Tag: Social History

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Dear Reader

Dear Reader #183

Dear Reader,

Clara Bow’s twenty-second movie was Parisian Love, another cut-price B.P. Schulberg production filmed in early 1925 and released on August 1, 1925. Clara played Marie, an Apache. The plot of this romantic crime drama starts out well enough, but then becomes complex in the extreme. 

Clara was displaying talent, but the production company she was tied to lacked class. She needed a break. She also needed to sort out her love life, which was more complex than the plot of Parisian Love.

My 9 x great-grandmother Barbara Aubrey was born c1637 in Pencoed, Glamorgan. She married John Bevan in 1665 and from 1683 to 1704 she lived with her family in Pennsylvania. Barbara Aubrey is a ‘gateway’ ancestor, connecting my family with the noble houses of Europe.

Barbara’s parents, my 10 x great grandparents – William Aubrey c1610 – c1660 and Elizabeth Thomas.

William Aubrey’s parents, my 11 x great grandparents – William Aubrey c1573 – 1647 and Jane Mathew.

Jane Mathew’s parents, my 12 x great grandparents – Humphrey Mathew c1567 – c1651 and Mary Lewis.

Humphrey Mathew’s parents, my 13 x great grandparents – Miles Mathew b1538 and Catherine Mathew b1545.

Miles Mathew’s parents, my 14 x great grandparents – William Mathew 1516 – 1551 and Alice Ragland b1520.

Alice Ragland’s parents, my 15 x great grandparents – John Ragland 1505 – bef 1538 and Anne Dennis b1507.

Anne Dennis’ parents, my 16 x great grandparents – Sir William Dennis c1470 – 22 Jun 1533 and Anne Berkeley b1474. They had six sons and seven daughters.

The branches then lead to the noble houses of Europe, including my 20 x great grandmother Isabella of Castile, pictured.

I’m organising the Golden Age of Hollywood Mastodon Mega Movie Poll. Here are the results from Week One.

Voted for by the movie lovers of Mastodon.

The format: 32 movies seeded and selected by the American Film Institute receive a bye to Round Two.

Round One: 64 movies selected by Mastodon movie lovers, matched when possible by era and genre.

My latest article for the Seaside News, about Myrna Loy, appears on page 35 of the magazine.

To understand Clara Bow, you need to understand her formative years.

“Clara’s birth was not a source of joy to her mother and father. They lived in a tiny flat with two rooms. All her life, Clara has been trying to blot out memories of her early years. Her childhood was not particularly happy.” – Dora Albert, 1933.

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

For Authors

#1 for value with 565,000 readers, The Fussy Librarian has helped my books to reach #1 on 36 occasions.

A special offer from my publisher and the Fussy Librarian. https://authors.thefussylibrarian.com/?ref=goylake

Don’t forget to use the code goylake20 to claim your discount 🙂

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Dear Reader

Dear Reader #182

Dear Reader,

Clara Bow’s twenty-first movie was Kiss Me Again, a silent romantic comedy direct by Ernst Lubitsch and released on 1 August, 1925. Clara played Grizette, a sexy Parisian secretary who bewitches her married boss. 

Lubitsch had the knack of sneaking material past the Hays Office censors. He used an audience’s imagination to make his suggestive point. 

In Kiss Me Again, Clara finally had a decent part in a decent movie. And she shone. Variety stated: “Clara Bow absolutely triumphs in the role of a lawyer’s steno.”

Meet My Ancestors

Sir William Denys aka Dennis, c1470 – 1533, of Dyrham, Gloucestershire, my 16 x great grandfather.

Sir William was a courtier of Henry VIII and High Sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1518 and 1526. In 1511, he was appointed an Esquire for the Body – a personal attendant – of Henry VIII. At this time, the king granted Sir William the honour to empark 500 acres of Dyrham, with exclusive hunting rights. Pictured, (Wikipedia), the charter.

In June 1520, Sir William was one of seven knights of the Gloucestershire contingent selected to accompany Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold when Henry met King Francis I of France.

Sir William married a noblewoman, Anne Berkeley. The couple had six sons and seven daughters.

Anniversaries

Married on 22 February 1868 at Ruhama Chapel, Bridgend, Glamorgan, my 3 x great grandparents Thomas Jones and Hannah Morgan. They had five children. 

Thomas started his working life as a “cow boy”. He then became a coal miner. The family moved around the Glamorgan coalfields, working at the various mines. Hannah disappeared from the historical record in the 1880s, while Thomas disappeared in the 1890s. With so much transience, their records appear to have been lost.

📸 Aberbaiden Colliery, one of Thomas’ places of work.

I’m organising the Golden Age of Hollywood Mastodon Mega Movie Poll. Here are the results from Week One.

Voted for by the movie lovers of Mastodon.

The format: 32 movies seeded and selected by the American Film Institute receive a bye to Round Two.

Round One: 64 movies selected by Mastodon movie lovers, matched when possible by era and genre.

“The real Clara Bow is not the madcap personality created by press and public. As a matter of fact, Hollywood’s hotcha baby would rather croon a lullaby than a torch song. It all goes back to the somewhat drab days of Clara’s youth – to a hungering, poignant desire for mother love that was never quite wholly satisfied. And that same childish hunger, long repressed, has developed in the mature Clara’s material instincts that will not be denied.” – Dora Albert, 1933.

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

For Authors

#1 for value with 565,000 readers, The Fussy Librarian has helped my books to reach #1 on 36 occasions.

A special offer from my publisher and the Fussy Librarian. https://authors.thefussylibrarian.com/?ref=goylake

Don’t forget to use the code goylake20 to claim your discount 🙂

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Dear Reader

Dear Reader #180

Dear Reader,

Some book news. Operation Zigzag, book one in my Eve’s War Heroines of SOE series, is currently number one on the Amazon genre charts.

Clara Bow’s nineteenth movie was Lawful Cheater aka The Lawful Cheaters, a silent crime drama. Clara played Molly Burns, a young woman jailed for “indiscreet behaviour”. Produced during the spring of 1925, the movie was released on July 17, 1925. 

The critics were not impressed with this offbeat crime drama, calling it “slight and trite” and “cheaply produced”. The “sole redeeming factor” was Clara Bow. At one point, Molly Burns appeared in male drag, which was “fun to watch”. However, The British Board of Film Censors did not have a sense of humour – they banned the film.

A transcribed page from my 9 x great grandfather John Bevan’s journal. He talks of his friend, William Penn, and the prospect of emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1683. John thought it would take some time for the settlement to establish itself. However, his wife Barbara Aubrey persuaded him because she thought it would be a good environment to bring up their children “amongst sober people”.

A transcribed page from my 9 x great grandfather John Bevan’s journal. He and his family have settled in Pennsylvania. Four of his children have married and had children of their own. However, in 1704, twenty-one years after settling in Pennsylvania, John had the urge to return to Wales. His wife, Barbara Aubrey, “could not be easy to stay behind me.” So, John, Barbara and their daughter Barbara returned to Wales.

In this entry from my 9 x great grandfather John Bevan’s journal he talks about his journey from Pennsylvania to his estate in Wales. The weather was stormy and pirates looted a number of vessels. He was going to transfer to a vessel bound for Bristol, but a storm prevented the transfer. Later, that vessel “was taken” so John, his wife and daughter had a lucky escape.

Anniversaries

My 4 x great grandfather Daniel Hopkin died on 11 February 1864, in South Cornelly, Glamorgan. An agricultural labour, Daniel was baptised on 4 March 1781 in the Church of St Tydfil, Llysworney, Glamorgan. He married Annie Lewis on 10 May 1812 in St James’ Church, Pyle (pictured). The couple had four children, including my 3 x great grandmother Mary Hopkin. Daniel died three months after his wife Anne died. Maybe after fifty-one years of marriage her passing was too much for him to bear. 

Clara Bow Quotes: “At times, Hollywood had been like a godmother, giving me joy and happiness. At other times it had turned like a vicious old hag, threatening to claw me apart, body and soul.”

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

For Authors

#1 for value with 565,000 readers, The Fussy Librarian has helped my books to reach #1 on 36 occasions.

A special offer from my publisher and the Fussy Librarian. https://authors.thefussylibrarian.com/?ref=goylake

Don’t forget to use the code goylake20 to claim your discount 🙂

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Dear Reader

Dear Reader #179

Dear Reader,

Clara Bow’s eighteenth movie was Eve’s Lover, produced during the early months of 1925 and released on 6 July, 1925. Clara played Rena D’Arcy. This was one of Clara’s ‘loan-out’ movies. She was not the lead actress in this movie, yet her image featured on the lobby cards. Another example of how Clara upstaged everyone, regardless of her status in any given movie.

Anniversaries

Born this week, 3 February 1813, in Margam, Wales, my 3 x great grandmother Ann David. Out of wedlock, Ann gave birth to a son, Evan Lewis. In 1847, Ann married a widower, David Jones and they produced two daughters, Mary and Ann. Mary died, aged 70, in an asylum, while Ann married my 2 x great grandfather, William Howe. In the 1880s, their son, and my great grandfather, William Howe acknowledged Evan Lewis as a member of the family by recording his name in the family Bible, pictured.

From ‘Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania’, mention of my 9 x great grandmother Barbara Aubrey (1637 – 1710) and her connection, through the Herberts, to the nobility and royalty.

Cowbridge, Wales, 1835 a little after my 9 x great grandmother Barbara Aubrey’s time, but I’m sure this landscape would have been familiar to her.

Philadelphia Quaker Monthly Meeting Records, c1730. 

The opening paragraphs pay tribute to my 9 x great grandfather John Bevan while the remainder of the page is the first part of the transcription of his diary. John explains how he converted to Quakerism while the introduction states: “John Bevan…a good man…having deserved to have his name transmitted to posterity for his holy life and conversation.”

John inherited a “considerable estate”. However, his brothers were unprovided for. When he came of age, John portioned his land and gave his brothers “a helpful subsistence in this world”.

The second page of the Philadelphia Quaker Monthly Meeting Records, c1730, details how my 9 x great grandfather John Bevan was excommunicated for his Quaker beliefs, how his wife Barbara “who sincerely loved her husband” gave the priest a “piece of her mind”, and how John’s friends were arrested at his house and imprisoned for fourteen weeks for their Quaker beliefs.

My latest article for the Seaside News, about Mary Pickford, appears on page 35 of the magazine.

Clara Bow Quotes: “When I was approached on the matter of paying money to keep statements about me from appearing in print, I was dumbfounded. What in the world could be said about me that already had not been printed? I had done nothing. I knew the statements to be entire fabrications. But what could I do? There was only one thing I could do and retain my self-respect. That was – fight.”

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

For Authors

#1 for value with 565,000 readers, The Fussy Librarian has helped my books to reach #1 on 36 occasions.

A special offer from my publisher and the Fussy Librarian. https://authors.thefussylibrarian.com/?ref=goylake

Don’t forget to use the code goylake20 to claim your discount 🙂

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Dear Reader

Dear Reader #178

Dear Reader,

Clara Bow’s seventeenth movie was My Lady’s Lips, a silent drama released on July 1, 1925, that starred Alyce Mills. The film also featured William Powell, later to achieve fame in the Thin Man series, in his tenth movie role. Clara played Lola Lombard, the daughter of a newspaper magnet. Despite their overlapping careers, Clara and William Powell only worked on two movies together. 

At this stage of her career, Clara was making cheap films at a hectic schedule, often completing the production within two weeks. Vacillating between the flirtatious and the vulnerable, she was used by people in the film industry, and she used some of those people to get her way. 

From the slums of Brooklyn and burdened with low self-esteem, Clara Bow was a complex person, and all those complexities were on display during this phase of her life.

An early photograph of Mary Pickford. For twenty-three years she was the undisputed “Queen of the Screen”. For fourteen of those years she was the most popular woman in the world.

Although Mary was signed to Adolph Zuker’s Paramount, other studios bid for her services. Zucker couldn’t match their offers, so he invited Mary to rest for five years, on a salary of $52,000 per annum. Mary refused. Instead, she made movies for $675,000 per annum.

This ethereal image depicts Mary Pickford’s (centre) first appearance before a movie camera, on April 20, 1909, aged seventeen. The production was a short – Her First Biscuits. This was one of seven shorts Mary filmed in three and a half weeks. Listed number sixteen out of sixteen actors, she played ‘Biscuit Victim’. 

Another ‘Biscuit Victim’ was Owen Moore, a regular co-star during this period. In due course, Moore became Mary Pickford’s first husband.

The ‘Big Four’ in 1919 at the time of the formation of United Artists – Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, director D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks. Chaplin was a regular visitor to the Pickford-Fairbanks mansion, ‘Pickfair’. Chaplin and Mary Pickford were the big earners of the era. When one secured a more favourable contract, the other demanded one too.

My 9 x great grandfather John Bevan was mentioned in ‘Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania’, published 1911. This entry suggests that John was descended from the Last Prince of Glamorgan, and Edward III of England. It also suggests that he lived in Pennsylvania for twenty years.

‘North America, Family Histories, 1500-2000’ mentions my 9 x great grandfather John Bevan and his daughter Elizabeth in relation to a Samuel Richardson, in that Elizabeth married Samuel’s only son, Joseph, in 1696. The entry also mentions slave ownership and Samuel’s wardrobe. Many Quakers were anti-slavery, and from other entries I believe this was John Bevan’s stance. John gifted Elizabeth £200 for the marriage, the equivalent of £24,000 today.

A grainy, but important image, a page from the Pennsylvania Quaker Meeting Records, which recorded my 9 x great grandfather John Bevan, his wife Barbara, and their ‘tender’ family’s arrival in Pennsylvania, 1683.

This entry in ‘The History of Bucks County’ mentions my 9 x great grandparents John Bevan and Barbara Aubrey. It also mentions their daughter, Elizabeth, and Barbara’s ancestors. The entry describes John as a ‘man of considerable wealth, a friend of William Penn, a preacher of great influence, and a judge at the County Court of Philadelphia.’

Clara Bow Quotes: “With my mental attitude in this condition came rumblings. If I had only been able to foresee the results! I would have given anything gladly to have avoided such events but, as usual, with my trusting nature, I could not see the danger signals.

Talk travels rapidly in Hollywood, and before it gets very far the original comment has been distorted and twisted to suit the taste of the gossiper. Rumours, ugly rumours, began to spring up about me.”

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

For Authors

#1 for value with 565,000 readers, The Fussy Librarian has helped my books to reach #1 on 36 occasions.

A special offer from my publisher and the Fussy Librarian. https://authors.thefussylibrarian.com/?ref=goylake

Don’t forget to use the code goylake20 to claim your discount 🙂