Cathrine Curtis
Cathrine Curtis (1889–1955 or 1962) was a film actress, investment consultant and the founder of the isolationist organization "Women’s National Committee to Keep the U.S. Out of War".
Life
Cathrine Taylor was born in Syracuse, New York to parents George M. and Flora Beach Taylor. As a child she had private tutors and later attended New York University but did not graduate. She moved to Arizona and meet novelist Harold Bell Wright. Wright invited her to Hollywood to star in a film of one of his novels The Shepherd of the Hills (1941). She had a successful film career and became a producer. Her most acclaimed film was The Sky Pilot (1921).
- Cathrine Curtis Taylor was born in Syracuse New York on November 9, 1889. Her parents, George M. and Flora Beach Taylor already had one daughter, Blanch. Flora Taylor died just a few years later in 1897 and Mr. Taylor became a hotel keeper. He ran the Rockwell House in Glens Falls, New York. Curtis later told interviewers that he was a “New York capitalist,” but the Federal and New York censuses disagree. She married Perit Coit Myers, a hardware salesman from Yonkers, in December 1911 and they moved to Phoenix, Arizona where they bought a ranch in June, 1912. They had a daughter, Gretchen, on March 6, 1913. She met author Harold Bell Wright, a fellow Arizonan, who was preparing to make his novel, The Shepherd of the Hills, into a film. He thought she looked so much like the main female character, Sammy, that he cast her despite her lack of acting experience. Shooting took place from 1917 to 1918 in California and the Ozark Mountains in Missouri. As she told the assembled journalists in 1919: “I became immensely interested in the subject of picture making while playing in Mr. Wright’s feature.” The rest of her family also left Arizona: on the day of the 1918 draft Perit Myers was living at the Yonkers YMCA, and by the 1920 Census Gretchen Myers was living with her aunt and uncle, Blanch and Garrett Veeder, in Schenectady, New York (he was the vice president of a paper company there). After her press luncheon, Curtis got right to work on her first feature, hiring George Foster Platt (who’d just directed Helen Keller in Deliverance) to direct, Edward S. Curtis, noted photographer of Native Americans as the cameraman, and Western star Tom Santschi as the leading man. No leading lady was announced, so there might have been truth in Kingsley’s speculation that Curtis planned to act in it herself. They traveled to Hayden Lake, Idaho for some location shooting. In October, Camera reported that Santschi had been twice kicked by a horse, breaking three ribs and fracturing his arm. He went to the hospital in Spokane, Washington where the local Chamber of Congress honored the cast and crew with a dinner. After that, there was no more news about the project and it was never finished. Next, in June 1920, she bought what she thought were the rights to make The Lost World, so after quite a bit of script work and planning, she got to be part of the messy lawsuits that were eventually settled after the film got made by First National in 1925. Undaunted, she dove right in to her next project and had more success. She bought the film rights to Ralph Connor’s book The Sky Pilot and hired King Vidor to direct. Colleen Moore starred as the evil cattle baron’s daughter who gets injured in a stampede, but regains the ability to walk when she saves a minister (aka the sky pilot) from a burning church. They shot it on location in the Canadian Rockies and Truckee, California in September to December 1920. The film opened in New York City on April 17, 1921. It was the only time Vidor and Moore worked together, but they stayed friends for the rest of their lives. On April 17, 1924 Curtis married Joseph S. O’Neil in Baltimore, MD. He was a lawyer in private practice in Binghamton New York. However, by early November of that year she was living under the name Cathrine Myers at the Hotel Vanderbilt in New York City – that’s the address she gave when she filed a petition for personal bankruptcy. They divorced in July, 1929.[1]
She became independently wealthy and moved to New York City where in 1934 she hosted the radio program Women and Money. On her program she was critical of New Deal economic policies. The program was cancelled in February 1935 due to her criticism of the Roosevelt Administration. Her supporters were outraged over the cancellation and began to offer her invitations to speak at public gatherings. Eventually her supporters encouraged her to start a women’s investment organization which led to "Women Investors IN America, Inc." being formed in May 1935. By 1939 the group had over three hundred thousand members. The Women Investors group took a decidedly aggressive bent against FDR and the communist menace.
Cathrine Curtis became “Jew-wise” and subscribed to a host of nationalist and anti-Jewish publications including Industrial Control Reports published by James True and Michael Ahearn, American Vigilante Bulletins by Robert Edmondson and publications from World Service in Germany. She was said to have been romantically linked to Michael Ahearn.
On 20 September 1939, she formed Women’s National Committee to Keep the U.S. Out of War. The aviator Laura Ingalls was one of the first women to have joined her group. Later that month Ingalls flew over the White House and drooped peace pamphlets addressed to Congress and written by Cathrine Curtis.
- Cathrine Curtis, born 1889 in Albany, New York, was one of the first female film producers. After a short acting career, Curtis set her sights on film production and, in 1919, founded the Cathrine Curtis Picture Corporation with her father, a wealthy businessman. Her company had offices in New York City and Los Angeles. She found initial success with production of the 1921 film The Sky Pilot, but was plagued by legal matters in her next significant project, that of bringing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel The Lost World to the screen. The film was eventually produced in 1925, but not by Curtis. She abandoned the project after being sued over rights to the miniature dinosaur models that were to the highlights of the film. In 1926 Curtis filed for bankruptcy after another failed film put her almost $1 million in the red. Curtis later became a radio personality known for her twice-weekly show, Women and Money, in which she advocated women’s financial independence. However, Curtis also became known for her anticommunist, antisemitism, and isolationist views. She died in 1955.[2]
Family
Curtis was married several times; her husbands included lawyer Joseph O'Neil (divorced 1929) and Perit Coit Myers Jr. Myers and Curtis had a daughter, Gretchen, together. She was known to be very tall.
Pamphlets
- Britain's War Aims (1941)
- The March of Democracy (1941) 12-page pamphlet
- H.R.1776: The Nation's Bankrupting Act of 1941 (1941)
Source
- Women of the Far Right: the Mothers' Movement and World War II, By Glen Jeansonne
