in more than 100 silent and sound motion pictures.

Wilson appeared with various established or up-and-coming film stars of the silent and early sound eras: Pola Negri in Bella Donna [1923], Rudolph Valentino and Bebe Daniels in Monsieur Beaucaire [1924], Louise Brooks in The Show Off [1926], Bette Davis in Seed, Davis' second film [1931] and Tom Mix in Rider of Death Valley [1932].

She worked with Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova in The Dumb Girl of Portici in 1916. Wilson played heroine Molly Wingate in one of the most popular westerns of the silent era, The Covered Wagon [1923]. In that same year she appeared in Hollywood, one of the earliest films using cameos by a parade of stars--in this case ones such as Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks, Noah Beery, Mary Astor, William S. Hart and Alan Hale. She played Shirley Temple's mother in Bright Eyes [1934].

In 1922 Wilson was in the first group of WAMPAS Baby Stars of actresses expected to be major stars. That campaign was a promotional effort by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers and ran annually until 1934.

In 1926 she played Daisy Buchanan in the first film version of The Great Gatsby released just a year after the novel was published. Like so many silent films, this one has not survived but a one-minute trailer does exist. Thus we have an Alabama actress playing a character based on Alabama native Zelda Fitzgerald. 

Wilson made other films with Alabama connections. In 1921 she played the title character in Miss Lulu Bett; her male co-star in the film was Milton Sills. You can read a long review of the film by Fritzi Kramer here. A few years later Sills would star in Men of Steel, a picture filmed mostly in Birmingham. In 1922 she appeared in Manslaughter with Thomas Meighan. Two years later Meighan would be in the Birmingham area to film Coming Thru. 

After 1941 Wilson made only one more movie, The Girl from Jones Beach in 1949. The comedy starred Ronald Reagan and Virginia Mayo; Wilson played the mother of Mayo's character. She did not completely retire from acting, however. She had a couple of roles in Broadway productions and did network television work on the soap operas The Guiding Light and The Secret Storm.  

Wilson was a good friend of silent film star Gloria Swanson and made an appearance on the 1957 episode of the television series This Is Your Life when it profiled Swanson. In 1950 Swanson had played former silent star Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd., one of the great films about Hollywood. 

Wilson died at 93 on March 3, 1988, in Riverside Hospital in Reno, Nevada. She is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. She never married. Whether she ever returned to Alabama after leaving in 1915 is currently unknown. 

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Picture-Play Magazine December 1918
In the section titled "Favorite Picture Players" she follows Mary Pickford and Alice Joyce

Wilson made the cover of Picture-Play in April 1923.

Motion Picture Studio Directory for 1919
Wilson's entry is in the right hand column, 3rd down

Source: BhamWiki.com 

Old Alabama Stuff (4): Teacher Certification in 1922

This pamphlet of 16 pages was published in 1922 as Bulletin No. 32 of the State of Alabama Department of Education. The item describes the various types of certification and methods of receiving them for Alabama's public school teachers. 

Certificates could be received by graduating from an approved post-high school training program for teachers or by examination. Certificates valid in other states could be approved by the State Superintendent of Education. Special and emergency provisional certificates were also available.  

Details are also given for rules governing examiners, preparation of teachers in colleges and universities and "preparation of teachers in colored institutions." 

That Time Mom Saw George Washington Carver in Camp Hill

George Washington Carver in March 1942
Photograph by Arthur Rothstein

When my mother was six and seven years old, she and the family were living in the small town of Camp Hill in Tallapoosa County.  Her father John Miller Shores was minister at the Methodist church. Mom was the youngest of four children; the older siblings were Heth, John and Marjorie. My grandmother Tempe completed the family.

Mom tells the story of the time they went to hear a talk by George Washington Carver while they lived in Camp Hill. Since she was born in 1929, that would have been in 1935 or 1936. The event took place in the town's largest auditorium at the Southern Industrial School, which is now Lyman Ward Military Academy. Mom remembers him as an older black man with snow-white hair. Carver was about 70 at the time. The trip from Tuskegee would have been a drive north of less than 40 miles.

The auditorium was crowded. Mom was lifted into one of the deep windowsills to watch beside other children. She remembers being afraid she might fall from her perch. She doesn't recall any of Carver's speech, just the size of the crowd. Both whites and blacks were in attendance. She suspects the blacks were segregated in some way, but doesn't remember specifics. Perhaps the auditorium had a balcony.

The Lyman Ward web site notes that one of the school's two gyms was constructed in the 1930's. You can see a panoramic video of the interior of Tallapoosa Hall here. I've shown this video to mom and the high windows are the way she remembers them in the auditorium. 

Mom does remember something very specific about the event. The family brought home a booklet which she read and kept for some years. The item described Carver's many achievements; she doesn't remember if the pamphlet was sold or given away at the event. 

Carver's appearance is interesting in light of events in Camp Hill just a few years earlier. In July 1931 a meeting of the Alabama Sharecroppers Union in a church was attacked by a band of white men. A shootout resulted in at least one death and 30 arrests. Four other individuals were later lynched, but the 30 were eventually released. The all-black Union, affiliated with the Communist Party USA, operated in the state from 1931 until 1936.

On a brighter note, Chicago White Sox outfielder Bill Higdon was born in Camp Hill in 1924. He died in 1986.

Rev. John Miller Shores 

My grandmother Tempe, Aunt Heth standing on the left, Uncle John on the right. The two squirts are Aunt Marjorie and mom--she's the one with the pensive look. 

Birmingham Photo of the Day (28): The Morris Hotel in 1908

In the previous post in this series I made some comments on the city's Hillman Hotel and included a photo from the Views of Birmingham published in 1908 that included so many photographs of local landmarks at that time. Below is another hotel photo from the book, this time featuring the Morris Hotel at the corner of 1st Avenue North and 19th Street. 

The Morris was constructed in 1891 as an office building and a 125-room hotel. The building lasted until 1957 when it was demolished for a three-story parking deck. You can read much more about the Morris at its BhamWiki entry. A few more photos can be seen at the Birmingham Public Library's Digital Collections. 

Image of the newspaper article taken from the Birmingham Public Library's Digital Collections

Pondering Alabama Maps (5): An 1867 Railroad Map

 

The wordy title of this map is "Map showing the line of the Alabama & Tennessee River Rail Road and its proposed extensions; exhibiting also the contiguous mineral deposits and zone of production". The dark blue line indicates the existing railroad; the dark green lines are proposed extensions.

The company had incorporated in March 1848 under an act of the Alabama legislature. By 1862 about 135 miles of the line ran from Selma to Blue Mountain and toward Dalton, Georgia. By February 1867, after acts of both the Alabama and Georgia legislatures, the line was merged with one in Georgia to become the Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad. By 1894 the road had become part of the Southern Railroad Company.

Digital versions of this map in various sizes/formats can be found at the Library of Congress web site.

A very good history is Wayne Cline's book Alabama Railroads. 

WAPI-TV Ads from the 1950's & 1960's

For some time I have been mining the Lantern Media History digital collection for material related to Alabama. The site offers full text of numerous trade and popular magazines related to film, television and radio. The publication dates range from the early twentieth century into the 1960's.

The advertisements below all come from the site; I have linked to the specific Lantern pages for each one so you can look at the full magazine issue. I've posted numerous images from the site on my @AJWright31 Twitter feed and will be using many in future posts on this blog. 

 These five advertisements are taken from various media trade journals between 1955 and 1964. All five feature WAPI-TV, Channel 13, the longtime NBC affiliate in Birmingham. Today the station is known as WVTM or NBC13. Alabama's first television station went on the air in July 1949 with different call letters, WAFM, and network affiliations. New owners changed the call letters to WABT and finally WAPI in 1958. The WAPI in the first ad refers to one of Alabama's oldest radio stations. 


The second ad lists the fall 1962 network programming on the station. Boy, do I remember many of those shows with fondness. We must have watched a lot of NBC in those days; the only show I don't remember at all is Saints and Sinners. 

The third ad comes from a period when the station carried both NBC and CBS programming. Note the tiny listings for weekly programs featuring "Bear" Bryant and "Shug" Jordan. No doubt a much larger font would have been used if that ad ran today!

The final two ads are simply touting the brand. I wonder who that outstanding young woman with the beehive hairdo was.

Broadcasting 1956

Broadcasting 1962

Sponsor 1964 

Broadcasting 1962

Sponsor 1962 Also appeared in Broadcasting

Movies with Alabama Connections (1): The Lawless Breed [1953]

John Wesely Hardin is a rather unusual figure in the history of the American West. Yes, he was a Texas gunfighter and outlaw who claimed to have killed 42 men, including one for snoring. Yes, he was involved in the famous Sutton-Taylor Feud. Yes, he became a fugitive from justice, hiding from the Texas Rangers for several years in Florida and Alabama. His capture in Pensacola in August 1877 was a spectacular event. Back in Texas he was tried for murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison. In February 1894 he was released and soon pardoned. He obtained a law degree, but in August 1895 was shot dead in an El Paso saloon. Hardin was 42.

One thing that makes him unusual is the written legacy he left behind. The year after his death his autobiography "from the original manuscript" was published. Some of it is true. While he was in prison his beloved wife Jane had died, but Hardin had written many letters to her included in a 2001 published edition of his correspondence. 

Hardin has also left a significant trail in popular culture including novels, movies, and episodes of western television shows. The title song of Bob Dylan's 1967 album John Wesley Harding features the outlaw despite the variant spelling. And thus we come to our topic, the 1953 film The Lawless Breed. 

Released in the U.S. by Universal on January 3 of that year, the film featured the up-and-coming star Rock Hudson as Hardin and Mary Castle as his wife Jane "Brown"; her real maiden name was Bowen. Other well known actors include Julie Adams ["Julia" here], John McIntire, Hugh O'Brien, Dennis Weaver and Lee Van Cleef. For another Alabama connection, two years later McIntire played assassination victim Albert Patterson in the Phenix City Story. The Lawless Breed is one of many films directed by actor and director Raoul Walsh.   

I watched a DVD release of this movie, and the included trailer gives us a taste of what's to come. The film is the "true story of the greatest gunfighter of them all...from his own original manuscript" and follows the "preacher's son with a deck of cards in one hand and a gun that never missed in the other. Here it is--the life he lived, women he loved, lives he took" with the "brilliant and romantic stars Rock Hudson and Julia Adams." After that billing, the film itself might seem anticlimactic. Hudson had appeared in 18 previous movies but this one may be the first in which he is the primary male lead.

The film opens as Hardin is released from Huntsville Penitentiary in Texas. Much of the action is flashback. Wife Jane is killed, and after some action in Texas friend Rosie McCoy gets Hardin out of the state when he is injured. He appears in Kansas City as John Swain, a variant of the pseudonym the real Hardin used in Florida and Alabama. 

Soon Hardin appears in "Polland" Alabama running a horse farm, and marries Rosie. They have a son named John. When Hardin goes to Pensacola for a horse auction, the Rangers arrest him. After 16 years in prison, he returns to his horse farm "Green Stables". The movie ends with Hardin being shot in the back trying to his keep his son out of a fight. Unlike the real Hardin, this one survives his saloon altercation. They all leave town as son John drives the wagon with his father and mother aboard. 

The writers on The Lawless Breed freely adapted the events of the real Hardin's life. Hardin did indeed have a second wife, Callie Lewis, a fifteen-year-old he married not long before he died. Hardin and first wife Jane had three children, two daughters and a son named John. The saloon shooting resulted in Hardin's death. John Selman, Sr., shot Hardin in the head from behind after Hardin had a dispute with Selman's son earlier in the day. Many other differences between the real and film Hardins can be found.

"Polland" is actually Pollard, Alabama, where he was based for some time while on the run from the Rangers. Jane had relatives in the area. The town in Escambia County survives today; a 2013 estimate put the population at 137. Some claim part of the movie was filmed in Pollard. Alabama's Rube Burrow robbed a train near the town in 1890. 

While in Alabama Hardin did not operate a horse farm; he worked in the area's lumber industry. He also spent time gambling; Hardin and a friend were arrested in Mobile after a card game went sour. Since they didn't know who they had, authorities quickly released him. 

If you like "classic" i.e., fantasy, westerns, you might enjoy this one, although it falls far short of the greats in the genre. The action and dialog rarely rise above the mundane. I enjoy most westerns, and the Alabama connection made this one special. The film's colors are gorgeous; the Technicolor greenery of "Polland" really pops from the screen. Rosie's green, red and blue dresses also stand out. 

Much has been written about Hardin over the years. I've published a couple of articles on his Southern years myself; the citations are below. The articles are similar, but the 1982 one has extensive references. Unfortunately, they are not available online. 

Wright AJ. John Wesley Hardin's 'Missing' Years. Old West 1981 Fall; 18(1):6-11

Wright AJ. A Gunfighter's Southern Vacation. Quarterly of the National Association for Outlaw and Lawman History, 1982 Autumn; 7(3):12-18