Hi everyone! Welcome to the last entry in my blog series “The Shadow Land of Make Believe: Mythologising Hollywood in the 1920s”. Today we’ll be looking at two comedies, The Extra Girl (1923) and Ella Cinders (1926), which chronicle a young woman’s journey from small-town Americana to the bright lights of Hollywood in the hopes of becoming a movie star.
Ella Cinders seizes her chance to move to Tinseltown.
As I discovered during my trip to the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, glamour was a commodity that Hollywood was keen to sell to the American public. Magazines dedicated to its most popular performers endeavoured to create a devoted community of fans – while maintaining the illusion that style was easily purchasable through the makeup, elocution classes and dodgy diet pills constantly advertised throughout its pages. Once elevated to film star status, your image could become a household brand (see the Rudolph Valentino cigar box label) or be featured in documentaries showing off your latest movies behind the scenes (see Dorothy Dalton in A Trip to Paramounttown (1922)). It was immediately clear that young women were the primary targets of these promotional campaigns, but what happened to the ladies who put down their magazines and actually tried to make a career for themselves in showbiz?
As the academic Heidi Kenaga describes, Hollywood was confronted with a dilemma when it came to the throngs of “movie-struck girls” (130) milling around its studios. On the one hand, they needed “a steady flow of unskilled workers who potentially could be trained to meet the specific requirements of a marketable product”. Extras were necessary background fillers meant to give productions a sense of scale while doing their job with no questions asked. At the same time, the ‘anyone can become a star’ fantasy was looked upon with growing suspicion when numerous studio scandals hit headlines in the early twenties. Most famous was the death of model Virginia Rappe and the resulting legal fallout that was cruelly sensationalised by the national press. Less reported on was the loss of child star Bobby Connelly, who continued to follow an intense work schedule after an endocarditis diagnosis, as well as the potential suicide of supporting actress Florence Deshon by gas asphyxiation. These tragedies dulled the dazzling public image of the American film industry and subsequently rendered the desires of the extra girl a “moral threat”. To have your dreams crushed by false promises was disheartening enough – but to endanger your life was unjustifiably dangerous.
Such social turmoil was the rocky foundation in which films like The Extra Girl (1923) and Ella Cinders (1926) were made – films, on first glance, that look incredibly similar. Here’s the plot: a somewhat sheltered young lady longs to leave Anytown, USA behind and travel west in search of fame and fortune as an actress. Following a local beauty contest, a few silly misunderstandings and an inexplicable chase sequence with a lion (yep, both of these films feature actual lions!), they finally try for a part in a lavish Hollywood production.
A lobby card for The Extra Girl (1923) featuring one of two random lions.
This is the formula for what I call the 1920s ‘going-to-Hollywood' movie. However, it is not the script rewrites, endless rehearsals or even the celebrity cameos that I would like to focus on within these stories. If you predicted that they would close with a flashforward in time – our heroine now the most beloved star in Tinseltown with adoring fans of her own – then you would be wrong. Actually, it turns out this was never her dream. In the final act, she is swept off her feet by her childhood best friend and leaves California behind for a tranquil existence as housewife and mother. Close-up of a newlywed kiss... the end!
You can probably tell that I was gobsmacked when I witnessed this ostensibly arbitrary conclusion unfold not once, but twice. After spending so much time studying studio-to-fan communication channels, it was inconceivable to me that a studio-approved happily-ever-after could ever take place away from Hollywood. But on closer inspection, I realised that there was an obvious explanation for this finale. It had everything to do with the approaching army of “movie-struck girls” (Kenaga 130).
But first, some supplementary context. Extra Girl and Ella Cinders star Mabel Normand and Colleen Moore – both accomplished comic actresses – as Sue Graham and the titular Ella Cinders respectively. Residents of the similarly tight-knit communities of River Bend and Roseville, Sue and Ella want more from life than dating foppish neighbours or caring for wicked stepsisters. They decide to enter a beauty contest, excited by the prospect of winning a Hollywood contract, and win. From then on, the road to La La Land seems to draw closer and closer as they voyage westwards to pursue their dream.
As if the fairytale comparisons weren’t already potent enough, the screenplay for Ella Cinders is directly adapted from the comic strip of the same name, specifically based on the classic tale. The extra-to-star pipeline is undoubtedly a rejuvenated version of the Cinderella narrative – but whether or not the handsome prince is replaced by a leading role is trickier to decipher.
The thing is, Sue and Ella can’t help but create trouble wherever they go. Stranded in a sprawling dream factory, their unfamiliarity with Hollywood codes of conduct sticks out like a sore thumb. Ella especially wears her local accolade like a badge of honour. Eagerly marching off the train and into Los Angeles, she assumes that the crowd of photographers applauding in her direction have arrived simply to congratulate her – just like the people she left behind on the platform.
“I’m Ella Cinders, the beauty contest winner,” she beams at a passing journalist. But instead of shaking her hand, he rolls his eyes with obvious disdain: “I’ll keep your secret.”
Ella and a fly enter the Roseville Beauty Contest.
Perhaps being the pride of Roseville isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Ella resorts to breaking into a studio to get some attention, perplexed by the likewise contemptuous greeting she receives from its security guard. Where is the Hollywood treatment she was promised? Only by sheer luck is she finally cast in her first role – by wandering in front of the camera to ask a costumed actor for directions. This small part suddenly catapults her towards a starring vehicle that features a fictionalised version of her life story. Cleaning away in dirty rags, her convincing performance is cut short by the entrance of George Waite, college athlete and long-time boyfriend. Before Ella can even blink, he whisks her onto an oncoming train and out of frame.
“Get a new star to do your scrubbing – we’re going to get married!” George yells at the director, who runs as fast as his legs will allow him toward the speeding vehicle. As quickly as it has come, Ella’s time in the limelight is over.
Sue Graham doesn’t have an easy time of it, either: her unassuming entry to the River Bend beauty contest is secretly swapped out with a ‘prettier’ portrait by her boyfriend’s overprotective mother. After the deception is discovered, Sue has no other choice but to work as a costumer’s assistant, looking on from a distance as other people play pretend. On a chance encounter with a respected producer, she is approved for a screen test (a lengthy process which observes how well she can manage in recorded conditions) and is given the opportunity to perform alongside real leading man William Desmond. What Sue doesn’t expect is for the entire production crew to laugh at her audition – and then give her the job. A visit from her elderly parents causes even more problems as they both fall victim to a fraudulent investment scheme. In a move that transforms Extra Girl into something of a crime melodrama, their daring daughter recovers all of their stolen savings at gunpoint. Sue gives her father a tearful hug before the scene fades to black. The Hollywood backlots are nowhere in sight.
This leads to the finale – the moment in which our heroine has found domestic bliss, of course. Extra Girl and Ella Cinders’ endings are so remarkably alike that they are practically engaging in dialogue with each other. A few years have passed since Sue and Ella’s time on the California backlots, and they now spend a peaceful afternoon at home with their young son and doting husband. Primarily, this conclusion serves to reflect on the protagonist’s madcap escapades in a light-hearted manner: it was a brief chapter in her life that has been decidedly closed. Sue doesn’t mince her words when she tells David that being called Mamma “means more than the greatest career I might ever have had”. On a superficial level, advocating for maternity is a reasonable attempt to resolve her struggle to assimilate into Hollywood culture. Rather than assuming a carefree façade and reluctantly following studio orders, Sue and Ella can reclaim their own narratives and choose to exist in a way that feels fulfilling for them. A happily-ever-after indeed... if they had always wanted to become parents in the first place.
Four years on, Sue and Dave "look backward".
This sudden shift in character motivation is what makes the wife-and-mother ending of Extra Girl and Ella Cinders feel so frustrating as a modern viewer. If the narrative arc inevitably concludes within the small town that our heroine has been so desperately trying to leave, then what is the point of Ella’s jaunt to Hollywood – and thus the heart of her story? Why should Sue feel the need to look back at her old audition if she is perfectly happy to leave the movies behind?
Even more peculiar are the circumstances in which these endings are constructed: by a thriving system of prominent American studios, the very same ones that Ella and Sue are so desperate to be a part of. The hustle and bustle of the productions they wander through are not simulated. They showcase genuine working sets – a priceless documentation of directors, camera operators, makeup artists, producers and actors – whose perpetual labour constitutes the cinematic world. To reveal the inner workings of moviemaking to the audience, only to push this same audience away with the drudgery of domesticity, begs the biggest question of all. Does Hollywood hate Hollywood? Or, more specifically, does it hate its female fans?
It's significant that Sue watches back her screen test with evident embarrassment. Only once she examines herself through the camera’s gaze does she recognise why she was ridiculed by the crew – because of a painted hand accidentally printed onto her undergarments, visible when she lifts up an outrageously garish costume she wears for a “garden scene”. This inadvertently bawdy blunder diverges from the undoubtedly tame relationship between Sue and now-husband Dave, who projects the test with a small grin. Meanwhile, their bright-eyed toddler (Jackie Lucas, future star of another going-to-Hollywood movie, The Hollywood Kid (1924)) is too little to understand that the footage in front of him is fictional: “Daddy, why is that man kissing Mamma?” There’s an underlying awkwardness in observing Sue act unfaithfully towards her lover, particularly for a paycheck.
Sue and Ella’s amiable eccentricity sets them apart from other aspiring actors, but executives fail to take their talents seriously. The protagonist finds herself opposing the typical expectations of auditionees – to a) be pretty and b) to obediently follow instructions – through her ignorance of Hollywood etiquette and a knack for comedic timing. In other words, she is a breath of fresh air in an oversaturated industry. However, her abundance of anarchic energy that so disrupts the casting process just cannot compute with the studios she is meant to work within. Instead, she feels as though she is degrading herself: either by causing unintended chaos during principle photography (remember what I said about lions and chase sequences?) or by recreating the very poverty she grew up in for a rags-to-riches tale. The unapologetic love that Sue and Ella harbour for the silver screen is too much for a capitalistic bureaucracy to tolerate. Never mind con men and wild animals – the real dangers in Hollywood are the ‘over-ambitious’ extra girls with stars in their eyes. They need to stop dreaming and do as they’re told.
From rags to riches... a poster for Ella Cinders (1926).
This is why Extra Girl and Ella Cinders finish with domesticity. It is a feasible solution to Sue and Ella’s disillusionment with moving pictures: beneath the glitz and glamour they have been so adamantly promised, there is a cynical reality in which the ingenuity of the Tinseltown worker must be subdued. Winning first place in a neighbourhood beauty competition cannot compete with a Hollywood that has become a well-oiled machine. Instead, talent is made to fit inside a figurative box. “They’re making fun of me,” Ella confesses to George after her unconventional contest entry is met with a thunderous reception. Simply because she does not meet the impossible standards of a perfect star, our heroine is cast aside as a temporary amusement.
Then again, Sue and Ella’s determination to make it big is also squandered by a male partner. It’s convenient that he is either secretly wealthy (George is the heir of an enormous fortune) or a surreptitious chaperone for his girlfriend’s first experience as an independent woman (Dave takes on stagehand duties just to keep an eye on Sue). Marriage represents more of a safety net than a personal aspiration – a supposedly inevitable status which suggests that the self-sufficiency of a young lady constitutes nothing more than an adventure before she ultimately settles down. “Give up this foolish idea of a career and let’s get married,” Dave mutters after a delighted Sue walks off set. He neither recognises the ruthlessness of the studio environment nor the unbridled joy on this performer’s face: he merely sees his future wife humiliating herself. Not really my idea of a handsome prince.
In short, this subgenre confirms what I had already suspected – Hollywood of the 1920s was facing a major identity crisis. In an expanding web of almighty production studios, the determination to mythologise the American film industry as a glamourous dream factory clashed considerably with social change and downright scandal. Many believed that the darkness within this shadow land would lead to the downfall of the movies altogether. But one thing’s for sure: for fans across the world both a century ago and today, the Hollywood magic continues to live on.
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