John W. McKay: Miracle Man
The ‘Canadian Connection’ with the Goetz Brothers, and Early Cinema more generally, is one that I find particularly interesting. Today I’ll examine this connection a little further through the personality of John W. McKay, vice president of the Mayflower Photoplay Corporation— the film company that was supposed to make Edith May Leuenberger, winner of the National Salesgirls’ Beauty Contest (NSBC), a movie star.
Mayflower partnered with Flo Ziegfeld promoting the NSBC— a cynical affair which I discuss at length here. Part of Edith May’s prize was to play a staring role in an untitled film directed by Raoul Walsh, old Mutual Film talent, and to be ‘career-coached’ by his wife Miriam Cooper. McKay’s company enjoyed this partnership at the expense of Ziegfeld’s brother’s struggling film enterprise, which had just made a ‘White Slavery’ picture at a time when the US government needed film to tone-down its pornographic content.
There was a third partner to the Ziegfeld/Mayflower contest, Photoplay Magazine, which everyone involved preferred to remain silent. Photoplay was part-owned by one of the Shallenberger brothers, who were key investors in John Freuler’s Mutual Film concern. Another major Photoplay investor was Chicago publishing magnate Robert E. Eastman, who had bad blood with gangster Charlie Chaplin. Prior to becoming film executives, the Shallenberger brothers were a trio of itinerant venereal disease specialists at a time when the dominant international prostitution syndicate was controlled by such doctors.
John W. McKay had an important role in the Ziegfeld/Mayflower/Photoplay partnership: he was the big promoter. McKay appears to have been something of a genius—or at least an innovator— in advertising, or “exploitation” as they called it back then. He consistently challenged advertising norms, like promoting films before production, and premiering films in “representative” rather than “key” cities, as tastes in major metropolitan areas were considerably different to those of the majority of film viewers. (“Will it play in Peoria?”-type thinking was the brainchild of McKay.) Who was this John W. McKay?
Not an easy question to answer. The only biographical information I could find was the following, published on January 1st, 1920, in MacLean’s Magazine, the Canadian news magazine:
What McKay implies in this MacLean’s clipping is that he is the grandson of a famous man, Rev. John McKay, who was the son of a Scottish settler and the daughter of a Cree Hudson’s Bay official. Besides his duties as a missionary Presbyterian minister, Rev. McKay also served as a type of elder and policeman who was esteemed by both Cree and European Canadians:
Excerpt from “The Selkirk Settlers in Real Life,” by Rev. R. G. MacBeth, William Briggs publishers Toronto, 1897. 1/2
Excerpt from “The Selkirk Settlers in Real Life,” by Rev. R. G. MacBeth, William Briggs publishers Toronto, 1897. 2/2
As stated, McKay implied illustrious roots via MacLean’s, a magazine which was founded by the son of another prominent Presbyterian minister. However, the death date he gives for the “Rev. McKay” is over a decade off that of the renowned McKay. “John McKay” is a popular name in Canada, yet I could find no “Rev John McKay” who matched both the death date and biographic material supplied. Altogether, these mysteries lead me to suspect John W. McKay’s biographical stub is fiction, but useful fiction for a movie-man peddling religious films. In reality, we know nothing of John W. McKay prior to a rash of incorporations he made in New York City in late 1917.
Exhibitor’s Herald, September 29th, 1917.
In creating these film-production, promotion and exhibition corporations, McKay went into business with a certain Olga Schultheis, who appears to have been equally busy that March in the same New York market, but with different partners. It would be fascinating to know what Olga Schultheis brought to the table with all these partnerships, but like McKay, she is a shadowy figure.
The Dramatic Mirror, new incorporations list. March 24th 1917
The Dramatic Mirror, new incorporations list. March 31st 1917
McKay’s career picked up roughly nine months later in 1918, when he was hired by a character named Isaac Wolper. Prior to his engaging McKay, Wolper was a Boston-based merchant who wanted to break into the film business. To that end, in 1917, Wolper set up the Mastercraft Photo-Play Corporation with F. Eugene Farnsworth and Dr. Thomas Dixon Jr.
Motography, January 26th 1918.
The Dramatic Mirror, January 19th 1918
F. Eugene Farnsworth is famous as the man who brought the Ku Klux Klan to Canada’s New Brunswick and Nova Scotia provinces during the early 1920s. Note this is not the Klan of the 1860s, which formed in the Southern US states as a response to “Reconstruction” polices after the US Civil War, but the 1920s era Klan, the origins of which are more obscure and complicated.
A Portrait of the charismatic Farnsworth from the cover of sheet music. Early 1920s.
Farnsworth was the son of a Union (Northern) Civil War veteran and he worked for a time as a traveling magician, until he was charged with manslaughter after his wife was crushed by a boulder during one of his acts. After this charge, he got a job as a photographer for the Boston Herald— from his post at the newspaper he began to make strange connections.
In January 1918 Farnsworth went into business with Isaac Wolper to produce an anti-socialist movie called “The One Woman”, which was written by Thomas Dixon, the author of “The Clansman”, the book that inspired D. W. Griffith’s anti-war movie, “The Birth of a Nation”. “The Birth of a Nation” was produced at the time Imperial German interests were keen to keep US forces out of WWI. Wolper decided to produce “The One Woman” in the wake of the 1917 Russian revolution— events which had also made NY financier Jacob Schiff, Imperial British agent William Wesley Young, and others sit up and pay attention.
According to Allan Bartley (an intelligence analyst formerly employed by Canadian security) in his 2020 book “The Ku Klux Klan in Canada”, Farnsworth had the personal charisma of a great showman, much like Mischa Appelbaum. “The One Woman” was a flop, but also much like Flo Ziegfeld’s brother, Farnsworth was given financing to go on a photographic adventure in the wake of this cinematic failure. (Farnsworth’s trip happened at roughly the same time as William K. Ziegfeld’s expedition to document the Russian existence of W. D. Haywood, who had served on the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America.) Farnsworth traveled to Puerto Rico and onward into South America, reportedly to document head-hunters (instead of Bolsheviks!). Bartley doesn’t class the head-hunter photography as part of Farnsworth’s Klan work, but as “itinerant “educational research””. Of course, the educational potential of film was being explored at this time by a number of New York-based experts, including William Wesley Young and the persuasive Charles Urban.
Exhibitors Herald, May 1st 1920.
Farnsworth next appeared back in Boston in 1922, as head of a Nativist organization called the Loyal Coalition. From here, he became head of the regional Klan for about 18 months, moved into a mansion, and was then expelled over obscure money problems. (For commentary on this second incarnation of the Klan and the 1930s pornography business, see my post on Albert Dezel.) Farnsworth drops from the print record at this time, but he did last longer than Mastercraft Photo-Play Corp., which went away in 1917. Isaac Wolper, however, did not go away.
Isaac Wolper’s next move was to incorporate a second firm, the Mayflower Photoplay Corporation, along with investment partner Benjamin A. Prager. Mayflower’s “Articles of Organization” are listed in the the image below, which comes from “Abstract of the Certificates of Corporations Organized Under the General Laws of Massachusetts, for the Year Ending November 1918.” Wolper had a knack for choosing slippery business partners.
Benjamin A. Prager was almost certainly a white-collar criminal, and was tried for serious financial crimes in Massachusetts. I cannot find out the outcome of his 1922 trial without traveling to MA, however I can say that the Supreme Court in Suffolk County, MA felt the allegations against him substantial enough for the trial to go forward when Prager tried to have the case dismissed. Allegations were very specific: Prager used his position as a director at the Boston-based Cosmopolitan Trust Company to embezzle $700,000 with which to fund Mayflower and another firm called the Rainbow Film Company. (Prager also allegedly stole at least another $800,000 to fund a rash of amusement companies in New England.) Wolper made Prager Mayflower’s treasurer, a move he would soon regret, but which had positive consequences for McKay:
Wid’s Film Daily, April 16th, 1920. 1/2
Wid’s Film Daily, April 16th, 1920. 2/2
Isaac Wolper’s ouster from Mayflower happened in April, 1920. To understand McKay’s involvement in Mayflower, we must look back a few months before that April. McKay’s first involvement with the company was on the film-production end of things. The Mayflower Photoplay Corporation was formed with one film already in its sights: “The Miracle Man” (1919). The following press clipping describes McKay’s role bringing “The Miracle Man” director George Loane Tucker to the West Coast.
Tucker was famous for his 1913 film about white slavery and the Galician trafficking network in New York, “Traffic in Souls”, which was advertised as “Six Reels of Thrilling Realities”. “Traffic in Souls” was the story of two Swedish sisters, domestic servants, who get caught up in organized prostitution. White slavery— prostitution— was a topic to which early film producers and financiers were obsessively drawn. The 1918 press clipping below is the first mention of McKay in relation to Mayflower in any capacity.
Wid’s Film Daily, December 4th 1918.
“The Miracle Man” was something unusual in the history of Early Cinema: a religious film based on the Christian Scientist teachings of Mary Eddy Baker and the book of the same name by Canadian author Frank Packard. The film, now lost, carried a message of spiritual redemption, this is IMDb’s summary:
A gang of crooks evade the police by moving their operations to a small town. There the gang's leader encounters a faith healer and uses him to scam gullible public of funds for a supposed chapel. But when a real healing takes place, a change comes over the gang.
In addition to its unusual message, the film was an assault on the burgeoning “star system”, wherein production companies banked on a handful of stars’ names to sell their product. “The Miracle Man” was a record-breaking hit with absolutely no star-power. William Wesley Young’s boss Benjamin B. Hampton explains the film’s impact in his 1931 book “A History of the Movies”:
A History of the Movies, Benjamin B. Hampton, 1931 1/2
A History of the Movies, Benjamin B. Hampton, 1931 2/2
The success of “The Miracle Man” lifted everyone’s boat at Mayflower, McKay’s included…
Motion Picture News, December 13th 1919
…. and precipitated the expulsion of Wolper, but not of Wolper’s money:
Motion Picture News, May 1st, 1920.
“The Miracle Man” also unleashed McKay’s advertising genius, allowing him to hire a crack-team of “exploitation” gurus to promote future films, among them R. A. Walsh’s untitled piece, a staring role in which was to be part of beauty queen Edith May’s prize. The clip below describes McKay’s efforts putting his ad team together in March 1920; the first press mention of the NSBC would come in May.
Motion Picture News, March 27th 1920.
This crack-team of ad men included the type of operator who could deliver actress Anna Q. Nilsson to your yacht. (See below.) McKay must have established his contacts with the Shallenbergers at Photoplay Magazine and Ziegfeld at the same time he formed his ad-team; more than likely this outreach was done through Albert W. Sobler, the “news exploitation” expert. Sobler would have had the press connections necessary construct a facade for the management of the National Salesgirls Beauty Contest via the “Newspaper Enterprise Association” and hacks like “Friend Lady” a.k.a. Zoe Beckley. It says something about the reputation of the Shallenbergers that both Mayflower and Ziegfeld wanted to obscure the beauty contest’s association with the doctors.
Motion Picture News, August 14th 1920.
Anna Q. Nilsson, a Swedish actress made famous through American early film business networks. Date unknown, but probably the mid 1920s.
A naked housemaid? Anna Q. Nilsson in fantasy colors on the cover of the Shallenberger’s November 1920 Photoplay. This would have ran about the time Edith May’s syndicated newspaper column was making its last runs.
I’ve written about the promotion of the National Salesgirls Beauty Contest and the promotion of Alfred Cheney Johnston via the New York Times company— both would have been the product of McKay’s “Field Exploitation Force”. The group was also able to count on support from NYC’s mayor:
Exhibitor’s Herald, Nov 13th 1920.
(Curiously, a later Mayor of New York City— which is an elected post— was also on cozy terms with Flo Ziegfeld’s girlie shows. You can read about that in Kahn and Ziegfeld: Glorifying the American Girl.)
McKay used Mayflower’s short-lived success to promote himself too, never missing a chance to provide editorials to trade publications on various industry issues— most of which are quite light on content, but certainly kept the “Mayflower” name in the press. McKay also fed on the dissolution of Mutual Film, some assets of which found their way to the new First National corporation. Not only did Mayflower sign on old Mutual talent Raoul Walsh, but McKay arranged for the distribution of Mayflower films through First National— films that would never come to be.
As quickly as Mayflower’s star rose, it fell. Edith May left New York, all her contracts unconcluded. A key Mayflower employee (Larkin, the director of publicity and advertising) left ship as early as February 1921. McKay tried to distract from highly-publicized delays and product no-shows with increasingly desperate sounding publicity statements:
The Motion Picture Magazine, April 1921
I don’t know what McKay meant by “an even greater sensation than the legitimate offering”, however, it appears that Metro Pictures was working on a project of the same name at the same time, according to the Columbia University Women Film Pioneers Project’s biography of Natacha Rambova (Mrs. Rudolph Valentino):
This meeting between the two was the start of a great artistic relationship. Aphrodite (1921), [Alla] Nazimova’s film for which Rambova designed all sets and costumes, was their second collaboration. It was never completed. Undertaken by Metro Pictures as a project to adapt a successful Broadway show, Aphrodite was terminated by the studio, which feared new censorship laws.
It is strange that Mayflower, the maker of the Christian Scientist “The Miracle Man”, would next offer a film about the Greek goddess of love that was obviously offensive to censors. “Aphrodite” was a separate project to the one R. A. Walsh was working on that would have featured Edith May, and would cost the company $500,000, according to McKay.
Then, the bottom fell out:
Wid’s Film Daily, March 2nd 1921
McKay responded by taking a cool $15,000,000 and incorporating another firm in the great state of Delaware…
Wid’s Film Daily, May 26 1921
… and announced his exit from the film business two days later!
United States Investor, May 28th 1921. 1/2
United States Investor, May 28th 1921. 2/2
The Canadian Connection in early film isn’t any stinkier than the rest of the industry, but the prominence of both Canadians and Brits in the beginnings of the American film industry— an industry which now leads (some would say smothers) the world— is remarkable. I look forward to elucidating these connections further in the future!
