The US Navy, Organized Prostitution and Hollywood
Since Ancient Greece political theorists have remarked on the usefulness of pornography and commercial sex for pacifying civic unrest. These ideas found open discussion during the French Revolution, but I do not think they were ever dropped from the playbook of unscrupulous governments. From what I gather, the reasoning runs something like this: young men are the spearhead of wider rioting, so if young men can be kept distracted, then a higher level of public discontent can be contained than would otherwise be possible. At the heart of this reasoning is the assumption that the political power of the populace ultimately rests on their willingness to act violently.
Following from the belief that young—or at least single— men are early political actors, unpopular governments can be expected to take particular care shepherding certain institutions— the armed forces, for example. For late 19th century armies, in which soldiers (particularly officers) were increasingly drawn from urban milieus and exposed to materialist ideas, such care was especially important. All over the world at that time favored pimps were allowed to operate near military bases in a sort of quid-pro-quo arrangement with military authorities.
Who were the primary benefactors of this toleration besides unpopular regimes? The dominant global pimping network in the 1900s was based out of Austria-Hungary, specifically the territory of Galicia, and included the infamous “Zwi Migdal” gang, among others, who worked different geographies of the international commercial sex market. This network enjoyed the protection of central authorities (like the Hapsburgs) and joined in an uneasy partnership with different imperial political police forces and intelligence services. Besides dealing in women/children, the pimps could be hired to break up strikes or crush organized political dissent. The pimps were a political tool par excellence, but one that cut two ways.
During WWI, the wisdom of this organized crime/government partnership was challenged from two sides: 1) the social/military cost of venereal disease and 2) widespread cases of tolerated network prostitutes and pimps spying for opposing sides of conflicts. The danger of tolerating potential spies close to military personnel during wartime was forced onto the consciousness the Hapsburgs (and other governments) by high-profile scandals. Information security concerns, in conjunction with (mostly Anglo-American) public outcry against the White Slave Trade, forced military leaders to act.
In the USA, this action took the form of closing bordellos in the vicinity of military installations. Josephus Daniels, the Navy secretary, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, deputy secretary, oversaw the closures. Daniels was a close ally of the Roosevelt political family, which included Theodore (26th US President, 2 terms minus 1 year) and Franklin Delano (32nd President, three terms). Both Teddy and FDR built their power-base from New York state politics and the US Navy.
“Passing Morro Castle as she entered Havana harbor, Cuba, on 25 January 1898. She was destroyed by explosion there some three weeks later, on 15 February. Half toned original image. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.”
Prior to serving as President and vice president (Republican party), Theodore was governor of New York, having been elected to that post in 1898— fresh from his victory with the Navy in Cuba. All was not well in fin de siècle NY, however: “Tammany Hall”-style politics had lead to massive election integrity issues, which were being exported to other US urban centers via slaving networks. While “Tammany Hall” has connotations of Irish immigrant corruption, the reality is that large-scale graft and “ballot stuffing” operations were run out of whore-houses.
One of the more publicized cases of metastasizing election integrity problems involved the Soviner brothers, who came from the East Coast to St. Louis, MO and quickly took over the local commercial sex market. Edward J. Bristow, an historian of the Galician network, says the pair then partnered with a local Police Captain Boyd to “encourage the Democratic vote”. Bristow continues:
That empire collapsed quickly. By 1903 the crusading Circuit Attorney, James Folk [sic], had begun to seek answers to why so many male votes were tallied in streets where only women resided, that is to say from whorehouses. Then one of the Soviner prostitutes came forward to complain, typically, that she had been defrauded by one of the brothers. Raids and arrests followed and the Soviners, always managing to stay ahead of the law, jumped bond and fled to Cuba.
Joseph Folk was a fascinating man and the office of Missouri’s Secretary of State has published a biography of him by Kenneth H. Winn, which I recommend to anyone interested in organized crime and politics. Folk was a product of the same system that benefited the Roosevelts, but Folk chose instead to fight Missouri’s “culture of corruption”, which Winn says “thrived in a manner that Americans today associate with third world countries”:
In the process of prosecuting corrupt politicians, however, he made an important discovery. They all had ties to businessmen—rich ones. Many of the city’s social elite lived in nice mansions in the city’s Central West End. They became collectively known as the "Big Cinch." They owned banks, speculated in real estate, ran corporations, and were powerful lawyers. But here matters got more complicated. Their work gave them extensive business dealings with government. Many of these businessmen were shamelessly greedy, looking for the special privileges that only government could bestow.
Joseph Wingate Folk, Missouri Governor from 1905-1909. He challenged the pimps and won over election integrity issues.
When the Soviners fled to Cuba, they portended bad things to come for the island nation. Cuba was, of course, the island that 1903-era president Theodore Roosevelt had wrested away from Colonial Spain with his “rough riders” a few years prior. For more information about the “rough riders” and their connection to Leon Goetz and William Wesley Young, please see Submarines in the Great Lakes and my writing on Davis Edward Marshall. Sadly, Cuba would become a mecca for the sex trade, which contributed to increasing political repression and unrest, see The Day Leon Goetz Died.
Stepping back from Cuba and focusing again on “Tammany Hall” NY: this murky environment nurtured Roosevelt family fortunes and birthed one of the most successful US political dynasties— a dynasty that oversaw explosive growth in the Federal Government, growth which wouldn’t have surprised Folk. However, the willingness of some press magnates to publish exposés eventually brought NY rot to light and organized prostitution, coupled with other concurrent organized crime, became a national political flash-point.
By 1907, personalities familiar to Goetz aficionados began to engage themselves in the politics around the White Slave Trade, according to Bristow:
In the United States on occasion brilliantly organized campaigns could galvanize the Jewish masses into opposing prostitution. This was the case with the Committee of Fifteen in 1900-01. Begun with the participation of celebrities like Jacob Schiff, the financier, and E. R. A. Seligman, the Columbia professor, this anti-vice committee managed to strike up an effective alliance with the Lower East Side....
Jacob Schiff was the ultimate funder of Mischa Appelbaum’s Humanitarian Cult, an organization designed to control NYC’s socialist movement and use members as a voting block. Appelbaum identified E. R. A. Seligman as the man who actually recruited him to be the face of the cult. Monroe, WI-native William Wesley Young ran the cult’s magazine from his offices at NYC’s theatrical Friars’ Club. Unfortunately, Schiff’s initial anti-prostitution effort did not engage his target audience:
It was impossible to sustain mass public interest and we know the pimps returned. By 1907, with Jewish crime having become a very sensitive political issue providing fuel for advocates of restrictionist immigrant legislation, the Federation of Jewish Organizations pleaded with its supporters on the Lower East Side.... This accomplished little because the Federation was a weak institution...
Schiff tried again, but this time with a “vigilante” squad called the Kehillah: “The Kehillah itself had the support of a broad cross-section of New York Jewry, from notables like Jacob Schiff, Adolf Lewisohn, Louis Marshall, and Felix Warburg....”
We met Felix Warburg’s relative Aby Warburg in the discussion of hermetic influences in Flo Ziegfeld’s heavily sexualized stage shows. Felix Warburg was the other managing partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., alongside Otto Kahn. Otto Kahn of course was an investor in Monroe, WI-native John R. Freuler’s Mutual Film Corp.; a suspected pre-1917 Imperial German “active measures” agent; an activist on behalf of Schiff’s Humanitarian Cult; and a promoter of Ziegfeld’s sex-themed theatrics.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the Humanitarian Cult activities of Schiff, Seligman, Kahn, etc. the promotion of socialist politics was tied to opposing prostitution and ostracizing pimps. Chicago had its demagogues just like NYC: Where Mischa Appelbaum tied pacifism, and then militarism, to the socialist cause, in the Second City Morris Rosenfeld tied anti-pimp action to socialism. This wasn’t a natural synergy everywhere, in Europe and North America (at least) the demographics from which pimping gangs recruited were often strongly socialist-leaning.
Unfortunately, despite these lofty names and deep pockets, organized efforts came to little according to Bristow: “As far as the furtherance of Jewish goals is concerned, there was only very limited success in dislocating Jewish commercial vice.” Conversely, Schiff had fabulous success twisting the socialist movement in support of Teddy Roosevelt’s WWI war-mongering.
When Josephus Daniels tackled organized prostitution, he was taking on an industry that was politically sensitive to his patrons the Roosevelts, as well as politically sensitive to the NYC financial interests which supported his president and boss, Woodrow Wilson. There had to be give-and-take. As the Navy closed the whore-houses, it organized a (poorly supervised) fund to create films devoted to ‘sexual health’— this was a boon to the US pornography industry. I’ve written about that in Health Films and the US Navy. You can read about Leon Goetz’s Chicago porn partnership with Navy Recruiter Albert Dezel, here.
Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels. Naval History and Heritage Command.
In closing the bordellos, Daniels’goal was not simply to end the costs of VD. Daniels wanted to erase the memory of the Navy’s association with prostitution. Daniels began a campaign to censor Navy-prostitution associations in media.
Excerpt from The Moving Picture World, Chicago news section, March 20th 1915. 1/2
Excerpt from The Moving Picture World, Chicago news section, March 20th 1915. 2/2
Certainly Daniels’ claim that “moral and self-respecting” navy personnel exist is true, however in the Midwest we have a saying: “where there is smoke there is fire”. Assuming movie representations of “blue jackets” were as bad as stated above, such representations were probably a reflection of long-standing public perceptions based on experience. If US Navy men weren’t prone to drink and whoring, they would be the first group of sailors in history to boast such qualities: the lifestyle is prone to these vices. Secretary Daniels wished to encourage Americans to ignore their senses and participate in his fairy tale.
Fortunately for the Navy Secretary, fairy tales were movie-men’s specialty and the movie-men loved him. Contemporary film trade journals rarely missed an opportunity to report on Daniels’ attendance at a society function, or, for example, when Daniels made a witty comeback when slighted in a crowd. The sycophancy displayed would probably have made some politicians uncomfortable, but Daniels never appeared to have reservations about being associated with this low-brow industry. The Navy Secretary also enjoyed excellent connections with film leaders— Monroe, WI native John R. Freuler was the Navy’s film executive contact appointed by the WWI Committee of Public Information. (This committee was organized by Ziegfeld investor William A. Brady.) Freuler’s role organizing the industry to oppose censorship made him doubly motivated to pressure every film magnate to get on board with the Secretary’s message.
“President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josephus Daniels, ambassador to Mexico, as they arrived at 4-H Club encampment in Washington on June 14, 1940. In background to the presidents right is Henry Wallace, secretary of agriculture.” North State Journal.
What movie-men got in return was a sympathetic administration at a time when the majority of people were not sympathetic to the moral tenor of the movies. As I stated before, they also got a slush fund for producing high-profit “enlightenment” films. That these films did little enlightening is evidenced by Pennsylvania State Board of Censors member and social commentator Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, writing in 1922:
Venereal disease has lately received a considerable amount of attention and several films have been made to illumniate this subject. Some, like “Damaged Goods” [John R. Freuler's scandalous 1915 production through Mutual Film], are held to have literary support. Others, such as “Fit to Fight,” “The End of the Road,” and “Open Your Eyes,” were called out by the war. I know not in what spirit they were originated, but I can believe that one or more of them may have been born of some honesty of motive. It is barely possible that they may have had their uses in camps or before selected audiences, gathered together to be instructed under the direction of reverent persons. But others hold a different opinion.
“We cannot conceive of any methods more mischievous and perverse,” says an English writer, speaking specifically of “The End of the Road,” “Damaged Goods” and “Open Your Eyes”, “than those employed by the producers and hawkers of these pictures” in the British Islands. He asserts that “the stories with the printed innuendoes which accompany them on the screen are almost directly subversive of the real warning which ought to be conveyed. In all their high falutin' asseverations and sordid trafficking in Scriptural texts, the dominant feeling with which one comes away from such films is that, if one cannot be 'good' one should be 'careful.'”
Continuing his observations, concerning “The End of the Road” in particular, the writer says: “The reasons for condemning sexual promiscuity are founded on the deepest moral principles, yet these are completely neglected in the film. The appeal to idealism and purity of life is never hinted at. All that is left is a crude appeal to the emotions by as silly a story as it is possible to imagine; the whole effect of which on the minds of the susceptible can only be to transform illicit sexuality into a speculative adventure which may have no bad consequences (for the man) if treated in the right way.”
As for “Open Your Eyes,” he adds that its whole lesson amounts to nothing but that 'with a moderate degree of caution the dangers of syphilis may be overcome' and that the 'services of a recognized medical practitioner are preferable to those of a quack.” [London Quarterly Review for July 1920, pp. 180-81.]
I have not been able to find a list of “enlightenment” films funded by the Navy’s health-film slush fund, which was created by the 1919 Chamberlain-Kahn Act. I suspect none such exists. Of those mentioned by Oberholtzer above, “Fit to Fight”, “Open Your Eyes” and “The End of the Road’ are likely Chamberlain-Kahn funding recipients. In regard to “Open Your Eyes” in particular, I remind readers of the important role some venereal disease doctors played in the Galician network.
While pornography might have bought off the pimps with enough cash to finance film production, what about the prostitutes displaced by Daniels’ closures? Historian of pornography Dave Thompson details his own theory in Black, White and Blue: Adult Cinema from the Victorian Age to the VCR (2007):
However, the rise of the American stag film did coincide almost seamlessly with the fall of another national institution, the officially tolerated (if not altogether sanctioned) red-light districts that had, since the end of the Civil War, been a feature of almost every major city in the land.
The dismantling of the brothels was a process that had begun in 1910, with the passage of the Mann-- or White-Slave Traffic-- Act, legislating against the interstate and international transport of women for immoral purposes. Over the next five years, virtually every state in the union had passed laws expressly aimed at prohibiting the keeping of brothels, or otherwise profiting from the earnings of prostitutes...
Where did the whores go? Some simply took their chances with the law and carried on as before. Others may indeed have reformed. But there is a third possibility, one hinted at in early histories of Hollywood and which finds further credence in the police reports and yellow press of the day.
Hollywood's rise to cinematic preeminence was a direct consequence of New York mayor McClellan's campaign against the picture houses inn 1908… There, amid the palm trees of Hollywood, on the fringe of Los Angeles, they [movie-men like Cecil B. DeMille] established a new renegade community where movies could be made without fear of interference.... The area's population soared accordingly. In 1910, barely 500 people lived in Hollywood, religiously devout mid-westerners for the most part. By 1930, the population had soared to over 120,000, and God scarcely got a look in any longer.
Many of the young women arrested for soliciting and prostitution in early-1920s Los Angeles (and beyond), when pressed to give their profession, proclaimed themselves actresses. Their logic was impeccable. Even the dimmest cop would have known that far more young women aspired to the silver screen than could ever actually fit onto it, and there were only so many ways of making ends meet while one awaited her lucky break.
A decade later, however, historian Lionel B. Hampton [sic] shed a new light on the subject when he claimed that the motion pictures themselves had rescued many young women from a life of prostitution, stating, in his 1931 A History of Movies, that, in the motion pictures, they found “amusement and recreation and a new outlook on life that propelled them away from the red-light districts and into homes of their own.”
One can take the claim at face value (in which case it appears implausibly naive), or one can read it with the same eye for innuendo that many of Hampton's own readers would have developed from perusing the scandal sheets of the day, and conclude that for any young woman determined to continue making her living from her natural sexuality, the stags arrived at the most opportune moment imaginable.
There is no way of knowing how many prostitutes, “reformed” or otherwise, chose to enter the moviemaking business, just as there is no way of knowing how many of those arrested on the streets of Hollywood really were aspiring thespians....
I have respect for Thompson’s work documenting pornography, but here he has made a mistake: the author of A History of Movies was not Lionel B. Hampton, but William Wesley Young’s NYC theater rag boss Benjamin B. Hampton. Curiously, there are passages in Hampton’s 1931 book which support Thompson’s theory much better than the passage Thompson chose to quote. For instance, a passage dealing with the consequences of press coverage of “wild parties” and drug use in Hollywood:
Producers and distributors were at least convinced that they must get together and create and effective national association. In 1922, they formed the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., and elected Will H. Hays, postmaster general in President Harding's Cabinet, as president....Will Hays soon proved himself a sound investment for the industry.
The producers met the two situations that menaced their progress and prosperity-- that is, censorship and the sensational charges against Hollywood's morals-- by giving Will Hays almost autocratic power. The Hollywood branch of the association, managed by Fred Beetson, worked closely with the studios, eliminated the conditions that made possible the perplexities and dangers of the previous years. Beetson maintains a centrally located employment bureau, the costs of which are paid by the studios, at which extras must present themselves for examination by a staff of professional sociologists. If they pass the tests, they are registered and classified in accordance with the types, or characters, they can represent before the camera, and then are assigned to the various studios when their services are needed. The scientific handling of this phase of studio activity by Beetson's organization has removed the possibility of prostitutes defaming the profession by declaring themselves actresses, and scandals have thus been reduced to a minimum.
According to Hampton, Hollywood’s ‘displaced prostitute’ problem was so bad that Fred Beetson had to implement an industrial-scale vetting process. Who was this Beetson?
Fred Beetson is one of those shadowy early Hollywood potentates whose career offers a wealth of information on the industry. According to CentralCasting.com:
The first Academy Awards
As the film industry really began to take off in the mid-1920s, producer Louis B. Mayer, west coast chief of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), set out to create a group that would serve the needs of film producers and settle labor disputes. In 1927, Mayer met with Fred Beetson, secretary of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America and president of Central Casting, actor Conrad Nagel, and director Fred Niblo to lay the groundwork for his envisioned organization. From this meeting the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the body responsible for the Academy Awards, was formed.
Two years later, on May 16, 1929, the Academy presented 15 awards to actors, directors, and other industry members during a private ceremony at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
Who would have suspected that “Central Casting” started out as a filter for the “scientific” identification of prostitutes? (How was that done, exactly?) Certainly in the early twentieth century many things were inaccurately labeled “scientifc” in an attempt to give them credibility. Judging by Central Casting’s longevity, Beetson’s operation was, to an extent, successful at weeding out prostitutes who didn’t understand the Hollywood game.
Courtesy ActingPlan.com
As time went on, Beetson became something of a “fixer” for all that ailed Hollywood’s motion picture industry and a driving force behind the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an invite-only professional organization and originator of the “Oscar” awards ceremony. According to Britannica.com:
The academy was created in 1927 by 36 film industry leaders after Louis B. Mayer, the head of the powerful Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, actor Conrad Nagel, director Fred Niblo, and producer Fred Beetson had the idea for a new industry organization for handling labour disputes, promoting harmony among the different branches of film production (the academy’s original branches represented actors, writers, directors, producers, and technicians), improving the public image of the film industry, and providing a common ground for the discussion of new production procedures and technologies. Never an effective arbiter, the academy abandoned labour negotiations by 1937, and its focus became cultural and educational.
One of the early committees formed within the academy was assigned the task of considering awards presentations. From this committee evolved the function for which the organization is best known: the annual presentation of the Academy Awards, gold-plated statuettes (traditionally called Oscars) symbolizing recognition for excellence in acting, directing, and other areas of motion-picture production.
“The Oscars” have become one of the most recognizable aspects of American Culture: the hours-long rite is televised so that audiences can see perfectly coiffed celebrities (mostly) behaving themselves. Quite often this is not how recipients behave off the screen— a duality which gave birth to the public relations event and is true to its roots.
I’m going to end this post by reminding readers that the Ancient Greeks— or at least some of them— understood the political utility of pornography as well as people’s propensity to believe in fairy tales, especially when reality is painful. They had more than a passing acquaintance with the use of naval power for domestic political ends, too. I think they would look on our modern “Cloud Cuckoo Land” and roll their eyes.
“Men dressed as birds”. Courtesy of Cornell College.
