by Paul R. Spitzzeri
When Josephine M. Workman, a granddaughter of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste and using the stage name Princess Mona Darkfeather, rose to film stardom in the first half of the 1910s in the early years of the increasingly troubled Hollywood film industry, another figure in direction and production was making a major mark, as well. This was Mack Sennett (1880-1960), born Michael Sinnott in Danville, Quebec, Canada, northeast of Montreal.
Moving as a teen to Massachusetts, he went to New York City and, with his new stage name, joined the Biograph film company as an actor, director and scenario writer and partially honed his craft, after coming to Los Angeles in 1910, working with the legendary director D.W. Griffith. In New York, he formed the Keystone Studio and then relocated it to what was then called Edendale and is now the Echo Park area—this is also where Princess Mona Darkfeather did her earliest work.
Quickly becoming renowned for his comedies, Sennett achieved fame for the first full-length comedy picture (most early films were short films, many in the 20-minute range), 1914’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance. Among the stars who worked for him were Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chase, Chester Conklin, Marie Dressler, Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd, and Mabel Normand, who, Sennett said, was the love of his life, though he never married. He was perhaps best known for his Keystone Cops company of bumbling police officers and their pie-throwing antics and his coterie of Sennett Bathing Beauties, which he said he formed to get photos of his actors in newspapers for publicity.
Sennett’s salad days were in the Teens, but he sold Keystone and formed his namesake production company, but, by the Roaring Twenties, his career was in decline. Though he embraced the sound and color technologies, his once-great wealth evaporated and, in 1933, during the height of the Great Depression, he declared bankruptcy with close to a million dollars in debt, but just $1,600 in assets. At the end of his life, he was nearly destitute, though his obituary in the Hollywood Citizen-News was front-page, banner headline news.
This “That’s A Wrap” post features, from the Homestead’s historic artifact holdings, a program from Miller’s Theater for the first local showing, starting on 15 June 1922, of Sennett’s ambitious The Crossroads of New York. The full-length picture, distributed by First National Pictures, was a marked departure for the producer, who blended some comedy with a focus melodrama in the tale of a young man from the country who goes to live with a rich uncle, but ends up as a street cleaner living in a boarding house where he ends up engaged to the landlady. When the uncle is reported dead in Alaska, the young man becomes his heir and gets tangled in a breach-of-promise suit with a woman who’d been the uncle’s girlfriend. In the end, however, he and an heiress he twice saved emerged from the morass together with a happy ending.
The picture went through some challenges in production but had its premiere at the Capitol Theatre in New York on 21 May 1922 with the second location for its showing being Miller’s Theater in Los Angeles. Previous posts here have discussed some of the early history of the venue, opened on 1 November 1913, and its principal figure Fred A. Miller, as well as his nearby California Theatre.
Miller’s was on the east side of Main Street between 8th and 9th, within two years of this program’s issuance Walter P. Temple and partners constructed two nearby office buildings at Main, Spring and 8th streets. It closed around 1940, not long after Miller died the prior year at age 62, and the structure was razed later as the demand for automobile parking lots grew. The site remains used for this purpose today.
The earliest local mention of the film was from the 30 April 1922 edition of the Los Angeles Times, which reported that
Mack Sennett’s special feature made under the working titles of “Heartbalm” and “For Love or Money,” is to be released soon by First National and called “Crossroads of New York.” This film is a whirlwind of fun and melodrama. The cast contains such noted names as Kathryn McGuire, Noah Beery, Ethel Gray Terry, George O’Hara, Robert Cain, Herbert Standing, William Bevan, Mildred June, Charlie Murray and others.
Most of these actors are now obscure, possibly excepting Beery, who achieved fame along with his brother Wallace and whose son, Noah, Jr. was also very successful and best remembered in his later years for playing James Garner’s father in the hit television series, The Rockford Files. McGuire, playing the female lead, was just 17 when she appeared in 1921’s The Silent Call and garnered serious attention.
The Hollywood Citizen-News of 22 June pointed out that the actor migrated from her native Illinois and settled in Tinsel Town, graduating from Hollywood High, though her ambition was to be a dancer until she was discovered by producer Thomas H. Ince and appeared in films strictly as a dancer. While she appeared in many films for a decade, her career ended by 1930, though she later appeared in some television roles later in life.
The Los Angeles Times of the 25th featured McGuire and it observed that although “this Mack Sennett beauty hasn’t achieved a position in the screen-world firmament,” she was likely to “all because of her ability to weep salty, briny tears at any time and upon the slightest provocation.” It was asserted that the producer and director F. Richard Jones, a Sennett veteran who died in 1930 after working for Hal Roach, Paramount and Goldwyn while he also directed Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s The Gaucho (1928), chose her specifically because “of her ability to control her lachrymal ducts.”
The male lead was George O’Hara, who was signed by Sennett for his striking looks but also went behind the camera into some production and scenario writing. While he worked consistently through the rest of the silent era, he was not able to make much of a transition to sound, mostly taking uncredited extra roles in the Thirties and Forties.
Billy Bevan, who played a press agent in the picture, was briefly mentioned by the Times weeks before the film appeared at Miller’s, as the paper, in its issue of 8 May, stated that the actor “is one of the best-loved comedians on the American screen.” Born and raised near the bushlands of Australia, he was briefly a reporter before taking to the stage at 18 and was remembered in his home country for his work in light opera. He signed to Sennett on arriving here and became well-known in the producer’s pictures. He, too, lost his luster in the talking era, though appeared in many films in bit parts, most uncredited.
Another of the cast to get some individual press attention was Dot Farley, who played the overly aggressive landlady. The Chicago native was on stage at age 2 and did stock theater work until she made her film debut in 1910. She was another Sennett regular, while also a prolific writer of film scenarios, having 260 of these produced by the time this part of her career was featured in news articles in 1924. The Los Angeles Express of 19 June 1922 noted that “in her special honor tonight has been designated as ‘Dot Farley Night'” at Miller’s and the actor made a personal appearance for the evening showings.
Lastly, there was Mildred June, whose spotlight was in the 18 June edition of the Times. The uncredited writer sought to make the feature a snappy, comic one about her name, which was her actual one, not a stage moniker. The actor, who was 19, and played a restaurant server in the film, was said to be “a happy, lovable girl who wouldn’t threaten a mosquito” as well as “bubbling” and “effervescent” in a role that “gets over in big style.” Sadly, her largely ended by 1930 as alcoholism took hold and she died at just age 35 from cirrhosis of the liver.
The 25 May edition of the Express reported that “impress by the success with with [sic] which ‘The Crossroads of New York,’ Mack Sennett’s current First National attraction is meeting with at the Capitol theater in New York, the Miller brothers, operating Miller’s theater, have booked it for an indefinite run.” Three days later, the Times quoted the producer as proclaiming that the film “is a knock-out! Doing the only business on Broadway,” while Miller was also reported “enthusiastic over the possibilities presented” by the picture.
The Express of 6 June highlighted the fact that the movie was only showing in New York and Los Angeles, adding that “great preparations about being made for the premiere in the West” and that “Miller’s theater was selected for this exclusive advance because of the success it has had in presenting pictures for long runs,” including the aforementioned The Silent Call, which ran for 14 weeks, and others from one to two months. Sennett and Miller officials felt assured that the picture would “equal or surpass the runs of these other extraordinarily successful attractions.”
Two days later, the paper pumped the picture’s promotion by quoting Miller as saying that the first showing on 15 June would be at 6 p.m., not sooner in the day, because,
It will be impossible to open earlier, as I having my house employes [sic] carefully and firmly tighten every bolt in all the thousand seats to avoid any possibility of accident, for “Crossroads of New York” will produce an avalanche of laughter and thrills that requires this precaution. It is the fastest moving tornado of fun and excitement ever screened, so “safety first.”
The most substantive and detailed review appeared in the 16 June edition of the Express, in which the paper asserted that the picture “is a representative panorama of seething cities where destiny offers a choice of vice, luxury and greed or purity, love and honor to visionary youth marching on from plowshare, forge and mine.” Director Jones was credited for “a cinema melodrama that is replete with climatic situations and sparking high comedy relief.”
Yet, the unnamed reviewer continued, “the thematic material . . . is boldly, perhaps too broadly etched” while “certain colors are so strongly accented that the eye is dazzled and befogged.” The cinematography, viewed as ultra-modern, was deemed “stunning” and “heighten[s] dramatic tension” and the depiction of the uncle’s house was considered “grippingly realistic.” The cast was generally praised, with McGuire stated to be “spontaneously girlish,” Beven and Ben Deely depicting “satirical cartoon of shrewd publicity hounds,” Farley as “capital,” and Ethel Gray Terry, as “the vamp,” said to be “alluring” and “in turn icy, wheedling and seductive.”
In a capsule review the next day, the Express pronounced that “Mack Sennett has again succeeded in giving a jaded public a new kind of picture” and “bids fair to crowd some of the world-record marks for which this theater is famous.” The movie, it went on, “is a new kind of comedy-melodrama, combining legitimate thrills with rich rare humor that makes if a perfect tonic for that tired feeling, and there is not one dull moment in its entire six reels.” The actors were feted for “making this a real picture that will make the most blase theatergoer sit up and take notice.”
The next day’s Times remarked that “Crossroads of New York” was simply “a different picture” and that “a thousand thrills and 10,000 laughs have been incorporated in this photoplay of modern life.” Gotham City critics “said it was a new departure in screen entertainment” while those who saw the film at Miller’s “thoroughly agree with that description.”
With respect to the cast, it was remarked that “each player has exerted himself or herself to make” the picture another success for Sennett and that “some of the most thrilling scenes yet filmed were included” in what was “genuine humor throughout, touched with paths and real drama.”
For the following Sunday screenings, noted the Express of the 23rd, “Mr. Miller will offer a number of distinct novelty subjects, including a reworking of an Aesop fable called “The Farmer and the Cat” to include appearances by such movie luminaries as Buster Keaton, Bessie Love, Colleen Moore, Carmel Myers and Anita Stewart. One wonders, though, if this and the “Dot Farley” day were efforts to boost lackluster attendance; in fact, “Crossroads of New York” played for two weeks, far shorter than what was anticipated, based on what was reported above.
The film did make the rounds in other areas of Los Angeles County, including the Pasadena Theatre in the Crown City, the Colonial Theatre in nearby Monrovia, and the California Theatre in Venice, while it also ran at the Hollywood Theatre. It has been stated that First National’s storage was so subpar that many of its films were lost and this was thought to be the case with “Crossroads of New York,” but a portion was located in Europe some fifteen years ago.
As for the program, printed by The Broadway Press in the still-standing Loew’s State Theatre Building at Broadway and 7th, it is dedicated to promotion of the film with a centerfold providing quotes from New York critics and pushing the picture as a “Gloom Chaser!” and “‘Full’ of ‘Zip’ and ‘Pep.'” Moreover, the piece gushed, “It Tickles!! It Enthralls!! It Satisfies!!” while it was deemed to be “A Veritable Melting Pot of Genius in Entertainment Pouring Forth Hilarious Laughter, Thrilling Adventure and Dramatic Portrayal.”
The last page highlighted the cast and stated, “‘Dot’ Farley ‘out-flaps’ the ‘flapper;” McGuire “is delightfully charming;” O’Hara “is a fascinating hero” while warning female theatergoers, “Don’t crowd girls!” Terry was an “irresistible vamp” so that “well, no bank roll is safe,” while for Beery’s rich uncle, “Oh, Boy! The price he paid.” Charles Murray’s judge character “never tried a Volstead case,” this referring to national Prohibition of alcohol production and sale, and June (remember how she died) was said to be “winsome and captivating.” The remainder of the performers, finally, “assist in making this offering a riot of laughter.”
Look for future “That’s A Wrap” posts covering various aspects of the film industry in Los Angeles through 1930 and sharing historic objects from the Museum’s collection.