HOLLYWOOD IS A WOMAN'S TOWN

Yesterday we saw journalist Helen Louise Walker's informative article on Boris Karloff from 1932. We also saw an article from a film fan magazine later that year in which Miss Walker declares "Hollywood is a Woman's Town" and gives her reasons why.

She returned to the subject at least twice more; Her comments on the topic were discussed in Stephen Sharot's February 15, 2022 essay "Hollywood is a Woman's Town’: Masculinity and the Leading Man in American Fan Magazines of the 1930s", published at the Wiley Online Library:

Helen Louise Walker provided evidence that Hollywood was a woman's town from interviews with male stars. Gable is quoted as saying that the differences in salaries say it all: ‘feminine glamor, appeal, whatever you choose to call it, is worth more at the box office than anything a man can offer. Nearly all of the well-known women in Hollywood earn more money, per week, than men do’, and in a town where women earn more money than men ‘things get all topsy-turvy’. An unnamed ‘leading man’ under contract to MGM complained that a man's reward for achieving a big following at the box office was that he was ‘allowed to support one of the important women stars!’ Somewhat circumscribed statements of the female influence were provided by Errol Flynn who stated that, ‘there is probably no other place where men discuss their business and professional affairs with women as freely and as fully as they do here’, and by Humphrey Bogart who mumbled that the men let the women think that they control them. Walker's conclusion was that ‘women rule Hollywood pretty conclusively—and that men like it’.

The following images were taken by Ray Jones, probably in the early 1930s, and show Walker with actor John Boles. The snipe on the back of each photo reads: "Miss Helen Louise Walker, on the staff of Motion Pictures Publications, interviews John Boles, Universal's singing star" [Source: eBay]. Mainly a portrait photographer, Jones was the head of Universal's stills department in the 1920s into the early 1930s (he later worked for Paramount) and was the uncredited stills photographer for THE MUMMY.

MODERN SCREEN February 1937 "Is Hollywood a Woman's Town?" by Helen Louise Walker:

SILVER SCREEN October 1939 "How Women Rule the Men in Hollywood" by Helen Louise Walker:

YOUR SCREAMS WILL MAKE HIM A STAR

There were many women journalists who had their finger on the pulse of Golden Age Hollywood. One of them was the famous and powerful gossip columnist Louella Parsons. Another force to be reckoned with was Hedda Hopper. Still another was Helen Louise Walker, who may not have been as famous as Parsons or Hopper, but she more than made up for it with her prolific presence in the Hollywood entertainment publications of the day.

As far as I have ascertained, there is scant biographical information available about Walker's life other than her work as a reporter from the 1920s into the late 1950s, when she wrote for numerous movie fan magazines such as MOTION PICTURE CLASSIC, PICTURE PLAY, MOVIELAND, MOVIE MIRROR, PHOTOPLAY, SILVER SCREEN and MOTION PICTURE.

Painting of Helen Louise Walker by Charles Gatchell, 1920s.

Charles Gatchell obit, The Herald-Palladium, Benton Harbor, Michigan,
April 5, 1933 (coincidentally, the birthplace of my late father).

During her career, she wrote countless features and profiles, interviewing stars such as Claudette Colbert, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Bing Crosby and Rudolph Valentino just ten days before his death at the age of 31. Her access to so many actors and actresses made her very influential to those looking for publicity in Hollywood celebrity circles.

Walker wrote this article on Boris Karloff for the April 1932 issue of MOTION PICTURE. In the story, she states: "I've known him myself, for five or six [years]. I'm pretty proud of it, too, because he is the first actor that I "knew when." There is no mention of his being cast for THE MUMMY, which would be released at the end of the year, but she does mention that he is up for a role in a remake of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (it was never filmed), as well as appearing in the upcoming THE INVISIBLE MAN (he didn't).

Helen Louise Walker also had a perception about the power of women in Hollywood, and she wrote about it several times in the 1930s. In his February 15, 2022 essay "Hollywood is a Woman's Town’: Masculinity and the Leading Man in American Fan Magazines of the 1930s" (Source: Wiley Online Library, author Stephen Sharot begins by writing:

In their address to a predominantly female readership, fan magazines of the 1930s asserted that Hollywood was one place in which women were not subordinated to men as female stardom was superior to that of male stardom. The magazines’ representations of male actors were both compliant with, and resistant to, the tough-guy image of hegemonic masculinity. The personas of most ‘leading men’ who led the supporting casts of female stars were represented as softer forms of masculinity than that of the majority of male stars. The on-screen hard forms of masculinity of male stars were softened by the magazines’ reports of their off-screen personas, and the personas of some actors were presented as a bipolar masculinity that combined soft and hard forms.

I believe the first time she wrote about the topic was in this article from the September 1932 issue of PHOTOPLAY.

Continued tomorrow.

BAD GIRLS AND LETHAL LOLITAS

Described by the editor as "the magazine of femme fatale cinema and culture", Draculina Publishing's SHE looks to be the newsprint version of the slick FEMME FATALES published by Frederick S. Clarke. Both are enthusiastic chroniclers of women in genre cinema.

This issue of SHE includes a long feature on Hong Kong actress Carrie Ng, the second half of the two bombshells (the other is Chingmy Yau) in the 1992 Category III erotic thriller, THE NAKED KILLER. According to the Hong Kong motion picture rating system introduced in 1988, the restriction applicable to Category III films is defined as: "No persons younger than 18 years of age are permitted to rent, purchase, or watch this film in the cinema."

Also included is "The Ten Toughest Babes in TV Land!", an article on "cat-fight" cinema and the usual news and reviews.