Cathrine Curtis

Last updated

Cathrine Curtis
Born
Cathrine Taylor

1889
Albany, New York, U.S.
Died1955
California
Occupation(s)Film producer, actress, political organizer
Spouse(s)Joseph O'Neil, Perit Coit Myers, Jr.

Cathrine Curtis (1889 - 1955) [1] was an American actress, film producer, investor, and radio personality. She was one of the first female film producers and was also a political organizer noted for her far-right views.

Contents

Early life

Curtis was born in Albany, New York, [1] attended boarding school in a suburb of New York [2] and graduated from St. Agnes High School in Albany. She attended New York University but left before graduating. [3]

Career

Curtis owned and operated a ranch in Phoenix, Arizona. She began investing in stocks at the age of 15. [3] In Phoenix, one of her neighbors was the novelist Harold Bell Wright, who invited her to Hollywood to play a role in his film, The Shepherd of the Hills . [3] [4]

Hollywood career

While working on the film, she decided that she wanted to become a producer that she would stay in Los Angeles. [5] Her first credit as a producer was on King Vidor's 1921 silent film The Sky Pilot . [6] She planned an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (ultimately released in 1925), but legal wrangling ensued over rights. [7] She was noted as one of the only film producers of her day[ citation needed ] and was notable for being the first woman in that position. [8] [9] Curtis ran her own production company, The Cathrine Curtis Pictures Corporation. Created in 1919, the company had offices in New York City and Los Angeles. [10] She seems to have lost interest after she married her husband, Joseph O'Neill, but continued making advertorial films through the end of the decade.

Political leanings

After moving back to New York City after the stock market crash, she continued investing and became a radio personality, producing a twice-weekly show, Women and Money, for WMCA, in which she began espousing a brand of feminism centered on women's financial independence. [3] Her criticism of the New Deal eventually led to cancelation of the program. [1]

Curtis was also a far-right activist and organizer known for her anticommunist, antisemitism, and isolationist views. She created a number of committees and organizations in her day, including the National Legion of Mothers of America and the Women's National Committee to Keep the U.S. Out of War. Her criticism of the New Deal and her lobbying on behalf of women investors [11] led her to create the Women Investors Research Institute, a non-profit organization that grew to 300,000 members in 1939. [1]

Personal life

Curtis was married several times; her husbands included lawyer Joseph O'Neil [12] (divorced 1929) [13] and Perit Coit Myers Jr. [14] [15] Myers and Curtis had a daughter, Gretchen, together.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cameron Diaz</span> American actress (born 1972)

Cameron Michelle Diaz is an American actress. Known for her work in both comedy and drama, her films have grossed over $3 billion in the U.S. box-office. Diaz established herself as a sex symbol and one of Hollywood's most bankable stars, and in 2013 she was named the highest-paid actress over 40. She has received various accolades, including nominations for a BAFTA Award and four Golden Globe Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audrey Munson</span> 20th-century American model and actress (1891–1996)

Audrey Marie Munson was an American artist's model and film actress, considered to be "America's first supermodel." In her time, she was variously known as "Miss Manhattan", the "Panama–Pacific Girl", the "Exposition Girl" and "American Venus." She was the model or inspiration for more than twelve statues in New York City, and many others elsewhere. Munson appeared in four silent films, including unclothed in Inspiration (1915). She was one of the first American actresses to appear nude in a non-pornographic film.

<i>Halloween H20: 20 Years Later</i> 1998 film by Steve Miner

Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later is a 1998 American slasher film directed by Steve Miner, and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, LL Cool J, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, Janet Leigh, and Josh Hartnett, in his film debut. It is the seventh installment in the Halloween franchise. H20 is a direct sequel to Halloween (1978) and Halloween II (1981), ignoring the Jamie Lloyd story arc of the previous three installments. It follows a post-traumatic Laurie Strode, who has faked her death in order to go into hiding from her murderous brother, Michael Myers, who finds her working at a private boarding school in California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Ingalls (aviator)</span> American aviator and Nazi agent (1893–1967)

Laura Houghtaling Ingalls was an American pilot who won the Harmon Trophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elsie Ferguson</span> American actress (1883–1961)

Elsie Louise Ferguson was an American stage and film actress. Seen by some as an early feminist, she promoted suffrage, which she discussed in interviews, and supported animal rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Dilling</span> American writer and political activist (1894–1966)

Elizabeth Eloise Kirkpatrick Dilling was an American writer and political activist. In 1934, she published The Red Network—A Who's Who and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots, which catalogs over 1,300 suspected communists and their sympathizers. Her books and lecture tours established her as the pre-eminent female right-wing activist of the 1930s, and one of the most outspoken critics of the New Deal, which she referred to as the "Jew Deal". In the mid-to-late 1930s, Dilling expressed sympathy for Nazi Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carmel Myers</span> American actress (1899–1980)

Carmel Myers was an American actress who achieved her greatest successes in silent film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine MacDonald</span> American actress (1891–1956)

Katherine Agnew MacDonald was an American stage and film actress, film producer, and model. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and was the older sister of actresses Miriam MacDonald and Mary MacLaren.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nance O'Neil</span> American actress (1874–1965)

Gertrude Lamson, known professionally as Nance O'Neil or Nancy O'Neil, was an American stage and film actress who performed in plays in various theaters around the world but worked predominantly in the United States between the 1890s and 1930s. At the height of her career, she was promoted on theater bills and in period trade publications and newspapers as the "American Bernhardt".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bessie Barriscale</span> American actress (1884–1965)

Bessie Barriscale was an American actress who gained fame on the stage and in silent films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clara Whipple</span> American actress

Clara Whipple(néeClara or Clarissa or Clarise Brimmer Whipple; November 7, 1887 – November 6, 1932) was an American actress who flourished in theatre from 1913 to 1915 and in silent film from 1915 to 1919. She was also a silent film scenario writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosemary Theby</span> American actress (1892–1973)

Rosemary Theresa Theby was an American film actress. She appeared in some 250 films between 1911 and 1940.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Josephine Crowell</span> Canadian actress

Josephine Bonaparte Crowell was a Canadian film actress of the silent era. She appeared in more than 90 films between 1912 and 1929.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Minna Gombell</span> American actress

Minna Marie Gombell was an American stage and film actress.

Neema Barnette is an American film director and producer, and the first African-American woman to direct a primetime sitcom. Barnette was the first African-American woman to get a three-picture deal with Sony Pictures. Since then, she accumulated a number of awards, including a Peabody, an Emmy and an NAACP Image Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Stoneman</span> American lawyer

Katherine Stoneman was an early 20th-century suffragist and the first woman admitted to the Bar Association in the State of New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilhelmina Weber Furlong</span> German American artist and teacher (1878–1962)

Wilhelmina Weber Furlong was a German American artist and teacher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alice Morgan Wright</span> American sculptor, suffragist and animal welfare activist

Alice Morgan Wright was an American sculptor, suffragist, and animal welfare activist. She was one of the first American artists to embrace Cubism and Futurism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lois Zellner</span> American screenwriter

Lois Zellner was an American screenwriter active during Hollywood's silent era. She also went by the name Lois Leeson later in her career.

<i>The Shepherd of the Hills</i> (1919 film) 1919 film directed by Louis F. Gottschalk and Harold Bell Wright

The Shepherd of the Hills is a 1919 American silent drama film directed by Louis F. Gottschalk and Harold Bell Wright, and based on Bell Wright's 1909 novel of the same name. It was remade in 1941 by director Henry Hathaway.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Jeansonne, Glen; Luhrssen, David (2006). Cook, Bernard A. (ed.). Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present. ABC-CLIO. pp. 137–138. ISBN   9781851097708 . Retrieved January 26, 2019.
  2. ↑ Woman's Journal. IPC Magazines. 1921.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Jeansonne, Glen (June 9, 1997). Women of the Far Right: The Mothers' Movement and World War II . University of Chicago Press. p.  57. ISBN   9780226395890. cathrine curtis actress.
  4. ↑ Parton, Lemuel F. (December 18, 1941). "Who's News This Week". The Plumas Independent. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  5. ↑ "Cathrine Curtis". The Belleville Republic County Democrat. May 25, 1921. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  6. ↑ "Cathrine Curtis to Produce Series of Movies on Home". The Post-Star. Glens Falls, NY. June 6, 1927. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  7. ↑ "Archives On The Air 172: Jurassic Conmen—Cathrine Curtis Corporation Records". Archives on the Air. Wyoming Public Media. Retrieved December 8, 2019.
  8. ↑ "First of Her Sex in the Field of Film Production". The Woman Citizen. VI (19): 11. February 11, 1922. Retrieved January 26, 2019.
  9. ↑ "Curtis was if not the first, at least among the earliest of women who were only producers." Grace Kingsley's Hollywood: One hundred year old news and gossip, compiled by Lisle Foote. Adventures in Film Production: Week of August 16, 1919. https://gracekingsley.wordpress.com/tag/cathrine-curtis/
  10. ↑ "Cathrine Curtis Pictures Corporation". The Editor. 51 (6): VII. September 25, 1919. Retrieved January 26, 2019.
  11. ↑ "Congress Urged to Substitute Sound Finance Bill". The San Francisco Examiner. August 4, 1935. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  12. ↑ "Pioneer Woman Movie Producer Secretly Wed". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. May 26, 1924. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  13. ↑ "Catherine O'Neil Divorced: Decree Revealed by Lawyer's Suit for $5,000 for Services," New York Times, 9 Nov 1929: 40
  14. ↑ "Thinks Public Wants More Art in Movies". The Boston Globe. February 26, 1926. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  15. ↑ "Phoenix Woman Is Head of New Film Company". The Arizona Republic. August 23, 1919. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.