THE RISE OF SALACIOUS CINEMA
By 1899 conservative-minded folk felt threatened by the popularity of penny arcade presentations, believing the new technology violated decorum. This moral majority exercised considerable force, pressuring elected officials to establish and enforce mechanisms of film regulation. But by the first decade of the twentieth century the film industry was already difficult to control. Besides fistic films, off-color comedies and risqué pictures continued to pack storefront nickelodeons despite content regulations. New York authorities led by antivice crusader Anthony Comstock raided picture parlors as early as 1900, but the situation had already progressed beyond their control.1 By 1904 it was common to see glimpses of ankles, prolonged embraces, kissing, and women disrobing on-screen. In Biograph’s A Busy Day for the Corset Models, Pathé’s Ladies of the Court Bathing, and Lubin’s Beauty Bathing, all from 1904, women were seen in their bloomers, undergarments, and less. Pressure was building for censors to assert a greater role, but it would take a triggering event to galvanize the regulators.
That triggering event was the first modern celebrity scandal: the Thaw-White affair. The event was a perfect storm: a sordid sex scandal involving a deranged socialite, a decadent and extravagantly wealthy two-timing letch, a beautiful underage victim, a cold-blooded murder, and a high-profile trial. With a single sensational event, Thaw-White set off a media frenzy that inaugurated the modern era of tabloid journalism.
Harry K. Thaw (1871–1947) was a fixture on New York’s high-society party scene. He lived off a trust fund left by his father, a captain of industry who had helped build the infrastructure of America in banking and railroads. In 1905 Harry married twenty-one-year-old Evelyn Nesbit (1884–1967). Nesbit had gained a measure of notoriety for her nude modeling before joining the chorus of the Florodora show on Broadway. On the evening of June 25, 1906, Harry took Evelyn to a show playing at Madison Square Garden’s rooftop restaurant. A few rows separated them from celebrity architect Stanford White. During the final musical number Thaw stood up, walked over to White, and shot him dead at point-blank range. Adding to the surreal moment, eyewitnesses reported that the stage manager leapt on a table, directing the show to continue and shouting, “Go on playing! Bring on that chorus.”2
White had designed such New York landmarks as Penn Station, the arch in Washington Square Park, and Madison Square Garden, which would be the scene of his murder. A married family man, White also kept a secret sex den. Six years prior to the fatal encounter, he had spent an illicit evening with Evelyn, then an unmarried sixteen-year-old showgirl. The details of their debauched night were outrageous. White had brought the girl to his playpen gilded with mirrored ceilings, upholstered walls, and a red velvet swing where the lovers frolicked. After a bottle of wine, White allegedly raped the teen.3 Years later, as Harry Thaw shot the lothario, he shouted, “He ruined my wife!”4
The press devoured the story and its most salacious elements. Broadway promoters the Mittenthal brothers staged A Millionaire’s Revenge with amazing speed. The show premiered in November 1906, just four months after the incident.5 Biograph capitalized on the motion picture market, releasing two dramas within months of the crime: The Thaw-White Tragedy (1906) and its sequel, In the Tombs (1906).
Thaw’s trial played out in the courtroom and in the press. Alienists debated the socialite’s sanity. The case reached a fevered pitch as defense attorney Delphin M. Delmas introduced a novel legal theory he called “dementia Americana.” “It is a species of insanity,” Delmas argued, “which makes every American believe that his home is sacred . . . that the honor of his wife is sacred.”6 Under this argument Thaw had acted within his rights because the God-given, unwritten law protected the purity of homes. Delmas urged for his client to be cleared of all charges. With the jury unable to reach a verdict, a mistrial was declared on April 13, 1907.7 Lubin anticipated the result, timing the release of The Unwritten Law: A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Case (1907) nearly simultaneously with the breaking story.8
Lubin’s Unwritten Law showed Evelyn visiting White’s lavish apartment, drinking wine, swooning, and disappearing behind a Chinese screen for the ultimate scene. The decadence, the perverse lifestyle of the rich and famous, and the suggestion of sex and violence fascinated audiences and scandalized authorities.
Despite the salacious material—or because of it—Lubin’s picture was a hit, selling over one thousand units at the premium price of $104 per reel.9 A police inspector stopped the show at a Minneapolis screening, calling the picture “mind poisoning.”10 In Houston an audience of several hundred spectators watched as authorities intervened; even after the theater offered to cut the mirrored bedroom scene, the film was not permitted.11 A Wisconsin theater was packed with an audience “two thirds women, and as the first pictures were thrown upon the screen depicting an artist’s studio the interest was intense. The exhibition got no further, however, for at this point the chief of police walked upon the stage and dramatically stopped the show.”12 In New York an exhibitor was charged with impairing the morals of children and fined one hundred dollars.13 Lubin’s film succeeded too well: The Unwritten Law became a lightning rod for developing regulatory concerns surrounding moving pictures.
A flashback sequence in Lubin’s The Unwritten Law: A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Tragedy (1907) in which the prisoner lying on his cot recalls the fatal shot.
Evelyn Nesbit (1884–1967). From the collections of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The Unwritten Law was singled out by censors and gave momentum to the growing campaign against the detrimental effects of nickelodeons. The Chicago Tribune was one of the strongest voices advocating that “the city has a right to exercise its police power in censoring immoral pictures.”14 Within months of The Unwritten Law’s Chicago premiere, Chicago’s aldermen passed a film censorship ordinance. On November 4, 1907, the Second City became the country’s first to systematically censor motion pictures.15
Like many celebrity scandals, Thaw-White remained in the news. In 1908 Thaw was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to an asylum. He made headlines again when he escaped in 1913.16 The tabloids screamed, “Thaw’s Escape Last of Series of Sensations” and “With the escape of Thaw the scandal is complete. The public needs no more proof that the murderer with money is safe.”17 The new incident became fodder for more films: IMP’s Escaped from the Asylum (1913) and Canadian-American Feature Film Company’s Harry K. Thaw’s Fight for Freedom (1913).
Evelyn Nesbit parlayed her own sudden celebrity into a fifteen-year film career prefiguring reality TV stardom by a century. Nesbit appeared in several pictures, often with her son, Russell, that capitalized on the family’s notoriety, including Threads of Destiny (1914) for Lubin and Thou Shalt Not (1919) for Fox. Her career ran its course. In 1918 the New York Times reviewed her film I Want to Forget, writing, “So do we.”18 From supermodel to star witness to movie starlet, Evelyn Nesbit had been a pop culture phenomenon. By the roaring twenties she was a footnote.
A celebrity scandal teeming with salacious details and a cold-blooded murder helped elevate the Thaw-White affair into a media firestorm. Frenzied coverage of the event, its aftermath, and the continuing popularity of its key figures played an important role that roused the machinery of censorship into action. In order to maintain the status quo anchored by Christian morality and Victorian values, civic activists recognized that popular culture’s fascination with crime and decadence had to be controlled.
