Theaters of Goetz: 1913 The Princess in Monroe, WI
Here in Monroe we enjoy a public library where an almost complete set of our town’s early newspapers is available on microfiche. I’ve been working through the Monroe Evening Times (MET) paper from 1910 documenting which theaters were in existence when; what their programmes were; and what else was going on in local politics and the entertainment industry. Having worked through a few years now, I’m in a position to rewrite what we know about movies in Monroe, and maybe the movie industry more generally.
It’s generally accepted among academics that film was first used as a wartime espionage tool during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. I can tell readers now that Monroe, WI had a previously undocumented theater, The Princess, which first appeared in May 1912. The Princess only had Chinese war footage to air— and that for only two days! This anomaly coincided with a US Red Cross fund drive for the new Chinese president General Yuan Shikai. Our local paper, the MET, ran United Press syndicated columns stumping for General Yuan and the Red Cross in the days which followed the Princess’ opening.
In 1912 war footage of any sort was very sensitive material. It could only be obtained through the cooperation of warring parties and the military(ies) supporting the filming. That a small Midwestern town was supplied with copies of such timely film is interesting. It would be fascinating to know where these films played next, and if the same United Press articles were run in their local papers to coincide with the exhibition. (I’ll follow the railway lines out of Chicago and let you know.)
In March 1912 China was reeling after a revolution. The ‘Last Emperor’— made famous through that 1987 Spielberg movie— had been deposed, and General Yuan, who would become their military dictator and then emperor, was sworn in as president on the 10th. Eleven months later, in April 1913, Yuan took loans from a predatory group of foreign banks, the “China Consortium”, represented by our dear friend Max Warburg, as well as one of J.P. Morgan’s Anglo-American financial wizards, Harry (Henry) P. Davison. Of course by 1915, and certainly after WWI, the ‘Americans’ in this group were in the dominant position. Their Chinese Partner Yuan had declared himself emperor in 1915, been deposed in 1916, and China continued its downward spiral under a mountain of foreign debt.
Who was your engraver? A 1914 5-yuan bill featuring the image of Yuan Shikai. The China Consortium was so predatory that Woodrow Wilson distanced himself from it politically in 1913, but did nothing to actually stop the banksters’ actions in China. (He encouraged them to act in a private capacity.)
Max Warburg in 1905. Max was an advisor to Kaiser Wilhelm II and ran the government finance provider M. M. Warburg & Co. in Hamburg, Germany. His brothers include German intelligence operative Aby Warburg; US Federal Reserve architect Paul Warburg; and Kuhn Loeb & Co in-law Felix Warburg. Otto Kahn was a business partner to Felix via Kuhn Loeb. The Warburg family were German Jews with strong Anglophile ties in London; some of the boys had US citizenship/residency.
Harry P. Davison (center with cane) on a visit with the Japanese wing of the Red Cross, for which he served as an executive. Prince Tokugawa is on the far left. Davison’s career will be explained below. Photo from the Library of Congress, 1918.
This 1912 revolution ‘opened China up’ to New York City-based financial interests; financial interests which would consistently use the Red Cross as a cover for their private goals. (In 1919 the US congress had hearings on why the Red Cross leaders— wearing their banking hats— had details of the Versailles Treaty before congress did!) I’m going to talk about these Red Cross bankers and how they relate to other aspects of the Goetz story in this post: prepare for more subs, Civil War counterfeiters, and Broadway magnates, readers!
But first, don’t take my word for it— here are the press clippings relating to Monroe’s most mysterious and fleeting of movie houses, The Princess.
The Princess’ first newspaper advertisement:
Monroe Evening Times, May 6th 1912
The “Amusements” announcement above reads:
CRYSTAL
“Mutt and Jeff" and the Italian Strikers” A wonderful moving picture of those famous comedians. One of those thrilling laughs.
“A Child’s Plea” A drama full of heart touching scenes.
“Does Your Wife Love You?” This comedy will make you laugh.
3,000 Feet of Film. 5 and 10 c.
PRINCESS
Tomorrow— The Famous Chinese Revolution taken from the actual scenes in China. The film of the day. Just out.
The other theater in that ad, The Crystal Theater, was a long-standing business that advertised its nightly fare in the MET every day. The above ad is the first time the Princess Theater was mentioned in our paper— at least after 1910, i.e. if the Princess was in business before, it hadn’t advertised in two years! Even event spaces which only periodically showed movies, like the Turner Opera House, advertised the movies they offered. Therefore I can with reasonable confidence say that Monroe’s Princess Theater began operation on May 6th, 1912.
That the Princess opened with so little fanfare suggests haste. When other new theaters or amusements opened in the city they enjoyed front-page news articles— heck, if there was any sort of disturbance during showtime or novelty shown at the Crystal it got a front page article. This lack of care with respect to Princess advertising also suggests it wasn’t run for profit.
The next day’s advertisement (May 7, 1912) provided more information on the actual war footage shown.
Monroe Evening Times, May 7, 1912.
The “Princess” section reads:
PRINCESS
Special today, the world famous Chinese revolution. First time in history pictures were even taken on the real battlefield. 3,000 feet.
One night only 5 and 10 c.
I’m not sure what they meant by “one night only”, unless the May 6th footage was different to that of the May 7th. Film reel was expensive and it’s likely that these same reels would have been rushed around the Midwest, trying to reach as large a market as possible before they wore out. War footage was an exceptional commodity and the exhibitioners may have genuinely believed this was the first time such material had been shown publicly.
Both the Crystal and the Princess are important to the Goetz story because in about six months’ time both would come under the management of 21 year old Leon Goetz and his teenaged brother Chester. The timing of this management change is important because of the extreme youth of the Goetz boys and the gruesome murder of Tillie Bergsterman in Janesville, WI a fortnight prior. Tillie’s murder exploded Janesville’s entertainment industry and sex trade: all the prostitutes were run out of town and the saloons, pool halls and hotels where they plied their trade were closed. (Smart sex-trade money was leaving town.) More on that in a coming post.
The Princess theater’s ‘Chinese Revolution’ offering coincided with a series of articles in the MET describing horrific humanitarian conditions in China following the revolution, and how money was being collected by the American Red Cross to alleviate suffering there.
Monroe Evening Times, May 9, 1912. “Report of Red Cross Agent Describes Suffering in China.”
Monroe Evening Times, May 10, 1912. '“Cannibalism Resoted [sic] to by Chinese Flood Victims. [United Press]”
Events in China had not made an appearance on MET pages during prior years. Editorship bounced between Howard W. Chadwick and Emery Odell during these years, but Odell was editor during The Princess’ brief life.
After this burst of China-activity, the Princess’ management seemed rather empty-handed. Only a few more ads for Princess showtimes were placed, here are all of them.
Monroe Evening Times, May 11, 1912. I found no indication anywhere of what this “Special 4 reel program” contained. Typically, something truly special would have been front page news.
Leon and Chester Goetz took over the management of the Crystal on October 28, 1912. The next Princess ads came in November of that year. It seems the Goetz boys were managing the Princess by this time, too.
Monroe Evening Times, November 16, 1912. I guess the Princess is selling… something.
Monroe Evening Times, November 20, 1912.
Monroe Evening Times, November 24, 1912.
And that’s it for The Princess. After an astounding first opening featuring sensitive war footage alongside an American Red Cross campaign to raise funds for the new man in China, the Princess is turned over to Leon and his teen brother. Leon appears to have wound the theater up by the end of November, 1912.
None of this makes sense… unless the ‘return on investment’ for the Princess was made up somewhere else. It is conjecture to say that the United Press wire service articles were a coordinated campaign alongside this fly-by-night theater with powerful friends. None the less, the American Red Cross is a volunteer organization which does solicit funds from the public. The American Red Cross’ executive board was also staffed by men close to Arabut Ludlow’s ‘National Bank’ patrons in NYC. Could it be that Monroe’s “country correspondent” bank, the First National Bank of Monroe, did a favor for its patron George F. Baker (1840-1931)? Was this favor named ‘The Princess Theater’?
The American Red Cross is an organization with its roots in the US Civil War: it’s founder, Clara Barton, organized Union nursing efforts which were exploited by lobbyists/journalists like our hometown girl Janet Jennings. Union medical care during the Civil War was an eye-wateringly corrupt undertaking, you can read that sad story in Janet Jennings, ‘Angle’ of the Seneca. The Red Cross was already something like an espionage wing for the Roosevelt family by the time of their 1898 invasion of Cuba. Read about how that affected Leon Goetz’s later life, here.
Any nation-wide volunteer effort will always want/need money. One easy way to get money is to recruit bankers for the effort’s executive board. The American Red Cross had strong friends from J. P. Morgan’s banks and the ‘Bankers Trust’, a wealth-management concern which made money because it was sheltered from federal regulations that applied to national banks. Most of the information in this post comes from the old Bankers Trust’s talkative law firm which still exists, White & Case.
In 2016/17 White & Case published their tone-deaf but valuable official history online. (Read it before they take it down.) This firm was basically founded to be the legal arm of the Bankers Trust. Let’s cut to the chase: Where did all the money come from?
Bankers Trust was a financial scheme designed to short-circuit banking restrictions that had been created to finance the North during the US Civil War; it was George F. Baker’s “phase two” for robbing the nation blind. The American Red Cross was used as a P.R. face for these bankers’ war profiteering.
Details: In order to finance the US Civil War on the Northern side, a bankrupt counterfeit-banknote watcher named John Thompson devised a new system of government-debt backed paper money. (The North had a lot of IOUs, but not a lot of gold.) Thompson advised Lincoln on how to print money to finance his war; Thompson also founded a bank optimally placed to profit from his financial wizardry. This bank was called “The First National Bank of the City of New York” and Thompson chose a 23 year old Quaker named George F. Baker to be the head/face of this bank. Since his mid-teens George F. Baker had been fronting financial schemes for his father based on family contacts in New York state public financing. These corrupt connections made young George useful to the tainted old bankrupt Thompson. (Strong stomach? Read up on NY’s famous Livingston Family.)
With political contacts like these, “Baker Weather” became a euphemism in NYC’s financial world for ‘times of lush taxpayer-guaranteed and risk-free profit’. Much like his patron Thompson, Baker was always on the lookout for young men to recruit. One of these recruits, Harry Pomeroy Davison, was a young teller at a bank run by P.T. Barnum, the showman.
P.T. Barnum is famous for his freak shows, which provided capital for his banking concerns. Barnum is pictured with Charles Stratton, a.k.a. “General Tom Thumb”: “He [Barnum] invented the celebrity wedding, arranging a ceremony for Tom Thumb and Lavinia Warren, midgets appearing at his New York museum, followed by a lavish reception for 2,000. Then he sent the newlyweds to the White House for another reception, this one hosted by President Abraham Lincoln.” What more do you need to know?
Barnum took a liking to Davison and introduced him to his rich friends. Let’s hear how White & Case describe Baker’s grooming of Harry Pomeroy Davison:
Davison soon came to the attention of George Baker, who was always on the lookout for bright, young executives to staff the various banks he controlled. In 1894, Baker hired Davison as an assistant cashier at Liberty National Bank. In 1901, Davison became Liberty’s president and, the following year, was tapped by Baker for a vice-presidency at the huge First National Bank. [That’s our Civil War era bank, readers.]
Davison’s biggest break of all came in 1907 when, as an officer of First National, he worked with the redoubtable Pierpont Morgan in implementing a Morgan-devised plan to stem a nationwide financial panic. As the panic deepened before being ultimately resolved, Morgan was impressed by Davison’s judgment and ability to get things done. Not long thereafter, Morgan asked his friend George Baker for a personal favor—that Baker allow Davison to leave First National to join the Morgan firm. Baker agreed, and on January 1, 1909, the 41-year-old Davison became a J.P. Morgan & Co. partner, the pinnacle of Wall Street success. Four years later, when Pierpont Morgan died, Davison was tapped to manage the firm, although Pierpont’s son, J.P. “Jack” Morgan Jr., became its titular head.
Please note that it was Harry P. Davison who first contacted George Case, of White & Case, when Davison wished to set up the Bankers Trust. Prior to that landmark client, White & Case represented Liberty National Bank (Harry Davison was its president) and Case’s father-in-law’s bank. Davison made White & Case from the lawfirm’s earliest days; White & Case filed the paperwork for Bankers Trust. The lawyers:
Davison conceived the idea [for Bankers Trust] while serving as a vice-president of First National Bank. With the support of his boss, George Baker, he took the concept to J.P. Morgan & Co., which underwrote Bankers Trust’s initial offering of stock and acquired a controlling interest in the new company.
What Davison, Baker and Morgan were doing was finding a legal way to break the National Banking Laws, which were much more restrictive and profit-quashing than state-charted financial institutions like trusts. (Read about that here.) After all, the National Bank system was devised to finance a war, not primarily for bankers’ profit— at least most bankers’ profits. An organization which could credibly manage bank assets as though they were the assets of a wealthy family could cream it.
I highlighted credibly above, because NYC bankers are a shifty lot. The Trust had to have the backing of enough well-placed commercial bankers to give the industry confidence that ‘taking the money and running’ would have serious consequences:
To cement its relationship with the banks, Bankers Trust filled its board seats with commercial and investment bankers. At its founding, the company’s board of directors included representatives of 11 commercial banks in New York and one each in Chicago, Jersey City, Kansas City and Pittsburgh, as well as representatives of three investment banking firms—J.P. Morgan & Co., Blair & Company, and Kidder, Peabody & Co. A Bankers Trust official remarked, with only a bit of hyperbole, that every commercial banker in the United States personally knew at least one member of the Bankers Trust board.
And yes, short-circuiting the National Bank law was profitable. And yes, Bankers Trust continued to benefit from changes in banking legislation:
Bankers Trust enjoyed remarkable success. By 1912, its surplus and capital reached $20 million and its deposits were $134 million, making it—in just nine years of existence—the second-largest trust company in the United States. Five years later, in 1917, federally chartered commercial banks were granted trust powers, allowing them to compete directly with Bankers Trust and other trust institutions. That, in effect, released Bankers Trust from its non-compete pledge to the banks, and over the next decade it transformed itself into a full-service commercial bank. In 1917, it acquired Astor Trust Company, which became its first retail branch. In 1919, its bond department began distributing bonds nationwide. In the 1920s, its trust department began offering pension and other employee benefit plans to its corporate customers. In 1928, it formed a subsidiary, Bankers Company, to begin underwriting and distributing both debt and equity securities. This transformation into a full-service bank turned out to be successful, and by 1928 Bankers Trust was the sixth-largest commercial bank in the nation.
Note how Teddy Roosevelt never trust-busted the bankers, readers. The financial industry avoided attention until the Wilson administration, under which it was treated more gently than Teddy treated tobacco. These kit-gloves took the form of the “Pujo Committee”, a managed-opposition congressional investigation that was to a large extent steered by lawyer Samuel Untermeyer. The son of Bavarian Jewish immigrants, he was a long-time behind-the-scenes NYC political player. (He was also instrumental in in publishing Oxford University’s Zionist reinterpretation of the bible known as ‘The Scofield Bible’, which was a foundational tool for spreading ‘Christian Zionism’ in the USA.) Barnum would be proud.
The outcome of this Pujo farce was the passage of even more bank-friendly legislation in the form of the Federal Reserve Act on Dec 23, 1913. This act gave the same syndicate of bankers compete control of the US financial system through the issuance of “Federal Reserve notes” and removed what oversight Congress had with the previous ‘greenback’ system.
The same cabal of bankers who benefited from the Federal Reserve Act were busy in Europe making war loans to both sides of the WWI conflict. This cabal included Kuhn Loeb & Co., the early film kingmakers. Find out more in Understanding Kuhn Loeb & Co. And yes, more Warburg Boys and Otto Kahn.
But let’s step back to Harry P. Davison for a moment. There are many ways to profit from war and by 1913 working the ‘humanitarian crisis’ angle was a hustle that the self-righteous New England banking community had honed for generations. Naturally, Davison’s attention turned to the Red Cross, a tried-and-tested charitable vehicle for political interests. Davison made sure his lawyers got their claws into the organization:
Davison also relied on White & Case for important matters not related to clients. During World War I, while continuing to manage J.P. Morgan & Co., Davison was appointed chairman of the American Red Cross War Council at the request of President Woodrow Wilson. Case became legal adviser to the War Council at its inception and was later, at Davison’s request, appointed a member of the War Council by President Wilson.
…George Case focused much of his pro bono work and charitable board service on the American Red Cross.
An image from White & Case’s official history book. Cornelius Bliss was the business partner of Col. George Fabyan, sometime Imperial German intel agent and founder of the US’s premiere signal intelligence outfit, the NSA. Thank you, White & Case!
The synergy between the Red Cross, private banking and the War Department through Davison was much stronger than just free legal work, however:
During World War I, while continuing to manage the Morgan firm, Davison was appointed chairman of the American Red Cross War Council by President Wilson. The War Council took charge of all of the Red Cross’s efforts to provide support for American and Allied soldiers and their families during the war and raised more than $100 million for these relief efforts during the ambitious Red Cross campaign of 1917. According to Thomas Lamont’s [J.P. Morgan banker] biography of Davison, that campaign gave rise to “an entirely new standard of giving, in establishing a new scale of generosity that has since been felt in efforts of charitable and educational gifting throughout the country.” After the war, Davison’s proposal to form a federation of individual national Red Cross Societies led to the creation of the League of Red Cross Societies, a predecessor of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
No better man to write the book! (Published by Macmillan, 1919)
In 1912 the American Red Cross was very active in China, that is the ARC was active from immediately after the revolution and the establishment of (what shortly became) General Yuan’s government. While Davison and friends made loans to General Yuan, Davison’s Red Cross supported Yuan’s most powerful adversary in government, Shen Dunhe, thereby ensuring protection for the international banks under all likely political outcomes. According to Bingling Wei’s paper, The Red Cross Society of China in the Beiyang Government Period (1912-1928): A Civil Society Organisation Amidst Political Unrest (2021), the Washington D.C.-affiliated Chinese Red Cross organization (Shen Dunhe’s sponsors) was dominated by “partial gentry and merchants in Shanghai”.
The bind which the Chinese government got itself into is tragically shown by the fact that Gen. Yuan sent John Calvin Ferguson as his emissary to the 1912 International Conference of the Red Cross in Washington, D.C., in order to check the Shanghai/Shen Dunhe cabal there. Ferguson was a long-time Chinese railway consultant and art collector for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Smithsonian Institution in D.C. But don’t think that this Red Cross crowd has any personal grudge against China, their lawyers White & Case were just as happy to sell out the US to Chinese investors in the 2010s and beyond:
More recently, a team of the Firm’s lawyers led by Reiss, Ernie Patrikis and Francis Zou represented Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world’s largest bank in terms of assets, in its 2012 acquisition of the Bank of East Asia. With this transaction, ICBC became the first mainland Chinese bank to receive approval from U.S. bank regulators to acquire a controlling stake in a U.S. bank, either retail or wholesale, or to have a U.S. bank subsidiary by either establishing or acquiring it, setting a precedent for future Chinese/U.S. financial institution merger and acquisition activity…
In 2016, a White & Case team led by Vivian Tsoi and Greg Pryor represented Qingdao Haier, a Chinese company that is 41 percent owned by Haier Group, in its $5.4 billion acquisition of General Electric’s appliances business, GE Appliances, through a hotly contested auction process. Qingdao Haier’s interest in GE Appliances arose when General Electric’s agreement with Sweden’s Electrolux was terminated because of antitrust issues in December 2015 and General Electric began an auction to find a new buyer. The Firm successfully led Qingdao Haier through the process to complete the acquisition, which was one of the largest U.S./China acquisitions in 2016. This transaction was a watershed moment, with the combination of an iconic Chinese consumer company with an iconic U.S. brand representing acceptance in both China and the United States of the ability of Chinese companies to navigate the U.S. M&A environment.
The national security implications of White & Case-style deals is only just making headlines, but it’s been a problem since the 1990s.
I think I’ve made my point as to why National Bank cronies might be interested in drumming up Red Cross donations ‘for China’ via Monroe’s Princess Theater in 1912. I’d like to spend just a few moments now drawing attention to White & Case’s business activities through the years, which eerily resemble those which touched Leon Goetz’s life.
Back in December 2020, I wrote about Mark Hanna’s 1909 illegal arms deals involving the American Shipbuilding Company, which was to build submarines for the British in violation of the US neutrality policy. Leon Goetz had taken out a submarine escape pod patent in 1910 for reasons that are hard to explain.
Turns out, White & Case, the Bankers Trust lawyers, had at least one partner representing the American Shipbuilding Company (ASC) in the 1950s! Weirdly, since the 1930s White & Case also represented US Steel, a primary competitor to Charles Schwab’s Bethlehem Steel. Woodrow Wilson made sure Bethlehem Steel did not profit from ASC’s illegal submarine building…
Roger Blough was a White & Case partner. Thank you, White & Case!
White & Case were also involved in the Hog Island Shipyard, which acted like a subsidiary of American Shipbuilding Company in WWI, as far as I can tell.
“ The New York Shipbuilding Corporation and the Hog Island Shipyard were two other important early clients. Charlie Fay [White & Case lawyer] represented and advised both in connection with their efforts during World War I. New York Shipbuilding built battleships and destroyers for the U.S. Navy at its shipyard on the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey. Hog Island Shipyard, then the largest shipyard in the world and the first designed for the mass construction of vessels, was located across the Delaware in Philadelphia and produced ships to carry war supplies and troops. Some of these ships, known as “Hog Islanders,” plied the oceans for many years after the war.”
Thank you, White & Case!
Thank you, White & Case!
Irving S. Olds was a partner at White & Case, too. Thank you, White & Case!
Hey, look! Another ship named after a corporate lawyer. Thank you, White & Case!
One of my posts, the one on Col George Fabyan, the NSA and Imperial German active measures leading into WWI, has been quite popular. Fabyan’s German spook work was in conjunction with a fellow named Col William Selig, who made his fortune doing film-based PR work for Philip Danforth Armour of Chicago, the notorious stockyardman. As I wrote:
Armour was a wealthy stockyard owner in Chicago who partnered with Mr. Plankinton during the US Civil War to supply meat to Union troops. They were wealthy before the war, but by its end they were fabulously so. Plankinton would expand into the hotel business, founding the iconic Plankinton House Hotel in Milwaukee…
While Armour made his fortune provisioning Civil War soldiers with meat, he is remembered for the scandal surrounding meat he sent for Teddy’s Spanish American War, which was described as “embalmed”. This awful business, along with nasty conditions at his Chicago factory, inspired Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel “The Jungle”. Selig’s 1900 films would help Armour combat the bad press around his Spanish American War deals.
Surprise! Armour was one of White & Case’s pre-WWI clients!
Thank you, White & Case!
Finally, the Metropolitan Opera was a favorite project of Otto Kahn, the London-New York-Berlin international man of financial mystery and kingmaker in the Early Film world. Otto Kahn was president and chairman of the board of directors of the Metropolitan Opera from about 1908 to 1931. Turns out White & Case did Kahn’s heavy lifting when he was no loner able to.
Thank you, White & Case!
Readers, it is one of the pleasures of my life to bring this information to you: truth is stranger than fiction. I hope this background information brings you some peace of mind, in as much that the problems the world faces today are nothing new, but rather the predictable consequences of bad people buying government favors.
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ADDENDUM
Monroe, WI has always had a funny synergy with the American Red Cross.
For instance, there was our Spanish-American War “nurse” Janet Jennings and her creepy D.C. connections with President Lincoln’s junta…
And our public schools were used to sell ARC schlock, as well as being indoctrination camps for the Ludlow banking family, and a feeding-dish for their political cronies…
The ARC also enjoyed Leon Goetz’s support on multiple occasions, sometimes even openly!
