Virginia Flugrath

These old photos fascinate us.  Like the first post on this blog, another flip though the older photos turned up yet another and older suprise. 

This is Virginia Flugrath - stage name Viola Dana - and some pumpkins in the silent movie era.  At about this time, Virginia was just about 19 and recently married. Girl from Brooklyn makes good in flicks should be the headline.  The movie in question and playing at the Metro Theater (of Metro Pictures), "The Flower of No Man's Land" was a steamy little drama about a woman eventually working, and after some trails and travails, in New York as a seamstress, and was released just before the 4th of July in 1916.  That's the movie listed on the billboard and Viola's picture adorns the signs on the sidewalk. Virginia/Viola went through 3 husbands and lived in Southern California for another 70 years before dying at age 90.

We like to look at pictures with a "before and after" though.  The picture to the left is the Metro in 1916 featuring the aforementioned Viola.  The picture to the right is the Metro a couple years later (1922 - November to be exact).

We liked the "bunting" on the theater in the picture on the left and the addition of the marquee (probably marquis at the time) in the later shot. There is an unidentified building to the left of the theater (in each shot) and that has caught our interest.  We are exploring.  It has to have a story worth finding. The lot in question has gone through a number of uses in the 30 years we remember so there are records and we will find them.

Just a few more years to the celebration of the 100th year of the Metro.  Can't wait.

Just a little village history - what's in a picture

We take lots of pictures now that we aren't developing film and, being a generation of instant gratification - well its snap it now and it is on Facebook in a minute or less. Old black and whites, the staple of the Brownie Camera from youth produce really magical "snaps" and these treasures are everywhere for the looking.

While rummaging around in the Stirling Historical Societies collection at the Floyd Memorial Library we found this photo of our local movie theater.  In an attempt to label it right, it needed a date or some way to place it in time.  Well the Metro was the Metro for decades so the name was of no help. However, on the far right of the picture there are three "billboard" panels and the one on the far right of the three announces the movie "The Forgotten Law". Aha. The picture dates from November or so of 1922. Bingo.

The Forgotten Law (plot unknown) starred a fellow name Milton Sills.  Sills was from Chicago and wealthy AND smart. Before he caught the limelight he taught at the University of Chicago but was lured away by a touring stage company and eventually Broadway and on to silent movies.  This 1922 production was one of his early movie appearances and in his brief but highly regarded career he was some pumpkins although how someone gets critical acclaim as an actor in a silent film melodrama - well its like watching the soap operas without the sound  - at least to me.

There was a era when lives like this could happen although so remote given the nature and demands of our times.  It seems we all had a college acquittance who literally packed up his bag and his Royal typewriter and moved to New York City to become a writer; silly because you could write from your basement for that matter and no sense living in a La Boehme melodrama if you didn't have to but he went and probably did ok.

So here is this Milton Sills who walks away from a wealthy "swells" life and the prestige of being a professor at what was then and is now a superb University to get in front of a crowd and then a camera and actually do it.

You can see his star on the Hollywood walk of fame and you might wonder who the heck he was. Now you know. He was the guy starring in the film playing at the Metro that had a printed billboard up in front of the theater in November, 1922 - 90 years ago give or take. Oh - the GPS for the Star is 34.101747, -118.326453. He's buried in Chicago.

He died playing tennis with his wife in Santa Barbara.