Chasing Claire Adams

Six Degrees of Claire Adams and other thoughts from the BIO Conference

This time last week I was at the Natural History Museum of LA panting like a cornered mountain lion after at least seven trips up and down stairs lugging posters, easels and wine for the fund raising cocktail party opening the Third Compleat BIO Conference being held across the road at USC. I think my heart rate has returned to normal now, thank you...

The conference itself was inspiring, edifying and all those goals any organiser would want to kick, but it was also So Much Fun. I met up again with great people I'd crossed paths with last year at the conference in DC or had corresponded with via email. Someone would pass me by and I'd recognize the name but not the face of someone who had provided some advice, answered a question or even folks I'd been able to help. There was a convivial and collegiate atmosphere to the whole weekend, kicked off with our cocktail party last Friday night.

Running up and down stairs was not the only reason my heart was thumping. I had been appointed moderator for a panel session on Saturday afternoon titled Pursuing Hollywood's Past featuring historians and biographers of the highest calibre: Cari Beachamp, James Curtis, Steven Ross and Lois Banner. I'd met with all of them separately in the preceding weeks, in pubs, offices and even poolside as a means of getting to know more about them that I'd be able to ascertain from their impressive and, needless to say, more than slightly intimidating biographies. That they were such generous, feisty, passionate and goddam interesting people made my job of steering the 90 minute conversation relatively easy. If we had any issues, it was how to balance the necessarily practical advice (such as make ProQuest and Ned Comstock your friend) with the dozens of "coal-face" experiences they'd had, the tiny scraps that led to treasure, the bizarre connections that come from unlikely sources and the extraorinary humans that emerge from their years of persistent digging.

I couldn't help but feel I have a mountain of work still to do. Listening to the panel speak, I had half my mind on the time, the other casting back through all the tip offs and suggestions various people had made over the last two years or so, that I have either put on a follow up list or been unable to get to. I may be in the States, but it's a looong way from Santa Monica to George Eastman House. But you never know, I may yet get there.

I'd attended a morning session on Legal Obligations and Liabilities that I found absolutely terrifying (you could almost hear everyone in the room nervously sucking in their breath). I've been concerned about the ramifications of "outing" not just Claire as an abused wife but of Hampton as an abusive husband and less than reliable source on the History of the Movies. At least I was able to release my breath when I learned that dead people cannot sue you for liable, but there are some privacy elements I'll look into, just in case.

I also poked my nose into a session on adapting Biographies to Biopics, with some great chaps from HBO and other companies talking about the process of transferring life to the screen - treatments, outlines, agents, scouts etc. Then they shared a story about how the moderator's book was picked up for adaptation. Turns out that three people on set making Shutter Island happened to be carrying the book one day and started a conversation - hey wouldn't this make a great movie? Pure Luck and coincidence that left everyone sort of shrugging hopefully. Best comment - "hey man, love the way you worked into the speech that Leonardo Di Caprio was reading your book!"

I'm not sure what I was actually registered for following my panel session (which I have on good authority "went very well" Thanks Beverly!) I was too mind blown to move very far so took a seat in the same room and came to have one of the most inspirational moments of the day. The session was about Unauthorised Biographies and I did a complete conceptual 360 when Andrew Morton began to speak. I'll admit I thought people who dug into the lives of celebrities, including and in particularly royalty, were a little sensationalist, capitalising on someone else's fame to improve their own fortunes. How narrow minded could I be? Perhaps I was still recovering from my shattered princess dreams, but listening to his descriptions of death threats and recriminations for uncovering the truth, I came to see him and his colleagues somewhat more like journalistic crusaders, questioning the role and power of the celebrities our culture has produced. EG: Tom Cruise was able to sway Bill Clinton to call Tony Blair to lobby for Scientology's tax free status in the UK. David Stenn was another speaker who drew the distinction between Fame (Angelina Jolie) and Notoriety (Monica Lewinski) - one is sought, earned and cultivated, the other incidental, coincidental and largely negative. 

Thought provoking, inspiring and reassuring stuff. I spoke to David Stenn following the session. Asthe biographer of Clara Bow, I thought he may have heard of Claire Adams. They were costars in 1924s Helen's Babies. He had and then asked if I'd spoken to Diana Serra Cary. I did not recognise the name, until he said that she used to be Baby Peggy, who played Claire's daughter. We swapped cards and with a couple of days, this lovely lady was on the phone who had played opposite Claire Adams. Honestly, it was quite overwhelming.

Together, these sessions and the fabulous people I've met have brought home not just how important it is to get this project finished and out there, but if I'm lucky enough to continue this  with another biography, just what the responsibilities are. Not only in terms of liability, veracity and integrity to our subjects, but to our potential readers, to represent the truth of our subjects and their times to help illuminate our own.  

Shining Light on Lost Treasure

A new friend described to me his focus and intent on solving a problem. He said he was "like a chicken on a June Bug". Similarly, I can't give up the chase. Even though the first draft is done, finished, Out There, I'm still hunting, looking for more clues, chasing loose ends that I can tie to another to make a stronger knot that might hold together a few more facts, a chain of events to make it all make just a little more sense. The writing became a means of molding these results into a narrative, with a structure that really had no plan, driven only by a few questions I thought in need of attention, that had been left in the dark too long.

Here is a sample of over fifty beautiful gems that have recently come to light:

Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries. Claire Adams Photographs (MS-P008)

 Just back from Australia, while waiting to hear from a number of people and between planning sessions for the BIO Conference next month, gasp, This Month (!!) I threw in another google search, to see how the metadata maelstrom was treating our Claire. To see what else may have been put up or processed recently. Well, I was directed to this photo which I do not remember seeing before, and which was featuring on the blog of new acquisitions, from the University of California in Irvine Special Collections team.

I used to joke about finding a "Golden Shoebox", a collection of material relating to Claire's life and career, and this collection is the closest I've come. To make it even more special, it comes from Claire's little sister, Barbara Stephens, who donated her collection of Claire's photos and newpaper clippings several years ago. Precious, that they survived at all. More so that they came from someone who loved her. Interesting that they have Claire's shaky scrawled handwriting on the verso, the lacy blue patterns I've come to associate with her later years, the same determined and slightly shaky hand that wrote what she could remember or could be bothered recording on the photos she left in Melbourne.

Few of the photos at UC Irvine are not annotated in this way, whereas those in the Trust Collections have so little information they remain a mystery. I must also point out that many of those I viewed yesterday are far more interesting, beautiful and pertinent than any others I've seen. There are shots of the set - Claire gazing over the cameraman's head, seated  high on a saddle, reins in hand, atop a wooden horse. Claire as a nurse in several shots from The  End of the Road (1919) and one precious still from The Spirit of the Red Cross (1918). Claire in her first equestrian role in the first film adaptation of Black Beauty, retitled Your Obedient Servant (1916). And Claire with Tom Mix, the King of the Cowboys, of course,  who visited Barbara for her birthday and rode her around on his shoulders atop Tony the Wonder Horse. 

There are many more shots from different roles, scenes and characters. There are also newspaper clippings and commentary throwing more light on her Hollywood life. Her career always seemed poised and ready for take off, yet somehow stalled just as she was gliding so elegantly up to the runway. I've built a good case explaining why this probably happened, and the more I find the more it comes down to one person: Benjamin B Hampton, the man who made her a star, married her then wrote her out of history.

A Hampton collection of photos or papers may yet turn up somewhere, though I doubt it, given who cleaned up the house after he died and how he'd been treating her in the years they were married. I'm so pleased that there is now officially more than one collection commemorating the career of Claire Adams, and I feel she had a hand in creating this one at UC Irvine. Did she sort through her box of photographs before she died, as one article describes her doing? Was she sifting through the layers like a palaeontologist, looking for her favourites, places and faces she could remember, relive and elect as a legacy the roles she was most proud of, had the most fun with? Those where she looked and gave her best and would like to be remembered by?

The catalyst for this project were questions I had years ago, as I sifted through the larger collection of photographs Claire left in an attic of her South Yarra house. I'd spent many hours wondering "who were those people, those movies, this person?" It is as though she edited out her favourites and her best and sent them to her little sister, back to California where Claire's role in the movies may one day come to mean something, as they seem to have meant so little to Melbourne, who knew her in a very different role, at a gentler and happier time in her life.

Who knows if I'll ever get across to George Eastman House, New York Public Library and MoMA to see what images and other bounty I know they have? For now, though, this particular collection is very dear to me for its particular provenance, and may prove more significant than we can currently guess. Thank you Steve MacLeod and Christine Kim, who hosted me yesterday. And most importantly, thank you, the Misses Adams!

*Ding* Turn the Page ...

I miss Claire.

It has been around ten days since I finished the manuscript and sent if off to my agent Margaret Gee in Sydney. Post champagne celebrations and that bizarre week in a comatosed state during which my brain was porridge and my hands felt empty for the lack of a task, I've awoken to a new stage in my life and that of the project. I've sent Claire off to be viewed and judged by strangers and I am locked and fretting about what I haven't done, couldn't get to, misplaced and may have misunderstood, knowing that it will be very rare to receive any feedback other than well done but it's not for us. And I'll not have a chance to change anything, explain, elucidate or demonstrate just why I have presented her the way I have, the way she was.

We are both 'different' women, not easily categorised, which subsequently means you wind up with the label "Difficult". We don't fit the norm, we make risky choices, pursued a creative compulsion in order to make a difference in the world, take the challenging rocky road because we wont let fear get in the way of doing the right thing. Take the occasional punch because we're strong, rather than live defensively in fear and distrustful of the world. (It's always harder to be an optimist!) And we wear our mistakes, bounce back and learn and share our experiences with others. The job we do, what we think of our own performance, is more important than going for the accolades that come from cheap gags and mainstream mediocrity. 

Has writing this biography really been a more intimate examination of my own life choices? Did I choose Claire's story to explore because it was like my own (well, apart from the beauty, riches, abusive husband and fabulous film career...) or did it choose me? I was always inspired by the love story and her courage to move between continents - it was one of the reasons why I undertook the project to begin with. But then so many coincidences have come to light, so much in common that I've felt I know her, which you'd hope would happen after two years of biographical research. But now she's gone and I miss her company. There are other things I need to do with my days than dive into archives, rummage in dusty shelves, postulate, hypothesize and review my Deep Chrono for evidence, explanation and connection. Maybe it's not Claire that I miss, but the process ... oh no, this could really be awkward!

I've heard through other biographers through BIO that one does become slightly obsessed with or, more accurately, possessed by one's subject. At the conference last year, there was a great speaker who discussed his decision making process for choosing a subject. He had two options. One was a heavy duty political journalist, and the other was Sammy Davis Junior. He said out loud, holding his chin and nodding to the high ceiling of the National Press Club, "Now, who would I feel good about sharing my couch with every night for the next couple of years?" And so a great biography of Mr Davis was produced.

I've enjoyed having Claire in my head, on my couch, in the car and on my walks. I've learned so much from her, am more inspired by her actions and beliefs that until now have been forgotten and I just hope hope hope that others will get the chance to know her as I've found her. We know more now than when I started, but I still have questions to ask. At least I have answered those I started with, and that information has come as much from my own experiences over the last couple of years as from what I've found. What does it mean to have been a Hollywood movie star in the 1920s? How does it feel to leave everyone and everything you've ever known and move to another continent? And perhaps that most important question, do people really get to live happily ever after? To that last, the answer is Yes, but you have to fight for it. Love is the only thing worth fighting for.

So with this stage concluding (and the old project manager in me can't help but review...!), I've already started making tentative, hushed and whispered little searches about someone else I find intriguing, someone else I have something in common with who I'd like to know better. Stay tuned. I think I have the bug or the obsession has turned into a full blown infection. Or maybe it's love with this new field? I've changed fields before. Maybe biography is where I've been heading all along? As I believe Claire Adams would say, I wont know if this is the end of my biography story or the beginning of a whole new chapter, until I turn the page.

* Image (c) National Trust of Australia, Victoria

The End of the Road?

This research and biography business is a lonely one. That I'm doing it on the other side of the world to most of the people I love makes it more so. Countless times I have wanted to run something by someone, tell a joke that only a select few would get (or humor me with a chuckle...), hark back the other times and places when we were all together or at least in the same time zone. That's the trouble with good friends. You know they are always there for you, but sometimes "there" is thousands of miles away. I am so grateful for my small but loving band of friends here. I've always been kind of selective, going for quality over quantity. One day, somehow, I hope the two sets can meet.

One way I've dealt with this distance is imagining they are here, my mates and family, visiting with their partners and kids I haven't even met yet, sharing this adventure. Babies have been born, career paths evolved, critical illness faced and  vanquished. In many ways, this exercise of summoning my imaginary real friends has helped shape and understand Claire, someone I never met. Rather I've recreated her from the traces she left in the public record, melded with the stories she left behind. My next writing project when I've finished her story will be one about my friends, this ex-pat experience and how I've dealt with it in the kitchen. This ghostly company (and yes I do have conversations, but there's only the cat here and she doesn't seem to mind) joins me at the stove, at the sink and even the chopping board. So much of how and what cook I've learnt from my friends and there's an article or short story emerging there.

I'll miss Claire when she's gone, when I have to either put her in the drawer with my other unpublished manuscripts or hand her over to a stranger, like sending a child off to school. I know, if I'm that lucky, they'd take care of her, but can I trust them? Will they really understand her? Have I prepared her well enough?

This is what I've been doing the last two weeks, and will finish up next week. Preparing the final completed submission. I have no illusions about it being perfect. I'm just trying to make it as good as it can be, show Claire in her best and most authentic light to let it shine brightly again so her grace, talent and kindness wont be lost in the darkness. Reading my two year's work (and that's not so long on this kind of project...) I can see the presence of others, like my absent friends, whose influence has joined me at the keyboard to create something I've never tried before. I turned to them for help, to show me how biography was done through reading how they did it. 

The earlier chapters show the presences of William Shawcross, official biographer to The Queen Mother, assiduous in his referencing, blessed in the scope of accessible material and steady in his tone. As though seeking an equally best selling balance, I read Elizabeth Gilbert, thinking I would include more of my own perspective and flesh out what I thought would be a lighter story with observations ad reflections of my own migrant experience. Needless to say, this combination hasn't worked. There's been quite a lot of chopping of what I thought at the time to be witty and personal observations. Now it sounds silly and inappropriate, and Claire deserves better.

Next came traces of two fabulous biography mentors, Stacy Schiff and Hazel Rowley. Between Cleopatra and the Roosevelts I learned how to paint a character, explore almost unknowable relationships and respectfully draw beautiful and plausible hypotheses to fill the spaces between the evidence.

Throw in the deft humour and academic rigor of Simon Schama (History of Britain) and Richard Holmes (Age of Wonders), with the saucy glamour of Frances Osborne (The Bolter) and the more journalistic perspective of Susan Orlean (Rin Tin Tin) and you have the imaginary friends of this biography. I've already written in praise of Nigel Hamilton, which I read just prior to this revision process, who made me feel I hadn't been so haphazard as I'd thought and may have actually done a good job.

We'll see. By this time next week, the revisions will be done and sent to my lovely agent Margaret Gee, who has never given up on Claire and I. Maybe, just maybe, we'll catch this wave of interest in silent movies and forgotten faces of film history and relaunch Claire Adams for a new generation, one hundred years after she first appeared in film. Wish us luck!

Vini, Vici, Viva Le Artiste!

Please forgive! There has been much champagne and braised rabbit in honour of the silent film features of the Academy Awards, but I have to commemorate the fabulous Artists who took the risk and had the honour to acknowledge the genre of film that so many film theorists have ignored as not important, that was all "panto in front of a camera", that without words film was nothing ...

Oh my, we all know that so much can be said without words, the crews from The Artist and Hugo, oh  my, you have my admiration and thanks for drawing attention to this little piece of time that brought a new technology to life, that built the audience, that became a crowd that needed to dream and was fed by a cultural medium that has become such a dominant international artistic force ... did I mention I've had a bit to drink ...? Did I mention I've spent a lot of time working on the life story of a woman who saw it all happen?

For all The Artists, in all The Movies, bravo and I look forward to next years crop. Don't let us down!

PS: I love Meryl, but Viola Davis, I am sooo looking forward to more of what you got!

PPS: Rose Byrne, do you know how to ride a horse!

Sex, Babies and Boundaries

I guess it was inevitable. Writing a biography that features a brilliant story of "love at first sight" between two consenting adults, one a tall, handsome ex-rower and the other a movie star gorgeous older widow, try as one might, I've found myself thinking a lot about sex. (Kind of revenge upon my husband the palaeontologist who found the earliest fossil evidence of, ahem, "internal fertilisation" and has spent the last three years talking about it. Dinner time conversation has never been the same...)

How can one explain in the most literary and respectful terms that Claire and Donald were simply unbelievably hot for each other?  Every picture we have of them radiates love and passion. "Love at First Sight" is usually a retrospective epithet for a brief but hot and heavy encounter that turned into something more enduring. I should know - I'm 11 years into a relationship that essentially started as a one night stand that couldn't possibly go anywhere. What starts as harmless fun with an attractive stranger turns into something compelling with a lovely soul mate you cannot live without. Cannot imagine a life or a future that does not feature this endearing other. "I" becomes "we". You are shaken, confused and terrified as your orbit oscilates to align with the other's. Your paths cross in the forest, each enroute to your own "x" on the map, to find they converge, merge and veer off beyond the forest, off the map and into uncharted territory. There's no one and nothing to hold onto but this person, this thing that grew out of the sweet sweat and heat that shone from each other, all those days, weeks, months and years ago, and nothing else matters or will be same again.

But enough of my love life. Is this what Claire and Donald experienced, having eyed each other up from across the crowded room in London during a Coronation Party. Claire's famous line uttered when Donald entered the room was apparently "That's the man I'm going to marry". Was it more something she said flippantly, mid conversation about her marriage plans or prospects, perhaps, along the lines of "Oh I don't know, maybe I'll marry him!" And three weeks late, she did.

Hmmm I wonder how they spent those three weeks... it's a no brainer and not at all disrespectful. They were adults. Experienced. Independent. At a fabulous party on the other side of the world from their families, their "real lives" and its expectations. What a wonderful time to have a fling? To enjoy each other, no strings attached, beautiful strangers who met and found there was so much more than a beautiful face, love of horses and a "cute giggle". The one night stand, becomes an affair, becomes love at first sight (well , that's what you tell your parents...) that began the love that lasts a lifetime. 

And what of Donald's past. We know Claire's experience of marriage had not been a happy one. I find it hard to imagine that Donald had lived like a monk. He was sporty. He was handsome. And he was rich. Now none of these traits dictate he was a ladies man, but it does imply the ladies would not have been unaware of his potential. In fact, as an eligible bachelor, he was most likely the target of more than one young Melbourne lady's designs and marital ambitions. Even the most noble gentlemen have a past, a failed romance, an unrequited or unsought admirer. But we know nothing of who he may have been involved with, what his experience may have been. 

There's another related issue that keeps coming up, and that is why Claire never had children. People ask and I find it sort of confronting, perhaps because I don't have any either. Claire's childless state is something I accept as her business, nothing out of the ordinary because I can relate to it. For me, it's normal. I guess for most, ok, everyone else I know, it is abnormal. Most folks cannot imagine life without their little ones and I don't blame them. So it is also kind of inevitable that they wonder about Claire's missing babies. As though there is a reason, an explanation and there probably is. We just don't know and I haven't spent too long getting into it because it is in many ways unknowable and like her love life, I feel intrusive prying. Like me, she had reasons for remaining childless but those reasons are her own, her husbands' and intensely private. Whether it was through choice or circumstances, I feel as though people put Claire (and myself, for that matter) into some sort of little box with a label on it because she didn't have kids. They would feel "incomplete" without their families and thus assume Claire was missing something in her life. It becomes a matter of defining her through a lack, a negative, rather than seeing her for who she was and the life she lived with all its wonder and accomplishments. "Oh, but she didn't have kids. Pity..." Hmmm.

What do you think? How much should I look for, infer and ask about? How much does it alter who you think she was, because she didn't/couldn't/wouldn't have kids? I haven't read that many biographies of blokes recently, but I get the impression it wouldn't be such an issue. 

 

 

Presentations and Changing Perceptions

Hello to anyone new to the site who came along to my presentation at the museum yesterday. 

Thanks so much for joining us, particularly anyone who bravely googled "Claire Adams" and had to wade your way through some weird stuff you weren't expecting. 

Without "The Histories" (the unofficial title of those belonging to the hard working History Department) this project would not have been able to get off the ground, let alone reach near 100,000 words. From the first conversations I had with the wonderful Beth Werling and William Estrada within days of landing in LA, through to John and Betty in the Seaver Centre who show such patience and forebearance when I drop in unannounced with one obscure request or another - your help and vital guidance of my research have been invaluable. Thank you. I am honoured to be counted amongst your ranks!

I came away yesterday feeling pleased to have had the opportunity to present the whole story With Pictures. Others in the audience have heard bits and pieces over the last two years or so, when I'd blather on at parties and functions about what I'd found that week and discuss what it may or may not have meant. And I say "blather" because I define that as an unstructured gush of disparate pieces of information inflicted upon a kind yet possibly distracted victim who may really have just wanted me to answer their query "How are you" with "fine thank you", rather than several minutes of, well, blather.

I may have had the occasional stumble yesterday, but I don't believe I blathered. I've been so pleased with how all the disparate bits have knitted into a cohesive, interesting and rather compelling narrative. Sure I still have a few black holes to fill, but even if they are left as is, or built over with informed and feasible hypotheses (an acceptable technique I picked up last year at the BIO conference in DC), I don't think they detract over all. If anything, it keeps it interesting, as though it's good for me as a writer and also for potential readers to have a few issues or questions outstanding at the end. Some of these generated some great conversations over the rest of the afternoon.

I was stopped several times as I wandered through my fav galleries by folks who wanted to know more or explore a particular aspect of Claire's life and personality. This is so helpful to my thinking about these issues and also for how to address them. The main issue that came out was one I've even only just started to really grasp myself, and that is Claire's significance to women's causes such as birth control, physical abusive, identity and independence. All issues that are still relevant for women today. She was far from a blue stocking but the kind of feminist most of us are but are reluctant to identify as since it became such a problematical term: we are people who expect equal rights, equal pay and the right to decide our biological destiny. You don't have to be a woman to care about or believe in such basic precepts. It creates equality and respect between all people.

So it will be interesting to see what comes from yesterday and I hope more ideas and angles emerge over the course of my association with the Museum and the History community. It's sure making for a very interesting editing process!

And the Winner Is ...

... Silent film and heroic film making!

But first a shameless plug:

So pleased to see all my favourite films amongst this year's nominations for not one but several Academy Awards, particularly the films that confirmed for my lonely little biographer's heart the interest and value of stories from the silent era.

I quietly sobbed through or at the conclusion of three of them, not so much for the details of the denouement or the fate of the characters, but for the months I've questionably spent researching and piecing together a person's life during the times depicted. Validated by my choice of project? Certainly. Moved by the resurrection of the memory of pioneers like George Melies? Definitely. Assured that Claire Adams remains, as Roger Mayer, one of my sources confirmed, "a person of interest"? Abso-bloody-lutely!

People still ask me, seriously, if there is a film in it and objectively I believe there is. Claire's story forms a perfect narrative arc, one of struggling childhood, professional success, personal tragedy and hardship, disastrous marriage to an abusive tyrrant, triumph, rebirth, courage to love again, the handsome hero in whose burly Australian arms she lives happily ever after. A case study in personal evolution, set against exotic and glamorous backdrops.  Music Hall London, frontier Canada, New York during the Great War, Hollywood at the peak of the Silent Era, London during the Coronation and the lead up to WW2, Melbourne during the 1940s and '50s, when Georges was at its peak and the Paris End of Collins Street was the place to be seen.

Claire is obviously the star of her story, but what I've loved uncovering is her cast of supporting characters. Aside from her adventurous and heroic family members, I would love to see recreated on screen the production line movie making of Edison Co, where she first stepped before a motion picture camera one hundred years ago. Confronting the horrors of mechanised warfare during her nursing in Detroit and Winnipeg. The drama and idealism surrounding the making of her war time films The Spirit of the Red Cross and The End of the Road, reconciling the noble ideals with the censorial outrage that followed the release of the latter. And who amongst those besotted with the Silents, would not want to see Tom Mix in his heyday, "ruling like a rajah" over Mixville? In my wildest dreams (and somedays, that's all I have to cling to!) I see Tom Mix played by our Hugh Jackman. They bear an uncanny resemblance, as noted in an earlier post, and don't we just love to see Hugh on a horse? (I wonder if Joey, of War Horse fame, is looking for another gig?)

And then there are the others. My new favourite screen idol is Jean Dujardin from The Artist. He may have been channelling Douglas Fairbanks in The Artist, but I can see him as  Adolphe Menjou, one of Claire's costars and seven time best dressed man award winner in Hollywood. Then there is Lon Chaney, John Gilert, Clara Bow, and that's just those onscreen. The folks behind the scenes directing, producing and writing Claire's films are as if not more compelling - James Montgomery Flagg, William de Mille, Thalberg, Goldwyn ... and then of course Benjamin B Hampton, her producer, seducer and abuser... hello Stanley Tucci!

The hardest role to "cast", of course, is the leading lady herself. I'm too close by now to be able to be objective, like a possessive mother who doesn't think anyone is good enough for her only child. Realistically, I'm not mad and don't think this conundrum will ever materialise in the real world. Although it's hard not to think along these lines when the bloke on the table opposite me happens to have produced the "Rocky" films and the cafe manager goes all gushy at him rather than brings me my check. (The paralysing effects of a surprise Star-gasm). So close and yet ...

We may have missed the timing to get Claire's story onto the screen. By this time next year, which would be earliest a book could be produced if I got a call from my agent  today to say we've finally got a deal, the 1920's silent era fever will have most likely subsided. At least I now know who she was, really was, before she married an Australian wealthy bachelor and lived her life as his wife. She had a whole other life, one that has been lost and/or deliberately disguised, like the countless others who contributed to the birth of the film industry. As I've said before, we have so much more to learn about that time and one thing I've picked up along the way is that some of the best Hollywood stories happened behind the scenes, and Claire's is just one of them.

Want to know more and in the vicinity oft he LA Natural History Museum on Thursday? All welcome.

 

Picture Perfect Lives

Image: Publicity still of Claire Adams for The Brass Commandments, 1923, Fox Film Corp, Author's Private Collection

A funny thing happened at the manicurist. A heavily pregnant woman waddled in, phone clasped to her ear, heaved herself into the recliner and was swarmed by a small army of beauticians. As the beauty professionals are all Vietnamese, I had little way of understanding their chatter, other than the unmistakably excited tone that carried their whispers around the salon. Sure enough, photographers soon appeared outside. This happened behind my back - gosh, how could they tell it was me? ;-) Then Kathy, my partner in pedicures leant in and whispered "Dat Laddy, she is star in da mooffies!" Yes, I had seen her and for the record, she was very  sweet. (She'll remain anonymous out of respect her privacy because I'm really boring and wouldn't want some random blogger waffling about my beauty treatments - before passing comment, one should always walk a mile in their Opi 'Roadhouse Blues'.)

Yes, this is what we get in Santa Monica. Having Actor/Producer/singer and Olympic Athlete brothers taught me  long ago that famous folks are people too, and shouldn't be discriminated against. As was the case yesterday, I'd much rather give the girl some privacy (she's getting her nails done, for Chrissakes!) rather than collapse into a breathless quivering frenzy at her polished feet, which I believe is called having a "Star-gasm". One of the other women in the salon, this being this town, gamely pitched her a movie idea and got the name of her agent... oh, so that's how it works! (No wonder I'm unpublished! Note to self - Get Ruder!)

More than once over the last couple of years I've wondered about how far I should delve into the life of a Silent Hollywood Star, have felt a bit intrusive on her privacy and in some cases downright trangressive. Some of the nasty stuff to do with her first husband I would really rather not have found out, but now that I know it's impossible to ignore. Claire's experiences over the rocky course of her first marriage explain much about her life after his death and only an irresponsible biographer would ignore it. There will be those who would prefer I don't bring such things up, to mar her memory with the truth.

Nigel Hamilton, he of the Primer in a previous post, insists that we have to look at our subject's sex and private lives or else risk glossing over who they really were, deny them their imperfect humanity. What drew me to this project in the first place was how unrealistic the standard narrative we currently know of, or accept as the life of Claire Adams Mackinnon feels. She was human, a living breathing woman, and our lives are so much more chaotic and messy than many of us would like to admit, full of doubts and bad hair days, wrong turns and broken dreams. Buying into the fairy tale presentation of Claire's life is like judging a corporation by their media releases rather than by their annual report. One is crafted to make us believe something nice. The other is the real story of what actually happened. Warts and all, even though some would prefer to keep things private. Will jump off that critical bridge when I come to it.

I was feeling a bit huffy and morally high-horsey about the intrusion on Ms X's privacy yesterday at the salon, when I stopped myself and blushed  - had I not asked the former property manager at Mooramong where Claire would have got her hair done? At the time, I was trying to think of all the things I have found challenging about moving to LA and finding a new hairdresser was one of them. Unsurprisingly, LA is not short of fine salons, which I don't think was Claire's experience when she moved to Skipton. I was told there actually was no hairdresser in town and that Claire "would have had to make do like the rest of us and do it herself!"

Claire Adams was from the days when motion picture performers did their own hair and make up, carried their own cosmetics and learned the tricks of the trade from each other. When Claire moved to Mooramong, she brought her make up case with her, was always well "done-up" for her new role. She was known to give classes for some of the young women visiting in how to apply cosmetics, to always look their best. You don't have to be an anthropologist to realise that a girl's powder and paint is her shield and a mask to disguise her flaws, to offer just a little more confidence, whether we're facing a camera or our family and friends. We create an image of how we'd like to be seen. The actual process of creating that  front, like a mask we wear to hide our pain or sorrow, is private.

I've lost the urge to confirm where Claire got her hair done, and the next time I see a "Mooffie Star" at the manicurist I'll still ignore them like the strangers they are. Unless of course, they'd be PERFECT to play a silent movie star from the 1920s who met and married an Australian and lived happily ever after ... Look out Rose Byrne! Or Keira Knightley, perhaps? ....

 

Content is King.

Some time this year, it will be one hundred years since Claire Adams first stepped in front of a motion picture camera.

She was far from a new comer. Even at the ripe old age of 15, she was a veteran of the stage, having strut her stuff in both London and her native Canada since she was  a very small child. How small, is rather hard to judge. I found a business card sized "swap card" of the wee-mite, maybe four, maybe five, dressed up with a page boy fringe to match her little collar and breeches. The banner reads "Little Beryl Adams" (her real name) which echoes the description sent from her father to the Winnipeg daily news paper gushing over her beautiful recitation at an elegant function celebrating Canada's Natal Day. Very cute.

2012 also marks a Century of Cinema and it seems even more pertinent to look back and celebrate everyone who has contributed to the industry. The major studios - Universal, Paramount etc - seem to have launched or are planning some sort of commemorative edition of their classics, but from what I've seen, these only go back as far as the 1930s. Looking forward to be proven wrong on that. 

Maybe it was reading Kurt Andersen's article in January's Vanity Fair (You Say You Want a Devolution) or feeling  mildly nauseous at the movies when they showed a preview of, gag, Titanic In 3D, but I am just dying for something fresh and new from our collective cultural output. As Andersen describes, we're all sort of stuck in the early 1990s - the only thing that has changed about the way we communicate, entertain, dress and socialise is the technology we use. Little else has changed. Juxtapose that against the jarring differences between 1970 and 1990, before that 1940 and 1960 and it's clear that we're overdue a cultural shift.

Why is it so late? Have we all become too distracted by the pretty lights on the neat little machines? (says she, I know, on a bloody blog, but you know...). Has creative discourse been replaced by the proud thrill that comes when you become the first in the group to own and figure out the latest version of the new iDon't Know What.6? You want it, but why, to what end or purpose? We have a world of information at our finger tips and are still figuring out what to do with it. You can imagine - I need a new idea. Hang on, I'll just look one up, or I have an app for that - the iMuse! (patent pending...)

In Santa Barbara recently we saw a great exhibition on Picasso and Braque and their intensely creative relationship, locking themselves away for two years testing, trying and attempting to create something new. Rejecting everything they knew to explore, unfold and elaborate ideas that came from their discourse. You may have heard of what they came out of the lab with - Cubism. 

Technology today enables much to be located, mashed, mixed, shopped, rebooted and uploaded, which is brilliantly clever, but not always creative. How many of us, and our creative friends, use the technology to create something new that we haven't seen, heard or felt before. I'm not talking about a new take on something or someone - sorry Lady Gaga fans, to me she's just a new generation Madonna, rebooted - or artists looking for new material beyond our societies boundaries and comfort zones - that was what the Sixties were about. 

Studying art and film history, I had to go down many of those roads, and even as a fairly naive twenty something, I could smell something fishy. Artists sponsored by patrons who owned galleries who wrote the reviews who sold the works etc. Sensationalism, a cheap, short-cut shock that gets attention. Even a two year old can do that.

The bad feeling I'm grappling with, the nasty suspicion I can't escape is that the technology, and the commercial interests that have ensured our addiction to it, is (deep breath...) killing creativity. James Cameron, I'm looking at you!

Coming from a biographer, this might all seem a bit rich, however, I'm looking into a story that has never been told, in an era when technology changed everything. The market, not "marketing", made stars and blockbusters.  Big hits were nearly missed, were it not for a determined few who insisted on a new story, challengegd beliefs and took the audiences with them. Sure we have alternative cinema and independent film makers, but how can they compete for against the big buck business-modelled bullshit that fills most cinemas most weekends? (current and all-too-brief award season not included) The  films we've seen in the last few weeks have been wonderful but I couldn't help but notice on the credits for, say, A Dangerous Method, how many international government funding agencies contributed to ensure it got made. Like Freud himself, John and I couldn't shut up about it's brilliance, the ideas and astonishing characters that were surprisingly inspiring. When we saw The Artist, we had to travel as it was hard to find. Now, it's everywhere. Why - it's a good film so people talk about it. For free! Because they liked it! It gets shown more often and picked up by other cinemas. So their friends go and they like it ... ! Just as they did  one hundred years ago.

Ranting, but I do so like a dieting woman who has just had a whiff of freshly baked chocolate cake - I can't stop thinking about how good it would be if we had more beautifully made films with great characters exploring ideas and times in a way that we can use today to postulate about not only the past and the present but, shock, The Future. We used to dream about The Future, about how great our lives would be with all this great technology. As one wise comedian said recently, "Where's my space ship?" Or do we expect it to be more like The Terminator, full-frontal distopian nightmare. Doesn't this tell us that our future is still yet to be created, and, I'll give you the juice: it can be whatever we want it to be. Shocking thought, hey? A little bit sentimental, wistful and old-school perhaps? Guilty, and anyway isn't that what the reviews said about War Horse?

Getting back to Andersen (have I recommended you read it yet?) he blames our current cultural stagnation on a blissful infatuation with the past, looking back to a time when things were so much better/nicer/well designed/comfortable/reassuring, you know, like before equal rights, the emancipation of women and work place relations. But enough about the Republican Party. What worries me, and this could be the genius of Graydon Carter, are the articles that also fill the pages of VF January 2012. The one about the economy and the other about the US addiction to the military machinery that holds up so many millions of people in communities around the country. My nightmare - that if people have forgotten how to think creativly and come up with new ideas, they will look to google to find the answer to the last depression, and it was World War II. That really got things moving. People look to the past for certainty, comfort and familiarity, "models" whether you're a movie executive looking for the right formula, a funding agency looking for a safe bet with government money, or a clothing line wishing to guarantee a certain level of sales. Instead of risking everything, people are now averse to risking anything on the unknown? 

(Some would say publishers fall into the risk averse group too, but I think all publishers are fabulously brave and intelligent people who appreciate the value of an excellent new story with great characters, like a biography of a silent film actress forgotten by history, like Claire Adams!) 

One hundred years ago, a bunch of feverishly enterprising show people got hold of some new technology and went for it. They had very little to go on and actually flew in the face of traditional business practices (much to the chagrin of Claire Adams's first husband Ben Hampton). Instead they went forward on their rat-cunning, gut instincts and understanding of what people loved and would pay to see - a good story with great characters that made them laugh, cry, squeal and talk. They risked everything and fortune smiled upon them.

New technology does not equate to new ideas. They come from us - the human interface, the nut loose in front of the screen. The tech can inspire and explore new information and interpretations, but creativity and ideas are ours. (And I'm deliberately not touching on the book I'm reading about the history of copyright, an issue that filled my brain for two years before I left Australia and is intimately connected to the survival of a creative class. I'll save that juicy one for another day).

One hundred years from today, I wont be around to see if Titanic Un Cut in smell-o-vision with hologram out takes featuring Leo and Kathy Bates (she only ever went for boys who happened to be that size...!) with interactive icebergs in your old-fashioned and whatever will be filling the theatres. Or I should say, whatever media we engage with to ingest our cultural capital. But I know how it ends anyway. I'm hoping that whatever shape or form our entertainment in the future takes, I hope, like the Speilbergian sentimental traditionalist I am, that the artists will have equal say at the table and the decisions wont only be made by the money folks. That together they will be able to keep creating something new to take our thinking and our dreams towards a positive future.

That's a challenge Mr Cameron, and for all those who fund you.