62. The Return of The Clansman

Copyright 2023 Peter Schmitz - All Rights Reserved

[AITH Opening THEME]

Peter: Welcome back to Adventures in Theater History!  Here on this show we bring you the best stories from the deep and fascinating history of theater in the city of Philadelphia. I’m your host, Peter Schmitz. Our original theme music is composed by Christopher Mark Colucci.

Let me say at the start that this is NOT the episode about Vaudeville in Philadelphia, which I promised you at the end of the last episode. Since that show came out, it’s been a rather busy time here at Adventures in Theater History World Headquarters. All sorts of unexpected but fantastic professional opportunities have been popping up, which I hope to be able to speak about soon. But these opportunities have been taking a lot of the time and attention of the writing, producing and research staff here in the AITH Executive Suite (by which I mean Just Me, of course). I still plan to have that episode ready to go by the end of November - look for it to drop on the Friday after Thanksgiving, 2023.

But to keep things rolling here at the podcast, I have gone back into the archives of the Bonus Episodes that I occasionally release only to our supporters on Patreon.I have taken up one of those episodes and re-mixed it, and added some new material and additional music. That’s what I’m sharing with you today.

By the way: You too, can become one of those supporters - let me thank Rob and Bob, who have just recently signed up there as Patreon Patrons. Rob and Bob are not related, I believe, and I thank them for shortening their names as I believe we already have another Robert on the list. But let me welcome them, and all the other lovely and variously named folks that have gone to Patreon.com/AITHpodcast and signed up to receive monthly bonus content about Philadelphia Theater History. Bless you and thank you all.

So, on to our show for today, This story follows up on our trilogy of episodes that we released in the Fall of 2022, entitled “The Fight Against The Clansman”. If you haven’t heard them, it’s not completely necessary that you go back and find them, but you can at least go to our website, www. Aithpodcast.com, and read the blog posts about these episodes. I will put all the links in the show notes, along with a link to a post about this episode as well. And, of course, we will once again use our Season Three: The Tryout Town theme music - because although our topic today is about a film, not a play, it does fall right into the time period we are preparing to discuss, as the Philadelphia theater world is transitioning from being controlled by the Theatrical Syndicate, and the world of vaudeville and legitimate theater is dealing with the prospect of the big new gorilla in American popular culture: the movies.

[The Tryout Town THEME MUSIC]

Back in the year 1906, the prominent minister, popular public speaker and best selling author Thomas Dixon had written a new play based on two of his historically revisionist and white supremacist novels about the Post Civil War Reconstruction Period, entitled The Clansman. Basically it was an origin story about the Ku Klux Klan, and believe me, Dixon was one hundred percent pro-Klan and deeply deeply alarmed about any prospect of Black political power or what he would have ominously called “race mixing.” As we learned in our episodes about this play, Dixon had staged and produced a traveling combination company of The Clansman - two companies, in fact - and these had produced considerable controversy and outrage all over the country from the African American community.  In quite a few cities, including Philadelphia, they had even succeeded in getting local authorities to ban productions of the play, on the grounds that it threatened public safety and advocated for violence against Black people. For a long time now, I’ve been intending to follow up on the promise I made to you all a while back, that is, to tell the story of what happened afterwards, when that infamous film Birth of a Nation (which was adapted from The Clansman) came to Philadelphia in 1915. And so now I’m finally making good on that promise! It took me a little while to study up on the early history of American film and censorship, I admit, but now I’m all ready . .

So what had Thomas Dixon Jr. been up to in the years since his play was banned in Philadelphia in the fall of 1906? Well, at first, as we detailed, all the publicity that occurred when Philadelphia and many other cities banned the play had actually only increased interest in it. So for a while he did quite well. But then as we also mentioned, Dixon rashly poured most of his profits into stock market and cotton futures investments, which he promptly lost in the great financial Panic of 1907, and then he lost control of production rights of the play, although of course he still owned rights to the script itself.

Over the next few years, interest in Dixon’s novels and his career as a public speaker was also fading. Having made his point about his hatred of miscegenation and growing black political power, his writings of this period largely railed against two other pet causes of his: the peril of Socialism and the dangers of letting American women have the right to vote. These were two widely popular causes during the Progressive Era. Though of course Socialism would never really gain wide acceptance in America, Dixon was certainly behind the curve of history on the question of women’s suffrage, which before the decade was out would result in the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution. In the public mind, he was becoming just another crank whom the times had passed by.

This was frustrating for the intensely ambitious and career driven Dixon. Having once been firmly at the center of public attention, he could barely stand to be out of it. But, he quickly saw a way back in: This was also exactly the period when films and movie making were beginning to take hold of the American entertainment industry, Nickelodeons were springing up all over the place, and many vaudeville theaters were already exhibiting more movies than they did live performances. Dixon was quick to see the possibilities of the new medium, as a vehicle for repackaging his old stories and even older political resentments. He was sure that The Clansman could easily be made into a moving picture.

But, like many new technologies, it wasn’t clear what KIND of movie-making he should get involved in. He did not team up with Philadelphia’s own Sidney Lubin film studio, which was making a reputation in black-and-white silent shorts and soon even longer prestige projects.. Thinking that the spectacle of the Civil War battle scenes should best be seen in both sound and color, Dixon instead attempted to get The Clansman on film using a new technology called “Kinemacolor.” He and his old theater producing partner George Brennan teamed up with a California director of short films named William Haddocks, who was a big advocate of Kinemacolor. They even filmed some scenes from the play on location at a plantation in Natchez Mississippi in 1911, using the special Kinemacolcor cameras. But they never got more than a reel and a half of the film completed, lacking further financing because they could not persuade any American theater owners and film exhibitors into committing to buy the special projection equipment it would take to actually show it. But the few scenes they had been able to film were eventually shown around to other people in the trade around Los Angeles. 

This is when an early film reviewer named Frank Woods saw the footage, and he introduced Dixon to the film producer Harry Aitken, and the director D.W. Griffith. In 1908, Griffith (just as Dixon had been) was a failed theater actor and playwright but just five years later had gone out to Los Angeles, and suddenly found success making films. Griffith and Aiken had just started working together on a film about Pancho Villa, and was already working with a stable of actors, including Lillian Gish. Griffith, like Dixon, was a Southerner who held deep resentments about the Reconstruction period. He promised Dixon ten thousand dollars if he could make a film out of the Clansman, though because Griffith was still struggling financially, Dixon had to agree just a quarter of that sum, plus any share of future profits. By 1914, Frank Woods had written the screenplay, and work on the filming was underway. Though originally using the working title of The Clansman, they settled on the more grandiose The Birth of a Nation - the nation being born, of course, was the revived Southern white nation, under the leadership of the Ku Klux Klan. 

Using the spacious fields of the California countryside, and the sound stages and back lots that were springing up all over Hollywood, the work on the film was completed after eight full months of filming - though its costs ballooned to one hundred thousand dollars - an astounding sum for the time. The battle scenes were done with great historical accuracy with advice from military historians, but the filmmakers also included some sequences which sprang directly from Thomas Dixon’s darkest fantasies - black Union soldiers accosting white women on the street, while abolitionists recoiling from the smell of black children, and even a scene showing the deportation of black people back to Africa, with subtitle “Lincoln’s Solution” - you will remember perhaps that Dixon revered Lincoln, because he thought (inaccurately) they shared the same ideological  “solution”  for “The Negro Problem”(ie. Kicking them out of the country entirely). 

There was a scene which showed President Lincoln’s assassination in Ford’s Theater. And the movie was quite clear that John Wilkes Booth was evil and Lincoln good. While the historical recreation of the Reconstruction period is horribly portrayed and is filled with all sorts of lies about the supposed tyranny uneducated Black politicians and venal northern abolitionists and carpetbaggers, the reconstruction of a mid-19th theater in the movie, at least, was quite astoundingly accurate, I have to admit as a theater historian.  I’ve even shown that footage to my own theater history classes. But there isn’t much else in the film I would show to students, except as a warning. But that one scene - well as I tell my classes before showing it: Gold Among the Dross.

Anyway, back to our story . . It was a silent film, there was no sound or title cards, but Dixon and Aitken and Griffith commissioned a score to accompany the film, to be performed by live musicians.  In fact that’s the music that I’m using to accompany this podcast episode, we’re listening to it right now [MUSIC UP, and then DOWN - and here’s an interesting point - both Griffith and Dixon were determined that this film was to be treated as much like a play as possible in its exhibition. Part of this was the running time of the film - since it was a mammoth 12 reels long, it would take about two hours to watch it. Most people at the time thought that watching flickering screens for that long would hurt their eyes! But if it was a play, well okay, a two hour long play was understandable.

The other part was about censorship.

By 1915, film censorship was widespread in America. Moral panic about what was being shown on movie screens was everywhere. First there was nudity - not just female nudity, but male nudity. Boxing films - documentaries of actual bouts, in particular, were suspect, showing men striving with each other on screen stripped to the waist. When Black boxer Jack Johnson was shown in all his physical glory on the screen, a lot of people just flipped out. Implications of interracial sex, in such films as The Cheat - in which a lascivious Japanese gangster attempts to rape a white woman, had whole churches up in outrage. There was also great worry about religious and political content of films, as well as the supposed glorification of crime in many early films. And the supposed loose morals of both filmmakers and the exhibitors - many of whom were immigrants, and worse, to many people’s minds, Jews. Chicago had set up a censorship law as early as 1907, and Pennsylvania was to follow in 1912 - every film reel shown  had to have “approved by the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors”. Looking at its list of published do’s and don’t it seems that PA was really not ok with images of women drinking and smoking. Some smaller states just went along with whatever the big states did, but some municipalities and counties wrote their own rules. There were many overlapping censorship authorities; in fact, that one early filmmaker complained that it was like appeasing dozens of different Sunday schools, all at once. And despite industry efforts to police itself, it was rumored that federal censorship was coming.

And here’s the thing - in February 1915, as The Birth of Nation was about to be released, a landmark Supreme Court decision came down, known as Mutual vs. Ohio. According to the court, film making - unlike theater - was a business, not an art form. So protections of Free Speech did not apply to it. If you were a theater producer, you could appeal to the courts about the unconstitutionality of local laws trying to shut you down. But films were fair game. This decision was to stand until the 1960s, in fact.

So when The Birth of a Nation first opened - in Boston, of all places - it undertook a careful marketing campaign. It was a film about history, it carried a valuable moral and political lesson, and most of all, it was a play.

On April 9, 1915, the fiftieth anniversary of Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House, The Birth of a Nation opened at the Tremont Theatre. Now the Tremount was a ‘legit’ house which had been fitted up with a movie screen for the occasion. Ushers were dressed in mid-19th century costumes to show people to their numbered seats, and others stood in Civil War uniforms flanking the auditorium. There was a live orchestra in the pit, ready to play a special score that Dixon and Griffith had commissioned to accompany the action.

But the first thing the audience saw on the screen was a title card, placed there by a film industry group called NBC -the national board of censors, which stated that this was “A historical presentation” not meant to reflect upon any “race or people of today.” But these cards were meant to placate white audiences, and just as has been the case at the Walnut Street Theatre in 1906, a lot of Black people sure weren’t buying that line.  Once again there were angry demonstrations outside the theater, sponsored by the newly formed NAACP, and once again eggs and angry words were being tossed inside the house. Boston Mayor James Curley, wanting to placate his African American constituents, had demanded that cuts be made of some of the most offensive title cards and scenes, but despite promises, apparently this was not done.

Nonetheless, despite these protests continuing, the film received rave reviews in the white papers of the day. The country was mad for Civil War history in those days, and the depictions of battle scenes in the movie just blew people away. The exhibitors slowly moved on from one large Northeastern city to the next - this was the same strategy Dixon had employed with The Clansman, remember. The movie was shown in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - always in high-class houses, always with reserved seats, and a souvenir program, just  like a play. The film kept on its triumphal progress. President Woodrow Wilson famously had it shown at the White House - doing a favor for his old college buddy. Just as alarmingly, at a special showing in Raleigh North Carolina, the entire US Supreme Court were in the audience were "many members of Congress and members of the diplomatic corps", the Secretary of the Navy, 38 members of the Senate, and about 50 members of the House of Representatives. The audience of 600 "cheered and applauded throughout.”

It ran in Atlantic City, New Jersey during August, so it’s likely that many Philadlphians first saw The Birth of Nation there while on summer vacation.

In September of 1915, it was finally booked for Philadelphia. It had received the necessary approval from the Pennsylvania Board of Censors - no women were shown smoking or drinking in it, after all. Still, the film studio was careful with Philly, because they knew that the source material had been banned there in 1906 - there wasn’t a great distinction between plays and movies in those days - and it was still an open legal question whether that ban stood. But even if the mayor Blankenburg and his director of public safety George D. Porter forbade its public exhibition, would the courts uphold that ban? In Pittsburgh PA, on the other side of the state, the mayor, after receiving a delegation of Black citizens outraged by it, had banned the movie, but then a Pittsburgh judge, pointing out that the state board had passed it, declared that authority trumped any local jurisdiction, and unless there were real riots being caused by it. Would that happen in Philadelphia?

There was certainly a great deal of outrage - again it was mostly the Black community that spoke out against it, there isn’t a great deal of evidence about what is sometimes called “allies” in the white majority. Jane Addams, of Hull House in Chicago, wrote a letter of protest, as did Rabbi Samuel Wise of New York. But I can’t find many similar voices in Philly. One supposed white progressive voice, Dr. Charlotte Abbey, who for years had worked in medical clinics alongside black medical professionals actually praised the film. Nobody seemed to stand up for the memory of former Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stepehens, who was viciously parodied in the play and the film. Nobody, that is, except for Black professional men and women.

“Possibly the most enthusiastic meeting held this summer to arouse interest in the effort to suppress the production of the disgraceful photoplay “The Birth of a Nation” was that held Tuesday, August 31st at Allen Chapel,” reported the Philadelphia Tribune, the leading black paper in the city. These were all substantial citizens, many of them the same one who had organized against the original play nine years earlier. The NAACP, the Professional Men’s Club, the Baptist MInisters Conference, AME Preachers Conference and so forth.

The Forrest Theatre - the first on, on Broad St. had been booked for showing of the movie - again this was a large legitimate theater. It must have felt like they were protesting a play - and again at the time, overall the difference between a movie and a play was not that clear yet. Ads were printed in all the Philly papers - in the “Amusements” sections right amongst those for live shows.

On the day of the first showing at the Forrest, September 4th, the city authorities finally made a decision. Director Of Public Safety Porer informed the manager of the Forrest that t1he photoplay could not be shown in Philadelphia, to protect public order. But I’m wondering if he really expected that order to stick - after all he knew that the Pittsburgh ban had already been overturned. Maybe he was just putting on a show, as it were, for black Republican voters, and just wanted to show them that he had at least tried.

Tellingly, Porter was quoted in the newspaper as actually saying that he personally liked the movie. “It is the best and most stupendous I have yet seen and as an educational film I think it is marvelous.” But still he didn’t think it should be shown in Philadelphia. However, the local board of censors passed the film, and a judge overturned the ban. The show, as they say, went on. Over a thousand people attended the first night, and got their commemorative programs.

The events surrounding The Clansmen were not destined to be repeated. On this opening night there were not thousands of African American protestors blocking Broad Street, however. Three people inside the theater were arrested and removed for disorderly conduct, including Lazarus Lewis, Richard Williams and Hubert Hocurt, for shouting and protesting during the movie.

When he was arraigned in court, their attorney G. Edward Dickerson certainly had a lot to say. “This play is nothing more than an infamous, villainous and diabolical attempt to depict the negro as a brute,” he declared. “Men who say it is history know nothing of the period of reconstruction. This play is designed only to deprive the negro of a good name and to reduce him to the condition in which he was before the immortal Lincoln loosened the shackles that held him fast.” 

Joseph McCullers, the attorney for the Forrest Theatre, announced that he was not pressing charges on the men, and asked that they be let go because they were “Just dupes of people who had not grasped the proper meaning of the play.” The film showed how the Negro had developed, he said, referring to the final scenes which show Negro college men training to leave for Africa.

‘It Does NOT!” thundered Dickinson in reply, “It shows a pernicious effort to keep the negro in a continual state of degradation.” But as admirable as these protests were, they did not in the end have any effect. In the end, these protests were regarded by the court as ethnic special pleading, much like the Irishmen who had vigorously protested against Playboy of the Western World in 1909.

“The authorities who control such matters, whose business to forbid exhibition that are false, immoral and calculated to stir up strife among the people of the city have deemed it safe, expedient and good to permit The Birth of a Nation,” mourned the editors of the Tribune, but Might does not make Right.”

Four weeks later the movie was still running, the Tribune noted ruefully in another article from October the 2nd. It once again noted that the violence that the film would inspire might not be immediate, but it would be widespread and systemic. It once again carped about Dixon’s bad interpretation of history in it: “If the South hailed Abe Lincoln as its best friend, why did the Southerners rebel? Tom Dixon is a liar.”

In the end, The Birth of a Nation ended up playing three solid months at the Forrest Theatre - and then it moved over to the Garrick Theatre, where it ran through December. It was reported that two “Near riots” - so likely just peaceful demonstrations on the streets outside the theater by black people were “checked by police.” When the run finally ended, the Philadelphia Inquirer declared: “The Immensity of Birth of a Nation is one of the most widely discussed points of interest. As a production it is tremendous in scope and prodigal in detail.” The decision to market the film, in essence, as a historical play that just happened to be on film had been a great success.

After receiving wide nationwide distribution, the film ended up making a bundle for its creators. They could barely keep track of all the money from ticket sales -  they were charging two bucks at some theaters, an unheard of amount for a movie. It is still today cited as being the first real blockbuster film, and its receipts, tellingly, were only eventually eclipsed by the next big Southern Civil War movie, Gone With The Wind. Some of this money inevitably made its way back to Dixon, but in the ways of Hollywood, the studio managed to keep most for itself. D.W. Griffith went on to make many many other films, of course, But fortunately Tom Dixon again invested his money foolishly, and lost it all in the next stock market crash, in 1929. He died in considerably straitened circumstances in 1937.

But what can we make of the effort to stop the movie in Philadelphia? Well, as we’ve seen paradoxically the fact that there was not official censorship boards for movies actually ended up protecting it - but more importantly the fact that almost the entire white political class of the day approved of the movie, even enthusiastically supported its message, meant that there was never a real chance that it would be controlled or censured, even in the court of public opinion. Meanwhile, the influence of the movie, glamorizing the Ku Klux Klan, certainly had a great deal to do with the subsequent rise of the modern Klan in the 1920s, which now spread far outside the south, especially in the American midwest. It wasn’t until the 1960s that black Phialdlephians would finally gain enough political power to begin to have an effect on popular culture of the city - in 1964 they would finally get blackface portrayal banned from the Mummers Parade, for example.

But in the first half of the 20th Century, as we have seen in our subsequent episodes about censorship and public debates about the propriety and decency of plays of that era - it was almost never going to be racism and pernicious historical myths that were going to be matters of dispute. After all, we had to protect the children from ladies wearing too little clothing, and smoking, and important stuff like that.

Anyway, that’s our episode for today. It’s actually turned out to be an important refresher on a lot of topics we covered in Season Two, and sets us up to continue the stories we’ll be covering in Season Three. If you haven’t already done so, subscribe and like our podcast feed on whatever app you’re using. Please consider taking a few minutes to leave a review about the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, that helps us out so much. We’ll be back soon with our episode about Vaudeville in Philadelphia. 

Thank you for listening, and for coming along on another adventure in Theatre history, Philadelphia.