In early 1926, Universal Studios filmed a silent feature-length movie called Crashing Timbers (later released as The Ice Flood) in the small town of Klamath Falls, Oregon. The Ice Flood starred well-known Hollywood actors Viola Dana and Kenneth Harlan, with child actor Billy Kent Schaeffer, and was directed first by James Spearing, but finished with George B. Seitz (reason for change unknown). The Klamath Falls community saw social, economic, and mild infrastructure impacts as a result of the Universal Studios’ visit to the town during January and February 1926.
The silent film era provides a unique view for historians of the arts, entertainment, and culture that existed in the Progressive Era America. Studies estimate seventy to ninety percent of silent feature-length films produced between 1912 and 1930 have been lost, yet The Ice Flood film survives. There are no remnants of the movie’s filming found in local archives or at the museum, except for a dvd of the movie and historical newspaper articles from 1926 and 1927. People who would have first-hand accounts of the event have long since passed, and there is no indication that their descendants have anything to offer on the topic.
Reports on the topic over the years also do not indicate its significance for the community in and around Klamath Falls, both during the time of film production or when the movie was released and shown, a year after filming. A lone scholarly article written in 2005 by archivist and historian Bill Alley notes missing information in the reconstruction of the historical narrative.1 The Ice Flood was originally released to audiences in 1919 under the title The Brute Breaker, a story written by author Johnston McCulley - creator of the acclaimed film hero Zorro. There are no copies known to exist of that movie, however.
My study of this surviving historical silent film has been guided by the following driving questions: What new information has been found on the topic? How did the production crew and cast interact and impact the town? Can the reasons for The Ice Flood’s survival and The Brute Breaker’s demise be found?
Primary sources such as newspaper and magazine articles, newsletters, Library of Congress documents, and the movie itself can be used to construct an updated narrative of the topic and fill gaps of missing information noted in Alley’s 2005 article. Secondary sources that describe studies of silent film and provide explanations of silent film’s significance for historians can serve as a baseline of what is known, and what is new discovery on the topic, can also be used in answering driving questions - as well as explain the significance of surviving silent films.
I also tracked down lobby card reproductions of the movie and had them printed in the traditional size of 14 inches long by 11 inches tall, on lightweight poster board. (Thank you Shortrunposters.com for an awesome job!)2 An article in Smithsonian Magazine explains that “lobby cards were displayed in sets of eight or more in the lobbies of movie theaters. The first card typically displayed a film’s name and crew, which was followed by scene cards that gave viewers a glimpse at the plot.”(see image 1, 2, & 3).3 I didn’t know that they were produced in sets of eight - this is how many I was able to find, so I must have a complete set!
Image 1, lobby card displays film’s name & crew.
Image 2, lobby card shows scene from movie. Image 3, lobby card shows scene from movie.
The article adds that sometimes lobby cards “are the only surviving evidence of a film’s existence, as so many early films have been lost or destroyed,” “can add nuance to contemporary film scholars’ understanding of the early days of cinema,” and they “revealed the importance women played in the silent film industry, both in front of and behind the screen.”4
I also tracked down and purchased copies on dvd of the film, one by Grapevine Video and the other by Alpha Video (see images 4 & 5). There is another version out there done by the now out-of-business Sundance Films. One other copy can be found on YouTube that is courtesy Variety Films (I have watched this one), and along with the two dvds I bought, will be my next endeavor of comparing and noting differences of the copies. Here's the link to the YouTube copy: https://youtu.be/vp4RMloPHlk?si=5Rz9Yo6KjatbjRk9.
Image 4, Grapevine Video’s 2013 copy Image 5, Alpha Video’s 2017 copy
One last resource I have constructed on the topic is an oral history interview with Kurt Liedtke. He is the local film guru, as he is the former executive director of Klamath Film. He's an independent filmmaker and he worked for over a decade in Hollywood in various roles in film and music production. Kurt has a vast knowledge of film origins, and particularly of the silent film industry and era.
There are parts of my interview with him where he speculates on some aspects of The Ice Flood. After we completed the interview we were able to chat, and I was able to clarify and inform him on where the movie was filmed (close to McCollum’s Lumber Mill on the Klamath River, around 6 miles past Keno, Oregon), that the Altamont dance pavilion was the site for indoor filming and there was an electrical substation constructed to accommodate power needs, and that the entire film was re-shot at Universal City except for the outdoor scenes. Here's the link to that interview: https://youtu.be/oI2lL-rHto0.
I was able to find the missing information Alley noted in his article during my research: He claimed that the film was never shown in Klamath Falls,5 but newspaper reporting contradicts that claim (see images 6, 7, & 8).6 Alley does note that he examined back issues of the Evening Herald, and did not mention looking at issues of the Klamath News - Klamath Falls’ other newspaper at the time. Alley figured that mixed reviews, and ones that were “not encouraging…might explain why it was never shown in Klamath Falls.”7
Image 6, Klamath News, Jan. 25, 1927, p. 8 Image 7, Klamath News, Jan. 27, 1927, p. 8
Image 8, Klamath News, Jan. 30, 1927, p. 6.
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Notes:
1. Bill Alley, “Crashing Timers, Ice Floods, and Movie Stars: Universal Studios Comes to Klamath Falls,” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly 96, no. 4 (Fall 2005): 181-186, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40491874.
2. Located in Nashville, Tennessee, https://www.shortrunposters.com/.
3. Ella Feldman, “See the Stunning Lobby Cards Keeping Silent Movies Alive: Thanks to a Collector, Thousands of Lobby Cards from the Silent Film Era Will Soon Be Digitized,” Smithsonian Magazine online (Oct. 19, 2022), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/tons-of-silent-movies-have-been-lost-to-time- lobby-cards-help-some-survive-180980943/.
4. Ibid.
5. Alley (Fall 2005), 185-186.
6. A pre-showing announcement appeared in the Klamath News on Jan, 25, 1927 stating “WARNING An Ice Flood Is Due Here Soon PREPARE,” and according to Klamath News ads on Jan. 27 & 30, 1927 the picture was being shown at The Orpheus Theater on Feb. 1-4. Two other articles in the Klamath News appeared on Jan. 30 & Feb. 1, 1927 that announce the upcoming screening of the film at The Orpheus.
7. Alley (Fall 2005), 185-186.
In the last years of the silent film industry, the Great Depression hit America. There are a multitude of theories surrounding the causes of the Great Depression and its eventual demise. This post will look at just one theory: the sale and ownership of stock shares to a public that did not understand the workings of the American stock market.
The works of Bernake and White both discuss the element of average Americans as stock buyers in the equation that led to the Great Depression. Specifically, White tells that:
“Since the turn of the century, the demands of industrial finances and regulation had reduced the role of commercial banks and increased the need to sell stock to the general public…many people who had never bought stock before entered the market. One identifiable group of new investors was women…Women’s magazines carried articles on how to buy stocks…While these changes are not easy to quantify, they do provide qualitative evidence of the existence of conditions that enhanced the likelihood of a bubble appearing in the stock market.”
Women were targeted by speculators and journalists who worked with capitalists as potential stock buyers. Women had become a significant part of the workforce during the 1920s, and represented a new class of consumers. Journalist Samuel Crowther wrote a lengthy article in the August 1929 edition of The Ladies Home Journal entitled, “Everybody Ought to be Rich, An Interview with John J. Raskob.” This feature specifically spoke to female readers, because it put women on par with men.
Raskob tells readers, “If he [a married man] invests in good common stocks and allows the dividends and right to accumulate, he will at the end of twenty years have at least eighty thousand dollars…He will be rich. And because anyone can do that I am firm in my belief that anyone not only can be rich but ought to be rich.”
Excerpts such as “The line between investment and speculation is a very hazy one…,” “Placing a bet is very different from placing one’s money with a corporation…,” “The old view of debt was quite as illogical as the old view of investment…We now know that borrowing may be a method of earning and beneficial to everyone concerned,” and “The way to wealth is to get into the profit end of wealth production in this country” made readers rethink saving and investing.
Bernake discusses the reality of “insolvency of debtors” and “the ratio of debt service to national income went from 9 percent in 1929 to 19.8 percent in 1932-33. The resulting high rates of default caused problems for both borrowers and lenders.” Still, many individuals used their savings to buy stock.
America had become a borrowing culture during the boom years of the 1920s. “Small borrowers, such as households and unincorporated businesses, greatly increased their debts.” During the early 1930s, bank restrictions made it harder for average Americans to obtain loans. This meant that the first group of borrowers to be affected were households, farmers, unincorporated businesses, and small corporations; “this group had the highest direct or indirect reliance on bank credit,” according to Bernake.
Knowing this, what role did inexperienced shareholders play as potential borrowers? Arora and Buza explain that businesses which saw their starts between 1880 and 1920, sought expansion through stock sales to finance new plants, equipment, and other elements of expansion due to current bank lending crackdowns. In March of 1929, the Fed doubled interest rates to discourage investors. In response, these corporations started lending money to speculators and new investors to stimulate stock sales. These new investors contributed to the growth and expansion of companies and corporations.
For example, Figure 1 shows the amount investors contributed to the growth and expansion of RCA, the leading corporation for radio in America. RCA was able to withstand the economic downturns of the Great Depression, and instead grow in monumental ways from the surplus income they generated. This was due to the amount of stocks bought by new investors.
Fig. 1 From “Radio Corporation of America: Summary of Operations” reports.
Who were these new investors? The American public. They had seen the stock market increase by forty-eight percent in 1928, and believed that the market would continue its climb. Arora and Buza further explain that new investors “lacked experience in buying stocks and monitoring firms. Brokers were also making loans on margin and by October 1929, the loans had reached $8.5 billion. But, only an estimated 600,000 people had margin accounts in 1929.” This suggests that personal funds were heavily involved in the purchase of stocks, as well.
Photo courtesy Andreas Berger from Medium.com
Some new investors did make money (sometimes A LOT of money) on dividends paid out by the companies that they held stock in. Dividends were one way of paying shareholders a return on their investment; the payments may be done through cash, additional shares in the company, or the opportunity to buy additional shares at a discount. Some companies that offered dividends provided investors with a regular income as the stock price moved up and down in the market. However, an article by Green points out that during the last two years of the economic boom of the 1920s, dividends fell far behind the rise of stock prices, meaning that stocks that paid out dividends to its shareholders were not likely to make anyone as rich as it did before.
On the other hand, some new investors bought stock in companies that did not offer dividends. Companies that didn't offer dividends were typically reinvesting revenues into the growth of the company itself, which eventually led to greater increases in share price and value for investors. RCA was one of those companies. All of the money that came in from product and stocks sales, minus expenses, resulted in the gargantuan surplus of income for the company.
Two ways investors profited from stock investing were capital gains (selling off shares of stock that had increased in value over what it was originally bought at) and paying of dividends. If the stock a person owned in a company that didn’t pay dividends, then a stockholder’s only profit potential is from capital gains - meaning selling the stock to get money. In October 1929, a panic led to a mass sell-off of stocks, causing stock prices to plummet. Subsequently, the market crashed for a variety of reasons, scores of Americans went bankrupt, and the years of the Great Depression began.
Bibliography
Primary:
Crowther, Samuel. “Everybody Ought to be Rich: An Interview with John J. Raskob.” Ladies Home Journal. (August 1929): 9, 36. https://archive.org/details/sim_ladies-home- journal_1929-08_46_8/page/n10/mode/1up.
RCA. "Annual Report of the Directors of Radio Corporation of America to the Stockholders for the Year Ended December 31, 1928." https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021216877&seq=1.
RCA. "Annual Report of the Directors of Radio Corporation of America to the Stockholders for the Year Ended December 31, 1923." https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021216844&seq=3.
RCA. "Annual Report of the Directors of Radio Corporation of America to the Stockholders for the Year Ended December 31, 1926." https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021216869&seq=3.
Secondary:
Arora, Harjit K., and Michael P. Buza. "United States Economy & The Stock Market." Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER) 1, no. 1 (2003).
Bernanke, Ben S. “The Macroeconomics of the Great Depression: A Comparative Approach.” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 27, no. 1 (1995): 1–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/2077848.
Bernanke, Ben S. “Nonmonetary Effects of the Financial Crisis in the Propagation of the Great Depression.” The American Economic Review 73, no. 3 (1983): 257–76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1808111.
Green, George D. "The economic impact of the stock market boom and crash of 1929." In Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Consumer Spending and Monetary Policy: The Linkages, Monetary Conference, (1971): 189-220.
White, Eugene N. "The Stock Market Boom and Crash of 1929 Revisited." The Journal of Economic Perspectives 4, no. 2 (Spring, 1990): 67, https://go.openathens.net/redirector/liberty.edu?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/stock-market-boom-crash-1929-revisited/docview/208971271/se-2.
According to study results released in January 2023 by the American Film Institute (AFI) in which 6,000 feature films released in the silent film era, it was discovered that “women represented a higher percentage of writers, directors and producers in the silent era than at any other time in the first century of American film-making.”
Figure 1 shows where credits attributed to women working behind the camera were 10.9% in 1910-1930 versus 6.9% in 1931-1993. Feature films credits attributed to women screen/scenario writers and co-writers were 27.5% in 1910-1930 versus 12.2% in 1931-1993. Even literary sources that were written by women and adapted to the film were 19.6% in 1910-1930 versus 15.8% in 1931-1993.
Figure 1, information from AFI study released January 2023.
The silent film industry as a whole was not at first targeted by the Sherman Antitrust Act after it was passed, even though Thomas Edison had created a monopoly on much of silent film technology by founding the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) in 1908. The company subsequently folded in 1915 after it eventually lost a federal antitrust suit.
Until this happened however, an article in the Saturday Evening Post stated that, “The East Coast became suffocating for non-Edison-affiliated film makers. Every turn they made in the industry was met with a lawsuit, stifling creativity and stalling innovation. The environment that Edison concocted led to independent film makers wanting to get far away from him and his monopoly. Hollywood seemed like the ideal destination.”
Film production companies did become self-regulated through the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) which evolved into today’s Motion Picture Association (MPA), until the film industry was brought under investigation in United States v. Paramount Pictures in 1948. The MPPDA was founded in 1922 and led by former Postmaster General William H. Hays.
This information correlates to an article by Kolko that said Woodrow Wilson “expressed satisfaction that businessmen were beginning to reform themselves” in the time of Wilson’s vision coined the New Freedom.
Additionally, an article by Chandler notes that in the silent film era, the “modern business enterprise as having two basic characteristics: it contains a number of distinct operating units and it is managed by a hierarchy of full-time salaried executives.”
Silent film companies only half-mirrored Chandler’s description - there were several distinct operating units such as editing, costume, screenwriting, directing, acting, producing, camera crank, etc - BUT, film companies were managed by a few full-time executives, and were usually managed by investors, along with directors and producers, and there was no real hierarchy involved.
Abreu explains that by the 1930s, and at the end of the silent film industry/era, the “studio system” took over as the business method employed. The studio system operated for about two decades, and involved Hollywood movie studios having control over all aspects of their film productions - including production, distribution, and exhibition.
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| Frances Marion, c. 1920. Photo courtesy The Criterion Collection. |
Amid all of the new-found censorship antitrust legislation and modern business characteristics model, a pioneering woman in silent film named Frances Marion, navigated the business side of the industry to become arguably one of the longest employed, and best paid professionals in the field.
The January 2023 study by AFI that is referenced above specifically highlights Frances Marion as having more film credits attributed to her scenario/screen writing than any other in the industry. By 1918, Frances Marion was making $50K/year, which is almost a million dollars a year, today ($996,159). The irony is that for a time at the beginning of her silent film career, Marion worked for free to prove her skills as a writer.
By 1919, she received a letter from William Randolph Hearst offering her $2000 a week to write for his Cosmopolitan Studios in New York.
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| France Marion, silent film screenwriter. Photo courtesy In Their Own League. |
According to the Beauchamps, who wrote and produced the Frances Marion documentary Without Lying Down: Frances Marion in Hollywood, “she wrote more than 200 movies and was the world's highest paid screenwriter - man or woman. Hollywood moguls competed for her stories…Marion became the first screenwriter to win two Oscars.”
In fact, an article by Petersen in Screenland Magazine from 1938, tells that Frances Marion “remained consistently the highest paid scenario writer in the world. The first to make big money in screenwriting, Frances Marion paved the way for the present income tax bracket for Hollywood writers who have her to thank for their surtaxes today.”
Marion’s work as a screenwriter lasted through the beginnings of two film industries - silent and the “talkies.” She not only navigated a male-dominated field, she also became one of the most significant examples of how women with diverse capabilities behind the film camera came to run the early entertainment industry.
Antitrust laws came to the silent film industry through the breakup of the Edison trust, ending his hold on the technology used to create early films. Business enterprise models also reflected the structure of silent film companies in the Progressive Era, to a certain extent. Regardless, women were able to exercise their entrepreneurial sides and flourish economically in the now-extinct field.
Bibliography
Abreu, Rafael. “What is the Studio System?: Hollywood’s Studio Era Explained.” Studiobinder website. (Jan.1, 2023). https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-the-studio-system- in-hollywood/.
American Film Institute (AFI). “AFI Releases Landmark Study about the Contributions of Women to Early Cinema.” AFI Catalog website. (January 2023). https://aficatalog.afi.com/wtta-silent-era/#credits.
Beauchamp, Terry and Carrie Beauchamp. “Without Lying Down: Frances Marion in Hollywood.” Directed by Brigit Terry (2000). Video: Chaise Lounge Productions, LLC and UCLA Film Archive. https://milestone.vhx.tv/products/without-lying-down- frances-marion-in-hollywood.
Chandler Jr., Alfred D. “Chapter 2: Scale, Scope, and Organizational Capabilities.” In Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Capatilism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, (1990): 14-46. Accessed February 6, 2024. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Kolko, Gabriel. “Chapter Ten: The Triumph of Political Capitalism, The Federal Trade Commission and Trust Legislation.” In the Triumph of Conservatism. New York, NY: Free Press (1977). https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk& AN=1963172&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
National Coalition Against Censorship. “A Brief History of Film Censorship.” NCAC website (2023). https://ncac.org/resource/a-brief-history-of-film-censorship.
Petersen, Elizabeth Benneche. “Great Women of Motion Pictures.” Screenland. New York, NY: Screenland Magazine, Inc. (1938): 54-55 & 77-78. Urn:oclc:record:1085107635. https://archive.org/details/screenland38unse/page/n275/mode/2up.
Intro:
The silent film era, a time during the Progressive Era that ran roughly between 1880 and the late-1920s, presented unique economic opportunities for women. Not only did women gain financial independence by working in the industry, they also were afforded special circumstances to exercise their entrepreneurial abilities. Women in the silent film industry began primarily as actresses, but soon found their way into all aspects of film production and distribution. Women were screenwriters, producers, directors, costume makers, set designers, makeup artists, and musicians. Soon, women became founders of their own film production companies. They contracted with theaters to distribute their films for public consumption. To say that the silent film industry significantly changed employment and economic opportunities for women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, is an understatement. This study investigates the economic growth that occurred with people working in silent film.
Methodology and Sources:
To determine what kind of economic growth occurred with women in the silent film industry, this study looked at the following U.S. Census data sets: Statistics of Occupations from 1900; special reports of Women at Work from 1900; charts of Women in Gainful Occupations for 1910 and 1920; and Occupation Statistics for the years 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910. Additionally, peer review articles from two experts in the field of silent cinema were consulted. Since the silent film industry was new, census reports did not list the various employment positions that persons occupied. This study matched occupations that correlated with those found in the industry, instead. For example, costume makers could be listed as dressmakers and seamstresses in the census and those numbers were used as one data set to try and account for persons working in the industry. Photographer statistics were used, as sources indicate that technology used in the silent film industry was based on photography (Bakker, 6). The weakness of the study lies in the numbers used. Therefore, they do not necessarily represent actual occupation numbers for the industry; they merely suggest that some of the reported numbers worked in a particular job, likely in the silent film industry.
Comparison:
Figure one demonstrates the numbers of men and women working in occupations that were found in the silent film industry for the years 1880, 1890, 1900, and 1910. Men dominated the occupations in 1880, but a significant growth of women in occupations found in the silent film industry can help explain how they came to dominate the industry in its early years and throughout its existence.
Figure 1. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Occupation Statistics: 1880-1910.
Figure 2 compares the number of women in specific occupations related to those found in the silent film sector for 1900. Again, dressmakers and seamstresses did not necessarily dominate the work that women did in the industry, it merely suggests that as a profession, women costume makers were most certainly some of the dressmakers and/or seamstresses accounted for in census numbers.
Figure 2. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Women at Work Report: 1900.
Figure 3 compares women’s employment in occupation sectors related to silent film industry positions for 1910 and 1920. The statistics indicate significant growth in jobs such as designer (set designer), author/writer (screenwriter), and photographer (filmmaker), as well as theater owner and theater usher. Women in these professions experienced a marked increase, and even though these numbers are reported for all industries, they represent growth in occupation sectors found in the silent film industry.
Figure 3. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Women in Gainful Occupations: 1910-1920.
Findings:
Economic growth in terms of women in occupations found in the silent film industry grew from 1880 to 1920. Men were found to outnumber women in jobs found in silent film, but only for one data set year of 1880. The rest of the years included in the study saw women not only come to dominate jobs that were found in the silent film industry, they also indicate that more women in those positions meant more films were being made, more money was being generated, and more economic growth could be found.
The limitations of the study reside in the inability to obtain specific numbers of women in particular occupations within the silent film industry by only looking at U.S. Census reports. This means that further inquiry and in-depth analysis is needed to make the study a more reliable report of economic growth for women in the silent film industry. Also, time constraints for this study were problematic in researching and locating sources that could shed light on statistics that are directly representative of economic factors in the silent film industry.
Growth of the silent film industry came about for a few reasons - mainly due to the change in how films were shown to the public.The industry went from Nickelodeons to “fixed cinemas with a few hundred seats [that] quickly spread all over the country,” (Bakker, 10). Also, growth of women employed within the industry came about, especially in the last decade of the era - roughly from 1920-1929. Women worked as “producers, writers, actresses, costume designers, and other film professionals,” which in turn “directly contributed to silent films and played significant roles in shaping the silent film culture.” (Peng, 21).
Bibliography
Bakker, Gerben. "The evolution of entertainment consumption and the emergence of cinema, 1890-1940." Economic History Working Papers 22316 (2007). London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History. https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/wpaper/22316.html.
Peng, Alicia. “Social Changes in America: The Silent Cinema Frontier and Women Pioneers.” Humanities 13, no. 3. (2023). DOI:10.3390/h13010003.
U.S. Census Bureau. “Occupation Statistics: 1880-1910.” https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1914/dec/vol-4-occupations.html.
U.S. Census Bureau. “Women at Work Report: 1900.” https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1907/dec/women-at-work.html.
U.S. Census Bureau. “Women in Gainful Employment: 1910-1920.” https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1929/dec/monograph-9.html.
