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.

THE STRANGE HISTORY OF 'FRANKENSTEIN'

Say what you will, but Boris Karloff is Frankenstein, whether he's called that, "the monster" or otherwise, it's Karloff's lab-created creature that we see in our mind's eye when the name is mentioned. The marvelously talented Jack Pierce is responsible for the iconic visage that will remain indelible in horror cinema imagery for all time.

By the time the 1930s rolled around, Karloff's private life was being more publicized as a result of his increasing popularity, and in some ways was just as interesting as the characters he played.

This article by veteran journalist Walter Ramsey was published in the February 1933 issue of the Hollywood movie fan magazine, MODERN SCREEN. The scan was furnished by "Our Man in the UK", journalist Steve Green, for which I was grateful to receive as my own scan is in a lower resolution and not as legible. Thank you, Mr. Green.

You will find that this is only the first part of the article which covers his early life and years in Canada before he moved to the United States and Hollywood. My low-quality scan and the fact that I only have the first part are the reasons why I never posted it in the first place. So far, the second part has proved to be elusive except for a copy currently for sale on eBay--but that takes a bit of cash. 

Walter Ramsey was a prolific writer and staffer for a number of Hollywood fan magazines in the 30s and 40s, including MOTION PICTURE, TALKING SCREEN and MOVIE MIRROR. He is notable for having interviewed and written articles on Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Jean Harlow, Lyle Talbot, Constance Bennett and many more.

He began a new series of articles for MOVIE MIRROR (May 1935) featuring interesting individuals living and working in Hollywood who weren't celebrities.

The topic of one article was a person who was an early--and maybe the first--to give guided tours of the stars homes.

After World War II, Ramsey was discharged from the Navy and went straight back to Hollywood to work as the managing editor of media for the heavily-promoted Ideal Movie Group, a division of the Ideal Women's Group that published a trio of film fan magazines.

THE AMAZING LIFE STORIES OF THE FREAKS!

Some of them are idiots, it is true --

but they are happy idiots."

Forget about DRACULA, FREAKS was Tod Browning's masterpiece. A simple tale of revenge, it was the setting that elevates this 1932 picture into one of the most terrifying films ever made during the classic era of horror films. Born and raised around a circus in real life, Browning always had a fetish for the odd and downtrodden with an underlying sympathy for the characters that existed on the margins of society. He used Chaney to great effect for that purpose, but FREAKS was his crowning achievement.

Here is told the fascinating personal stories of the "freaks", in MOTION PICTURE April 1932.

INGAGI: FROM GORILLA SUIT TO LAWSUIT

This is the crazy story of an early "man in a monkey suit" Hollywood film that was initially a box-office smash, but eventually ended up becoming embroiled in legal troubles because of its claim to be a true documentary. Released by Congo Films, Ltd. in 1930 as "The Wonder Film", INGAGI (an unsubstantiated African name for Gorilla), the film's plot revolves around a wild gorilla who abducts a native girl for the purpose of -- wait for it -- procreation! The idea was as nutty as a coconut, but theater-goers were intrigued and flocked to their local cinemas to see what all the monkey business was about.

The titular character was played by Charles "Charlie" Gemora, a stowaway from the Philippines, who landed in California with enough artistic talent that soon got him noticed by Hollywood studios. Universal hired him for assisting with sculpting the ornamentation on the Notre-Dame Cathedral for their Super Jewel, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1923), as well as work for THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925). Gemora gravitated towards his true calling as a makeup artist and his small size made him perfect to literally fill his gorilla costumes to appear in films such as a Laurel and Hardy short, THE CHIMP (1932), THE GORILLA (1930), and THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932). His hirsute hi-jinks eventually led to his moniker, "The King of the Gorilla Men".

Producers William Alexander and Nat H. Spitzer concocted the idea for INGAGI, which involves a pair of white adventurers who stumble upon a gorilla-worshiping tribe in the middle of a sacrifice. Ingagi hauls off the topless native girl and the explorers set off to both save her and capture the hairy beast. What got the film in hot water was using copyrighted jungle footage for some of the scenes as well as the obvious casting of Hollywood actors to play the parts of authentic natives. One trade journal cried foul when vaccination scars could be seen on the arms of some of them and at least one person was recognized as an actor. Congo Films was sued by the owner of the original footage and won a settlement of $150,000, which was little deterrent for the film's claimed gross of over $4,000,000!

The two fake explorers.

Ingagi (Charlie Gemora) abducts his bride.

Ingagi drags his sacrificial bride through the jungle.

Other goofs and blunders were noticed, included children who were made up as pygmies, the two so-called "British explorers",  Sir Hubert Winstead and Captain Daniel Swayne did not exist on any official records, suspected white women were made up in blackface, and some of the scenes were filmed at the Los Angeles Zoo!

Broadway and Hollywood "Movies" magazine, 1931.

The outrage continued and the Federal Trade Commission stepped in to stop the distribution of the film on the charge of fraud. It was Charlie Gemora himself that sounded the death knell when he admitted he was indeed the man in the gorilla suit. Ingagi was banned in 1933 and faded away into the jungle. The film languished and was thought lost until Kino Lorber released a DVD and Blu-ray of the entire film in 2021.

From Kino Lorber:

The exploitation cinema had its share of scandalous films, but none is so mired in controversy as the bizarre pseudo-documentary Ingagi. Purporting to be an ethnographic journey into the wilds of Africa, it combines authentic footage purloined from other films, with outrageous scenes staged for the camera in Los Angeles. Among the hoaxes perpetrated are the discovery of the “tortadillo,” a heretofore unknown species of animal, and the exposure of an indigenous cult that worships (and sacrifices its women to) gorillas—a particularly racist concept that would resurface in films for years, most notably as the dramatic springboard for King Kong. After spawning a whole sub-genre of exotic shockumentaries (e.g. Forbidden Adventure, Karamoja), the originator faded into obscurity, mired in lawsuits and cursed by the notoriety of its title (the Kinyarwanda word for “gorilla”). Ingagi has not been commercially distributed for at least 50 years, and this 4K restoration, from materials preserved by the Library of Congress, marks the film’s home video premiere.

This film contains racism and/or the mistreatment of people or cultures. Such depictions, in any era, are inexcusable. The film is being presented in its original form to bear witness to the history of racism in cinema, and to encourage a dialogue about how a future cinema can become more inclusive.

Exhibitor's Herald-World, June 28, 1930.

Hollywood Filmograph, June 28, 1930.

Motion Picture, October 30, 1930, detailing some of
the goofs in INGAGI.

The counter-suit by Congo Films, Ltd.

A letter by one of the producers defending the film.

Charlie Gemora blows the whistle in
Motion Picture, February, 1931.

Theater ballyhoo from Exhibitor's Herald-World, October, 1930.

A German program.

Promotional matchbooks.