Speaker 1: So rewarding new I'm on a city bus with author
Speaker 1: Amy Hillharth to talk about a civil rights pioneer. So
Speaker 1: she was, she was riding through this neighborhood, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: she was. Transportation was not integrated and had she had
Speaker 1: trouble before? Much everybody had had some trouble in the past. Now,
Speaker 1: I know you think you know who we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: but no, we're not in Montgomery, Alabama, and we're not
Speaker 1: talking about Rosa Parks in the nineteen fifties. We're in
Speaker 1: New York City and we're talking about the eighteen fifties.
Speaker 1: They tell her to get up, and she resists. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said no. And I'm pretty sure you've never heard
Speaker 1: of this woman. Her mark on history has all but disappeared.
Speaker 1: And she's not alone. In this episode. We'll also tell
Speaker 1: you the story of the first black Major League Baseball player,
Speaker 1: and no, his name is not Jackie Robinson. To rewind
Speaker 1: a few decades, you know, from nineteen forty seven back
Speaker 1: to eighteen eighty four actually, and will introduce you to
Speaker 1: the woman who ruled Hollywood one hundred years ago. At
Speaker 1: several points, she was the highest paid director in the industry,
Speaker 1: the highest paid female, a man, woman or child. As
Speaker 1: one reporter put it, I'm mo Rocca and this is mobituaries,
Speaker 1: this moment the forgotten forerunners Jesse. The other day, one
Speaker 1: of the fine citizens of our community is as Rosa Parks,
Speaker 1: was arrested because she refused to give up her seat
Speaker 1: for a white passenger. That was the Reverend doctor Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King Junior, speaking about the Montgomery bus boycott in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. Off when civil rights icon Rosa Parks
Speaker 1: stood her ground by sitting, but another African American woman
Speaker 1: struck her own blow for justice a false century earlier.
Speaker 1: She's really the Rosa Parks of New York, and most
Speaker 1: New Yorkers, most Americans, have no idea. Her name was
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Jennings, and Amy Hillharth wrote a book about her
Speaker 1: called Streetcar to Justice. Last summer, Amy and I retraced
Speaker 1: Elizabeth's footsteps around the once infamous Lower Manhattan neighborhood known
Speaker 1: as Five Points. You may remember it was the setting
Speaker 1: of the Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York, The
Speaker 1: Five Points, Murderer's Alley, brickbat Mansion, The Gates of All.
Speaker 1: I think it was the dirtiest, most disgusting place imaginable.
Speaker 1: I think if you think of the worst smell you've
Speaker 1: ever smelled, and multiplied by a thousand on a second,
Speaker 1: have you been on the sea train lately? Amy's right,
Speaker 1: City life was especially filthy. Back then the streets were
Speaker 1: covered in horse manure, with wild hogs running a rampant
Speaker 1: alongside open sewers. No surprise, life expectancy was only forty
Speaker 1: years old. Amy and I met up on a sweltering day,
Speaker 1: just like it was on July sixteenth, eighteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: when Elizabeth headed to church to practice the organ with
Speaker 1: the choir. She was wearing these long sleeved jacket over
Speaker 1: a long dress that went down to her ankles, with
Speaker 1: layers of petticoats and choruses and so on. Must have
Speaker 1: been miserable. You know, I'm taking advantage of the fact
Speaker 1: that this is audio only. I'm wearing shorts and I'm
Speaker 1: still hot. In other words, Elizabeth Jennings is an upstanding
Speaker 1: churchgoing woman, a school teacher, no less. All she wants
Speaker 1: to do is board a horse drawn street car, the
Speaker 1: public transportation of the day, with her good friend Sarah Adams.
Speaker 1: But certain rules got in the way. In New York City,
Speaker 1: like most northern cities at the time, there was both
Speaker 1: dejoe legal and sort of de facto segregation and discrimination.
Speaker 1: Leslie Alexander is a history professor at the University of
Speaker 1: Oregon and has written about the black experience in New York.
Speaker 1: In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they had particular street
Speaker 1: cars that were designated as colored street cars. Now, a
Speaker 1: black person could ask to board the cars designated for
Speaker 1: white people, but if any white person on that particular
Speaker 1: car objected to the presence of a black person, you,
Speaker 1: in theory, would be ejected. Remarkably, we know exactly what
Speaker 1: happens that day from contempt Brainy's news accounts. Jennings is
Speaker 1: running late and the first car to arrive is for
Speaker 1: white passengers. There are empty seats, so Elizabeth climbs aboard,
Speaker 1: but the conductor says, hold it, you need to wait
Speaker 1: for the next car with your people in it. That
Speaker 1: other car does pull up, but it's full. Elizabeth isn't budging,
Speaker 1: She's bold in a variety of ways. Here's Professor Alexander
Speaker 1: reading Jennings's own detailed account published at the time in
Speaker 1: the New York Daily Tribune. I answered again and told
Speaker 1: him I was a respectable person born and raised in
Speaker 1: New York, did not know where he was born. The
Speaker 1: conductors an Irish immigrant, that I had never been insulted
Speaker 1: before going to church, and that he was a good
Speaker 1: for nothing, impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while on
Speaker 1: their way to church. He then said I should come
Speaker 1: and he would put me out. She does not mince
Speaker 1: words there. All of those things were incredibly important messaging
Speaker 1: right in the nineteenth century to say I was born
Speaker 1: in this country as a result of my birthright, I
Speaker 1: have a right to be an American citizen and have
Speaker 1: a right to be treated as such, and I'm a
Speaker 1: respectable person. Then things turn physical. I told him not
Speaker 1: to lay his hands on me. He took hold of me,
Speaker 1: and I took hold of the window sash and held on.
Speaker 1: He pulled me until he broke my grasp, and I
Speaker 1: took hold of his coat and held onto that. The
Speaker 1: conductor calls in a reinforcement the street car's driver. I
Speaker 1: screamed murder with all my voice, and my companions screamed out,
Speaker 1: you'll kill her. Don't kill her. The two men have
Speaker 1: pushed Elizabeth down off the street car, but guess what,
Speaker 1: she climbs back onto that street car again. Unable to
Speaker 1: overpower her, the driver heads full speed to the nearest
Speaker 1: police officer. The officer doesn't listen to Elizabeth's plea. Instead,
Speaker 1: he forcibly pushes her off the street car and onto
Speaker 1: the ground. She's really beaten up. Her clothes are torn,
Speaker 1: She's covered with Bruce's Jennings refers to the men as
Speaker 1: monsters in human form, but it turns out they messed
Speaker 1: with the wrong person. Well, there's no question that Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Jennings came from an activist tradition. Both of her parents
Speaker 1: very heavily involved in the antislavery cause. Throughout her entire life,
Speaker 1: she would have been hearing all kinds of political discussions
Speaker 1: and debates taking place. Hers was a prominent family. Elizabeth's father,
Speaker 1: Thomas Jennings, is believed to be the first African American
Speaker 1: to hold a patent for an early version of dry cleaning.
Speaker 1: It made the family considerably wealthy, and Thomas did this
Speaker 1: in eighteen twenty one, before slavery was fully eradicated in
Speaker 1: New York. That wouldn't happen until eighteen twenty seven, but
Speaker 1: the legacy of slavery in New York was still being
Speaker 1: felt decades later. Probably the most significant salient challenge that
Speaker 1: black people in the North were facing was as the
Speaker 1: result of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty, maybe the most despicable piece of legislation in
Speaker 1: our history. The Fugitive Slave Act mandated that runaway slaves
Speaker 1: be returned to their owners. It became the perfect pretext
Speaker 1: for abducting free blacks from the North. The North essentially
Speaker 1: became sort of open season for a process where black
Speaker 1: folks are being rounded up and kidnapped on the streets
Speaker 1: and sold into slavery. I mean it's horrifying, yes, all
Speaker 1: the more remarkable then that, during such a precarious time
Speaker 1: for black Americans, Elizabeth Jennings and her father decided to
Speaker 1: sue the Third Avenue Railroad Company. Here's author Amy Hill Hearth,
Speaker 1: and they passed a hat in the church. Everybody pitched in,
Speaker 1: and then they went to look for lawyer. Their first
Speaker 1: choice was unavailable. So the lawyer that they do find,
Speaker 1: as name that's familiar to presidential history, buffs that's right.
Speaker 1: And this is how I found out about the Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Jennings story. You see, I have a thing for obscure
Speaker 1: nineteenth century presidents. All the guys between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: lots of facial hair, usually from Ohio. One of them
Speaker 1: was knocked off by an anarchist, another by an aggrieved
Speaker 1: office seeker. If you've watched me on CBS Sunday Morning,
Speaker 1: you've probably seen me do reports on a few of them. Anyway,
Speaker 1: one day, I was rifling through one of my presidential
Speaker 1: trivia books, because that's what I do on the weekends too,
Speaker 1: on wine and I read about our episodes Heroin and
Speaker 1: her legal representation by a future very obscure nineteenth century
Speaker 1: president Chester Alan Arthur. Yes, our twenty first president, and
Speaker 1: he was twenty four years old, and he actually only
Speaker 1: been practicing law for about six weeks. He's really wet
Speaker 1: behind the ears he was. Arthur would go on to
Speaker 1: grow mutton chops that would humble any Brooklyn hipster. Quick
Speaker 1: side note. Decades later, when he was in the White House,
Speaker 1: he was accused of having actually been born in Canada,
Speaker 1: the original Berther conspiracy. You can learn all about that
Speaker 1: in my story online. But back to this story, In
Speaker 1: spite of his youth, chet Arthur was up to the
Speaker 1: task of defending Elizabeth Jennings. Arthur was an abolitionist and
Speaker 1: he worked closely with her and her father on legal strategy.
Speaker 1: Instead of pursuing a criminal case, they decided to bring
Speaker 1: the suit to a civil court. With a civil case,
Speaker 1: it would fix the situation for everyone, not just find
Speaker 1: justice for her. So they weren't looking for a conviction
Speaker 1: for assault. What they were looking for was change. That's right.
Speaker 1: So if Jennings sought damages and one a new standard
Speaker 1: would be set for integrated transportation. The case was argued
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn before ay of white men. Jennings case was
Speaker 1: bolstered by eyewitnesses and her own first person account, but
Speaker 1: perhaps just as important, before deliberations, the judge reminded the
Speaker 1: jury that, according to statute, rail companies, and there were
Speaker 1: a bunch of them in New York City, were required
Speaker 1: to carry all respectable passengers there's that word respectable again,
Speaker 1: who were sober, well behaved, and free from disease. This
Speaker 1: language might sound antiquated to you, but it's the all
Speaker 1: that strikes me. The jury sided with Elizabeth Jennings and
Speaker 1: awarded her two hundred and fifty dollars. The Third Avenue
Speaker 1: Railroad Company was found liable and moved quickly to integrate
Speaker 1: their cars. The other rail companies were put on notice
Speaker 1: that they could be sued as well. At what point
Speaker 1: is in New York's these transportation system fully integrated well.
Speaker 1: Some historians say that that was the first major step
Speaker 1: after the Civil War, there was legislation that was passed
Speaker 1: that made it official. The case received national attention in
Speaker 1: antislavery papers. The New York Daily Tribune ran the headline,
Speaker 1: a wholesome verdict. Was she celebrated for a while? Yes,
Speaker 1: she was for about twenty five years. It was tremendously significant.
Speaker 1: That's Leslie Alexander again. You know, in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: the idea of women of any race being involved in
Speaker 1: an outspoken way in political matters of any kind was
Speaker 1: extremely controversial. So for her to take a stand in
Speaker 1: the way that she did and then allow her story
Speaker 1: and her name to be associated with this very public
Speaker 1: case was a huge deal. After the court case, Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Jennings led a rather private life and her name slowly
Speaker 1: faded from history. She continued teaching and even opened the
Speaker 1: city's first black kindergarten. She also married Charles Graham. They
Speaker 1: had a son, but he died as a young child.
Speaker 1: Jennings name briefly appeared in the newspapers again due to
Speaker 1: the political rise of Chester. Alan Arthur, that once wet
Speaker 1: behind the ears lawyer was elected vice president in eighteen eighty.
Speaker 1: Then he became president upon the assassination of James Garfield.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Jennings died on June fifth, nineteen o one. I
Speaker 1: didn't expect to find much, but there were at least
Speaker 1: a few short obituaries. Here's the New York Times with
Speaker 1: the headline aged colored teacher dead. Missus E. J. Graham
Speaker 1: was prominent in ante bellum raced troubles. Here the item
Speaker 1: takes note that her whole life was devoted to the
Speaker 1: improvement of her race. Why don't people know her name?
Speaker 1: She was just not a person who was sort of
Speaker 1: self seeking or self interested. She wasn't a person who
Speaker 1: was promoting herself or her story in that regard. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's part of it. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you honestly, I think on a deeper level, the
Speaker 1: primary reason we don't know Elizabeth Jennings story is that
Speaker 1: it doesn't fit with the narrative of the story that
Speaker 1: we like to tell about the North. So in order
Speaker 1: to know about Elizabeth Jennings, you have to know that
Speaker 1: slavery existed in the North. You have to know that
Speaker 1: slavery existed in the North for almost as long as
Speaker 1: it did in the South. You have to be willing
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that the legacy of slavery haunted the black
Speaker 1: population in the North for generations. But we do have
Speaker 1: to be willing to sort of, you know, pull back
Speaker 1: the curtains and have an honest conversation. So where are
Speaker 1: we at the corner of Pearl and Park Row. You
Speaker 1: in Lower Manhattan. If you do visit the site of
Speaker 1: the Elizabeth Jennings incident, you won't find a monument or
Speaker 1: even a placard. The street corner is actually dedicated to Ira,
Speaker 1: a fugitive Joseph Dougherty, but thanks to the persistence of
Speaker 1: some local school children, there is now an honorary street
Speaker 1: sign for her a few blocks away. Wait, what's up there? Okay,
Speaker 1: it says Elizabeth Jennings Place. The day we visited, it
Speaker 1: was covered up under scaffolding. But those who know Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Jennings story. Still hope that one day this remarkable woman
Speaker 1: will finally earn a more prominent place in history out
Speaker 1: in the open. What I would really love to see
Speaker 1: my dream is a statue. Now, there is a statue
Speaker 1: commemorating baseball's great number forty two, Jackie Robinson, But what
Speaker 1: about the player who made history years before him? The
Speaker 1: story of our next forgotten forerunner brought me to Toledo, Ohio.
Speaker 1: When I got into town, I was feeling a little peckish.
Speaker 1: What's the best thing about Toledo? Well, Tony Packles for
Speaker 1: number one, and so I hit up legendary Hungarian hot
Speaker 1: dog joint Tony Paco's. No, this isn't an ad I've
Speaker 1: just always wanted to eat there ever since I was
Speaker 1: a kid watching Mash and heard Toledo and Jamie Farr's
Speaker 1: Clinger character rave about the place. Hey. Incidentally, if you
Speaker 1: ever in Toledo, Ohio and a Hungarian side of town,
Speaker 1: Tony Packo's greatest Hungarian hot with chili peppers thirty five cents.
Speaker 1: Tony Pacos is famous for its buns. The walls of
Speaker 1: this restaurant are covered with hot dog buns autographed by
Speaker 1: all the luminaries who've eaten at Tony Paco's ever since
Speaker 1: Burt Reynolds started the tradition in the early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Bob Hope, Patti LaBelle okay, So Walter Mondale's right next
Speaker 1: to tiny Tim Don Shula. Oh there's Jibbie Reynolds, Penn
Speaker 1: and Teller signed the same bun I love Aria Speedwagon
Speaker 1: at the share the buns. So that's manager Frank Petersburger.
Speaker 1: They've got plenty of Frank's here, but surprisingly no Burgers,
Speaker 1: even though the food is delicious. Tony Pacos isn't the
Speaker 1: legend I'm here to profile. I'm in Toledo to learn
Speaker 1: about the first African American man to play Major League Baseball,
Speaker 1: And no it's not this guy nineteen forty seven. It
Speaker 1: was the Brooklyn Dodgers Abbott's Field, Jackie Robinson, given the
Speaker 1: challenge by Dodger owner Branch Rickey, and he accepted. Jackie
Speaker 1: Robinson is most certainly not forgotten. When he walked out
Speaker 1: onto Ebbott's Field to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he
Speaker 1: changed history. But technically speaking, he wasn't the first. According
Speaker 1: to this plaque right outside Toledo's minor league ballpark. Here
Speaker 1: we go Moses Fleetwood Walker. In eighteen eighty three, Walker
Speaker 1: joined the newly formed Toledo Bluestockings and became the first
Speaker 1: African American Major league ballplayer when Toledo joined the Major
Speaker 1: League sanctioned American Association the following year. Now this deserves
Speaker 1: a holy Toledo and here on this is considered Moses
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Walker square. That's Rob Worsinski, the communications guy for
Speaker 1: the current minor league team. Here the beloved Toledo Mudhens.
Speaker 1: Mash fans may remember that Jamie Farr wore a Mudhens
Speaker 1: jury from time to time on the show. But back
Speaker 1: to Moses. When you ask people who was the first
Speaker 1: man of color who played the top flight pro baseball
Speaker 1: in America, everybody will say Jackie Robinson. But in order
Speaker 1: for a color barrier to be broken, one head to
Speaker 1: be set up in the first place, and it was
Speaker 1: Moses Fleetwood Walker whose mere presence on the diamond invited
Speaker 1: the backlash that would bar black players from baseball for
Speaker 1: decades afterwards. Moses Fleetwood Walker was born on October seventh,
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty six, in Ohio and played baseball at Oberlin
Speaker 1: College and at the University of Michigan. Before long, he
Speaker 1: was playing for the minor league Toledo Bluestockings as the
Speaker 1: team's catcher, barehanded in those days. Soon after, Toledo's team
Speaker 1: got promoted to the American Association, and at the time
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty four, the American was top flight pro
Speaker 1: baseball in America. While there were other black players who
Speaker 1: joined team rosters, including Walker's own brother, Moses, was the first,
Speaker 1: but there were no celebrations around this milestone. Just like
Speaker 1: Robinson Wood, later on, Walker faced intense racial bigotry. There
Speaker 1: were also threats of lynching his own pitcher ignored his signals.
Speaker 1: Walker couldn't have been all that surprised. Just the year before,
Speaker 1: future Hall of Famer and Chicago player Cap Anson unsuccessfully
Speaker 1: protested Walker's participation in the game Moses Fleetwood. Walker's time
Speaker 1: and the majors was short. During his time with Toledo,
Speaker 1: he batted two sixty three with only one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty two at bats. As a catcher in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: baseball was a very dangerous position to play, and actually
Speaker 1: he ended up having a series of injuries that season.
Speaker 1: Played in a fraction of the games. Toledo released him
Speaker 1: that same season. Walker went on to play in other leagues.
Speaker 1: While catching for the Newark, New Jersey Little Giants, he
Speaker 1: was paired with an African American pitcher named George Washington Stovey.
Speaker 1: In eighteen eighty seven, they were set to play against
Speaker 1: Chicago and cap Anson. This time, Anson flat out refused
Speaker 1: to play if the black team members were put on
Speaker 1: the field. Newark gave into his demands soon after, baseball
Speaker 1: officials across the board decided not to sign any more
Speaker 1: black players the color line had been drawn. Post baseball,
Speaker 1: Walker held a variety of jobs, but eventually got in
Speaker 1: trouble with the law. After stabbing a man to death
Speaker 1: during a drunken racial altercation. He was acquitted. He did
Speaker 1: end up in jail later on for mail fraud. At
Speaker 1: the same time, the injustices he'd experienced inspired him to
Speaker 1: get angry and political. He wrote a book advocating black
Speaker 1: emigration to Africa. He had some success in business, but
Speaker 1: when he died in nineteen twenty four at the age
Speaker 1: of sixty seven, there was barely any acknowledgement. But some
Speaker 1: proud Ohioans are trying to change that. Saturday is Moses
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Walker's birthday, and thanks to a new state law,
Speaker 1: he'll be honored on that day every year. Toledo is
Speaker 1: doing its part to keep his name alive. At the ballpark.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's a Moses Fleetwood Walker bobblehead. And
Speaker 1: he's right next to Jamie Far. He's between two different
Speaker 1: Jamie Fars and just across the street at a bar
Speaker 1: called Fleetwoods. And it's not named after Fleetwood Mac all right,
Speaker 1: so we're entering Fleetwood's tap room. I mean, this looks
Speaker 1: like a pretty serious place for draft beer. Forty eight
Speaker 1: different types on tap. Hello, there's this picture. There's a
Speaker 1: big picture of Moses Fleetwood Walker And once people know
Speaker 1: the story behind the face, they're impressed. Yeah, that is incredible. Oh,
Speaker 1: Jackie Robinson was the first. That's pretty cool. Goal. Moses.
Speaker 1: You can't help but think he died, I'm guessing, not
Speaker 1: knowing that he would ever be acknowledged as as special
Speaker 1: or important. It really was a guy who just loved
Speaker 1: the game of baseball. He wanted to play it. Moses
Speaker 1: Fleetwood Walker and Jackie Robinson bookends to a sixty three
Speaker 1: year long journey baseball researcher Larry Lester may have put
Speaker 1: it best when he wrote, while Walker failed to lead
Speaker 1: his people to the promised plan, Robinson delivered his people.
Speaker 1: Both men wrestled with Jim crow Fleet bruised his knuckles
Speaker 1: and lost the early rounds. However, Jackie later bloodied his
Speaker 1: nose and won the fight. Next up, the Woman who
Speaker 1: ran Hollywood one hundred years ago. Now, let's travel back
Speaker 1: to the earliest days of Hollywood, somewhere between nineteen ten
Speaker 1: and nineteen twenty, to the story of one of silent
Speaker 1: filmdom's most prolific, yet almost completely forgotten directors. How much
Speaker 1: does this historical amnesia bother you? I mean, it's infuriating.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely infuriating, and film historian Shelley Stamp is here
Speaker 1: to set the record straight. One critic at the time
Speaker 1: talked about the three great minds of early Hollywood, two
Speaker 1: of whom will be familiar to most people who don't
Speaker 1: know anything about early cinema d W. Griffith and Saal
Speaker 1: speA Mill And the third great mind was Lois Webber,
Speaker 1: not Lewis Lois Webber. She was the first American woman
Speaker 1: to direct a feature film, A nineteen fourteen adaptation of
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. She was also one of
Speaker 1: the stars. This all took place before movies even had sound.
Speaker 1: Shelley Stamp wrote the book Lowest Webber. In early Hollywood,
Speaker 1: she was the highest paid director in the industry, the
Speaker 1: highest paid female, a man, woman, or child. As one
Speaker 1: reporter put it, she was respected. She negotiated very lucrative
Speaker 1: contracts when she formed her own studio, so you can
Speaker 1: see she was right up there with names that we
Speaker 1: associate with the fathers of American cinema at the time,
Speaker 1: and their legacy endures and hers does not. Last year,
Speaker 1: a mere three percent of studio films were directed by women,
Speaker 1: and pay inequity is a persistent issue. But in the
Speaker 1: Hollywood of one hundred years ago, Lowest Webber was one
Speaker 1: of the most respected and highest paid directors. I know,
Speaker 1: it's like I'm describing some mythical time and place like
Speaker 1: Camelot that just poof disappeared. I mean, did this really happen? Well,
Speaker 1: I think the first thing to emphasize is that, yes,
Speaker 1: Webber was the most prominent female director during this time,
Speaker 1: but there was lots of other female filmmakers during this time. Right,
Speaker 1: she wasn't a unicorn, she wasn't an anomaly. And the
Speaker 1: early years of the industry were open to many people. Right.
Speaker 1: When film began in the early decades of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: it became really popular, really fast. So there was an
Speaker 1: incredible need for movies. I mean it sounds like a
Speaker 1: land rush or something, right, No, seriously, this is open terrain.
Speaker 1: And you know, once the industry solidified in LA around
Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen, LA became an incredible magnet for women in particular,
Speaker 1: and Lois Webber was one of those women. She was
Speaker 1: born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, in eighteen seventy nine and
Speaker 1: started off as an accomplished pianist. She then moved on
Speaker 1: to the theater as an actress, and that's where she
Speaker 1: met her husband, Phillips Smalley. He started working in the
Speaker 1: movies first, but she very soon joined him and they
Speaker 1: worked together as a collaborative team. She wrote the scenarios,
Speaker 1: they acted together on screen, often playing husband, wife or
Speaker 1: romantic partners, and then they co directed Who is Leading
Speaker 1: Home Here? Initially their build as the Smalley's and their
Speaker 1: build as a couple, but within four or five years.
Speaker 1: Weber is clearly the dominant creative force. But as Shelley
Speaker 1: told us early on, Webber was not a unicorn, wasn't
Speaker 1: even the first in her field. In fact, the actual
Speaker 1: first woman to direct films, really one of the first
Speaker 1: filmmakers period, was Alice G. Blachet of France. We're talking
Speaker 1: about the eighteen nineties. She eventually opened a US studio
Speaker 1: in New Jersey with her husband, right around the time
Speaker 1: Webber was getting her own start. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: any exaggeration to say that women were at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the formation of film language. Here is an article
Speaker 1: August fourth, nineteen sixteen Lois Webber's are of first magnitude
Speaker 1: from the Nashville, Tennessee in I mean the middle of
Speaker 1: the country, you know, is surprised. It's not. Variety is
Speaker 1: not a trade journal. Low As Webber ranks with the
Speaker 1: greatest directors in the profession, and whose success confutes any
Speaker 1: argument of women's inability to fill posts in a man's field.
Speaker 1: I mean she was a very important finger. Webber was
Speaker 1: also prolific. She directed over one hundred short films and
Speaker 1: in one year alone, when she was Universal's top director.
Speaker 1: She wrote and directed ten feature length films. This is
Speaker 1: an extraordinary productivity. I can't really even imagine. I think,
Speaker 1: by contemporary standards, it's impossible to imagine. I mean, these days,
Speaker 1: you know, you wait for your favorite director to make
Speaker 1: a movie once every three years. Well, you know, the
Speaker 1: reporters that saw her on set during these years, they
Speaker 1: talk about how how decisive she was, how in command
Speaker 1: she was. She had her script in her hand and
Speaker 1: she was issuing orders, and everybody would come to her
Speaker 1: for every little detail about wardrobe, about sad, about everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think she just worked incredibly hard. She's prolific.
Speaker 1: Is she innovative? So she's not a cookie cutter director.
Speaker 1: She's not a director that's prolific because she's turning out
Speaker 1: the same thing again and again and again. She takes
Speaker 1: on all of these very controversial social issues of her day.
Speaker 1: She's known as this director who took on birth control
Speaker 1: and poverty and religious hypocrisy. But equally important, I think
Speaker 1: is her visual storytelling, which is extraordinary. One of Weber's
Speaker 1: most popular early short films is called Suspense. It's from
Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen. What she's doing is adapting of what at
Speaker 1: that time would have been a really well known formula
Speaker 1: called the last Minute Rescue, basically Liam Neeson movie. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: the early Liam Neeson. This is pre taken right by
Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen. By the time she takes it on, it's
Speaker 1: a very well known formula. She gives her film a
Speaker 1: generic title to tell us that she's taking on this
Speaker 1: formula and that she is going to better the master
Speaker 1: at his own game. Shelley and I watched the film together.
Speaker 1: It's only ten minutes long. And let me tell you,
Speaker 1: suspense is gripping and what's happening here. One of the
Speaker 1: hallmarks of the Last Minute Rescue is that you have
Speaker 1: the woman on the phone with police or her husband,
Speaker 1: and often the phone line is cut, and so that
Speaker 1: cross cutting back and forth of the phone call is
Speaker 1: a key element of suspense. What whatever does is she
Speaker 1: puts the three elements together in the frame. Yes, I
Speaker 1: see it. The screen is split in three. There's the
Speaker 1: wife at home on the phone, the husband at work,
Speaker 1: and the intruder coming further and further into the house
Speaker 1: right sawing the phone line, peeking through the door. So
Speaker 1: we see all three elements at once, and there he
Speaker 1: is looking right at us. A tramp is prowling around
Speaker 1: the house and he's good and bad guy's good in
Speaker 1: this and she's on the phone, and that's Lois Webber
Speaker 1: playing the woman. She wrote it. She started it as
Speaker 1: she's directing it. How did Lois Webber present if she
Speaker 1: were to walk in here, would you think, well, there
Speaker 1: she is, that's a groundbreaker or she's a radical? Absolutely not, No,
Speaker 1: she had what that is What I think is really
Speaker 1: interesting about her. Her persona was that of a kind
Speaker 1: of very dignified, married, white, middle class woman. She really
Speaker 1: presented herself that way. But I think that persona was
Speaker 1: a way for her to tackle the issues that she tackled.
Speaker 1: She describes herself as a missionary in several places that
Speaker 1: I've seen. Well, she took that description very seriously. Early
Speaker 1: in her career when she was pursuing music, she was
Speaker 1: involved in evangelical work in New York, and she really
Speaker 1: saw cinema as she said, it's it's a meeting where
Speaker 1: I can preach to my heart's content. One of the
Speaker 1: issues that she tackled on film was birth control. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic
Speaker 1: in America, That same year, Weber directed a film called
Speaker 1: Where Are My Children, which was considered so controversial that
Speaker 1: Universal preface to the film with a big, full screen
Speaker 1: warning to parents not to let their children watch the
Speaker 1: film unsupervised. The studio also defended the film subject matter
Speaker 1: by pointing out that birth control had been in the
Speaker 1: news fair warning to this audience. Though the film's point
Speaker 1: of view has not aged well at all, her take
Speaker 1: on legalizing contraception is very mired in the eugenics of
Speaker 1: the period. She said, media case for legalized contraception for
Speaker 1: largely for women living in poverty and for immigrant population.
Speaker 1: So that's a sort of classic eugenics argument, right, And
Speaker 1: that's one half of the film. The other half of
Speaker 1: the film is vilifying wealthy, privileged white women who repeatedly
Speaker 1: use abortion to avoid pregnancy. They're not propagating the right stock. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: they're not propagating the right stock. And so the reproductive
Speaker 1: politics of this film are pretty distasteful from a contemporary
Speaker 1: point of view, right, you know, we can't really shy
Speaker 1: away from that fact. But they were relatively typical of
Speaker 1: the time. Lois Webber was not part of some fringe
Speaker 1: No no Now, Lois Webber didn't earn recognition just for
Speaker 1: her directing. Just when I thought nothing else would surprise me,
Speaker 1: I learned about her political career. In nineteen thirteen, feigned
Speaker 1: Hollywood director Lois Webber gained national attention for another role.
Speaker 1: She was mayor of the Universal City. Yes, Universal City,
Speaker 1: the home of Universal Studios. Any family that's been lucky
Speaker 1: enough to take a trip to Los Angeles and we
Speaker 1: went as a family in nineteen eighty when I was
Speaker 1: in the fifth grade, hopefully took the Universal Studios tour
Speaker 1: where you see the Psycho House and you know, Jaws
Speaker 1: comes up and you think it's gonna bite you. What
Speaker 1: they don't tell you on that tour. The city once
Speaker 1: had a mayor, a female mayor, seven years before women
Speaker 1: gained the right to vote nationally. What was this about?
Speaker 1: Was this a big Hollywood publicity stunt kind of but
Speaker 1: it was an important publicity stunt. Right. Universal City imagines
Speaker 1: itself as a place where work in life are combined. Right,
Speaker 1: that making motion pictures is so fun, that it's it's
Speaker 1: a community. You live there and you work there together,
Speaker 1: and so part of that is having a mayor. But
Speaker 1: Webber runs on an all female ticket with other women,
Speaker 1: other Universal stars running as distric attorney and police chief.
Speaker 1: And some of the publicity was really negative, right about
Speaker 1: women taking over the Universal city, and the Amazons, the
Speaker 1: Amazons and you know they hate men and all all
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff. Now it gets a little calm
Speaker 1: implicated because Webber didn't win this election, but the guy
Speaker 1: who did left the studio six months later, and she
Speaker 1: took over the job a largely ceremonial post. Really, I
Speaker 1: don't think it had any real function, but I think
Speaker 1: it was an important ceremonial post and that it demonstrated
Speaker 1: to the world that Universal was led by a woman.
Speaker 1: So why don't we know Lois Webber's name? What happened?
Speaker 1: I think there's a whole bunch of complicated things that
Speaker 1: happened with her decline. Once we get into the twenties,
Speaker 1: once we get into the height of the jazz age
Speaker 1: entertainment and Hollywood in particular shifts to more escapism. Lois
Speaker 1: Webber doesn't do escapist and she doesn't do escapism, and
Speaker 1: she's out of stab. But there's a bunch of other
Speaker 1: stuff that's going, yes, yes, which are well, what happens
Speaker 1: is by the early twenties. The movie industry is incredibly profitable.
Speaker 1: So so guess what power consolidates. I'm a managing like
Speaker 1: a bunch of cigar choppers, like guys like the monopoly man,
Speaker 1: coming in and going all right, all right, all right, ladies,
Speaker 1: step aside, because now this is getting serious. There's big
Speaker 1: money here, and this is a man's job. That is
Speaker 1: basically what happens. I mean, the studios in order to
Speaker 1: buy up Holly Theater chains had to borrow a lot
Speaker 1: of money from Wall Street, and in doing so they
Speaker 1: sort of bought into a corporate culture which was highly
Speaker 1: male and as a result, disvalued, forgot about female filmmakers.
Speaker 1: So and it happens really fast. You know, by the
Speaker 1: late twenties and early thirties, when the first histories of
Speaker 1: Hollywood are being written, there is no mention of Lois
Speaker 1: Webber or any of the female filmmakers. It's all about
Speaker 1: the female stars. It's all about Pickford and Swanson. Great,
Speaker 1: but they are forgotten very very fast, in a sort
Speaker 1: of effort to as you say, legitimate the industry. You know,
Speaker 1: step aside, ladies, Well you know, we're gonna make this
Speaker 1: very profitable industry legit you could say women in Hollywood
Speaker 1: went the way of silent films. The Jazz Singer premiered
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty seven, talkies became all the rage in
Speaker 1: the following decades. Women directors were the exception to the rule.
Speaker 1: There was Dorothy Artisner. She was a big deal in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties and forties. Then in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: Hollywood actress Ida Lapino you know her from crossword puzzles,
Speaker 1: moved on to directing films and later television. And to
Speaker 1: this day, female filmmakers are told, well, it's never been
Speaker 1: done before. You're gonna have to reinvent the wheel. Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness. You know, I don't think a woman can
Speaker 1: direct a big budget film. I don't think a female
Speaker 1: lead can carry a picture. I don't think a film
Speaker 1: about so called women's issues can be successful. These arguments
Speaker 1: were one a hundred years ago, and yet we're still
Speaker 1: fighting about them because we've forgotten. It's a lot easier
Speaker 1: to imagine something as possible if you know it's happened before. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's why history matters. We talked about the forces that
Speaker 1: made it difficult for Lois Webber. Did she retire at
Speaker 1: one point, she did not retire. To her credit, she
Speaker 1: made her last film in nineteen thirty four, which was
Speaker 1: her one and only sound picture. She took a boatload
Speaker 1: of generators to Kawai. She shot the first film on
Speaker 1: location on Kawaii. Jurassic Park was shot. You can't even
Speaker 1: imagine doing that. I mean, it's it's phenomenal. So she
Speaker 1: That was her last film in nineteen thirty four. She
Speaker 1: died five years later in nineteen thirty nine, and in
Speaker 1: those intervening five years, she continued to write scripts. She
Speaker 1: continued to try to get films made. She never gave up,
Speaker 1: even in industry that was became very inhospitable to women,
Speaker 1: Just like we did for Elizabeth Jennings and Moses fleetwood Walker.
Speaker 1: We tracked down the newspaper coverage of Lois Webber's passing.
Speaker 1: She didn't get a ton of ink in the major papers,
Speaker 1: with one exception, a big front page item in the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles Times penned by famed gossip columnist had a Hopper.
Speaker 1: Hopper paid tribute by writing, I don't know of any
Speaker 1: woman who has had a greater influence upon the motion
Speaker 1: picture business than Lois, or anyone who has helped so
Speaker 1: many climb the ladder of fame, asking for nothing but
Speaker 1: friendship in return. Hopper added, I have a feeling she
Speaker 1: wasn't sorry to leave this world for a better one.
Speaker 1: Shelley Stamp hopes for a better legacy for Lois Webber.
Speaker 1: I feel confident that over the long haul, the histories
Speaker 1: of Hollywood will be rewritten to feature her and all
Speaker 1: of the other women that were active at the beginning industry.
Speaker 1: But the more films that come out and the more
Speaker 1: textbooks that get rewritten, the more at tension that's paid
Speaker 1: to her. I think we can correct this amnesia. These
Speaker 1: are the story of just three forgotten four runners, the
Speaker 1: Pioneers before the Pioneers. But in any story of firsts
Speaker 1: and four runners, you've got to be careful. We talked
Speaker 1: about Elizabeth Jennings as the Rosa Parks of New York
Speaker 1: Parks is one of the most famous symbols of the
Speaker 1: Civil rights struggle, But nine months before her arrest, a
Speaker 1: woman named Claudette Colvin did the very same thing. And
Speaker 1: as far as Moses fleetwood Walker well, baseball researchers recently
Speaker 1: came across the story of William Edward White he played
Speaker 1: one Major League game in eighteen seventy nine for the
Speaker 1: Providence Grays White was actually a former slave, but lived
Speaker 1: his free life as a white man. So was he
Speaker 1: really the first? I don't know. Maybe proving who was
Speaker 1: first isn't as important as we think. Maybe it misses
Speaker 1: the point that all these people, whether they were first, second,
Speaker 1: or one hundred and second, had guts and made things
Speaker 1: at least a little bit better for the people who
Speaker 1: came later, sometimes much later. Of course, that depends on
Speaker 1: us remembering their stories next time. On Mobituaries, The Unforgettable
Speaker 1: Audrey Hepburn, Were you aware that the day of your inauguration,
Speaker 1: Audrey Hepburn died? No, you didn't know that. No. I
Speaker 1: certainly hope you enjoyed this mobid Be sure to rate
Speaker 1: and review our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on
Speaker 1: Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Morocca. For more great content, including photos of our forerunners,
Speaker 1: please visit mobituaries dot com. You can subscribe to Mobituaries
Speaker 1: wherever you're getting your podcasts. This episode of Mobituaries was
Speaker 1: produced by Meghan Marcus. Our team of producers also includes
Speaker 1: Gideon Evans, Kate mccauliffe, Meghan Deetree and me Morocca. It
Speaker 1: was edited by Ashley Cleek and engineered by Dan de Zula.
Speaker 1: Indispensable support from Genius Dineski, Kira Wardlow, Zach Gilcrest, Richard Roarer,
Speaker 1: everyone at CBS News Radio, and Frank Petersburger at Tony Paco's.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart and as always,
Speaker 1: undying thanks to Rand Morrison and John Carp without whom
Speaker 1: Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi, It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries
Speaker 1: the podcast, may I invite you to check out Mobituaries
Speaker 1: the book. It's chock full of stories not in the podcast.
Speaker 1: Celebrities who put their butts on the line, sports teams
Speaker 1: that threw in the towel for good, forgotten, fashion defunct
Speaker 1: diagnoses presidential candidacies that cratered, whole countries that went caput.
Speaker 1: And dragons, Yes, dragons, you see. People used to believe
Speaker 1: the dragons will reel until just get the book. You
Speaker 1: can order Mobituaries the Book from any online bookseller, or
Speaker 1: stop by your local bookstore and look for me when
Speaker 1: I come to your city. Tour information and lots more
Speaker 1: at mobituaries dot com.