by Paul R. Spitzzeri
In 1918, Josephine M. (Workman) Akley was a recently retired actor, with a significant level of success and a large following just several years prior, but, in her mid-30s, no longer of an age to play the Indian maiden characters from which she developed her fame. Her husband, Frank Akley, a.k.a. Montgomery, a former actor as well as her primary director, continued working in the film industry, but the two launched a stage tour for “Princess Mona Darkfeather” in the Pacific Northwest and then moved to Seattle with occasional press notices about plans to resurrect her film career.
Notably, when he registered for the draft on 12 September 1918 as the First World War was two months from coming to a close after four years of horrific carnage, “Frank Edward Montgomery Akley” gave his “Present Occupation” as “Photo Play Star Mgr” and listed “Josephine Montgomery Akley,” (her maiden name was “Marie”) as his nearest relative at their downtown Seattle residence. Yet, the filing of a lawsuit on 24 June in Los Angeles County Superior Court was an attempt at staking a claim for ownership of and the receipt of back rents from a remnant of the 814-acre ranch Josephine’s father, Joseph, lost nearly a quarter century before, and claiming she was not notified, when a minor under age 18, of the loss of her interest as state law mandated.
The Workman ranch was acquired in 1895 by Oscar T. Bassett, an El Paso, Texas lumber company owner and banker who’d acquired a ranch near today’s Gardena and had a Santa Monica lumber business at the same time he took over the San Gabriel Valley property. At the beginning of 1898, he died at age 50 and left his estate to his only child, Charles, then 17 years old. Soon becoming of age, Charles took direct ownership of the Workman property, while remaining in El Paso, where he became a managing officer of the State National Bank his father founded and of which he was later president for more than twenty years.
Bassett was undoubtedly stupefied when informed of the Akley filing. He marshaled his defense team and filed an answer on 6 November, five days before the armistice was signed ending the war. He responded that the quit claim action filed by his father in 1895, which led to a court ruling that Oscar was the undisputed owner of the ranch and that the Workmans and their children had no future rights to ownership, was fully established in law and binding.
Akley’s attorneys then amended the original complaint and reiterated that the 1895 ruling did not apply to her because of the lack of proper and legal service, which, while made directly to her at the time, was to given to her parents as her true legal guardians. Apparently in response to a question from Bassett’s team as to why she waited so long to file a claim, Akley “pleaded facts purporting to excuse her delay” due to “her total lack of knowledge until May, 1917” of the quit claim proceeding from twenty-two years prior. Also part of the amended complaint was the omission of anyone who purchased land from the Bassetts since 1895, leaving the property claimed to the residue of 285.45 acres.
For his part, Bassett demurred to the amendment, arguing that it comprised “a want of sufficient facts, uncertainty and ambiguity” as well as a lack of basis under California law. This was overruled and an answer was submitted, which relied on the February 1895 deed from Akley’s parents to his father, the quit claim judgment that followed that year, and his legal inheritance to the ranch. He also pointed out his continuous ownership of the land since his father’s death and its “occupancy, improvement, cultivation, and use” as well as the paying of taxes and lack of any claim for all those years. Crucially, Bassett pointed to “the bar of various provisions of the statute of limitations” as part of his defense.
Nothing could be located in the local papers about these actions, the information coming from the 27 September 1922 edition of the San Francisco Reporter, which published state supreme court decisions among its legal news and notices. The earliest found media reference is from the Los Angeles Times of 2 March 1920, which, however, concerned a bizarre circumstance involving the serving of a subpoena of Akley’s mother, Josephine, then married to a man named David Parten, and sister Lucille and her husband, J. D. Montenegro.
The paper observed that a pair of deputy sheriffs wielded wire-cutters and other tools “in an effort to force open a newly-erected gate on the Rindge ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains in order to serve a bench warrant upon Josephine Parten” so she could testify in her daughter’s suit. May Rindge, owner of the more than 13,000-acre Rancho Malibu, vigorously fought efforts to expand both the Southern Pacific Railroad’s plan to connect Santa Monica to Santa Barbara as well as what became Pacific Coast Highway through her seaside haven. She was joined by her daughter Rhoda and son-in-law Merritt Adamson (who established Adohr [get it?] Dairy) in these efforts, including locked gates and armed patrols of the ranch, though the road battle was lost after years of very costly litigation.
David Parten was a Rindge employee and he, his wife and the Montenegros resided in Escondido Canyon, west of the Rindge and Adamson places and the article noted that the law enforcement officers were unable to serve the subpoenas “because they were refused permission to cross the ranch.” Judge Works, consequently, issued a “body attachment” giving the deputies the authority to arrest them and take them to the proceeding and the officials were prepared to use their tools to breach the ranch gate, if necessary.
The Times edition of the following day covered another notable aspect of the Akley vs. Bassett trial in reference to the question of Akley’s age and noted that,
A musty volume, an old baptismal record from the Plaza Church, was used in Judge [Lewis R.] Works’ court yesterday in the Akley-Bassett suit to determine the age of Mrs. Josephine M. Akley. It caused a long argument, at the close of which the book was admitted as evidence and verified Mrs. Akley’s contention that she was born in 1883 and baptized at the Plaza Church when she was four months old.
The article continued that “no birth records were kept in Los Angeles county between the years 1881 and 1888,” which is why the sacramental tome was accepted as proof of the age of the plaintiff. Notably, the 1900 federal census, the only one which requested the month and year of birth of the listed person, showed that she was born in January 1882, information that, presumably, Akley’s mother would have given the enumerator. The 1910 census, moreover, listed her age as 28, conforming to the January 1882 date.
When Akley, who was first married to musician Harry Knoll (who died in 1908) and with which she had her only child, Josephine, who died at age eight of diphtheria on the last day of 1910, married Montgomery in February 1913, her age was given as 27, but this might have been because of her film career and need to present herself as young as reasonable. As for the baptism, while it is typical for infants to receive the sacrament, this is not always so and it may be that Akley was well over a year old when she underwent the ceremony. In the 1920 census, taken at the beginning of the year, she listed her age as 36, matching the baptismal book, and her age matched this in the censuses that followed.
A month after this article, the Times of 3 April reported that “Mrs. Josephine Akley, petite picture actress and daughter of Joseph Workman . . . lost a fortune by a decision of Judge Works yesterday.” While she claimed that the deed made by her grandfather, William Workman, to the 814-acre tract was for Joseph’s life interest and then the heirs, including her, would assume ownership, Works agreed, but pointed out that Oscar T. Bassett acquired the ranch in 1895 “in the belief that he was buying an absolute title” and that “he got judgment in that year against the children.”
The judge acknowledged that this latter fact applied to all of the Workman children “except Mrs. Akley, who was then a minor,” she being the only one under 18 years of age, “and was not properly served with the summons.” Yet, while she did become of majority in 1901, accepting the 1883 baptismal date as evidence of her age, the summary continued,
Under these circumstances the court decided that Mr. Bassett acquired whatever right Mrs. Akley had by adverse possession and that she was barred from making any claim because of her long delay in ascertaining her right.
In California, a person could claim a property not theirs after occupying and improving it for at least five years and claiming it, in Bassett’s situation, under “color of title” because of possession of documents purporting to show ownership. What this would appear to mean is that, if Josephine had presented a claim prior to 1901, she would have had a legal basis to do so, though she made a point in court of referring to her father’s death in March of that year, as well as her coming of age two months prior to that, so, whether 1906 would have been the threshold is another matter. The Times also commented that “one peculiar fact about the case was that Mrs. Akley kept herself so far in the background that Mr. Bassett never even knew of her existence, he declared.”
Despite this defeat, Akley’s attorneys, according to the aforementioned Supreme Court summary, “moved the court to vacate and set aside the judgment and to enter another and different judgment” under a section and subsection of the civil code that concerns a decision made on a presumed misreading of the facts presented at trial. It may be that Judge Works was willing to have one of his colleagues rehear the case rather than have it go to appeal, but, whatever the reason, Judge Charles R. Burnell took it up.
At the end of January 1921, the Los Angeles Express, in its edition of the 29th, briefly reported on the matter and stated that,
Mrs. Josephine Akley, known on the screen as Mona Darkfeather, Indian princess, was richer today by $129,162.45 cash and land worth $80,000, following a decision rendered in her favor in Judge Burnell’s court.
Notably, the paper continued that Josephine “who formerly was associated with the Bison Film Company” during her heyday, but “now is in a company of her own” was able to prevail with Judge Burnell over Bassett, said to be “one of the wealthiest men in the west,” because she was not legally served in the quiet title matter. The paper concluded that “Mrs. Akley was awarded one-ninth interest in 315 acres of walnut land at Basset [sic] station.”
In its more extensive coverage, the Times of the same day, under the heading of “Wins Fortune For One Slip” added that an important factor in Josephine’s victory was “because three people are still living who recall facts connected with the delivery of a deed in 1873.” It continued that, because the principals (the parents of the litigants) were long deceased, “the contest necessitated the introduction . . . of records dating back to 1869 and the testimony of pioneers who were grown men and women half a century ago.”
The report, however, erroneously stated that “the old Puente Rancho” was divided into equal 16,000 acre sections in 1869 with William Workman buying one of them that year, though the division of Rancho La Puente between Akley’s grandfather and John Rowland, father of witness William R. Rowland (a two-time former county sheriff and oil tycoon), was in 1868 and comprised more than 24,000 acres each and was out of a grant made a quarter-century or so earlier in the Mexican era.
It was correctly reported, however, that, on 11 October 1870, Workman deeded the 814-acre tract to his son Joseph (and his wife, the paper added, though this was not the case) under a life interest and that the children would received the land on his death. The trio of witnesses, however, told the court that the deed was not recorded until 27 March 1873, while, importantly, a new civil code of procedure (enacted in 1872) meant that the provisions of the deed were subjected to new legal requirements not existing when the deed was first issued.
The 1895 deed from Joseph Workman to Bassett followed the suit to quiet title and “negative that provision of the deed which provided that the land should pass to the heirs of Joseph Workman,” but, the piece observed, “through an oversight,” Akley was not served according to law “so that the quiet title decision against her has been held invalid” by Judge Burnell. The jurist ruled that she was owed a 1/9 interest in 315 acres “of what is said to be the largest walnut grove in California” along with the share of the profits totaling nearly $130,000 covering the period to her initial filing in June 1918. Bassett retained ownership, under the decision, of the rest of the land said to be worth north of $1 million.
Wanting to add to her fortune, Akley “will immediately begin a new suit to recover her share of the walnut grove profits” to date. The article concluded with the statement that “Mrs. Akeley [sic], who several years ago was prominent as a cinema actress for the old Bison company,” though she worked for others, “and who acted under the name of Bessie [!] Darkfeather, was represented by Attorneys Daniel M. Hunsaker and Robert B. Murphey of Hunsaker, Britt and Edwards.” No doubt, Mona and Frank Montgomery, as they were commonly known in 1921, harbored dreams of resurrecting her career and/or enhancing his with their newfound riches.
Next, we turn to part four and the appeal by Bassett to the California Supreme Court and some of the testimony, referenced above, from the trial, so join us for that tomorrow.
I once applied a strategy similar to Mona Darkfeather’s in a legal case to help my relative, who was being bullied by a greedy plaintiff and a corrupt judge colluding to seize his property. They deliberately served court papers at two of my relative’s outdated addresses, causing him to miss his court appearances. Learning that he was employed in the military, I suggested he claim that the legal service was invalid, as it should have been delivered to his superior in the chain of command. As a result, the case was successfully overturned.