Silent Hollywood goes to war by standing still!

106 YEARS AGO TODAY:
This patriotic but bizarre photo has never before been identified. It features a nearly-vanished theatrical mainstay, the tableau. And not just one tableau but seven, filled with the cream of Hollywood! Each arch frames a World War I allied nation. In the breakout photos below, left to right, we have the foreground figures of D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin (no doubt paired because they’re both wearing spats), and Charles Murray and Mack Sennett. The troops are not actual soldiers but a volunteer militia gathered from studios.

The panoramic photo was taken at Clune’s Auditorum in Los Angeles, Sunday, May 26, 1918, during the launch of the Motion Picture War Relief Association. Thoroughly forgotten, in a way it survives today, doing important work you’ve likely heard of.

Tableaux were an intermediate stage between the static images of magic lanterns and the dynamism of motion pictures. Satisfying in their own right — at least to audiences at the time — they were still life scenes featuring real people, often with costuming and lighting effects. Sometimes they recreated famous works of art. Other times, presented in vaudeville as (supposedly) tasteful “living statues,” they allowed nude performers to skirt obscenity laws. Like all art, they were intended to elicit an emotional response, whether erotic or patriotic. The tableaux here, left to right, included the top stars of the time, posed as national symbols:

Japan: wife and husband Tsuru Aoki and Sessue Hayakawa, best known today for playing the camp commandant in Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Italy: J. Warren Kerrigan “and group”

England: husband and wife Bob Leonard and Mae Murray

America: Wallace Reid and Clara Kimball Young, who in a few years would lodge her own production company at the Edendale studio built by Selig Polyscope

Belgium: Francis McDonald (married at the time to Mae Busch, whose alleged affair with Sennett broke up his engagement to Mabel Normand) and Mildred Harris, who five months later would become Chaplin’s first wife

France: Bobbie Harron and Constance Talmadge

Those last two countries may be in opposite order. The final country is – China? So far I can find no record but, if so, it may be Anna May Wong who is pictured. China was not officially an ally, but it did take action against German colonies in the Pacific as an “associated power.” Tableau costuming and props were provided by the Universal Film Co.

More than 2,000 industry professionals attended. The goal of the Motion Picture War Relief Association was to raise $185,000 ($4.1 million in today’s money) to create and maintain a 1,000-bed Los Angeles hospital for casualties of the ongoing conflict. After the war, ownership of the hospital was to revert to the Association. However, the federal government was hesitant to receive such a gift, even temporarily, far from the eastern ports where service members would return. In any case, the Armistice was signed Nov. 11, and a site was never selected.

The Motion Picture War Relief Association had existed for only seven months when it officially dissolved Dec. 11. During that time, members provided entertainment to troops on 14 consecutive nights at the newly-formed Camp Kearny, near San Diego. The Association’s incomplete funds were tapped for transportation and lodging, but the rest was returned to donor-members by treasurer Mack Sennett.

The Association was chaired by Griffith. Earlier, on May 11, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, Mary Pickford, Lois Weber, Chaplin and DeMille had been named Association vice presidents. DeMille and Weber are in the foreground here, along with Weber’s husband, Phillips Smalley. DeMille, shown in uniform, was nominal commander of the pictured “Lasky Guard,” an earnest effort to raise a uniformed back-up to the California National Guard. Many studios formed their own militias, but all were quickly combined with the largest, created by Famous Players-Lasky, precursor to Paramount Pictures.

TO AMELIORATE SUFFERING AND STAVE OFF DEATH — these were the worthy goals of the Motion Picture War Relief Association. And though it failed, it also succeeded. I’ll explain in a moment, but this comes to mind when considering the lifespans of its leaders in the breakout images. All but Chaplin had started at Biograph in New York (as did Talmadge, Harron and Pickford), though Sennett was already founding Keystone when Murray came on board. Shown here, Murray was one month shy of his 46^th birthday, Griffith was 43, Sennett was 38 and Chaplin was 29. Their deaths were spread much more widely than their ages: In order, they passed in 1948, 1941, 1960, and 1977 – just 47 years ago. (The setting for this photo, Clune’s Auditorium, 427 W. 5^th St., died even more recently, in 1985, 39 years ago. In classic L.A. fashion, it was demolished for a parking lot.)

Camp Kearny today is Marine Air Corps Station Miramar. The Motion Picture War Relief Association was almost instantly reborn with the same organizers, this time with Pickford as its driving force, as antecedent to today’s Motion Picture and Television Fund, which operates a hospital and retirement community in Los Angeles’ Woodland Hills district. Popularly known as the Motion Picture Home, the War Relief Association appears to have had such an end-use in mind all along.

Both Sennett and Clara Kimball Young spent their final days there — as did peers including: G.M. “Broncho Billie” Anderson, early cowboy star and co-founder of Essanay; legendary Griffith cameraman Billy Bitzer; Sennett animator, Disney writer and voice talent Pinto Colvig (Goofy); Sennett star Chester Conklin; Chaplin’s second wife, Lita Grey; Biograph, Keystone and Sennett director Dell Henderson; Sennett and Hal Roach star (and Edendale native) Edgar Kennedy; Chaplin leading lady Edna Purviance; Harold Lloyd leading lady Jobyna Ralson — and many, many more, from both sides of the camera in all eras of film and television. Its long-term care unit was named in Pickford in 2019. The Los Angeles Daily News headline: “It was about time.”

This article combines information from sources including contemporary periodicals, especially Camera!, Motion Picture News, and Motion Picture Magazine, where this photo appeared across two pages in January, 1919. Edendale Cyclorama applies its logo only to those photos it has restored or otherwise manipulated.