“There was a magic in those early days that made it easy for us to believe that stardust fell only on the paradise we knew as Hollywood. We worked hard all day, and played harder at night. The world was ours for the taking. We thought it would never end …but it did!”
(Mack Sennett, 1958)
It was the summer of 1943 when I first became aware of the important role Canadians had played in the early days of the motion picture industry. As a member of the Royal Air Force, spending nineteen days leave in Hollywood, I was directed to the home of Sidney Olcott on Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills. Olcott had advised all the area’s service clubs that visitors from Canada would be welcome in his home.
There were few Canadian servicemen or women in Hollywood at the time, and Olcott’s invitation to dinner was extended to an eighteen-day stay. For the first few hours of my visit I was unaware that Olcott and his wife, the former Valentine Grant, were in any way connected to the film industry. But on the first evening, when I spoke of my hope to see inside one of the major studios, I discovered the amazing range of their influence.
Next morning the Olcotts drove me over to Canadian-born Mary Pickford’s mansion, Pickfair, at 1143 Summit Drive in Beverly Hills. Mary greeted me with open arms and a great big hug and asked if I had any preference for my studio visit. “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, please,” I said hopefully. A two-minute conversation on the phone between Mary and MGM chief Louis B. Mayer and everything was arranged. “My chauffeur will take you to Metro right away,” she said. “You’ll like Louis (everyone pronounced it Louie) Mayer. He is from Canada, too.”
Mayer proved to be an incredible host. He insisted on escorting me personally into every nook and cranny of his immense studio.
“You are fortunate to be the guest of Sid Olcott,” he said. “A genius. A great director. But he won’t make any more films, did he tell you that?” I didn’t want to tell him that this was the first I knew that Olcott was, or had been, a director. He continued, “We’ve all tried to bring him back but he is as stubborn as a mule.” Others, when told where I was staying, intrigued me with more stories of Olcott’s exploits in the film industry.
Mayer introduced me to so many of his stars that I lost count. But it was the Canadians he sought out who stayed in my memory. They were all so proud to talk about their former homes in Canada.
Allan Dwan, the veteran director from Toronto, Ontario, stopped shooting and introduced me to everyone on the set when we visited. We found Sam De Grasse, from Bathurst, New Brunswick, eating in the studio restaurant. How Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., could ever call this genial man “the slimiest and most evil villain on the screen” I found it hard to believe — until I saw one of his films.
Norma Shearer, from Montreal, Quebec, had been retired for several years but still used the cottage Mayer had built for her on the MGM lot. There she served tea for me and called her brother, Douglas, chief of MGM’s sound department, over to join us. It was a day I will never forget. Mayer had his driver take me home at five. Later that evening he called and invited me back to MGM the following day. “I have a little surprise for you,” he said.
The surprise was a luncheon party in my honor. All the guests were Canadian. Imagine sitting down to dine with Fay Wray from Cardston, Alberta; Walter Pidgeon from Saint John, New Brunswick; Jack Carson from Carmen, Manitoba; Rod Cameron from Calgary, Alberta; Fifi D’Orsay from Montreal, Quebec; Deanna Durbin from Winnipeg, Manitoba; Walter Huston from Toronto, Ontario; Ann Rutherford from Toronto, Ontario; Cecilia Parker from Fort William (now Thunder Bay), Ontario; and Mayer’s biggest rival, Jack Warner, from London, Ontario. Mayer told me later that it was the first time in ten years he had sat down with Warner without arguing.
Jack Warner insisted on my visiting his studio next day. The following Monday I was Deanna Durbin’s guest at Universal Studios. She called for me at 7:30 in the morning at Sid and Valentine Olcott’s home and drove me to the studio where she spent the whole day showing me the Universal lot before driving me to her home for supper.
Richard Day, the brilliant set designer from Victoria, British Columbia, had called while I was at Universal to invite me to spend the next day at the 20th-Century-Fox studio. Day introduced me to George Cleveland (later to become famous as Grandpa on the “Lassie” TV series) from Sydney, Nova Scotia. Cleveland invited me to dinner and added another guest, Montreal-born Mack Sennett, founder of the Keystone Kops.
Sennett suggested we visit the Columbia studio next day to meet Del Lord, from Grimsby, Ontario. “He was my greatest custard pie thrower,” said Sennett. “Now he’s directing many of Columbia’s comedies. He is working on a Three Stooges film right now.” I found out that Sennett was right about the custard pies when one thrown by Lord from ten feet away hit me right in the face. Sennett set me up for that “moment to remember.”
It was a fun time. For a while the war was forgotten as these wonderful people, so proud to be Canadians, gave me the vacation of my life. There was magic — then — in Hollywood.
Throughout the war I kept in touch by letter with many of my new found friends. When the fighting ended I visited Hollywood again, living and working there for a while. Now and then I was able to repay, in a small way, their generosity and kindness to me back in 1943.
Over the years I made notes of the startling, sometimes incredible, things they told me. As, sadly, each of my friends died, I was left with many wonderful memories that I could read over and over again.
I opened files on other Canadians I was not able to meet, but whose memories lived on in the stories I listened to with ever-growing fascination.
Joseph De Grasse, Sam’s brother, a fine director and writer, had been dead for three years when I first arrived in Hollywood in 1943, but he was not forgotten. Florence La Badie, an early star who died tragically in her twenties, was mentioned many times by her friend, Valentine Olcott. Was there something about her mysterious death that she was reluctant to put into words? It took me many years to discover the secret.
Mary Pickford, who became a good friend, confided in me with many stories of her early days in silent films and constantly talked about her younger brother, Jack, then dead for several years. Was her belief in his talents justified? His story is perhaps even more remarkable than hers.
Marie Dressler, from Cobourg, Ontario, dead for a number of years when I first saw Hollywood, was often spoken about by Louis B. Mayer, who had adored her and was proud to discuss her life. Her name even got me an interview, in 1980, with Greta Garbo, who told me a secret about Dressler she had guarded for almost sixty years.
Mayer’s friends told me how he had put a lot of former silent stars, down on their luck, under lifetime contracts with MGM so they would never go hungry. One was Florence Lawrence, the movies’ first real star, the “Biograph Girl” from Hamilton, Ontario.
I had little time in the 1950s through 1980s to do much more than put my notes in some semblance of order. My library of show-business books, from which I gleaned every word I could find about Canadians in Hollywood, had grown, by the 1980s, to more than 500 volumes. But when January 1, 1990, came around I made a firm resolution that it was time to start telling the world how much the early film industry in New York, and later in Hollywood, owed to Canadians.
Over the past fifty years I have sought out and talked to more than 500 veterans of the early days of motion pictures. Many were in their late eighties. One, with an incredible memory, was ninety-eight.
I have travelled to many cities in every corner of Canada and the United States looking for people with memories they were willing to share. I studied thousands of files in libraries, newspapers, and private collections, making photocopies of aging and flimsy clippings where I was permitted.
The result is this tribute to eighteen talented Canadians. It will, I hope, make a lot of people wonder whatever would show business have done without them.