#26 Part 3-- AN EARLY MATINEE IDOL--ONCE FAMOUS, NOW MOSTLY FORGOTTEN

                                                                 DUSTIN FARNUM

Dustin, the oldest of the three Farnum brothers was born on May 27, 1874 in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. At age seven he and his brothers went to live with their maternal grandparents in Bucksport, Maine. Here Dustin attended the East Maine Conference Seminary, a co-ed school; it advertised as Christian, but not sectarian, and students were required to attend daily prayer services in the chapel and two church services in the village each Sunday. It was in Maine that the brothers first appeared together on the professional stage and with the family’s permission, the boys joined the Thomas F Shea stock company and performed in The Hidden Hand. With his brother he formed a vaudeville act consisting largely of tumbling and wrestling. By age 13, he was travelling and acting in his father’ company. Dustin left school at age 15 to perform on stage.  He was working as a treasurer for a small Boston theatre when he was convinced to take a small part in a local theatre. For a year and a half, he primarily played Shakespearean roles, then spent a year with different stock companies playing mostly heavy parts before he landed his first Broadway role (A Romance of Athlone) in 1900.

                                                                        on stage 1905

Dustin (and his brothers) spent several years touring with various stock companies. Working conditions for a rank-and-file actor were not easy. Performers had essentially become the indentured servants of the stage, obliged to take part in weeks of rehearsals free of charge (up to 10 weeks for a play, 18 weeks for a musical). During certain weeks, including Christmas and New Year’s holidays, Easter, and Election Week, actors received only half salary.  Nearly all actors had to purchase their own costumes and pay their own hotel bills when touring. A contract could be immediately cancelled by the employer for any reason. Contracts had many provisos--a week’s pay could be lost for being seen drunk in a bar or missing a performance; a $5 fine for bad behaviour, loud talking, tardiness for rehearsals, liquor (or even laughter) in the dressing room, disrespect of the stage manager, “hanging about” the lobby.; a $2 fine for talking in the wings; a $1 fine for the use of profanity. The vague charge of “conduct unbecoming a lady or gentleman could result in loss of fee for the entire engagement. The theatre company managers were motivated by money. After all, by 1913, the theatre was America’s fourth largest industry.  As actors were the only “on trust” item on a producer’s balance sheet, unscrupulous producers took advantage of their vulnerability. Plays were paid for in advance, as was scenery and transportation; even house managers got an advance—but performers routinely got suckered.

In 1898, Dustin married Agnes Muir Johnston, who appeared on stage with him.

 

The Stage

Dustin performed on Broadway until 1913. Likely his most notable role was as Colonel Morrison in The Littlest Rebel in 1911 when he co-starred with his brother William. Wrote the San Francisco Examiner “Endowed as he was with the build and features closely approximating the popular notion of what a great hero should be like, Dustin Farnum soared to a position in the theater attained by few great actors." Time after time in New York and in cities all the way across the continent, the stage doors were stormed by crowds of women who fought to obtain an intimate glimpse of him. Asked what he would do when The Littlest Rebel ended, Dustin said, “I am going to get an aeroplane and go from New York to St. Louis in it.  In France I went up three times and I am fairly crazy about it.  I’ll give them a little time to perfect their machines and learn a bit more of the science—then it’s me for the high air.”

Dustin's breakout role was in The Virginian, considered the first true fictional western ever written.  It describes the life of a cowboy on a cattle ranch in northern Wyoming where he tends cattle, identifies and hangs a rustler, kills a notorious bad guy, woos and finally marries a schoolteacher The play opened first in Boston in 1903, then went to Broadway. Dustin starred in all three runs of the play and also starred in the earliest film version.  It was the first time he attempted a dialect. (He had spent several summer months in Virginia leaning the southern drawl.) He wore buckskin-trimmed cowboy clothes, carried revolvers and was able to draw on his horseback riding skills for this cowboy role.  “It is rather a coincidence that he is exceedingly fond of horseback riding, having ridden hundreds of miles in the West and in the East, and some of his experiences in the way of good tumbles from refractory horses make hair-raising stories.” Critics wrote “the play as a play has not made as favorable impression as has the acting of Mr. Dustin Farnham [sic] in the role of the Virginian.  Mr. Farnham fills the bill absolutely. If he can play other parts as well as he plays the part of the Virginian, his success as an actor is assured.” Another critic wrote that “Farnum had the genial task of combining a thief, cur, mean avenger and trickster in one character and succeeded to such an extent that hisses used to resound through the houses, particularly at matinees when not only impressionable women would be present, but the more impressionable little boys.” From this play comes the iconic Western quotation “When you call me that, SMILE!”

 

Scandal

Dustin’s popularity made front-page newspaper headlines when he was scandalously linked to the Gould divorce/alimony trial of 1909. Howard Gould was a millionaire son of railroad financier, Jay Gould; Katherine Clemmons was an actress whose career had been heavily subsidized by William “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Knowing how ferociously her father-in-law disapproved of her, Howard and Katherine were married in 1898 in a very private ceremony; the wedding cost Howard $5 million of his inheritance.

The marriage lasted less than a decade. Katherine filed for divorce in 1907, claiming desertion and cruelty. Howard claimed that Katherine was extravagant, intemperate, guilty of adultery with Buffalo Bill Cody and had frequent liaisons with actor, Dustin Farnum. It was charged that Katherine had followed Dustin about the country when he was performing, had frequently entertained him, and had taken him for long drives. Chauffeurs and hotel maids testified that they had seen Gould and Dustin together at various times. On the stand, both Duston and Katherine denied the affair, and that she was only asking his advice about returning to the stage.  Dustin testified that “So far as I know Mrs. Gould has never been guilty of an impropriety of conduct in any way…she has always been extremely dignified. This whole thing has been so devilish trivial that it has been hard for me to remember dates...she has never been guilty of any familiarity with me and never embraced me. I always addressed her as Mrs. Gould and she called me Mr. Farnum. I have never been in her bedroom at the St. Regis or anywhere else.”

Dustin’s testimony at this trial is fun to read.

Q; Do you remember what Mrs. Gould’s costume was the first time you met her, as you say, at Mrs. Lounsberry’s? Dustin: No, I didn’t pay any more attention to her than I did any other women present.

Q: Had you ever seen her before? Dustin: I may have seen her without knowing it. The only time I am sure of was when I was a boy and saw her play.

Q: What color is Mrs. Gould’s hair? Dustin: Reddish brown, I think. (it’s blond).

Q: Do you know the color of her eyes? Dustin: “I don’t know. I never looked into them.”

Q; Do you mean to say you always averted your glance when talking with Mrs. Gould? Dustin: I am a bashful young man.

Q; How tall is she? Dustin: I don’t think I ever saw her with her hat off.

Q: Ever see her with her shoes off? Dustin: No, I am sure I didn’t. 

Q; Is her figure stout? Dustin: I believe she is heavily built.

Q; What did she say about going into the theatrical business? Dustin: She asked if anybody ever sent me a play that I thought would be suitable for her to let her know.

Q; Have you ever drunk champagne with Mrs. Gould?  Dustin: I can’t drink champagne.

 

Despite the severe allegations leveled at his wife during the divorce proceedings, Howard Gould was ordered to pay Katherine $36,000 per year in alimony ($1.173 million today). It was the largest alimony settlement up to that time.

Shortly after the Gould trial, Dustin was served with divorce papers by own wife, Agnes. It seems that she had intended to divorce earlier but delayed until the Gould trial ended. No co-respondents (e.g. Mrs. Gould) were mentioned in the suit: all evidence was sealed by court order. The divorce was finalized in 1908. The next year Dustin married Mary Bessie Conwell, his leading lady in The Virginian.

 

Silent Movies

Dustin belonged to the old romantic theatrical school. The public’s stage taste was rapidly changing and the demand for gun-play melodramas was over. But Dustin then found motion picture audiences eager for these discarded plots and the all-powerful virtuous heroes. In 1913 Dustin announced his plans to retire from the stage, end his contract with the touring company and go into the moving picture business with a “film factory and studio”. He went to Cuba to star in his first film, Soldiers of Fortune, a five-reel picture enacted with the aid of the US navy and Cuban army; over 3000 regulars took part in the battle scenes.   Dustin Farnum was considered one of the first stage stars to fully devote his energies to the movie screen.

Dustin moved to San Diego, California where he had a large country place. Leaving the stage for movies and becoming a “vulgar business man” was not an easy or popular decision. “When I first adopted the movies—or they adopted me—I was vigorously denounced by my contemporaries.  I still have” Dustin said in 1915, “a number of letters written to me several years ago by prominent actors and actresses, calling my ‘abandonment’ of the legitimate stage ‘disgraceful’ and ‘a prostitution of art’ as well as other disagreeable things. Since that time I have received letters from some of the same writers asking me for advice as to how they could become equally ‘disgraceful’. Practically ‘everybody’s doin’ it” and there are few stars who have not had a fling at the movies.”

In 1913 Dustin was very candid about his move into motion pictures. “About two years ago in a club in New York I insulted a number of my friends by saying “Never mind, we will all be working for the picture show man before five years are out.”. When I said it, I had no idea how close to the truth that random prediction would prove to be, nor did I have any idea what a tempting field would be opened in that line of work.  A person in my position rarely makes a change unless it is for increased comfort or money. This proposition that has been made me offers both.  The idea was suggested to me while in Los Angeles. Out there they have a film company that is the most wonderful thing I ever saw, and I have traveled over the country to some extent.  The most interesting thing about it to a man weary of Pullman cars and changing hotels is the fact that the members of this company of which there are two hundred, live in cozy bungalows of their own and ride back and forth to their work—just three hours a day—in their own automobiles. They live like real people. They also get paid better than they ever could in other lines of the profession, besides living infinitely better. While I was in California the same company made me a very flattering offer…They wish to use my name on the films. I could make twice as much there.”

In 1914, Cecil D. DeMille gave Dustin the leading role in the film version of The Squaw Man, one of Dustin’s former Broadway hits.  “Back in 1914, when Hollywood was still a picturesque little village of orange groves, Duston Farnum, C.B.DeMille and Jesse Lasky made The Squaw Man for the newly organized Famous Players. Their studio was a barn on a ranch which is now the exact centre of Hollywood.” “Big, beefy, pleasant-looking Dustin Farnum plays an English aristocrat who sacrifices his honor to protect the woman he loves and ends up doing much of the same for an Indian maiden of the Old West.” The Squaw Man is considered Dustin’s Farnum’s most notable film. Interestingly, Dustin turned down the opportunity to invest $5000 in the production of The Squaw Man, an investment that would have made him a millionaire. When he was hired to star in the film, he was paid partly in cash and partly in the stock of the company formed to produce the film, headed by Cecil D. DeMille, the film’ director. Dustin thought so little of the stock that he gave it to his valet. When the film was released, the tremendous success resulted in the value of the stock soaring, and Dustin’s valet got rich overnight. In 1932, some critics claimed that The Squaw Man along with Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben-Hur were the three most popular plays written by American authors. The Squaw Man was translated into 26 languages and was performed over 600,000 times. Cecil B DeMille’s 1914 The Squaw Man was the first five-reel movie and the first movie made in Hollywood.

Dustin followed this smash hit with several film versions of plays in which he had earlier starred on Broadway. The blustering, swash-buckling hero with handsome features was just reaching its peak of acclaim on the screen when Farnum joined the pictures. His success, popularity and financial returns were immediate. In 1917 Dustin joined the Fox Film Company. Other notable silent films included The Scarlet Pimpernel (1917) and The Corsican Brothers (1920). Playing twin brothers in The Corsican Brothers proved quite challenging as he had to make costume changes as he switched from role to role; on one day he had to change clothes 30 times, even though it was into the same two suits; in all, 230 changes of clothes were required before the picture was finished. (My guess is that to maintain continuity, it was simpler to have Dustin change costumes than to change the set.)

Although he played a variety of roles, he tended towards westerns and became one of the biggest stars of that genre.  “My managers seem to think”, he once complained, “that unless they have me carrying a gun, I can’t do anything.” Then came the era of the 1920s flapper movies and the producers were forced to find a new type of hero. The brawny captain gave way to the well-mannered youth and Farnum’s pictures dropped out of prominence. But while houses in large cities spurned them, they continued to command audiences in smaller towns for a long while.  Dustin’s last picture was The Flaming Frontier in which he played General Custer. Between 1914’s Soldiers of Fortune and The Flaming Frontier in 1926, Dustin starred in 42 silent movies. Many of these films have been lost. A half dozen of Dustin's silents can now be viewed on You-Tube.

 

                                                            The Virginian

Retirement

In 1926, now immensely wealthy, Dustin retired from pictures to devote himself to his favourite sports--fishing and yachting. He won the Los Angeles Nordlinger Racing Cup for three consecutive years. About the 1921 race, it was written “The winner is Dustin Farnum, good actor on land and sea, and commodore of the Los Angeles Motor Boat Club. He captured the exquisite solid-silver design…with Miss Los Angeles II, his latest and finest trophy-chaser –and catcher. ..A combination of circumstances eliminated his most dangerous rival, but that doesn’t mean that everybody isn’t glad to see the cup become Commodore Farnum’s property. He made a long, sportsman-like fight for it, built boat after boat, spent a lot of money, and now has something to show for his enthusiasm and effort." To acquire possession of the trophy permanently, it was necessary for Farnum to have three consecutive annual victories (his were in 1919, 1920, 1921). And each year, he took all the heats of the race—a total of 9 straight and believed to be a world record at the time. Dustin also kept a speedboat the “David Garrick” on his truck farm at Bucksport. “Picture patrons often commented on [Dustin’s] wonderful smile. This smile becomes a habit when Dusty clutches the wheel of his big speedcraft way back home.”

Dustin had been separated from his second wife, Mary Bessie Farnum for twelve years. Claiming desertion, he divorced her in Reno, Nevada on August 17, 1924. One week later on August 24, 1924, he married film actress Winifred Kingston, described as a “vivacious, English-born and convent-educated  leading lady of silent films, with grey eyes and chestnut-coloured hair”. Winifred had played many leading roles opposite Dustin. “A score of times, in reel life, Winifred Kingston was wooed and won reel-istically by Dustin Farnum. The other day in real life, Winifred Kingston was wooed and won by Dustin.” The couple had first met in Cuba in 1914. Winifred was horrified to see an “ape” coming down the staircase. The man had a two week growth of beard, disheveled hair and was wearing the dirty cowboy clothes he used in the film. This was her introduction to Dustin, her leading man in Soldiers of Fortune. The next day, Dustin came to dinner looking like a matinee idol and it was love at first sight. Between 1914 and 1922, Winifred was the female lead in 28 silent movies; 21 of these movies were with Dustin. (notoriety was also attached to Winifred as she had been, reportedly, engaged to a motion picture director who was mysteriously slain in his Hollywood bungalow. This case was unsolved.)

In the 1920s, the Farnums’ palatial home in Hollywood was a mecca for movie celebrities. Guests often included William Farnum, Charlie Chaplin, Theda Bara, Cecil B. DeMille. Dustin had another home in Manhattan where he was a member of New York’s Lambs Club, a famous theatrical social club of “actors trying to be gentlemen"; members there included Cecil B. DeMille, Fred Astaire, Eugene O’Neill, W.C.Fields, Spencer Tracy and Irving Berlin. He was also a member of Hollywood’s Masquers, a private social club founded in 1925 by actors from New York who had left Broadway to act in motion pictures; the Masquers’ motto was “We laugh to win.”

Daughter Estelle Dustine Farnum was born May 29, 1925.  (Estelle later appeared in one movie and acted on radio.)  

Estelle was only four years old when her father, age 55, died in Manhattan on July 3, 1929 of kidney failure. Dustin had been a heavy drinker for many years.  His body was cremated, and the ashes buried in the Farnum family plot in Silver Lake Cemetery Bucksport, Maine.

                                                                Dustin's funeral

                                                    Silver Lake Cemetery, Bucksport, Maine

                                

Winifred married oil executive Carman Runyon in 1931. She died on February 3 1967 in La Jolla, California, age 72.

                      

Hollywood Walk of Fame

The Hollywood Walk of Fame pays tribute to legendary figures in the entertainment industry and stretches for 15 blocks (spaced 6 feet apart) along Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street. Currently there are over 2700 stars. Monuments are a coral-pink terrazzo five point star. The name of the honouree is inlaid in brass block letters in the upper portion of the star and below each inscription is an emblem that indicates the category of the person’s contribution. About half come from the motion picture category; other categories include TV, audio recording, radio and live performance. It spans the days of silent movies to today’s blockbusters. It also commemorates fictional characters like Mickey Mouse, Godzilla, Snow White, the Simpsons, Kermit the Frog that have had an impact on American culture.

Dustin’s star was among the initial installation of 1500 stars in 1960; these honourees had been selected by a small committee. Today the selection committee receives about 200 nominations yearly. Nominees must have a minimum of five years’ experience in their category and a history of “charitable contributions.” The committee chooses 20 to 24 celebrities.  Living recipients must agree to attend a presentation ceremony within two years; a relative of a deceased recipient must attend posthumous presentations.  A fee of $75,000, payable at time of selection is collected to pay for the creation and installation of the star as well as for general maintenance.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                

 

DUSTIN LANCY FARNUM

                b. May 27, 1874 in Hampton, New Hampshire

                m. 1. Agnes Muir Johnston in 1898, divorced 1908

                      2. Mary Elizabeth “Bessie” Cromwell in 1909, divorced Aug 17, 1924

                      3. Winifred Kingston on Aug 28, 1924 in Los Angeles, California

                d. Jul 3, 1929 in Manhattan, New York

my 4^th cousin, 4x removed (Homuth-Netterfield-Pierson line)

Silent Movies

• Soldiers of Fortune (1914)
• The Squaw Man (1914)
• The Lightning Conductor (1914)
• The Virginian (1914)
• When We Were Young (1914)
• Cameo Kirby (1914)
• Captain Courtesy (1915)
• The Iron Strain (1916)
• The Gentleman from Indiana (1916)
• The Call of the Cumberlands (1916)
• Ben Blair (1916)
• David Garrick (1916)
• Davy Crockett (1916)
• The Parson of Panamint (1916)
• The Intrigue (1916)
• A Son of Erin (1916)
• Durand of the Bad Lands (1917)
• The Spy (1917)
• North of Fifty Three (1917)
• The Scarlet Pimpernel (1917)
• Ready Money Ringfield (1918)
• The Light of Western Stars (1918)
• A Man in the Open (1919)
• A Man's Fight (1919)
• The Corsican Brothers (1920)
• Big Happiness (1921)
• The Primal Law (1921)
• The Devil Within (1921)
• Iron to Gold (1922)
• Strange Idols (1922)
• Oath-Bound (1922)
• Trail of the Axe (1922)
• The Yosemite Trail (1922)
• While Justice Waits (1922)
• Three Who Paid (1923)
• The Buster (1923)
• Bucking the Barrier (1923)
• The Man Who Won (1923)
• The Grail (1923)
• Kentucky Days (1923)
• My Man (1924)
• The Flaming Frontier (1926)

Broadway plays

• A Romance of Athlone (January 29, 1900 – March 3, 1900)
• Marcelle (October 1900)
• More Than Queen (October 30, 1900 – November 1900)
• The Virginian (Boston October 1903, New York January 5, 1904 – May 1904)
• The Ranger (September 1907)
• The Rector's Garden (March 1908)
• Cameo Kirby (December 20, 1909 – January 1910)
• The Silent Call (January 1911)
• The Squaw Man (January 9, 1911 – January 17, 1911)
• The Littlest Rebel (November 14, 1911 – January 1912)
• Arizona (April 28, 1913 – June 1913)
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