MARY LOUISE SPOOR & CHARLIE CHAPLIN

Mary Louise Spoor, Baby Bunting, chromolithograph 1917. PSAW Collections

Collecting is an adventure. The civilized version of big game hunting. You never know where the chase will  will lead, what roads you will follow. Here, we go from nursery illustrations to the early history of cinema.

A couple of years ago I was hunting at an antiques show. I was fast- walking the aisles, which is how I always do my first scan. I stopped abruptly at  a huge chromolithograph schoolroom poster published in 1917 by Congdon Publishers in Chicago. I immediately fell in love with the Japanese - or Japonism - inspired design. The dealer knew the name of the illustrator, Mary Louise Spoor, but not much about her. 

I immediately began searching for more of her work. I have subsequently found three of the school room posters. Hickory Dickory Dock, Little Bo Peep  and Baby Bunting Went A Hunting.

Mary Louise Spoor, Hickory Dickory Dock, 1917 Chromolithograph. PSAW collections

Internet searches revealed scant information on Spoor.  An interesting conversation among collectors and descendants reveals that Spoor (1887-1985) worked for a brief shining moment from Chicago, publishing illustrations for Rand McNally and Lyons & Carnihan.

Mary Louise Spoor, Hickory Dickory Dock, 1917 Chromolithograph. PSAW collections

By 1917 she was married and pregnant with her first child. She moved to Massachussets to raise her family. And that, as far as I can tell, ended her professional career. She continued painting and drawing private works that would end up in family collections but those works have not yet entered into public circulation. Nor may they ever. What a shame to have access to so small a piece of a life's work

 

ML Spoor from schoolroom poster triptychs, 1917, Pine Street Art Works Collections. Each image is 15'" square.

Before she left Chicago, Mollie, as she was called, went to The Art Institute  and shared a studio with Gertrude Spaller, another young illustrator. Together they illustrated at least two children's readers. The Easy Road To Reading Primer editions one and two.

ML Spoor illustrations, The Easy Road To Reading- PSAW Collections

Here'€™s where the road forks:

Mollie's brother was George K Spoor. In 1907 George founded Essany Studios in Chicago. Essanay was one of the first movie production studios in the US during the blink of an eye when Chicago was the center of US movie production. A couple of years later Essanay built studios in Niles, CA, but kept offices in Chicago.  George Spoor's partner in Essanay (S&A) was Max Aronson, aka Gilbert Anderson, aka  Broncho Billy, the very first film cowboy star .

Broncho Billy And The Essanay Film Company by David Kiehn. Farwell Books 2003

That'€™s right. The first cowboy star was Jewish. Aronson/Anderson appeared in the first great narrative film ever, The Great Train Robbery, then went on to direct and star in hundreds of films for Essanay.

When it began, Essanay depended on, and discovered, local Chicago talent, many of whom went on to become some of the biggest stars and directors in the industry, including Ben Turpin, Alan Dwan, Louella Parsons, Francis X Bushman, Gloria Swanson.

They made 2,000 movies in their ten year span, out of which only about 200 survive.

Charlie Chaplin in drag in Essanay's The Woman  from 1915

Charlie Chaplin was an Essanay star too, one of the first to be hired from outside the neighborhood. He had a contentious relationship with the studio, and left after a few years. His first version of The Tramp was an Essanay production.

It seems not unlikely  that the George Spoor would have asked his illustrator sister to design movie posters for his studio. She did design the Indian Chief logo for them. So far, I haven't discovered any but the hunt is on.

references:

conversation amongst relatives and collectors at Antiques and The Arts

essay on essanay from Chicago Magazine May 2007

Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Niles CA

Comments

[David]

Hi Liza! Very interesting post...I remember The Great Train Robbery and find the information about "Gilbert" and the Essanay studio fascinating. I thought Charlie actually looked better in drag altho his choice of companions could have been better...ps. your first two sentences really strike a chord --as an old auction hound I love the chase.

your Sterling neighbor...

[liza cowan]

Yes, Charlie looked divine in drag. You can view the movie on YouTube and it's really very funny, which is great considering its almost one hundred years old.

Some day, some very long day, I'd love to watch a screening of early Chaplin and Les Enfants Du Paradis to see the two great mimes in proximity.

[Maggie Jochild]

Well, dip me in gravy and call me a biscuit, buckaroos. Larn somethin' new ever day.

Actually, I'm not really surprised about the cowboy thang (though somebody should tell Kinky Friedman) -- the whole mythos of cowboys is wrong from the git-go. My great-granddad Sam Barnett was a real cowboy for the XIT Ranch here in Tejas, and it was NOT a good way to live. Did not attract the best and the brightest, shall we say.

The graphics in those early readers are so lovely, so appealing. But the text was deadly. I guess it had to be, to prepare them for the stulted prose of the Victorian era. I once read Moby Dick over a Christmas break because I ran out of other reading material (living in a trailer in the back of the beyond), and it's still a painful memory.

Great digging and dot-connecting, Lize. Can't wait to see what else.

[CaGal]

Nice to see a positive website about Charlie Chaplin. My hometown is Niles, California. Charlie Chaplin did alot for my hometown.

[liza cowan]

CaGal, I'll have to check out why people are not so positive about Chaplin. Is it his left wing politics? We like those here in Burlington. Thanks for writing.

Mags, the texts in those early readers had vigorous pedagogy behind them but I agree that they are a tad dull to our ears, and would never go down in history as great prose.

Great typefaces, however.

[somepinkflowers]

We hop and skip.
We art and blog.
We read and write
and blog some more.

:-)

We wish you a happy new year.

[laurie essig]

What an amazing story of how to unpack things- literal things, but also other things, like gender and identity and the photographic age. You're good at this blogging thing.

[Debbie]

Hi,

I just bought the Hickory Dickory Dock triptych poster from a dealer at the DC Big Flea in Washington, DC. I had never heard of Mary Louise Spoor, but I have to say that I am now in love with her work. The the triptych is stupendous - it is going to hang above our bed in our rowhouse. I am curious as to how many other triptychs exist, and what they illustrate.

The dealer indicated to me that the triptychs were probably either for schools or libraries. The one she sold me came, she said, from a library.

I have a real love of 20s and 30s illustrations, especially children's illustrations - and even though these date from the 19-teens, they seem to have a bit of the Arts and Crafts/Bungalow feel to them. I think I may have found a new collecting passion. (oh, NO!!!)