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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2010
Thomas H. Ince (1882–1924) was a popular motion-picture producer and director in the 1910s. He built his reputation and fortune by making feature films that appealed to middle-class tastes. In addition to his westerns and the epics for which he is best known, Ince made a number of social-problem films. Three of his films—The Italian (1914), Dangerous Hours (1920), and The Dark Mirror (1920)—are particularly interesting for how they illuminate the relationship between the American cinema and Progressive Era reform. A close analysis of these three films suggests ways that popular culture reflected the concerns of mainstream progressives and how these concerns shifted during the course of the decade.
2 On the periodization of early film history, Abel, Richard, “History Can Work for You, You Know How to Use It,” Cinema journal 44 (Fall 2004): 107–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also Keil, Charlie and Stamp, Shelley, eds., American Cinema's Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices (Berkeley, 2004)Google Scholar; Abel, Richard, Americanizing the Movies and “Movie-Mad” Audiences, 1910-1914 (Berkeley, 2006)Google Scholar; and Fuller, Kathryn, At the Picture Show. Small Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture (Washington, DC, 1996)Google Scholar.
3 See Gomery, Douglas, “Movie Audiences, Urban Geography and the History of the American Film,” Velvet Light Trap 19 (Spring 1982): 23–29Google Scholar; and Merritt, Russell, “Nickelodeon Theaters, 1905-1914: Building an Audience for the Movies” in The American Film Industry, ed. Balio, Tino (Madison, 1984), 83–102Google Scholar. On changing audiences in the 1910s, see Fuller, At the Picture Show.
4 Ince, Thomas H., “Is the Motion Picture a Fad?” Motography, Jan. 9, 1915, 51Google Scholar. The same article appeared the week before in Motion Picture News, Jan. 2, 1915, 29Google Scholar, under the tide “The Permanency of the Motion Picture.”
5 On Progressive Era investigative journalism, see Filler, Louis, The Muckmkers (University Park, PA, 1976)Google Scholar; and Fitzpatrick, Ellen, introduction to Muckraking: Three Landmark Articles, ed. Fitzpatrick, Ellen (Boston, 1994)Google Scholar.
6 The literature on social-problem films in the 1910s includes Ross, Steven J., Working Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton, 1998)Google Scholar; Sloan, Kay, The Loud Silents: Origins of the Social Problem Film (Urbana, 1988)Google Scholar; Brownlow, Kevin, Behind the Mask of Innocence (Berkeley, 1990)Google Scholar. See also Gunning, Tom, D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph (Urbana, 1991)Google Scholar.
7 For more on the problem of authorship, see Cook, David, A History of Narrative Film (New York, 1996)Google Scholar.
8 Historians have recognized Ince's influence, but public showings of his films have been rare. In 2006, Steven Higgins, film curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art, organized a series of twelve Incefilmsat the 25th Pordenone Silent Film Festival, October 7-14, 2006, in Sacile, Italy, a series repeated at MOMA in that December. See http://www.cinetecadelfriuli.org/gcm/ed_precedenti/edizione2006/edizione2006_frameset.html. Brian Taves had earlier organized the showing of several Ince films from the Library of Congress at the Mary Pickford Theater of the Library of Congress, July 2003.
9 Lindsay, Vachel, The Art of the Moving Picture (New York, 1915)Google Scholar .
10 Quoted in Sadoul, Georges, “La Triangle: Ince et Fairbanks” in Le cinema devient un art: La premiere guerre mondiale, vol. 4, Histoire generale du cinema: 1909-1920 (Paris, 1947), 132Google Scholar. French film historians Sadoul, Jean Mitry, and Louis Delluc were especially laudatory in their assessments of Ince. See , Sadoul, “Les independants americains et Thomas Ince (1910-1914)” in Le cinema devient un art: L'avant-guerre, vol. 3, Histoire générate du cinéma: 1909-1920 (Paris, 1946), 140Google Scholar, as well as Mitry, Jean, “Ince” in Anthologie du Cinema 9 (1965): 443–92Google Scholar. An abridged translation of this article appeared as Mitry, Jean, “Thomas H. Ince: His Esthetic, His Films, His Legacy,” trans. Sopocy, Martin and Atallah, Paul, Cinema Journal 22 (Winter 1983): 2–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Author correspondence (June 15, 1983) with film historian Steven Higgins, who interviewed Mitry about Ince in January 1983.
11 Staiger, Janet, “Dividing Labor for Production Control: Thomas Ince and the Rise of the Studio System,” Cinema Journal 18 (Spring, 1979): 16–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reviews Ince's business practices. In detailing Ince's contribution to filmmaking as an independent producer, Staiger portrays him as an innovative manager whose success stemmed from his knowledge that rationalizing the production of films was the most profitable means of filmmaking. See also , Ross, Working Class Hollywood, 109Google Scholar, which depicts Ince as a liberal producer somewhere between the radical filmmakers, the heroes of Ross's study, and moguls like Adolph Zukor whose antipathy for labor was reflected on the set as well as on the screen.
12 The exact order of events is unclear. NYMPC lost title to the Bison 101 studio, and Ince began to produce for Kay Bee, also owned by , Kessel and Brownlow, Bauman Kevin, War, The West, and the Wilderness (New York, 1978), 261–62Google Scholar.
13 Minutes of the New York Motion Picture Corporation, Dec. 10,1913, vol. 84, Harry and Roy Aitken Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, Madison (hereafter, Aitken Papers).
14 Bowser, Eileen, The Transformation of Cinema, vol. 2, History of the American Cinema (New York, 1990), 217–72Google Scholar.
15 , Brownlow, The War, the West and the Wilderness, 253–62Google Scholar.
16 For more on their business deals, see Aitken Papers. Also boxes 34-35, Thomas H. Ince Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (hereafter, Ince Papers-LC).
17 Bordwell, David, Staiger, Janet, and Thompson, Kristin, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York, 1985), 136–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Staiger, “Dividing Labor for Production Control.” Staiger compares the continuity script to a blueprint.
18 Bordwell, Staiger, and , Thompson, ClassicalHollywood Cinema, 138Google Scholar.
19 See examples of scripts in the boxes 1-9, Aitken Papers, and boxes 1-33, Ince Papers-LC.
20 For more on Triangle, see King, Rob, “Made for the Masses with an Appeal to the Classes: The Triangle Film Corporation and the Failure of Highbrow Film Culture,” Cinema journal 44 (Winter 2005): 3–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and LaHue, Kalton, Dreams for Sale (New York, 1974)Google Scholar. On star appeal, see deCordova, Richard, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America (Urbana, 1990)Google Scholar.
21 Ince made a number of films in 1914 and 1915 that expressed these themes. Among the surviving films are Gangsters and the Girl, Cup of Ufe, Jimmy, and The Italian. Among surviving scripts, continuities, script synopses, and occasional press photography are materials on Lois Zellner's Uttle Brother, Continuity Script in box 6, Aitken Papers, and The Corner, supervised by Ince and written by C. Gardner Sullivan, Jan. 1916, box 2, Aitken Papers. Other plot summaries come from Ince, Thomas H., “Synopses of Productions Made by Thomas H. Ince during the Period April 1912 to August 1915 at the Inceville Studios,” Rare Books Room, University of California-Los AngelesGoogle Scholar. There are 440 scenario entries in a 485-page carbon typescript. The most extensive collection of Ince's later scripts is in the Ince Papers-LC.
22 Thomas Ince, typescript for Film Daily Directors' Number, n.d, Thomas Harper Ince Collection, Celeste Bartos International Film Study Center, Museum of Modern Art (hereafter, Ince Collection-MoMA). From clues within the text, this was probably written in 1924, shortly before his death.
23 , Brownlow, Behind the Mask of Innocence, xviiiGoogle Scholar. , Sloan, Toud Silents, 5Google Scholar. On moral reform and motion-picture censorship, see Parker, Alison, Purifijing America: Women, Cultural Reform, and Pro-Censorship Activism, 1873-1933 (Urbana, 1997)Google Scholar.
24 For more on progressive activists and the campaign to improve movies, see Rosenbloom, Nancy J., “In Defense of the Moving Pictures: The People's Institute, the National Board of Censorship, and the Problem of Leisure in Urban America,” American Studies 33 (Fall 1992): 41–60Google Scholar, and “From Regulation to Censorship: Film and Political Culture in New York in the Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 3 (Oct. 2004): 369–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also Fisher, Robert J., ”The People's Institute of New York City, 1897-1934: Culture, Progressive Democracy, and the People” (PhD diss., New York University, 1974)Google Scholar; and Feldman, Matthew, The National Board of Censorship (Review) of Motion Pictures: 1909-1922 (New York, 1977)Google Scholar.
25 This interpretation differs from Sloan, Loud Silents, which argues that socially conscious films appealed largely to a working-class audience and that the production of such films diminished with the advent of the feature, which was more costly to make and thus posed more risk of financial loss if the picture failed before the public. For correspondence between Ince and the leadership at the National Board of Review, see boxes 4, 9, National Board of Review Correspondence with Film Companies, National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library (hereafter, NBR Records).
26 Everson, William K., The American Silent Film (New York, 1978), 62–66Google Scholar, points out the cinematic innovations in this film. Social historians who have examined The Italian include , Ross, Working Class Hollywood, 5Google Scholar, and Ewen, Elizabeth, “Immigrant Women and the Rise of the Movies,” Signs 5 (Spring 1980): 545–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 On Howe's interest in film and his role on the National Board, Rosenbloom, Nancy J., “Between Reform and Regulation: The Struggle over Film Censorship in Progressive America, 1909-1922,” FilmHistory 1 (Dec. 1987): 307–25Google Scholar, and , Rosenbloom “In Defense of the Moving Pictures.” Also, Howe to W D. McGuire, Apr. 1, 1915, box 29Google Scholar, NBR Records. Minutes of the Executive Committee of the National Board of Censorship, Apr. 5, 1915, box 118, NBR Records.
28 On the culture of film censorship, see Lee , Grieveson, Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early Twentieth Century America (Berkeley, 2004)Google Scholar. On the legal issues film censorship, see Jowett, Garth, “‘A Capacity for Evil’: The 1915 Supreme Court Mutual Decision,” Historical journal of Tilm, Radio, and Television 9 (1989): 59–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wertheimer, John, “Mutual Film Reviewed: The Movies, Censorship, and Free Speech in Progressive America,” American Journal of Legal History 37 (Apr. 1993): 156–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Anderson, Alexis J., “The Formative Period of First Amendment Theory, 1870-1915,” American Journal of Legal History 24 (1980): 56–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 C. Gardner Sullivan was a newspaperman from Stillwater, Minnesota, whose experiences launched a career writing scenarios and then scripts. He frequently collaborated with Ince.
30 This scenario is located in the typescript “Synopses of Productions Made by Thomas H. Ince during the Period April 1912 to August 1915.”
31 Corresca's, Rocco profile appears in Katzman, David, ed., Plain Folk: The Life Histories of Undistinguished Americans (Urbana, 1982), 3–13Google Scholar . On images of Italian New York, Gabaccia, Donna, “Inventing ‘Little Italy,’” journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 6 (Jan. 2007): 7–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 Ince, “Is the Motion Picture a Fad?”
33 , Everson, American Silent Film, 64–66Google Scholar.
34 May, Lary, Screening Out the Vast: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (New York, 1980), 40–42Google Scholar.
35 Ince, Thomas H., “The Film Director's Number,” n.d. (c. 1920)Google Scholar, manuscript, Ince Collection-MoMA.
36 “The Italian,” New York Dramatic Mirror, Dec. 1914, 26Google Scholar. On the pure-milk issue in the Progressive Era, Levenstein, Harvey, “‘Best for Babies’ or Preventable Infanticide? The Controversy over Artificial Feeding of Infants in America, 1880-1920,” Journal of American History 70 (June 1983): 75–94CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Koslow, Jennifer, “Putting It to a Vote: The Provision of Pure Milk in Progressive Era Los Angeles,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 3 (Apr. 2004): 111–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 Moving Picture World, Jan. 9, 1915Google Scholar.
38 Bush, Stephen, “Educational Lights and Shadows,” Moving Picture World, Jan. 23, 1915Google Scholar.
39 , Everson, American Silent Film, 64–66Google Scholar.
40 Negra, Diane, Off White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom (London, 2001), 1–24Google Scholar.
41 I want to thank Tom Gunning for lengthy discussions of this particular film and for insights into the relationship between the framing devices and class biases within the audience.
42 Meyer, Stephen, “Efforts at Americanization in the Industrial Workplace, 1914-1921” in Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History, ed. Gjerde, John (Boston, 323–32Google Scholar.
43 Franklin K. Lane, Speech at Hotel Astor, New York, n.d. [1919]; speech at the Americanization Banquet, New Ebbitt Hotel, Washington, DC, May 14, 1919; and Speech at Hotel Astor, Jan. 3, 1920; all can be found on reel 55, box 87, Josephus Daniels Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington.
44 Franklin K. Lane, speech before the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry, Jan. 11, 1920, box 20, Aitken Collection; Franklin K. Lane to George Kleine, May 19, 1920, box 1, Kleine Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Studios made a number of films to fit this agenda. These included the Fox drama Face at Your Window, Famous Players' comedy Humoresque, Robertson Cole's comedy-drama Unchartered Channels, and Goldwyn's social-industrial drama Dangerous Days; see list dated Nov. 30, 1920, box 9, NBR Records.
45 Continuity script for Americanism, box 4, folder 9, Ince Papers-LC.
46 Ince to Carl E. Person, May 5, 1919, with enclosure from editor of Labor Clarion, Apr. 30, 1919, Ince Correspondence, 1913-1919, Ince Collection-MoMA.
47 See Community Motion Pictures Bureau Scrapbooks, Feb. 1920, microfilm, Motion Picture Reading Room, Library of Congress.
48 “Employers Order Tickers for Employees to See ‘Dangerous Hours’ in Saginaw, Mich., Exhibitors Trade Review,” Community Motion Pictures Bureau Scrapbooks, Apr. 10, 1920.
49 Wid's Daily, Feb. 8, 1920Google Scholar, and George T. Pardy in unidentified news clipping, Community Motion Pictures Bureau Scrapbooks, Feb. 1920.
50 See title cards in film as each character is introduced to th e audience. Dangerous Hours is available in the Film Division, Library of Congress.
51 Continuity Script for Americanism, box 4, Ince Papers-LC.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid., scenes 198-210.
54 Ibid., scene 104.
55 Ibid., scene 117.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.
58 Dangerous Hours, Film Division, Library of Congress.
59 , Ross, Working Class Hollywood, 135–42Google Scholar, suggests that Americanism cast the John King character as a progressive and that it condemned organized labor through the figure of Michael Regan, one of the agitators tarred and feathered at the end of the film. I argue that King is typecast as a radical intellectual who has been smitten with Bolshevik ideas, similar to the real-life John Reed. I do not see any evidence in this film that Ince was anti-labor or that he opposed unionization, but thisfilm, like so many of his prewarfilms, championed the ideal of family, hard work, individualism, and social harmony. In this particular film, these values were represented by small-town America, family-run business, and the shipping industry.
60 Continuity Script, Americanism, box 4, Ince papers-LC.
61 Stansell, Christine, American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century (New York, 2000), 226–338Google Scholar. I want to thank Brian Taves for bringing The Dark Mirror to my attention.
62 Münsterberg, Hugo, The Photoplay—A Psychological Study and Other Writings, ed. Langdale, Allan (New York, 2002)Google Scholar.
63 On public space, cinema, and women, see Peiss, Kathy, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986)Google Scholar; Balides, Constance, “Making Ends Meet: ‘Welfare Films’ and the Politics of Consumption during the Progressive Era” in A Feminist Readerin Early Cinema, ed. Bean, Jennifer M. and Negra, Diane (Durham, 2003), 166–94Google Scholar; Stamp, Shelley, Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon (Princeton, 2000)Google Scholar. On modernism and feminism, Stansell, American Moderns; Cott, Nancy, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, 1987)Google Scholar; and Rosenberg, Rosalind, Beyond Separate Spheres: The Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism (New Haven, 1982)Google Scholar.
64 Balides, “Making Ends Meet,” includes a discussion of The Cup of Life. On women in Hollywood films, Higashi, Sumiko, Virgins, Vamps and Flappers: The American Silent Movie Heroine (Montreal, 1978)Google Scholar; Staiger, Janet, Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema (Minneapolis, 1995)Google Scholar; and Mahar, Karen Ward, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (Baltimore, 2006)Google Scholar. On the changing cultural paradigm and the role of the movies in the rise of consumer culture, see May, Screening Out the Past.
65 On the relationship between censorship and the narrative of film, see , Gunning, D. W. Griffith, 151–62Google Scholar. See also, notes 25, 28, 29 above.
66 Reviews of The Dark Mirror appeared in Wid's Daily, May 23, 1920Google Scholar, and Harrison Reports, May 16, 1920Google Scholar. Reviews can be seen in the Community Motio n Pictures Bureau Scrapbooks.
67 See continuity scripts and revisions for The Dark Mirror in box 32, Ince Papers-LC. On the manuscript, actress Dorothy Dalton, writer Joseph Vance, and director Charles Giblyn each marked their approval of revisions. Before shooting for the film, they eliminated and reordered certain scenes in order to remain true to Priscilla's point of view.
68 Philip Fosdick recalls the reformer Raymond Fosdick, who in the twenties worked for the Rockefeller Foundation and supervised research of criminologist Katharine Bement Davis. See Fitzpatrick, Ellen, Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform (New York: Oxford, 1989), 204Google Scholar . Earlier in his career, Fosdick had issued an influential report on the condition of movie theaters in New York City.
69 See notes on revised continuity script, The Dark Mirror, Ince Papers-LC.
70 Bordwell, Staiger, and , Thompson, ClassicalHollywood Cinema, ch. 15Google Scholar.
71 On women and freedo m of movement in the city in early film, Butler, Kristine J., “Irm a Vep, Vamp in the City: Mapping the Criminal Feminine in Early French Serials” in Feminist Reader in Early Cinema, ed. Bean, and Negra, , 195–220Google Scholar.