Finding Alabama in Oklahoma (2)

In May 2016 daughter Becca and husband Matt Leon moved to Edmond, Oklahoma, so he could start his new faculty position at the University of Central Oklahoma. Dianne and I went along for the move, and as a result of that trip I posted a blog entry on Creek names that had followed Native Americans on the Trail of Tears from Alabama to Oklahoma. 

Dianne and I recently made a trip through Edmond to Colorado Springs to visit her father. In this post and two more I'm sharing some of the photos I took in Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado. Bear with me, and in the final post there are several Alabama-related payoffs!

I'm discussing these photos somewhat randomly, so here goes.

We drove to Edmond on a Friday. Here's the son-in-law and daughter as we dined alfresco for lunch the next day. Son Amos flew into Edmond Friday night from Baton Rouge so he could join Dianne and I for the drive to Colorado Springs. So except for Dianne we were all Alabama natives in Oklahoma!

That Saturday afternoon we all walked around downtown Oklahoma City in the area where Becca works for the Parks and Recreation Department. We spent some of that time at the Myriad Botanical Gardens which was well worth the visit! 

I'll be discussing some photos from Kansas and eastern Colorado in the next two posts. While Dianne, Amos and I were in Colorado Springs we visited Manitou Springs, a nearby hamlet nestled at the foot of the Rockies. In contrast to that warm day in Oklahoma, the Colorado Springs area presented us with five or more inches of snow a couple of days after we arrived. 

Manitou Springs is full of shops, art galleries, and restaurants to keep you busy when you're not looking at the mountains. 

One of our favorite landmarks in Manitou Springs is this Sinclair station and its dinosaur. 

For more than 50 years my mother, Carolyn Shores Wright, has been painting, mostly in watercolors. Many of her works have been licensed for prints and other objects. While in Manitou Springs we went into The Taos Maos shop and found one of several stained-glass sun catchers made by Amia from her work. Mom's an Alabama native too, so there you go. 

Over the years we've run across mom's work or items licensed from it at numerous places ranging from J.C. Penney to Cracker Barrel and Disney World. 

Her original watercolors, prints and other items are sold on ArtFire and Etsy. If you are ever in the Pelham, Alabama, area, her work is also available at Encore Resales and Vintage Interiors.  

Here are Dianne and Amos clowning around with a bear in Manitou Springs.

This sight greeted us outside our hotel on Wednesday morning.

And now for a taste of things to come. Here are a few of the many windmills we saw driving across Kansas and eastern Colorado along I-70. Did you know that part of the country is really flat???

Alabama Film Actresses Before 1960: A List

I've been gathering various related blog posts into lists, and this one covers the series "Film Actresses from Alabama Before 1960". 

Lois Wilson

Gail Patrick

Dorothy Sebastian

Mary Anderson

Cathy O'Donnell 

Lottice Howell in Gay Madrid 

Patricia "Boots" Mallory 

Film Actresses from Alabama Before 1960 (7): Boots Mallory

In its January 1933 issue New Movie Magazine declared she was "Delectable Boots Mallory, the new Fox find..." Let's investigate her Alabama connection and her career.

Several sources give New Orleans as Mallory's birthplace; her mother Myrtle was born in Louisiana. However, other sources give Mobile. The 1940 U.S. Census lists New York as her birthplace. I have been unable to locate her family in Mobile until the 1930 U.S. Census, when her father John H., mother and several brothers and sisters are all listed. Mallory herself had left for New York by then. A number of sources do give her birth date as October 22,1913, including her Social Security record that lists Louisiana as her birthplace.

Mallory is known to have attended Murphy High School, which began as Mobile High School until the name change in 1927. That 1940 census gives "Highest Grade Attained" as the 8th grade. Around age 12 she started playing banjo in an all girls band. She also appeared as a dancer at the Lyric Theatre, Mobile's early vaudeville house. At some point a travelling group from the Ziegfield Follies came through town and noticed her. She soon relocated to New York City. 

Mallory appeared in George White's Scandals of 1928, which ran on Broadway from July 1928 until January 1929. She followed with roles in the Ziegfield Follies of 1931, that ran from July until November of that year. She seems to have made enough of an impression in these musical revues to warrant a move to Hollywood.

In September 1931 famed director and actor Eric von Stroheim signed a contract for a film version of Dawn Powell's play Walking Down Broadway. The production would be von Stroheim's first sound film and feature his "discovery" Boots Mallory as one of the two female leads. The story featured strong sexual themes too explosive for the era, and von Stroheim's version was drastically cut and new scenes added. The film was finally released in April 1933 as Hello, Sister!. Von Stroheim's version is apparently lost; he never directed another film. 

The first of Mallory's films to be released was Handle with Care in December 1932. As with Hello, Sister!, James Dunn played the male lead in this comedy-drama that has Mallory taking care of two rambunctious children left by her dead sister and falling in love with Dunn's character, an assistant district attorney. Oh, and assassins kidnap the pair of lovebirds but the children save the day. In the film Mallory sings "Throw a Little Salt on the Bluebird's Tail."

As a result of her appealing performance in that film, Mallory was chosen as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1932, an annual promotion by theater owners. Yet this positive publicity was undermined by the negatives surrounding Hello, Sister!. For whatever reasons, Mallory's film career did not last very much longer. 

She made less than a dozen movies. In April 1933 Hollywood on Parade No. A-9 was released. In this musical comedy short, Mallory appears with numerous other stars under the guise of studio portraits coming to life. The cast includes Chico Marx, Mae West, Ginger Rogers, and Bebe Daniels. Also appearing is fellow Alabamian Johnny Mack Brown, the former University of Alabama football player making a name for himself in westerns.   

Mallory acted in three more films in 1933, Humanity, The Wolf Dog and Carnival Lady. Two more films followed in 1934, one in 1935 and two in 1938. One of those two was Swiss Miss, a Laurel and Hardy comedy in which she appeared uncredited. She never returned to the screen. She also made two appearances on the Lux Radio Theatre in September 1936 and February 1939.

Her Wikipedia entry notes, "A tall blonde, Mallory was well regarded for her striking looks and was photographed by such photographers as George Hurrell. She also posed for risque lingerie photographs, and was painted nude by the pin-up artist Rolf Armstrong."

Mallory married three times. Her first husband was Charles Bennett, a much older New Zealander who began his career in silent films in 1912. She married him at age 16. By 1933 she was free to marry William Cagney, actor James Cagney's lookalike brother, an actor and film producer. The couple adopted fraternal twins Jill and Stephan. They divorced in 1946; one rumor claims Mallory caught her husband in a very compromising position with actress Ann Sheridan. The following year Mallory married actor Herbert Marshall; they remained together until her death in 1958.  

The article reproduced below, "Along Came Bill!", has a long profile of Mallory and discusses her poetry and an operation she had. 

Her ashes are interred at Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. Many more images of Boots Mallory can be found on this Pinterest page. 

Mallory's birthplace remains to be determined. I leave you with two quotes about her from the Mobile Press-Register newspaper:

"Patricia (Boots) Mallory,, blonde film star and native of Mobile, was married Saturday to William Cagney after an airplane elopement to Tia Juana...Cagney is a brother of James Cagney and a recent arrival in the Hollywood film colony."
-Tuesday, September 26, 1933

"Patricia (Boots) Mallory, native Mobilian, former stage and screen beauty and wife of actor Herbert Marshall, died yesterday in St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., of a chronic throat ailment.
-December 2, 1958

That latter piece goes on to note her marriages to Cagney and Marshall. It also says she was working as an usherette at the Lyric Theatre in Mobile when the Ziegfield Follies performed there. 

Mallory in 1934

Source: Wikipedia 

New Movie Magazine January 1933

Source: Lantern

Variety December 1932

Source: Lantern 

William Cagney and Boots Mallory

Source: Ancestry.com 

Modern Screen 1933

Source: Lantern

Motion Picture Herald 1935

Source: Lantern 

New Movie Magazine January 1934

Source: Lantern 

Variety February 1933

Source: Lantern 

Source: Pinterest

Postcard views of the Lyric Theatre in Mobile before 1920.

Source: Alabama Department of Archives and History

Source: Alabama Department of Archives and History 

Quick Visits to Confederate Memorial Park & Horseshoe Bend

In July 2012 my brother Richard and I took the first of our summer trips together visiting sites mostly related to either Alabama history or family history in the state. On this trip we took in not only the two places discussed in this post, but sites in other cities such as Sylacauga, Alexander City, Gadsden, Rainbow City and Hokes Bluff. Future blog posts on those place are coming.

I'm finally starting to do something on this blog with all the photos I took, so here's where we begin. These two places are related to a pair of defining periods in national and Alabama history--the Creek War of 1813-1814 and the Civil War.

We stopped first at Confederate Memorial Park in Chilton County. This park and museum is located on the site of the Confederate Soldiers' Home, which the state operated from 1902 until 1939 for aging veterans, their wives and widows. The park was created in 1964; in 1971 the Alabama Historical Commission took over operations. The Encyclopedia of Alabama has a history of the facility available here.

There are several things to see in the park. The modern museum has numerous artifacts related to the average Confederate soldier and the postwar years. Almost 300 veterans and several wives and widows are buried in the two cemeteries. The property also has a nature trail through an Alabama Treasure Forest. The Mountain Creek Post Office built in 1900 and the Marbury Methodist Church built in 1883 have been moved to the site. 

Once we had finished at the Park, we headed off to Tallapoosa County and the National Military Park at the Horseshoe Bend of the Tallapoosa River. First stop was the Visitor Center and its exhibits. Then we headed to the battle site itself.

On March 27, 1814, General Andrew Jackson led a force of Tennessee militia, regular US soldiers, and his Cherokee and Lower Creek Native American allies into battle against Chief Menawa and his Upper Creek or Red Stick warriors. The conflict had begun the previous year as a civil war among the Creeks, with some siding with Americans in the War of 1812 and others hostile to the United States. 

Menawa, some 1000 warrior and 350 women and children had settled in a temporary, fortified village named Tohopeka in December 1813. Jackson arrived with some 3300 men. You can read the details of the Red Sticks' devastating loss here. The final result was the Treat of Fort Jackson in which the Creeks turned over more than 20 million acres of their lands to the United States. After Jackson became president in 1828, he signed the Indian Removal Act after which Creeks and Cherokees were forced to move to Indian Territory during the 1830's. The area is now Oklahoma; I've written a blog post on some of the Creek names that followed the people. 

I've made some further comments below. All photos are mine unless otherwise noted.

Here's Richard in front of that Mountain Creek post office. Several photos below show the cemetery close to the museum.

Memorial Hall was built in 1902 and included the commandant's office, a library, a parlor, and a conference room. The upper floor was used as an auditorium. Fire destroyed the building in 1924.

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

This photo shows the museum and a flag display. 

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

These three photos show the site of the Battle of Horseshoe Bend as it looks today. On the other side of the trees the Tallapoosa River winds around the bend. All was quiet that day, a sharp contrast to the March day 200 years ago when so many Creeks and whites died here. Jackson's force lost 49 men and more than 150 were wounded. Some 550 Red Sticks died on this field; an estimated 300 more were shot in the river. 

We were standing on the "high ground" near the location of the breastworks noted on the map below when I took these photos.

Source is here.

Another map of the Bend and the battle.

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

This same guy reappeared at Horseshoe Bend.

Snowfall on Cloverdale Drive in 1958

Back in January I posted an item on a family trip to the beach in 1956. This time it's winter in 1958. According to the National Weather Service, eight inches of snow fell in Huntsville, Alabama, in February 1958. I think I have the evidence. Let's investigate.


A Weather Service chart here tells us that this snowfall was the most Huntsville has ever received in February. The only deeper ones were December 1963 (a whopping 21.4 inches!) and January 1988 (9.6 inches). 

We begin our story with the cover of the photo album provided by H & H Walgreen Agency Drugs, an artifact from a dim past itself.

Here I am with mom and little brother Richard. I seem to be trying to take possession of the snowman. We are really bundled up!

Putting on what is supposed to be the head at this point. This photo shows the house on Cloverdale Drive in northwest Huntsville. I was born in Gadsden in 1952, and we moved to Huntsville a couple of years later. This house is the first one I remember from childhood. We lived in Redstone Park after first moving to Huntsville.  

Now we must have wandered over to the corner of the house. Brother Richard seems to have gotten tired of walking in that snow.

Lots of snow around this "pretty blue Ford" as mom remembers it. The car was my parents' first one, bought second hand. That's license number 47-6152, by the way. Remember when Alabama vehicle tags began with the two digit number designating the county? So "47" was Madison County. 

Too bad that system was dropped a few years ago. We used to entertain ourselves on trips around the state by seeing how many different counties we could spot.

Another shot of the front of the house and the snowman, with that Ford appearing in this one.

Richard was on his own at least once in this blizzard. This snow may have been the first significant one he had seen. 

And a final picture features just the snow, a corner of the house with garbage cans, a fence and a telephone pole. Another house can be seen on the right and snow covered roofs across the fence. A nice composition by dad, our photographer. Too bad we didn't get him in any photos of this event.