Abstract:
Claire Adams Mackinnon and her contributions to the war effort 100 years ago are largely forgotten. The product of two Canadian military families, she put aside her burgeoning film career when war broke out to train and work as a nurse before returning to the silent screen. This article examines available evidence to reconstruct this period of her career (1914-1919), encompassing her nursing experience, her role in a fundraising drive for the US Red Cross, and her starring role in a government sexual hygiene campaign, which ignited one of the first censorship storms of the early film industry. I will argue that the choices Adams made reflect not only a determination to aid the war effort, but also place her at the vanguard of the women’s movement during the volatile years of the mid-1910s. This successful actress, who spent the second half of her life in Melbourne and regional Victoria, has largely been forgotten by film history. However, by placing this early period of her work within a firm historical context, one dominated by the fight for women’s suffrage, sex education and the First World War, we gain an appreciation of her significance within the early film industry and the origins of her ongoing community service.
Introduction:
For anyone with a passing interest in silent film history, Claire Adams Mackinnon is an intriguing transnational figure. A British subject for much of her life, she was born in Canada to an English father in 1896. A singer and an actress, on both stage and screen, she was a child performer using her real name “Beryl” Adams before gaining success as a motion picture actress in New York. As a teenager in early Thomas Edison productions she was known first as “Clara” then “Peggy” Adams before publically assuming her family pet name “Claire” in 1918. In 1920 Adams moved to Los Angeles and enjoyed an eight-year Hollywood career. In 1931 she became an American citizen prior to spending the last forty years of her life as an Australian.[1] Today, however, she remains largely unknown, despite appearing in some of the silent era’s most influential, popular and profitable films alongside some of the best-known artists and producers of the era.
If Adams is remembered at all it is within select circles in Victoria, Australia. Following the death of her first husband, Adams enjoyed a whirlwind courtship and marriage to Donald Scobie Mackinnon, the scion of a Melbourne legal and horseracing family. Together they reinvented the Western District homestead Mooramong, creating a jazz age delight redolent of the Hollywood Hills lifestyle she had left behind. Now in the hands of the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), Mooramong remains defiantly anachronistic in a district better known for its bluestone piles and weatherboard restraint, a monument to a much-loved couple reflecting their sophisticated tastes and cosmopolitan life experiences. Mrs Mackinnon’s career is reduced to a prelude to her second marriage, like a folly of youth indulged before her adult life began.
![Figure 1: Mooramong homestead, Skipton, Victoria. Image used courtesy of National Trust of Australia (Victoria).]()
Figure 1: Mooramong homestead, Skipton, Victoria. Image used courtesy of National Trust of Australia (Victoria).
An intensely private person throughout her life, Adams was enigmatic from her earliest interviews and has left little evidence to enable a simple or personal interpretation of her career.[2] Unlike many of her more famous contemporaries, she was not a movie star created by a studio publicity department: she was an experienced working actress, appearing across genres for a number of companies and eschewing the celebrity lifestyle. This independent approach resulted in a comparatively low public profile.[3] Nor was Adams in Hollywood when the studios began to construct their historical legacies. As such, she appears infrequently as a footnote in popular and scholarly accounts of the silent era, including the one written by her first husband, Benjamin B Hampton.[4] Eminent film scholars welcomed Hampton’s text as an authoritative account of the history of the early film industry.[5] If even her husband did not think she warranted more than an image caption, one could easily conclude that Adams was not terribly significant. However, as Lesley Speed suggests, Adams’s career is significant not only for the continuity of her workload, but for the time in which she was active, “spanning a period of major changes in the American film industry, including the transition from short films to feature-length productions, the industry’s relocation from the East coast to Los Angeles, the establishment of the star system and the formation of vertically-integrated major studios” (Speed 2015, 4).
Like the majority of women who dominated the ranks of the early motion picture industry, Adams has fallen through the gaps of film history’s indeterminacy.[6] However, as more scholars analyse the period and primary sources become more accessible, we are able to reconstruct a more accurate representation of the industry, the individuals and the era during which Adams was active, and the picture that emerges is one dominated by the women’s movement. Women made up at least 83% of the cinema audience at a time “when women’s voices were particularly valued” (Stamp 2012, 6). Women’s history scholars note that from the late 1910s “young women could not help but be influenced by the currents of the age” (Banner 1974, 151). As a young woman in New York City during the First World War, Adams was surrounded by the opportunities, debates and challenges confronting the first generation of young women free to pursue a career as a choice rather than a necessity. She was amongst the target audience for orators and activists such as Margaret Sanger promoting the birth control movement and key figures campaigning for Women’s Suffrage, which would not pass into legislation until 1920. We have no evidence that Claire Adams identified herself as an early feminist. However, through her career choices, she reflects the values and ideologies synonymous with the movement, a cultural catalyst which grew in parallel with the development of the motion picture industry.
By mainly focussing on two of her early feature films, this article will demonstrate that Claire Adams deserves recognition not only as a well-respected, adventurous and greatly admired actress of her day, but also as a young woman navigating the perils and opportunities opening up for women in the early twentieth century. She is also a representative of the forgotten contributions of countless women working in early cinema. I will examine her work of one hundred years ago, when she stepped away from Edison Studios and the early motion picture industry to train as a nurse, only to return to motion pictures in support of the troops heading off to the battlefields of Europe. By placing these early works within a firm historical context we will gain a more complete understanding of the scale and intersections of her careers, as both nurse and actress, her role at the vanguard of contentious social issues of the mid 1910s and her active participation in landmark moments of the early American film industry.
Real Life Drama
According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Claire Adams worked as a nurse for the Red Cross during World War I (Maxwell, 2000). This description conjures evocative images of mud and blood, battlefields and field hospitals. What drove an aspiring young actress away from the movie studio and into a hospital theatre? What data is available to determine how much official nursing she contributed to the war effort one hundred years ago?
![Figure 2: Figure 2. A young ‘Clara’ Adams (centre) with co-stars from left: Marion Weeks, Yale Boss, Elsie McLeod and Gertrude McCoy in The Office Boy’s Birthday (Charles M. Seay, 1913). From Kinetogram, 1 January 1913. Source: Seaver Centre for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.]()
Figure 2: A young ‘Clara’ Adams (centre) with co-stars from left: Marion Weeks, Yale Boss, Elsie McLeod and Gertrude McCoy in The Office Boy’s Birthday (Charles M. Seay, 1913). From Kinetogram, 1 January 1913. Source: Seaver Centre for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
In 1912, Adams began performing for Thomas Edison’s film production company under the stage name “Clara” Adams and appeared in 17 motion picture shorts in two years (Internet Movie Database, 2015). At the outbreak of war in 1914, she was almost 18 years of age. Both her grandfathers had served in the British military in Canada and India before entering business and public service (Letourneau 1982; Manitoba Historical Society 2009). This family tradition and tales of exploits on the battlefield inspired Adams and her brother Gerald as children (Will 1978, 30). As young adults, they were determined to emulate their forebears and sought opportunities to volunteer for the war effort.[7] Together they had grown up in an environment that was conservative and under the influence Anglo-Victorian social strictures of duty and community service. These strictures included a strong sense of volunteerism, which saw upper- and middle-class young people from across the British Empire come forward to support their King and Country (Quiney 1998, 190). Adams set aside acting to make an active contribution to the war effort.
Like thousands of young women across the British Empire, Adams applied to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment or V.A.D service, a corps of nurses and ambulance drivers trained and managed for the Red Cross by St John’s Ambulance. However, owing to her youth and inexperience, she was turned away (“Claire Adams, Starring in ‘The End of the Road’ Is Real Western Canada Girl”, 1920). She could not change her age but was able to address her skillset. Adams enrolled at Detroit’s Grace Hospital Training School for Nurses, one of the most respected institutions of its kind in North America (“Claire Adams, Starring in ‘The End of the Road’ Is Real Western Canada Girl”, 1920). Grace Hospital was just over the border from Canada on the shores of Lake St Clair, close to Toronto where she was living with her father Stanley Adams (Sweet & Stephens transcript). By 12 June 1915, Adams was listed on a ferry passenger manifest as an eighteen-year-old student nurse travelling between the two cities (Ancestry.com, 2009).
Unfortunately the enrolment records for the Grace Hospital Training School for Nurses from this time period do not survive, but the institution’s prospectus does, specifying a strict and rigorous lifestyle for their live-in student nurses.[8] This training would equip the young ladies to assist senior staff with both male and female patients in the hospital’s surgery, children’s ward and the obstetrics wing. Other extant records from Grace Hospital include the lists of graduates, and Adams’s name does not appear there either.[9] However this would not have prevented her from gaining employment as a nursing assistant, especially at a time when people with any medical or first aid experience were in high demand. Many students enrolled and failed to make it through the rigors of training or were unsuited to the prohibitive lifestyle required of those living in (Kathleen E. Schmeling, pers. comm.).
The Canadian Red Cross website describes how anyone working as a volunteer at a hospital during the Great War was referred to as a Red Cross nurse. Unfortunately records of the thousands of people who gave their time and energies to help have been either destroyed or did not exist in the first place.[10] What do still exist though are the Canadian census records taken in 1916 (Ancestry.com, 2009). They record that Adams was staying with her mother in Winnipeg and working as a “doctor’s assistant”. As happened across the Empire, she was most likely one of the thousands of women who volunteered to work in their local hospital. Deer Lodge was one of many country houses and hotels across Canada converted to military hospitals dedicated to convalescent soldiers returning from the front (Deer Lodge Centre, 20014). The English Government was short of both funds and infrastructure to deal with the number of wounded generated by the new means of mechanised warfare. Deer Lodge was established as a repatriation hospital in Winnipeg in October 1915 following a request made by the English Government to Commonwealth nations contributing troops to the war. Each country or dominion of the British Empire became responsible for the convalescent care of their own when casualty numbers exceeded British expectations and resources.[11]
Moving back to Winnipeg to reside with her mother Lillian, a piano teacher, also offered Adams the chance to participate in another historical event. In January of 1916, the women of Manitoba Province were the first in Canada to be granted the right to vote in municipal elections and hold public office. This occurred 2 years before most of their countrywomen and 4 years ahead of women in the United States (Jackal & Millette, 2015). Even during times of war, this would have been something worth celebrating and hard to ignore.
Following the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, the number of wounded Canadian troops requiring convalescent care rose from 2,620 in July 1916 to 11,981 by the year’s end (Veterans Affairs Canada, 2015). Adams may not have experienced the action on the front, but she would have witnessed the consequences it had on soldiers. In whatever capacity she was serving, she would have been expected to meet the demands of a near five-fold increase in the number of shattered patients, some approximately her own age, in the makeshift over-crowded wards ill-equipped to deal with them.
In 1916, Adams was still only 19-years-old. The physical toll of nursing accompanied by emotional exhaustion were the reasons Adams later gave to explain her return to motion pictures, admitting that she “collapsed finally under the strain of her work” (Goldbeck 1920, 27). Although equipped with some training and experience, she may not have been capable of maintaining an emotional distance or remain objective from the suffering she confronted. Well before the Armistice was declared in November 1918, she was back with Edison Company performing for the cameras. In doing so, she continued contributing to the war effort, but it was on a scale that exceeded anything she could have achieved had she remained a doctor’s assistant in Winnipeg.
Returning to the screen in 1917 with the stage name “Peggy”, Adams appeared in 8 Edison Productions. These included Barnaby Lee (Edward H. Griffith, 1917), her first feature film running over four reels (48 minutes), and the first of several in which she was directed by Edward H Griffith.[12] She starred in Your Obedient Servant (Edward H. Griffith, 1917), the first adaptation of Anne Sewell’s classic novel, Black Beauty (see Figure 3). Her next production, Scouting for Washington (Edward H. Griffith, 1917) was a melodrama set during the American Revolution. Wild Arnica and Shut Out in the Ninth (both Edward H Griffith, 1917) show a very young Adams, all dimples and dark curls, revelling in simplistic comedy.[13]
![Figure 3: Claire Adams with Pat O’Malley in Your Obedient Servant, (Edward H. Griffith, 1917). Edison Conquest Pictures. 1917. Source: UC Irvine Special Collections and Archives.]()
Figure 3: Claire Adams with Pat O’Malley in Your Obedient Servant, (Edward H. Griffith, 1917). Edison Conquest Pictures. 1917. Source: UC Irvine Special Collections and Archives.
The following year, Adams would make the pivotal films of her early career. They started with a short vignette, one of a series of social satires titled Girls You Know. It would be the last time she appeared in a motion picture produced by the Edison Company. Each sketch “featured a different type of American girl personally selected” by James Montgomery Flagg, the prodigious illustrator, cartoonist and photographer (“Edison Releases Flagg Social Satire Series.” 1917). The First World War was something of a career peak for Flagg. He’d had film experience, was a widely read social satirist and artist and produced recruitment and patriotic propaganda posters for the US government. Flagg’s most recognised image was his creation of Uncle Sam, the grizzled old patriarch on the recruitment posters who “Needs You for US Army”. [14]
Flagg was commissioned to provide the “one-reel photo-sketches … depict(ing) the grace, charm, foibles and frailties of ‘Girls You Know’, the likable types” (“Recollections of ‘Girls You Know’”, 1918). These “likeable types” featured such stereotypical characters as “The Art Bug”, the “Spoiled Child”, the “Bride” and “The Artist’s Model”. Adams was cast as The Man-eater (Jack Eaton, 1918). The influence of the war in this film is obvious. Adams’s character Nina bids a tearful farewell to her uniformed fiancé and dreams of medals pinned to his broad manly chest. Nina is a sprightly little flirt travelling to a picnic with friends, harmless but annoying in her need for male attention. She is eventually “doused off”, pushed into the river, pulled ashore then scolded like a half-drowned kitten.[15]
The Girls You Know vignettes were produced as light and satirical entertainment for the troops and for those on the home front. They also reflect the restrictive caricatures of young women in the early motion picture industry, characterisations of women indulgently pursuing or experimenting with a career (“The Artist’s Model” and “The Art Bug”). Others were defined by their relationships with parents or male partners (“The Spoiled Child”, “The Bride” and “The Man-eater”). As “the Man-eater”, shunned and dunked for her sexually assertive manner, Adams’s character suffers the entrenched social consequences as punishment for her morally dubious behaviour. The cast of the series were promoted as having been “all selected from (Flagg’s) models – the most famous in New York”, though featuring leading women “with no experience but clever ideas and no actresses of note” (“Recollections of ‘Girls You Know’”, 1918). Adams, however, was by this stage a well-established performer, and three of her four “Girls” colleagues also had previous motion picture experience.[16] Flagg, the producers and indeed audiences, may have been more attracted to a fresh pretty face than a talented individual with an identity, reflecting the low opinion many still held of the acting profession.[17] There is no small irony that she was at this time living against tradition, earning a respectable wage and supporting herself independently as a professional young woman.[18]
The Spirit of The Red Cross, (Jack Eaton, 1918)
When the United States entered the European conflict in 1917, the US chapter of the International Red Cross was charged by the government to raise funds and volunteers to maintain an active presence on the battlefields of Europe. The subsequent rise of American humanitarianism and the specific formation of a nation-wide Red Cross campaign coincided with a period when “sensationalistic mass media began to dominate American culture”. These forces, dominated by new motion picture technologies, were responsible for the “reshaping American ways of seeing, feeling, and responding to suffering by treating violence and pain as pleasure-producing commodities” (Rozario 2003, 426).
The Red Cross recognised the timeliness of motion pictures as an effective and expedient medium for stimulating potential donors and volunteers across the country (Rozario 2003, 429). The National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI), chaired by famed producer Jesse Lasky, was appointed to the American Red Cross to promote and “interpret the organization for the American People” through the production of a suitable motion picture (“Spirit of the Red Cross” 1918). Flagg was engaged to write the script. Jack Eaton, also of the Girls You Know series, was brought in to direct. Adams was cast as the lead, a nurse named Ethel, the image and embodiment of the International Red Cross. Lasky’s production expertise ensured that the resulting film, The Spirit of the Red Cross (Jack Eaton, 1918) presented “some of the best work done in motion picture making” (“Spirit of the Red Cross” 1918). With such an accomplished and professional team involved, this 2-reel film was certain to not only hit but exceed the patriotic, inspirational and philanthropic targets for which all parties were aiming.
Adams’s lead character Ethel was the sweetheart of “an American youth” Sammy, played by Ray McKee. When Sammy enlists with the army and sails for France, Ethel volunteers as a nurse. The film portrays the work of the Red Cross in the field, assisting refugees, nursing and caring for the wounded. The New York Times described Sammy heading for the battlefield, envisioning “Ethel in her white uniform, watching over him”, until:
After a charge, he lies on the ground with a bullet in his chest, half conscious. The vision of Ethel awakens him, just as a German comes forward slaying the wounded. Sammy grips his revolver and shoots the enemy. Later, removed to base hospital, Ethel finds him and nurses him back to health. [19]
The Red Cross were not averse to engaging exaggerated propagandist images for the benefit of their cause.[20] Their tactics owed much to the pulp media, sensationalist newspapers and war magazines, aiming to provoke the outraged and patriotic public into “acts of benevolence” (Rozario 2003, 430). What makes this campaign remarkable is that it was the first time such techniques had been mobilised so effectively on a broad national scale, utilising the emotive mass cultural medium of motion pictures.
The American Red Cross expected their national fund raising drive to receive “considerable impetus” from the release of The Spirit of the Red Cross (“Spirit of the Red Cross”, 1918). Newspaper listings from across the country noted that cinema proprietors were donating all takings from the screening to the cause.[21] The New York Times quoted that the goal of the organisation was to raise one hundred million dollars, or around $1.8 billion in US dollars today (Measuring Worth, 2014). By the time the Armistice was declared in November 1918, only 7 months after the film’s release, the Red Cross had raised approximately four times that sum (American Red Cross, 2014). The film is credited with playing a major role in the campaign’s success. By the war’s end, one-third of the US population, approximately 39 million people, were either contributing members of the Red Cross or serving as volunteers.[22] At the cessation of hostilities, war movies were the most successful types of films in the country and “spectacle was in the ascendant” (Rozario 2003, 439).
The promotional poster Flagg created for The Spirit of the Red Cross depicts the diaphanous vision of Adams’s character floating over the battlefield. Ethel valiantly directs stretcher-bearers toward the unseen wounded. The plaintive caption declares: “Not one shall be left behind” (See fig. 4). For the many, perhaps the millions, who attended the film or saw the poster, Adams represented the thousands of nurses serving in the field, saving the fallen and tending the refugees, even though she was not entirely happy with her performance (Lake 1922, 51). She may not have been directly ministering to the wounded any longer. However, through her contribution to this film, Adams achieved more for the war effort as a nurse on screen than would have been possible had she remained one in life. Well into her old age it was commonly accepted and reiterated in biographical entries that Adams had been a nurse for the Red Cross during the First World War. Having taken part in such a high profile and hugely successful campaign, it is fair to say that Claire Adams was not simply “a nurse” for the Red Cross: she was The Nurse, the face on the movie poster, the selfless guardian of the wounded and indeed the embodiment of The Spirit of the Red Cross.
![Figure 5: Figure 4: The Spirit of the Red Cross (James Montgomery Flagg, 1918). Source: World War 1 Posters from the Elizabeth Ball Collection, Ball State University Archives and Special Collections. Ball State University, 2011. All rights reserved.]()
Figure 4: The Spirit of the Red Cross (James Montgomery Flagg, 1918). Source: World War 1 Posters from the Elizabeth Ball Collection, Ball State University Archives and Special Collections. Ball State University, 2011. All rights reserved.
Adams was well positioned to maximise the opportunities offered by both the emancipation of women in general and the freedoms and opportunities offered by the motion picture industry. At the dawn of the Twentieth Century, middle-class women in North America were still expected to abide by the traditional Victorian roles of marriage, motherhood and marital obedience. As the 1920s loomed, however, “a woman’s alternatives to marriage were not only possible but exciting” (Banner 1974, 48). This social shift was influenced by women’s experiences backfilling male positions in the workforce and volunteering for the war effort (Quiney 1998, 193). By the time Armistice was declared, Adams was twenty-two years old with an independent motion picture career, an exciting new option embraced by increasing numbers of young women in the West. As such she exemplifies the symbiotic relationship between two new cultural forces at play, demonstrating that “Cinema history and history cannot be separated from one another”: “In the field of tension between the history of cinema in the 1910s and gender history, a movement of emancipation takes place” (Schlüpmann 2013, 24).
Women were not only welcomed but were highly valued in the early motion picture industry, occupying positions from theatre staff to major writers and directors. Like Adams, despite their prominent positions, most did not publically identify themselves with the early feminist movement (Slide 1996, 1-3). Crucially Adams had also proven she had the talent, experience and determination to excel. Having starred in the commendable The Spirit of the Red Cross, she had also gained her family’s acceptance and support (Lake 1922, 51). From 1919 she was known publically not as “Clara” or “Peggy” but as Claire Adams, the “pet name” favoured by her family. Following The Spirit of the Red Cross, there were several projects to which she would dedicate her talents. One of these was a leading role in Romance and Brass Tacks (Martin Justice, 1918), “the new Flagg comedy starring pretty Peggy Adams, the famous Broadway beauty” (“An Unusual Comedy at Vining Theatre” 1918). The next motion picture Adams found herself starring in was another high-profile government sponsored film, also made for the war effort and proving remarkably popular. However, it also drew the kind of attention that few respectable young ladies from Winnipeg may have welcomed. Adams starred in one of the first major censorship scandals of the motion picture industry.
The End of the Road (Edward H. Griffith, 1919)
Young girls, thrilled with patriotism, sometimes fail to realize that the uniform covers all the kinds of men there are in the world; men of high ideals … or, in the worst instances, men who feel that their own physical appeal must be gratified, no matter who suffers. And so, through ignorance, through emotion, take steps which will lead to bitter regret.
(Katherine Bement Davis from Colwell 1998, 73)
Following The Spirit of the Red Cross and the additional projects with Flagg, there is evidence that Adams returned to theatre. In May 1918, she is named amongst the cast members of a patriotic play called Loyalty, written by George V. Hobart and staged at the Belasco Theatre in Washington DC. Belying both Adams’s preference for patriotic pieces as well as the public’s support for them, Loyalty is described as:
Something more than a mere dramatic entertainment … the play also carries a message of hope to a world suffering from the hardships and horrors of war (“Loyalty Will Make First Appearance At Belasco Tonight” 1918, 14).
The war may have been over but the horror continued on the home front. The “The Spanish Flu” evolved in the trenches of Europe from a moderately innocuous virus into something quite lethal. The appearance of the disease in New York City, borne by returning soldiers, was first reported in August 1918. The vius attacked the young and healthy, becoming more infectious and lethal with each mutation. Many industries, including motion picture companies and theatres, were unable to operate normally or in some instances were forced to close. Adams may have been forced to take time off or found work options cancelled or postponed. By the time the city recovered months later, it had lost 20,000 to 24,000 of its six million citizens. (Dominus, 2009). However, influenza was not the only infection rife amongst the troops.
In her essay, “The End of the Road: Gender, the Dissemination of Knowledge, and the American Campaign against Venereal Disease during World War 1”, Stacie A. Colwell provides a detailed account of the social and political context which gave rise to Adams’s next project (Colwell 1998, 44-82). As the US entered the war, the number of new recruits infected by venereal diseases appalled doctors conducting medical examinations.[23] As had been customary for generations, many young men of the time were engaging in unprotected pre-marital and extra-marital sex, ignorant or uncaring of the consequences. This practice was intensified during the heightened emotional climate of the war. Young women at the same time were becoming more personally independent, challenging the social order and demanding equal rights and freedoms to men. These included sexual freedoms.[24] They were unfortunately doing so within a vacuum of ignorance, a symptom of the perennial code of dual morality encouraging young men to explore their sexuality while young women were kept sexually innocent, unaware of their body’s functions and frailties. Many, deeply smitten, unknowing or unable to say no, found themselves bearing the physical and social consequences of sex with strangers or sweethearts they feared they’d never see again. The result was a perfect storm of ignorance, class-based bigotry and misbegotten morality, and Adams stepped right in the middle of it.
Eugenics, racism and class tensions exacerbated both the fear and apportioning of blame for the spread of venereal diseases (Schaefer 1999, 21). At a time when eugenics was still considered to be a viable scientific theory, some believed that the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as syphilis and gonorrhoea served a deliberate political or religious agenda.[25] Others saw the epidemic as an insidious weapon activated by the working masses, crowding into industrialised urban centres to breed out the richer, more refined classes (Colwell 1998, 72). The front line troops in this intimate means of class warfare were believed to be not simply prostitutes (who had a surprisingly low level of infection due to regulatory frameworks and inspections of brothels), but liberated “diseased and promiscuous” women seducing innocent men of means who then passed the infection onto their wives (Colwell 1998, 72). In turn, these ‘pure’ middle- and upper-class women would be driven mad, infertile, or both, by the ravages of the disease.[26] With many changes being made to the social order and a popular culture rife with inflammatory propaganda regarding invaders from abroad, there’s little wonder that this kind of imbalanced fear and paranoia infected the home front, like another disease.
The U.S. War Department, ever the pragmatists, saw the issue quite clearly – sick soldiers were bad for morale, an additional expense and made for a weakened army (Colwell 1998, 47). The challenge of addressing this issue fell to the War Department’s Committee on Training Camp Activities. This committee was confronting disciplinary issues relating to groups of young, independent and assertive New Women moving to towns and areas surrounding the training facilities. Schaefer implies that some were probably entrepreneurial prostitutes. Others were most likely “the khaki mad girls”, opportunists who simply loved a man in uniform and weren’t afraid to show it (Colwell 1998, 73). The troops themselves, predictably, were considered relatively blameless.
The momentum generated by the war to stem the spread of STDs provided an opportunity for diverse community organizations with similar concerns to affiliate with the War Department. A consortium of public health and volunteer organizations was incorporated under the banner of the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA). Combined, they represented “a hybrid of social purity and sex education movements” (Colwell 1998, 46). These organizations pressed for a means of educating the population about the facts of life, the evils of STDs and pre-marital (or extra-marital) sex. Yes, it was bad for the War Effort. However for ASHA, the spread of venereal diseases was due to ignorance within a paradoxical culture. On the one hand young people had been loosened from the corset-like confines of the Victorian moral order, yet on the other were still bound by obscenity laws that made it illegal to disseminate medical or preventative information regarding STDs.[27] A “conspiracy of silence” reigned: people did not speak openly of such things and had few available sources of information (Schaefer 1999, 21). The volatility of the subject was amplified by the controversies surrounding the birth control movement. As Margaret Sanger and her supporters discovered, it was still considered obscene and illegal in the United States to distribute materials addressing the use of prophylactics and other forms of contraception.[28] Some considered it more socially repellent to talk of venereal disease in public than to actually contract a case and not mention it (Schaefer 1999, 21). ASHA concluded that a range of sensitive and educational, yet frank and fearless, vehicles were required, aimed at both men and women to address the facts of life and some of their indelicate consequences. As the Red Cross had realised before them, the military and their new allies embraced the power of motion pictures to educate and inform the public of America. A motion picture offered an additional bonus: In the darkness of a movie theatre, no one can see you blush.
Their strategy involved dividing the audience along gender lines. Fit to Win (Edward H. Griffith, 1919) was crafted to appeal to the needs and experiences of young male recruits.[29] The End of the Road (Edward H. Griffith, 1919) was aimed at young women who, out of curiosity, ignorance or early “girl power” gone awry, were finding themselves in physically and morally perilous positions. The film was to be screened with a pre-show lecture by a medical practioner in “Ladies Only” sessions at public cinemas. In order to make the subject matter more palatable for a “delicate” female audience, the educational aspects were wrapped up in a charming love story.[30] Conveniently, director Edward H. Griffith had been drafted into the War Department’s Committee on Training Camp Activities. Previously engaged by Thomas Edison Company, and with acting experience of his own, he played a major role in the production of several films supporting the war effort. During his time at Edison, Lt Griffith had made four films with Claire Adams. She was cast as Mary, the heroine of this sensitive story, opposite renowned actor Richard Bennett, who had enjoyed an expansive and celebrated theatre career before taking to the screen.[31]
A key figure within ASHA, Katharine Bement Davis was brought in to write The End of the Road. Davis described her contribution to the project as having “been most carefully worked out in consultation with physicians on the side of fidelity to medical fact, and with teachers as to the psychological effect” (Colwell 1998, 48). Davis had an established career in education, penal reform and public health, involving intensive research into the social causes of delinquency, the efficacy of reform programs for female prisoners, as well as surveys into the nature of women’s sexuality.[32] Her work had inspired John D. Rockefeller Jr. to establish the Bureau of Social Hygiene as part of his newly established foundation (Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2014).
The film was produced under the supervision of the Surgeon General of the US Army, a protective political arm supporting the enterprise. Additional collaborators included the National War Work Council, the YWCA, Rockefeller’s Bureau of Social Hygiene and the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation (American Film Institute Catalogue, 2015). This was a high-powered group of influential stakeholders with an interest in the film’s success. There was more than the usual amount of pressure and expectation placed on the actress playing Mary, the leading lady in this high-stakes drama. The following synopsis is from the American Film Institute Catalogue:
Mary, whose mother has instructed her about love, marriage and sex, leaves her boyfriend Paul to become a nurse in a New York hospital. Vera, encouraged by her mother to marry a rich man, takes an apartment from a young millionaire who promises marriage but only gives her syphilis. Mary and her doctor treat Vera and show her examples of the ravages of the disease. Mary meets other suffering women: an Irish servant girl betrayed by a chauffeur who dies after her baby is born; a garment worker who contracted syphilis from a soldier’s forced kiss; the invalid wife of a wealthy man whose philandering caused her condition, the blindness of her child and the suicide of another of his conquests. Paul, about to enlist, suggests that he and Mary have sex before her goes. Disappointed in him, Mary also rejects the proposal of her doctor, but later in Europe after seeing the kind of man he is, she accepts him.
On all fronts, this was a brave role for Adams. Some of the scenes featured actual patients scarred and suffering from venereal diseases, filmed on location at the women’s wards of Blackwell’s Island, New York City.[33] In her role as the nurse Mary, Adams is seen conversing with these obviously frail patients, gently supporting them as they present for the camera.[34] Most of the film was shot at the Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills in Mount Pleasant, New York State (Colwell 1998, 63). As a resident of New York City at this time, it would have been difficult for Adams not to be aware of the campaigns for and against women’s suffrage and access to birth control, including the incarceration and exile of Margaret Sanger, all of which received widespread publicity between 1916 and 1918 (Banner 1974, 103). There is also the possibility that she may have had first-hand experience with the physical, social and psychological impacts of these diseases during her training and duties in the obstetrics ward at Grace Hospital in Detroit. That possibility becomes more probable when considering her contact with repatriated soldiers in Winnipeg. Perhaps this experience galvanised her willingness to participate, in spite of the risks. Her participation in The End of the Road reflects the influence of her family’s military and public service background as well as her own compulsion to help others. She would require the strength of the first and her faith in the latter to confront the controversy this film was about to generate.
![Figure 5: Claire Adams as the nurse Mary Lee with a patient in The End of the Road (Edward W. Griffith, 1918). Source: UC Irvine Special Collections and Archives.]()
Figure 5: Claire Adams as the nurse Mary Lee with a patient in The End of the Road (Edward W. Griffith, 1918). Source: UC Irvine Special Collections and Archives.
The spark that ignited a furore was the sudden end of the war. This timing meant everything. Audiences and the industry had had enough of both war and sex.[35] The military units and programs that sponsored the film’s production were disbanded. Several key elements and references of the storyline were no longer relevant or threatened to offend peace-time sensibilities. Davis, however, successfully argued that the need to educate young adults, particularly young women, about their bodies remained, and that this justified public screenings. The project was permitted to “continue until a clear opinion has developed concerning the desirability or undesirability of its being shown through commercial channels” (Colwell 1998, 66). The ASHA gained control of the copyright of the film. The distribution and exhibition remained (for the time being) under the auspices of the Surgeon General, with safeguards in place to protect the film “from sensational exploitation”. Women’s groups and other officials were invited to preview screenings to judge its value and suitability for local audiences (Colwell 1998, 64).
The film premiered on 16 February 1919 in Syracuse, New York. There were fifteen hundred people at opening night and it went on to capacity crowds in a number of other cities (Schaefer 1999, 28). Most of the film’s key personnel were not there to see it. By opening night, Griffith had gone west. Davis sailed to post-war Europe pursuing her new role as General Secretary of Rockefeller’s Bureau of Social Hygiene. There was only one participant left with any skin in the game who made herself available to face down the critics and attend the film’s premiere. Colwell notes: “For the record, actress Claire Adams, who played Mary Lee, did travel to both Syracuse and Pittsburgh to defend the film she had starred in” (66). The New York Times reviewed the film in March 1919 and enthused that The End of the Road was “the most valuable motion picture of its kind yet produced.” The picture is not pleasant or euphemistic. Neither is the subject with which it deals. It is unpleasant, however, only to the degree necessary for force, and plain spoken only to the extent necessary for clearness. It is never morbid. One feels clean after seeing it (“Opening the Road” 1919). Acknowledging that audience responses would depend upon their own moral convictions, The New York Times also reassured readers: “No film would be effective without competent acting and directing and it is an important virtue of ‘The End of the Road’ therefore, that it had both in its making … Claire Adams and Joyce Fair, in the two leading female roles, were attractive in appearance and intelligent in their interpretation of their characters” (“Opening the Road” 1919).
Despite positive support in the mainstream media, critics of the film began protesting as soon as it was released. As The New York Times forewarned, the acceptance of the film was divided along the lines of the individual’s moral view and tolerance of the story’s unique premise: it was not just “patriotic prostitutes”, “army flappers” or “camouflage dames” responsible for the spread of STDs. The film dared suggest that decent middle class men played an active part.[36] The End of the Road was the first film to present the case that STDs did not always originate in women of the lower classes, demonstrating that “syphilis and gonorrhoea are equal opportunity diseases” (Schaefer 1999, 33). This perspective contributed to establishing a new set of social and political battlelines, just as the Great War ended.[37]
The pendulum swung back to a more conservative side of society, basking in victory and longing to normalise culture and behaviour (Schaefer 1999, 34). As a government sponsored project, The End of the Road drew intense criticism, more so than other sensational films that had preceded it (Schaefer 1999, 29). According to critics in Moving Picture World, copies of The End of the Road and Fit to Win had also “fallen into the hands of individuals who are allegedly exhibiting it to mixed audiences composed of men, women, boys and girls” (“Association Goes After ‘Fit to Win’”, 1919, 1141). Prominent church figures denounced the film, led predictably by the Catholic Church (Schaefer 1999, 32). By July 16, 1919, it was banned in Philadelphia. National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI), so successful in their production of The Spirit of the Red Cross, succeeded by the end of 1919 in having the film banned across the United States. This reflects what Löhrer describes as “a specific American moral panic at play” (Löhrer 2011).
Although the film could no longer be shown in the US, The End of the Road travelled abroad.[38] In May 1920 it was exhibited in Canada under the auspices of the Canadian National Council for Combating Venereal Diseases and the principals of local colleges. Demonstrating her ongoing commitment to the work, Adams reached out to her fellow Canadians with a personal message printed in The Vancouver Sun, subsequently reprinted across Canada. She is an unbowed advocate, certain “that every girl in Canada could see this play”:
The message it conveys is one that society must learn, and I feel that this powerful drama is the most wonderful method of telling the important story to girls everywhere. I played my part with that thought in my mind, and in my heart the feeling that at least to the best of my ability I was performing a real service to womanhood (“Message to Girls Through Film By Claire Adams” 1920).
The End of the Road found welcoming and respectful audiences even further afield. There is evidence that the film was used as an educative tool in military training campaigns as far away as Vladivostok (McMaster 2014, 5). Over the next decade The End of the Road was also shown extensively across Australia, where Adams would spend the second half of her life. Promoted in The Sunday Times in October 1920 with the US plan in place to segregate audiences along gender lines, the film opened at the Sydney Town Hall on Saturday 6 November 1920 and played for 5 weeks. The Evening News described how it had been shown the previous week at a private screening for representatives from the clerical, medical and legal professions, and was granted approval to be screened by the Minister for Womanhood. A search of Australia’s digitised newspaper archives shows that the film travelled through major metropolitan and regional centres across the country, from Muswellbrook NSW to Charters Towers QLD, Clare SA to Katanning WA. There is little criticism of the film evident: rather it received endorsement from civic leaders, educators and the press across the country.[39] Adams received rich praise. In Melbourne it was shown at the Palace Theatre on Bourke Street where the Table Talk reviewer declared in March 1921, “Nothing better has been shown on the screen than the perfectly moulded features of Claire Adams.” When The End of the Road reached Hobart in June 1921, The Mercury reported that over 5,000 had already seen it in Launceston. The reviewer from The Advertiser in Adelaide, who had seen the film at the Adelaide Town Hall, enthused in July 1921 that “The picture defies description. There is a touch of genius in it. The screen has never disclosed a purer or more impressive lesson.” The following week, the same paper discussed how several members of the public showed great interest in Adams, enquiring after her background and identity. They make much of her youth, talent and beauty, but pay particular attention to her patriotic service during the war and her nursing experience at Grace Hospital in Detroit.
The film continued across Australia until July 1928, when The Goulburn Evening Post reported that the reels had been stolen in Broken Hill. By that time, however, Adams had retired from her successful Hollywood screen career. One decade later, Claire Adams migrated permanently to Australia, stepping off the ship in Melbourne on Valentine’s Day in 1938, where there may still have been more than a few moviegoers who remembered her work. There is evidence to suggest that Claire Adams Mackinnon had a copy of both The Spirit of the Red Cross and The End of the Road with her when she came in Australia. It is not known, however, if they were shown beyond the bounds of her new home, or if those who saw them during one of her movie nights had any idea of the films’ impact during and in the aftermath of the First World War.[40]
![Figure 6: Claire Adams as Justyn Reed, the fiancé of Jim Apperson, played by silent screen idol John Gilbert in The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925). Image ©Warner Bros. Source: Author’s private collection.]()
Figure 6: Claire Adams as Justyn Reed, the fiancé of Jim Apperson, played by silent screen idol John Gilbert in The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925). Image ©Warner Bros. Source: Author’s private collection.
Adams’s performance in The End of the Road drew the attention of producers in Los Angeles and New York, where they were deep in debate regarding proposed censorship measures within the motion picture industry. In 1920, independent producer Benjamin B Hampton, who had also seen her work in The Spirit of the Red Cross invited her to Hollywood to star in his productions (Lake 1922, 51). They would marry in 1924. By the time she retired in 1928 she had starred in over forty feature films alongside some of the most popular and defining artists of the era. These included Tom Mix, Rin Tin Tin, Jean Hersholt, Lon Chaney and Clara Bow. Adams’s also appeared opposite John Gilbert in his break through role in The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925), noted in the AFI catalogue as being “frequently described as the most successful silent film of all time”. Adams played Justyn Reed to Gilbert’s doughboy Jim Apperson. Justyn is a blithe ingénue, somewhat reminiscent of Adams’s flirtatious character Nina from The Man-eater, gaily encouraging her fiancé to enlist so she can see how handsome he’d look in uniform. These characters, both Nina and Justyn, could well have been constructed from characteristics of the sexually liberated yet innocent/ignorant young women who were the target audience for The End of the Road. As such, The Big Parade is a strangely coalescent bookend for her career, which practically began and ended with blockbusting war films.
Conclusion.
The value of the Claire Adams films discussed here is lost when they are removed from their historical context. They are very much a product and reflective of the era in which they were produced, which was both defining and tumultuous. The confluence of war, the women’s independence movement and the development of the motion picture industry offered women a new degree of independence and a more active role within their own lives as well as within their culture, both as consumers and producers. This relatively small period from Adams’s career encapsulates those opportunities, as well as the threats and challenges available to women in general and within the motion picture industry in particular. She is a mediator between the realities and the fictions; a nurse playing a nurse addressing current issues both on and off-screen, lending more than a modicum of verisimilitude to the productions. Her characters in The Spirit of the Red Cross and The End of the Road were strong female protagonists, created to inspire audience members and advocate for action, encouraging all women to change their lives and in doing so play an active role in changing their world.
Amidst the international commemorations of the centenary of The Great War, it is timely to assess Adams’s life of service in front of the camera and behind the scenes, not only in Australia, but also for our allies in the conflict – Canada and the United States of America. She was, after all, a proud citizen of each country at different stages of her life. That her achievements have been forgotten is also symptomatic of the times. The role of women in the motion picture industry has been undervalued and overlooked for most of the previous century, so the “loss” of Claire Adams from film history is not unusual. The scale of public awareness generated around the superstars of Silent Hollywood, fed by the scandals, stereotyping and celebrity culture that engulfed the industry, has diminished the memory of her career, especially if it is measured and evaluated in terms of current and historic memory. My biography of Adams (in progress) explores her significance, of the difference she made as an actress and as a private citizen, and how she never lost the sense of public service first demonstrated in the choice of roles discussed here. Indeed, Adams continues to support community causes, including the Australian Red Cross, via a substantial trust established after her death in 1978.[41] By avoiding the superficiality and pressures of the studio system, Adams may have missed out on Hollywood immortality. However, her personal and professional choices demonstrate that she was not overly concerned by the vagaries of popular opinion. Her priorities were always much closer to home.
DEDICATION:
Many people in Australia, the US and Canada have contributed to this article and my research into the life of Claire Adams Mackinnon. However, I would like to dedicate this article to Mr Roger Mayer, who passed away in March 2015. Some will remember him as the recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Academy Award in 2005. Others will for his longstanding leadership of the U.S National Film Preservation Foundation. I will always remember him as a kind gentleman who upon hearing of my interest in Claire Adams insisted I pursue it with the words “Every piece of the story is worth saving”.
Bibliography:
American Film Institute Catalogue. “The End of the Road.” Accessed 29 August 2014. http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=15366
“An Unusual Comedy at Vining Theatre.” Ashland Tidings. Tuesday 31 December 1918. 1. Library of Congress.
Ancestry.com, “Census records for District 15, Province of Manitoba. 1916. Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. 51.”, Canadian Census Records. 1916. Accessed 27 October 2009.
Ancestry.com, List or Manifest of Alien Passengers Arriving Port of Michigan, June 1915, Sheet No. 35, Border Crossings: From Canada to U.S., 1895-1956, accessed 27 October, 2009.
Ancestry.com, Petition for Citizenship, Claire Adams Hampton, United States of America, No. 3441, 4 February 1931, U.S. Department of Labor, accessed June 2014.
“Association Goes After “Fit to Win””. 1919. The Moving Picture World. May 24. 1141. Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Banner, Lois W. 1974. Women in Modern America: A Brief History. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
Barnaby Lee. The American Film Institute Catalogue. Accessed 29 August 2014. http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=2108
A Brief History of the American Red Cross, The American Red Cross, accessed 19 August 2014, http://www.redcross.org/museum/history/ww1a.asp
The Canadian Red Cross. 2014. “About the Canadian Red Cross”, Accessed 15 August 2014, http://www.redcross.ca/who-we-are/about-the-canadian-red-cross/history-frequently-asked-questions
“Claire Adams, Starring in ‘The End of the Road’ Is Real Western Canada Girl”, 1920. Saskatoon Phoenix. June 19. Library of Congress.
Colwell, Dr Stacie A., “The End of the Road: Gender, the Dissemination of Knowledge, and the American Campaign against Venereal Disease during World War I.” In The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender and Science, edited by Paula A. Treichler, Lisa Cartwright and Constance Penley, 44-82. New York: New York University Press, 1998.
Dall’Asta, Monica and Duckett, Victoria. 2013. “ Kaleidoscope: Women and Cinematic Change from the Silent Era to Now.” In Researching Women in Silent Cinema: New Findings and Perspectives. Edited by Monica Dall’Asta, Victoria Duckett, Lucia Tralli. Women and Screen Cultures. Vol 1. University of Bologna in association with the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and Women and Film International. 8-11.
Deer Lodge Centre. 2014. “History.” Accessed 19 August 2014. http://www.deerlodge.mb.ca/aboutHistory.html
Dominus, Susan. 2009. “In 1918 Flu Outbreak, a Cool Head Prevailed.” The New York Times. May 1.
“Edison Releases Flagg Social Satire Series.” 1917 Motion Picture News, Vol 16. No 26. December 29. 4591. The Seaver Centre for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
Encyclopædia Britannica Online, 2014. “Katharine Bement Davis”. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc.. Accessed 17 Aug. 2014 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/152802/Katharine-Bement-Davis
“The End of the Road.”1921. The Advertiser. 11 July. Retrieved from TROVE, National Library of Australia. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article73372048
“The End of the Road.” 1921. The Advertiser. 16 June. Retrieved from TROVE, National Library of Australia. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article35249538
“The End of the Road.” 1921. The Mercury. 8 June. Retrieved from TROVE, National Library of Australia. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article23515162
“The End of the Road.” 1921.The Northern Daily Leader. 10 February. Retrieved from TROVE, National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article104816157
“End of the Road.” 1920. Sunday Times. 31 October. Retrieved from TROVE, National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article120516928
““End of Road” Barred.” 1919. The Moving Picture World. July. Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“End of the Road Barred.” 1919. Variety. 18 July. Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
“The End of the Road: a Movie of Disease.” 1920. Evening News. 3 November. Retrieved from TROVE, National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article117303505
Goldbeck, Willis, “My Lady Claire”, Motion Picture Classic, 1920, from Mooramong Collection, National Trust of Australia (Victoria).
Hampton, Benjamin B., History of the American Film Industry from its beginnings to 1931, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1970, ed. Richard Griffith, Curator Emeritus, The Museum of Modern Art Film Library.
Hampton, Benjamin B., A History of the Movies, Covici, Friede, New York, 1931.
Hellier, Donna, Endnotes to “Social History Report” included in O’Connor, John and Thurley, Mooramong Buildings and Structures: Conservation Analysis Report for the National Trust of Australia (Victoria), July 1989.
“Items of Interest”, Goulburn Evening Post. Tuesday 17 1928, Retrieved from TROVE, National Library of Australia, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article102527976
Jackal, Susan and Millette, Dominique. Revised 2015. “Women’s Suffrage”. Historica Canada. Accessed 12 June 2015. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/womens-suffrage/
Katz, Esther. 2000. “Margaret Sanger.” American Dictionary of Biography Online. Accessed 3 February 2015. http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00598.html )
Lake, J. Marion. 1922. “A Young Lady in Earnest.” Motion Picture Classic. May.
Letourneau, J. A. Rodger, “Kennedy, William Nassau”, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003. Accessed August 13, 2014. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/kennedy_william_nassau_11E.html.
Löhrer, Gudrun. Conference Report. Communicating Good Health: Movies, Medicine and the Cultures of Risk in the Twentieth Century. 26-27 May 2011. Brocher Foundation. Geneva/Hermance, Switzerland. Accessed 18 August 2014.
Louisiana Film History by Parish, Hollywood on the Bayou. 2015. http://www.learnaboutmovieposters.com/newsite/louisiana/Parishes/Orleans.asp
“Loyalty Will Make First Appearance At Belasco Tonight.” 1918. The Washington Times. 26 May. Library of Congress.
The Manitoba Historical Society, “William Herbert Adams”. Last modified 24 December 2009. http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/adams_wh.shtml
Marshall, Edward. 1914. “New York’s First Woman Commissioner of Correction”, The New York Times, 11 January.
Maxwell, Virginia. 2000. ‘Mackinnon, Claire Adams (1896–1978)’. In Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Accessed 15 August 2014. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mackinnon-claire-adams-10996/text19553,.
McMaster, Christopher T., “The International Military Police and the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War”, Student Pulse, Vol 6, No. 04, Retrieved 18 August 2014. http://www.studentpulse.com/a?id=891
“Message to Girls Through the Film By Claire Adams”, The Vancouver Sun, May 21, 1920. Proquest.
Measuring Worth. Williamson, Samuel H. “Purchasing Power of Money in the United States from 1774 to Present.” 2013. URL: www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus/
“Opening the Road.” 1919. The New York Times. March 2. Proquest.
“Park Avenue at 40th Street, 1920s”. Digital Murray Hill from the Mina Rees Library. Accessed 2 December, 2011. http://library.gc.cuny.edu/murrayhill/items/show/271
Petition for Citizenship, Claire Adams Hampton, United States of America, No. 3441, 4 February 1931, U.S. Department of Labor, from Ancestry.com, accessed June 2014.
Prospectus of the Grace Hospital Training School for Nurses, 1888. Grace Hospital Collection Papers 1880-1978, Walter P Reuther Library, Wayne State University.
Quiney, Linda J. 1998. “Assistant Angels: Canadian Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurses in the Great War.” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History. 02/1998. Accessed 15 August 2014.
“Recollections of ‘Girls You Know.’”1918. Motion Picture Magazine, V15, No 5, June, 78.
Rozario, Kevin. 2003. “Delicious Horrors”: Mass Culture, The Red Cross, and the Appeal of Modern American Humanitarianism.” In American Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 3 (September). American Studies Association, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 417-454.
Schaefer, Eric. 1999. Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959. Durham: Duke University Press.
Schlüpmann, Heide. 2013. “An Alliance Between History and Theory.” In Researching Women in Silent Cinema: New Findings and Perspectives. Edited by Monica Dall’Asta, Victoria Duckett, Lucia Tralli. Women and Screen Cultures. Vol 1. University of Bologna in association with the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and Women and Film International. 13-26.
Slide, Anthony. 1996. The Silent Feminists: America’s First Women Directors. London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Spartacus Educational. “James Montgomery Flagg.” Accessed 14 August 2014. http://spartacus-educational.com/ARTflagg.htm
“Spirit of the Red Cross.” 1918. The New York Times, 21 April. Proquest.
“Splendid Work of American Red Cross Society Graphically Told in Series of Single Reel Motion Pictures Now Ready for Screen”. 1918. Exhibitors’ Trade Review. December 7. Vol 5. No. 1.
Stamp, Shelley. 2012. “Women and the Silent Screen”. In The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film. Edited by Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundman, and Art Simon. University of Santa Cruz. Accessed 10 January 2015.
Theatre advertisements. 1919. The Youngstown Daily Vindicator. 4 April. Library of Congress.
“V.A.D Hospitals in Northumberland and Durham 1914-1918.” Donmouth Local History Society. Accessed 18 February 2015 http://www.donmouth.co.uk/local_history/VAD/VAD_hospitals.html
“What People are Saying and Doing.” 1921. Table Talk. 10 March. Retrieved from TROVE, National Library of Australia. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146718304
Will, Beverley. 1978. “Gallant and Romantic were the days of Claire Adams.” Green Place. October. Mooramong Collection, National Trust of Australia (Victoria).
The World War 2 US Medical Research Centre, http://www.med-dept.com/articles/venereal-disease-and-treatment-during-ww2/ Accessed 29 January 2015.
Unpublished sources:
- Hone, Geoff. (Chair of the Scobie and Claire Mackinnon Trust.) Email to author. June 2014.
- Miley, Nancy. Adams Family History, Unpublished Manuscript. Author’s private collection.
- Schmeling, Kathleen Emery. (Archivist) Grace Hospital Archives, Wayne State University. Email to author, May 21 2014.
- Speed, Dr Lesley. “‘In the best film star tradition’: Claire Adams and Mooramong”, Screening the Past, due for release 2015. http://www.screeningthepast.com/
- Sweet, Jill and Stephens, Barbara Adams. Oral History Transcript, Author’s private collection.
Filmography:
- Caneva, Lina, 2009, Mooramong – Private Hollywood, Caneva Media Productions.
- Eaton, Jack, 1918, The Man-eater, Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
- Griffith, Edward H., 1917, Scouting for Washington; a tale of the Revolution, Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
- Griffith, Edward H., 1917, Shut Out in the Ninth, Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
- Griffith, Edward H., 1919, The End of the Road, American Social Hygiene Association, Famous Players-Lasky Corp & US War Department.
- Vidor, King, 1925, The Big Parade, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Notes:
[1] Adams’s petition for US citizenship document confirms that she was a subject of the British Dominion of Canada and that her last foreign address was in Toronto. From there she entered the US permanently at Detroit on 12 June, 1915. She first declared her intention to become a US citizen in September 1922, two years before she married Hampton. Her petition for citizenship was granted in Poughkeepsie on 4 February 1931, having resided in Pawling, NY since 1 September 1928.
[2] Willis Goldbeck in Motion Picture Classic (1920) described Adams as “instinctively Britishly reserved, a person whom one cannot hope to know in a day, or a month.”
[3] As of this date, I have yet to find Claire Adams on the cover of either fan or trade magazines, though several profile interviews and letters to editors indicate she had a fan base. Without a studio publicity department behind her, and as part of a company that promoted all-star casts, she was able to enjoy a more private life and manage her own profile accordingly, hence my concept of her as an independent artist.
[4] Originally published as A History of the Movies, by Covici, Friede, New York, 1931, Hampton’s work was reissued in 1971 as History of the American Film Industry from its beginnings to 1931, edited with an introduction by film historian Richard Griffith.
[5] In his introduction to the second edition of Hampton’s book, Griffith asserted “That it is the best history of the movie business to date there can be no doubt’, and positions it in terms of authenticity and objectivity above Terry Ramsey’s A Million and One Nights (1926) and Lewis Jacobs’ The Rise of the American Film (1939).
[6] As described by Monica Dall’Asta and Victoria Duckett in “Kaleidoscope: Women and Cinematic Change from the Silent Era to Now.” 2013, 8.
[7] At only fifteen years of age, Gerald ran away to join the Scottish Highlanders, but was dragged back to London by his Great Aunt Mabel Adams with whom he was staying. As soon as he was old enough he enlisted, but had only just completed training when the war ended. He never saw any action on the front. Nancy Miley,“Gerald Drayson Adams (1900-1988)” from Adams Family History Notes, Unpublished Manuscript.
[8] This prospectus was written late in the 19th century. The Grace Hospital School of Nursing (GHSN) offered two years of vocational (if somewhat rudimentary) instruction during which time students would be under constant supervision, on and off duty. Students were permitted one afternoon off per week and were encouraged for the sake of their own health to spend one hour each day in the open air. They were allowed two weeks leave per year, one evening off per week and required permission from the school’s Principal to be out later than midnight. In return, the students would receive training in elements of hospital work, namely the dressing of wounds and burns, applications of fomentations and poultices, making beds and methods for avoiding bedsores.
[9] Adams’s name on all official documents was her birth name, Beryl Vere Nassau Adams, but this does not show up on the list of graduates either.
[10] According to the Red Cross Canada website, “Red Cross nurse” was a term applied to anyone volunteering in a hospital in any capacity, including letter writing and visiting. Millions of young women contributed to this international effort and there was simply not the capacity to establish or maintain complete records of every volunteer. “About the Canadian Red Cross”, Accessed 15 August 2014, http://www.redcross.ca/who-we-are/about-the-canadian-red-cross/history-frequently-asked-questions
[11] A New Set of Needs, from the website of Veterans Affairs Canada, describes the inadequate hospital infrastructure, and venues converted to repatriation hospitals following England’s requests to the Dominions to take care of their own wounded. Accessed 11 January 2015, http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/steannes-hospital/about-us/history
[12] According to the American Film Institute Catalogue entry, Barnaby Lee was probably not widely released. http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=2108
[13] Scouting for Washington, Wild Arnica and Shut Out in the Ninth were viewed by the author at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
[14] Flagg asserted that his Uncle Sam became “the most famous poster in the world”. As quoted on the American Treasures of the Library of Congress website, accessed 13 February 2015, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm015.html
[15] The Man-eater was viewed by the author at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
[16] The other lead roles in the “Girls You Know” series were played by Dorothy Wallace, Mary Arthur, Martha Mansfield and Peggy Hopkins. According to IMDb, Hopkins had appeared in 2 Columbia productions. Dorothy Wallace had one previous film credit. Martha Mansfield had four previous motion picture credits and seemed destined for a successful career. In 1920 she starred opposite Lionel Barrymore in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (John S. Robinson, 1920). Mansfield died in horrific circumstances in 1923 after her period costume caught fire on set. See IMDb http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0543806/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
[17] Banner suggests that it was considered “a disgrace for a woman’s name to appear in public print” though this began to change before the war (20).
[18] According to Nancy Milley, her father Claire’s Uncle, Ernest Adams and her Grandmother, did not approve of Claire’s profession, even into the 1920s when she was at the height of her career. “Ernest Dupin Adams” from Adams Family History Notes, unpublished manuscript, author’s private collection.
[19] Several scenes were shot in the Jackson Barracks in New Orleans, which was in use as a training and processing facility for the United States Army. This suggests that recruits may have been used as extras in the film, perhaps to add a layer of verisimilitude to the scenes of battle and troop movements. From website Hollywood on the Bayou, Louisiana Film History by Parish, http://www.learnaboutmovieposters.com/newsite/louisiana/Parishes/Orleans.asp
[20] The Red Cross War Council subsequently established a “Bureau of Pictures” in early 1918 “to tell upon the screen the splendid story of the Red Cross”. These single reel shorts featured such titles as “Broken Lives”, “Victorious Serbia” and “Russia: a Land Worth Saving”, reflecting their ongoing work in Europe and with veterans up to and following the Armistice. From “Splendid Work of American Red Cross Society Graphically Told in Series of Single Reel Motion Pictures Now Ready for Screen”. 1918. Exhibitors’ Trade Review. December 7. Vol 5. No. 1.
[21] In the El Paso Herald, for example, the proprietors of the Grecian Theatre placed a large advertisement, paid for by another local business, outlining a special “Red Cross War Fund Benefit”, from which they would donate all proceeds from the evening’s entertainment to the cause. Patrons were encouraged to “make your quarters jingle” at the box office as “Lives Over There” depended on their support. Wednesday 15 May 1918, 5.
[22] The release of the film was also accompanied by a nation wide door knock appeal (American Red Cross, 2014).
[23] The World War 2 US Medical Research Centre estimates that during the Great War, venereal disease “had caused the Army lost services of 18,000 servicemen per day.” http://www.med-dept.com/articles/venereal-disease-and-treatment-during-ww2/ Accessed 29 January 2015.
[24] As described by Banner, early feminists saw male sexuality as being at the heart of female oppression. Even before the war, early feminist Inez Milholland wrote that “we are learning to be frank about sex … and through all this frankness runs a definite tendency toward an assault on the dual standard of morality and an assertion of sex rights on the part of women” (116).
[25] According to Schaefer, “Discourses on venereal diseases and eugenics were so tightly intertwined as often to be inseparable” (21).
[26] The irony is that throughout the nineteenth century, prostitutes were seen as a necessary evil in order to protect the virtue of pure women. The North American sex industry operated in relatively structured or semi-licensed conditions where the workers were regularly checked for STDs (Banner 1974, 76). The change came in the early twentieth century when sexually active young women identified sex with strangers as a possible way out or momentary escape from the drudgery of their working class lives. If they accepted payment for sex, they could earn two to three times more than they could as a domestic servant or salesgirl (Banner 1974, 81).
[27] Schaefer laid out the confluence of concerns that surrounded the spread of STDs in American society, which included Eugenics, Industrialization, Abstinence and Prohibition. The constituents incorporated under the ASHA banner represented most of these concerns. Progressives were concerned about the political and social boundaries being blurred by the urban, industrial and technological developments of the early Twentieth Century (18 – 23).
[28] According the Katz, Sanger had already experienced exile from the US in 1914 when in 1916 she was arrested and imprisoned for opening the nation’s first birth control clinic. In 1917 she had also made a motion picture titled “Birth Control” which had been confiscated by New York authorities.
[29] Fit to Win was shown at training camps where a lecturer would be available to explain some of the finer points of the storyline and address any medical questions.
[30] The film’s writer, Katherine Bement Davis, had already conducted extensive research into the possible impact of sex education on young women, which contradicted prevailing Freudian based theories that too much knowledge of sexuality and its consequences could permanently damage young women (Colwell 1998, 60).
[31] In 1914 Bennett made his movie debut with Damaged Goods, a film adapted from the theatre script that “pictures the terrible consequences of vice and the physical ruin that follows the abuse of moral law.” Bennett had married his co-star from Damaged Goods, Adrienne Morrison, with whom he had three daughters, two of which would go on to major Hollywood careers: Joan and Constance Bennett.
[32] Banner describes Davis as a leading figure of the Progressive movement, instigating major studies and reforms in the fields of urban poverty, women’s prisons and sex education (Banner 1974, 98). The New York Times ran a major profile of Davis when she was named New York’s first female Commissioner of Correction in January 1914. See Edward Marshall’s “New York’s First Woman Commissioner of Correction”, The New York Times, 11 January 1914.
[33] The location where these scenes were shot is mentioned in the notes section for the catalogue entry for The End of the Road in the American Film Institute Catalogue accessed 29 August 2014, http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=15366. Schaefer describes how many of the more confronting scenes of open wounds were cut in order to please the censors and keep the film in theatres, but some scenes were later reintroduced by exploitative distributors (29-30).
[34] The End of the Road was viewed by the author at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
[35] The issues facing the film were compounded by the film industry’s wish to appear respectable and beyond moral reproach in the face of a growing amount of sex scandals and exploitation films (Schaefer, 30). There was also an acceptance of sex education taking place within schools, making the role of sex education films in public cinemas largely redundant (Colwell, 69).
[36] According to Colwell (71), there were around ten other films addressing the spread of STDs, however they depicted women as the source of infection and transmission. The End of the Road differs significantly by drawing attention to the complicity of men.
[37] Schaefer notes that Damaged Goods (Thomas Ricketts, 1914) also starring Richard Bennett was the first to have established this premise on film. Damaged Goods reinforced the claim that venereal diseases were the scourge of the lower classes and inflicted upon young men of means and family during moments of weakness caused by drunkenness or deliberate seduction by fallen women from the lower classes (23).
[38] The copy viewed by the author in the Library of Congress was in Dutch, indicating it was intended for audiences in the Netherlands and other Dutch-speaking colonies.
[39] This section could not have been conducted without the use of Trove, the National Library of Australia’s online database of Australia’s newspapers. The articles directly referenced are noted in the above reference section. http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q=The+End+of+the+Road
[40] The Mooramong Buildings and Structures: Conservation Analysis Report for the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) of July 1989 contains a list (Appendix A) of 48 motion pictures “compiled from film reels held at Mooramong”. The fate of these films is unknown.
[41] According the Geoff Hone, the Scobie and Claire Mackinnon Trust have donated approximately AU$2 million to the Royal Children’s Hospital as well as other significant amounts over the years to the Australian Red Cross.
Bio: Heather L. Robinson is a Research Associate & PhD Candidate in the School of Humanities and Creative Arts, Flinders University. She is also an Honorary Research Associate (History) at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum.
![Figure 2. When we view an image our eyes often fixate on key areas on interest for short periods of about a third of a second, and then the eyes may make ballistic shifts (saccades) to other features. When a typical subject viewed sequential images from the film 'UP', fixations (green circles) mainly centred on the respective faces of main characters, whilst lines between fixations show the direction of respective saccades [image from Craig Batty, Adrian Dyer, Claire Perkins and Jodi Sita. 2014 Seeing Animated Worlds: Eye Tracking and the Spectator’s Experience of Narrative ( Bloomsbury, 2015) with permission].](http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/2-DyerPink.jpg)
![FIGURE 3: Gaze plot shows the mean attention of a number of viewers (n=12) to a particular scene. In this case faces capture most attention consistent with previous reports (Yarbus 1967, Vassallo et al. 2009). [image from Craig Batty, Adrian Dyer, Claire Perkins and Jodi Sita. 2014 Seeing Animated Worlds: Eye Tracking and the Spectator’s Experience of Narrative ( Bloomsbury, 2015) with permission].](http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/3-DyerPink.jpg)
![FIGURE 4. Areas of interest can be programmed to quantify the number and respective duration of fixations to key components within a scene of a movie, which may allow for the dissection of how factors like narrative influence viewer behaviour. saccades [from Craig Batty, Adrian Dyer, Claire Perkins and Jodi Sita. 2014. Seeing Animated Worlds: Eye Tracking and the Spectator’s Experience of Narrative (Bloomsbury, 2015) with permission].](http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/4-DyerPink.png)
![Figure 6: Dissent, Linoleum [with permission from Universal Music]](http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/6.jpg)
