The Forgotten Forerunners

talking about Rosa Parks in the nineteen fifties. We're in New York City and we're talking about the eighteen fifties. They tell her to get up, and she resists. Yeah, she said no. And I'm pretty sure you've never heard of this woman. Her mark on history has all but disappeared. And she's not alone. In this episode. We'll also tell you the story of the first black Major League Baseball player,

and no, his name is not Jackie Robinson. To rewind a few decades, you know, from nineteen forty seven back to eighteen eighty four actually, and will introduce you to the woman who ruled Hollywood one hundred years ago. At several points, she was the highest paid director in the industry, the highest paid female, a man, woman or child. As one reporter put it, I'm mo Rocca and this is mobituaries,

this moment the forgotten forerunners Jesse. The other day, one of the fine citizens of our community is as Rosa Parks, was arrested because she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger. That was the Reverend doctor Martin Luther King Junior, speaking about the Montgomery bus boycott in nineteen fifty five. Off when civil rights icon Rosa Parks stood her ground by sitting, but another African American woman struck her own blow for justice a false century earlier.

She's really the Rosa Parks of New York, and most New Yorkers, most Americans, have no idea. Her name was Elizabeth Jennings, and Amy Hillharth wrote a book about her called Streetcar to Justice. Last summer, Amy and I retraced Elizabeth's footsteps around the once infamous Lower Manhattan neighborhood known as Five Points. You may remember it was the setting of the Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York, The Five Points, Murderer's Alley, brickbat Mansion, The Gates of All.

I think it was the dirtiest, most disgusting place imaginable. I think if you think of the worst smell you've ever smelled, and multiplied by a thousand on a second, have you been on the sea train lately? Amy's right, City life was especially filthy. Back then the streets were covered in horse manure, with wild hogs running a rampant alongside open sewers. No surprise, life expectancy was only forty

years old. Amy and I met up on a sweltering day, just like it was on July sixteenth, eighteen fifty four, when Elizabeth headed to church to practice the organ with the choir. She was wearing these long sleeved jacket over a long dress that went down to her ankles, with layers of petticoats and choruses and so on. Must have been miserable. You know, I'm taking advantage of the fact that this is audio only. I'm wearing shorts and I'm still hot. In other words, Elizabeth Jennings is an upstanding

churchgoing woman, a school teacher, no less. All she wants to do is board a horse drawn street car, the public transportation of the day, with her good friend Sarah Adams. But certain rules got in the way. In New York City, like most northern cities at the time, there was both dejoe legal and sort of de facto segregation and discrimination. Leslie Alexander is a history professor at the University of Oregon and has written about the black experience in New York.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they had particular street cars that were designated as colored street cars. Now, a black person could ask to board the cars designated for white people, but if any white person on that particular car objected to the presence of a black person, you, in theory, would be ejected. Remarkably, we know exactly what happens that day from contempt Brainy's news accounts. Jennings is running late and the first car to arrive is for

white passengers. There are empty seats, so Elizabeth climbs aboard, but the conductor says, hold it, you need to wait for the next car with your people in it. That other car does pull up, but it's full. Elizabeth isn't budging, She's bold in a variety of ways. Here's Professor Alexander reading Jennings's own detailed account published at the time in the New York Daily Tribune. I answered again and told him I was a respectable person born and raised in

New York, did not know where he was born. The conductors an Irish immigrant, that I had never been insulted before going to church, and that he was a good for nothing, impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while on their way to church. He then said I should come and he would put me out. She does not mince

words there. All of those things were incredibly important messaging right in the nineteenth century to say I was born in this country as a result of my birthright, I have a right to be an American citizen and have a right to be treated as such, and I'm a respectable person. Then things turn physical. I told him not to lay his hands on me. He took hold of me, and I took hold of the window sash and held on. He pulled me until he broke my grasp, and I took hold of his coat and held onto that. The

conductor calls in a reinforcement the street car's driver. I screamed murder with all my voice, and my companions screamed out, you'll kill her. Don't kill her. The two men have pushed Elizabeth down off the street car, but guess what, she climbs back onto that street car again. Unable to overpower her, the driver heads full speed to the nearest police officer. The officer doesn't listen to Elizabeth's plea. Instead, he forcibly pushes her off the street car and onto

the ground. She's really beaten up. Her clothes are torn, She's covered with Bruce's Jennings refers to the men as monsters in human form, but it turns out they messed with the wrong person. Well, there's no question that Elizabeth Jennings came from an activist tradition. Both of her parents very heavily involved in the antislavery cause. Throughout her entire life, she would have been hearing all kinds of political discussions

and debates taking place. Hers was a prominent family. Elizabeth's father, Thomas Jennings, is believed to be the first African American to hold a patent for an early version of dry cleaning. It made the family considerably wealthy, and Thomas did this in eighteen twenty one, before slavery was fully eradicated in New York. That wouldn't happen until eighteen twenty seven, but the legacy of slavery in New York was still being

felt decades later. Probably the most significant salient challenge that black people in the North were facing was as the result of the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty, maybe the most despicable piece of legislation in our history. The Fugitive Slave Act mandated that runaway slaves be returned to their owners. It became the perfect pretext

for abducting free blacks from the North. The North essentially became sort of open season for a process where black folks are being rounded up and kidnapped on the streets and sold into slavery. I mean it's horrifying, yes, all the more remarkable then that, during such a precarious time for black Americans, Elizabeth Jennings and her father decided to sue the Third Avenue Railroad Company. Here's author Amy Hill Hearth, and they passed a hat in the church. Everybody pitched in,

and then they went to look for lawyer. Their first choice was unavailable. So the lawyer that they do find, as name that's familiar to presidential history, buffs that's right. And this is how I found out about the Elizabeth Jennings story. You see, I have a thing for obscure nineteenth century presidents. All the guys between Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, lots of facial hair, usually from Ohio. One of them was knocked off by an anarchist, another by an aggrieved

office seeker. If you've watched me on CBS Sunday Morning, you've probably seen me do reports on a few of them. Anyway, one day, I was rifling through one of my presidential trivia books, because that's what I do on the weekends too, on wine and I read about our episodes Heroin and her legal representation by a future very obscure nineteenth century president Chester Alan Arthur. Yes, our twenty first president, and he was twenty four years old, and he actually only

been practicing law for about six weeks. He's really wet behind the ears he was. Arthur would go on to grow mutton chops that would humble any Brooklyn hipster. Quick side note. Decades later, when he was in the White House, he was accused of having actually been born in Canada, the original Berther conspiracy. You can learn all about that in my story online. But back to this story, In spite of his youth, chet Arthur was up to the

task of defending Elizabeth Jennings. Arthur was an abolitionist and he worked closely with her and her father on legal strategy. Instead of pursuing a criminal case, they decided to bring the suit to a civil court. With a civil case, it would fix the situation for everyone, not just find justice for her. So they weren't looking for a conviction for assault. What they were looking for was change. That's right. So if Jennings sought damages and one a new standard

would be set for integrated transportation. The case was argued in Brooklyn before ay of white men. Jennings case was bolstered by eyewitnesses and her own first person account, but perhaps just as important, before deliberations, the judge reminded the jury that, according to statute, rail companies, and there were a bunch of them in New York City, were required to carry all respectable passengers there's that word respectable again,

who were sober, well behaved, and free from disease. This language might sound antiquated to you, but it's the all that strikes me. The jury sided with Elizabeth Jennings and awarded her two hundred and fifty dollars. The Third Avenue Railroad Company was found liable and moved quickly to integrate their cars. The other rail companies were put on notice that they could be sued as well. At what point is in New York's these transportation system fully integrated well.

Some historians say that that was the first major step after the Civil War, there was legislation that was passed that made it official. The case received national attention in antislavery papers. The New York Daily Tribune ran the headline, a wholesome verdict. Was she celebrated for a while? Yes, she was for about twenty five years. It was tremendously significant.

That's Leslie Alexander again. You know, in the nineteenth century, the idea of women of any race being involved in an outspoken way in political matters of any kind was extremely controversial. So for her to take a stand in the way that she did and then allow her story and her name to be associated with this very public case was a huge deal. After the court case, Elizabeth Jennings led a rather private life and her name slowly faded from history. She continued teaching and even opened the

city's first black kindergarten. She also married Charles Graham. They had a son, but he died as a young child. Jennings name briefly appeared in the newspapers again due to the political rise of Chester. Alan Arthur, that once wet behind the ears lawyer was elected vice president in eighteen eighty. Then he became president upon the assassination of James Garfield. Elizabeth Jennings died on June fifth, nineteen o one. I didn't expect to find much, but there were at least

a few short obituaries. Here's the New York Times with the headline aged colored teacher dead. Missus E. J. Graham was prominent in ante bellum raced troubles. Here the item takes note that her whole life was devoted to the improvement of her race. Why don't people know her name? She was just not a person who was sort of self seeking or self interested. She wasn't a person who was promoting herself or her story in that regard. So,

you know, I think that's part of it. But I'll tell you honestly, I think on a deeper level, the primary reason we don't know Elizabeth Jennings story is that it doesn't fit with the narrative of the story that we like to tell about the North. So in order to know about Elizabeth Jennings, you have to know that slavery existed in the North. You have to know that slavery existed in the North for almost as long as

it did in the South. You have to be willing to acknowledge that the legacy of slavery haunted the black population in the North for generations. But we do have to be willing to sort of, you know, pull back the curtains and have an honest conversation. So where are we at the corner of Pearl and Park Row. You in Lower Manhattan. If you do visit the site of the Elizabeth Jennings incident, you won't find a monument or

even a placard. The street corner is actually dedicated to Ira, a fugitive Joseph Dougherty, but thanks to the persistence of some local school children, there is now an honorary street sign for her a few blocks away. Wait, what's up there? Okay, it says Elizabeth Jennings Place. The day we visited, it was covered up under scaffolding. But those who know Elizabeth Jennings story. Still hope that one day this remarkable woman will finally earn a more prominent place in history out

in the open. What I would really love to see my dream is a statue. Now, there is a statue commemorating baseball's great number forty two, Jackie Robinson, But what about the player who made history years before him? The story of our next forgotten forerunner brought me to Toledo, Ohio. When I got into town, I was feeling a little peckish. What's the best thing about Toledo? Well, Tony Packles for number one, and so I hit up legendary Hungarian hot

dog joint Tony Paco's. No, this isn't an ad I've just always wanted to eat there ever since I was a kid watching Mash and heard Toledo and Jamie Farr's Clinger character rave about the place. Hey. Incidentally, if you ever in Toledo, Ohio and a Hungarian side of town, Tony Packo's greatest Hungarian hot with chili peppers thirty five cents.

Tony Pacos is famous for its buns. The walls of this restaurant are covered with hot dog buns autographed by all the luminaries who've eaten at Tony Paco's ever since Burt Reynolds started the tradition in the early nineteen seventies. Bob Hope, Patti LaBelle okay, So Walter Mondale's right next to tiny Tim Don Shula. Oh there's Jibbie Reynolds, Penn and Teller signed the same bun I love Aria Speedwagon at the share the buns. So that's manager Frank Petersburger.

They've got plenty of Frank's here, but surprisingly no Burgers, even though the food is delicious. Tony Pacos isn't the legend I'm here to profile. I'm in Toledo to learn about the first African American man to play Major League Baseball, And no it's not this guy nineteen forty seven. It was the Brooklyn Dodgers Abbott's Field, Jackie Robinson, given the challenge by Dodger owner Branch Rickey, and he accepted. Jackie

Robinson is most certainly not forgotten. When he walked out onto Ebbott's Field to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he changed history. But technically speaking, he wasn't the first. According to this plaque right outside Toledo's minor league ballpark. Here we go Moses Fleetwood Walker. In eighteen eighty three, Walker joined the newly formed Toledo Bluestockings and became the first African American Major league ballplayer when Toledo joined the Major

League sanctioned American Association the following year. Now this deserves a holy Toledo and here on this is considered Moses Fleetwood Walker square. That's Rob Worsinski, the communications guy for the current minor league team. Here the beloved Toledo Mudhens. Mash fans may remember that Jamie Farr wore a Mudhens jury from time to time on the show. But back to Moses. When you ask people who was the first man of color who played the top flight pro baseball

in America, everybody will say Jackie Robinson. But in order for a color barrier to be broken, one head to be set up in the first place, and it was Moses Fleetwood Walker whose mere presence on the diamond invited the backlash that would bar black players from baseball for decades afterwards. Moses Fleetwood Walker was born on October seventh, eighteen fifty six, in Ohio and played baseball at Oberlin

College and at the University of Michigan. Before long, he was playing for the minor league Toledo Bluestockings as the team's catcher, barehanded in those days. Soon after, Toledo's team got promoted to the American Association, and at the time in eighteen eighty four, the American was top flight pro baseball in America. While there were other black players who joined team rosters, including Walker's own brother, Moses, was the first,

but there were no celebrations around this milestone. Just like Robinson Wood, later on, Walker faced intense racial bigotry. There were also threats of lynching his own pitcher ignored his signals. Walker couldn't have been all that surprised. Just the year before, future Hall of Famer and Chicago player Cap Anson unsuccessfully protested Walker's participation in the game Moses Fleetwood. Walker's time

and the majors was short. During his time with Toledo, he batted two sixty three with only one hundred and fifty two at bats. As a catcher in the eighteen eighties, baseball was a very dangerous position to play, and actually he ended up having a series of injuries that season. Played in a fraction of the games. Toledo released him that same season. Walker went on to play in other leagues.

While catching for the Newark, New Jersey Little Giants, he was paired with an African American pitcher named George Washington Stovey. In eighteen eighty seven, they were set to play against Chicago and cap Anson. This time, Anson flat out refused to play if the black team members were put on the field. Newark gave into his demands soon after, baseball officials across the board decided not to sign any more

black players the color line had been drawn. Post baseball, Walker held a variety of jobs, but eventually got in trouble with the law. After stabbing a man to death during a drunken racial altercation. He was acquitted. He did end up in jail later on for mail fraud. At the same time, the injustices he'd experienced inspired him to get angry and political. He wrote a book advocating black emigration to Africa. He had some success in business, but when he died in nineteen twenty four at the age

of sixty seven, there was barely any acknowledgement. But some proud Ohioans are trying to change that. Saturday is Moses Fleetwood Walker's birthday, and thanks to a new state law, he'll be honored on that day every year. Toledo is doing its part to keep his name alive. At the ballpark. Oh my god, it's a Moses Fleetwood Walker bobblehead. And he's right next to Jamie Far. He's between two different Jamie Fars and just across the street at a bar

called Fleetwoods. And it's not named after Fleetwood Mac all right, so we're entering Fleetwood's tap room. I mean, this looks like a pretty serious place for draft beer. Forty eight different types on tap. Hello, there's this picture. There's a big picture of Moses Fleetwood Walker And once people know the story behind the face, they're impressed. Yeah, that is incredible. Oh, Jackie Robinson was the first. That's pretty cool. Goal. Moses.

You can't help but think he died, I'm guessing, not knowing that he would ever be acknowledged as as special or important. It really was a guy who just loved the game of baseball. He wanted to play it. Moses Fleetwood Walker and Jackie Robinson bookends to a sixty three year long journey baseball researcher Larry Lester may have put it best when he wrote, while Walker failed to lead his people to the promised plan, Robinson delivered his people.

Both men wrestled with Jim crow Fleet bruised his knuckles and lost the early rounds. However, Jackie later bloodied his nose and won the fight. Next up, the Woman who ran Hollywood one hundred years ago. Now, let's travel back to the earliest days of Hollywood, somewhere between nineteen ten and nineteen twenty, to the story of one of silent filmdom's most prolific, yet almost completely forgotten directors. How much does this historical amnesia bother you? I mean, it's infuriating.

It's absolutely infuriating, and film historian Shelley Stamp is here to set the record straight. One critic at the time talked about the three great minds of early Hollywood, two of whom will be familiar to most people who don't know anything about early cinema d W. Griffith and Saal speA Mill And the third great mind was Lois Webber, not Lewis Lois Webber. She was the first American woman to direct a feature film, A nineteen fourteen adaptation of

Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. She was also one of the stars. This all took place before movies even had sound. Shelley Stamp wrote the book Lowest Webber. In early Hollywood, she was the highest paid director in the industry, the highest paid female, a man, woman, or child. As one

reporter put it, she was respected. She negotiated very lucrative contracts when she formed her own studio, so you can see she was right up there with names that we associate with the fathers of American cinema at the time, and their legacy endures and hers does not. Last year, a mere three percent of studio films were directed by women, and pay inequity is a persistent issue. But in the Hollywood of one hundred years ago, Lowest Webber was one

of the most respected and highest paid directors. I know, it's like I'm describing some mythical time and place like Camelot that just poof disappeared. I mean, did this really happen? Well, I think the first thing to emphasize is that, yes, Webber was the most prominent female director during this time, but there was lots of other female filmmakers during this time. Right, she wasn't a unicorn, she wasn't an anomaly. And the early years of the industry were open to many people. Right.

When film began in the early decades of the twentieth century, it became really popular, really fast. So there was an incredible need for movies. I mean it sounds like a land rush or something, right, No, seriously, this is open terrain. And you know, once the industry solidified in LA around nineteen thirteen, LA became an incredible magnet for women in particular, and Lois Webber was one of those women. She was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, in eighteen seventy nine and

started off as an accomplished pianist. She then moved on to the theater as an actress, and that's where she met her husband, Phillips Smalley. He started working in the movies first, but she very soon joined him and they worked together as a collaborative team. She wrote the scenarios, they acted together on screen, often playing husband, wife or romantic partners, and then they co directed Who is Leading

Home Here? Initially their build as the Smalley's and their build as a couple, but within four or five years. Weber is clearly the dominant creative force. But as Shelley told us early on, Webber was not a unicorn, wasn't even the first in her field. In fact, the actual first woman to direct films, really one of the first filmmakers period, was Alice G. Blachet of France. We're talking

about the eighteen nineties. She eventually opened a US studio in New Jersey with her husband, right around the time Webber was getting her own start. I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that women were at the beginning of the formation of film language. Here is an article August fourth, nineteen sixteen Lois Webber's are of first magnitude from the Nashville, Tennessee in I mean the middle of the country, you know, is surprised. It's not. Variety is

not a trade journal. Low As Webber ranks with the greatest directors in the profession, and whose success confutes any argument of women's inability to fill posts in a man's field. I mean she was a very important finger. Webber was also prolific. She directed over one hundred short films and in one year alone, when she was Universal's top director. She wrote and directed ten feature length films. This is an extraordinary productivity. I can't really even imagine. I think,

by contemporary standards, it's impossible to imagine. I mean, these days, you know, you wait for your favorite director to make a movie once every three years. Well, you know, the reporters that saw her on set during these years, they talk about how how decisive she was, how in command she was. She had her script in her hand and she was issuing orders, and everybody would come to her for every little detail about wardrobe, about sad, about everything.

I mean, I think she just worked incredibly hard. She's prolific. Is she innovative? So she's not a cookie cutter director. She's not a director that's prolific because she's turning out the same thing again and again and again. She takes on all of these very controversial social issues of her day. She's known as this director who took on birth control and poverty and religious hypocrisy. But equally important, I think is her visual storytelling, which is extraordinary. One of Weber's

most popular early short films is called Suspense. It's from nineteen thirteen. What she's doing is adapting of what at that time would have been a really well known formula called the last Minute Rescue, basically Liam Neeson movie. Yes, yes, the early Liam Neeson. This is pre taken right by nineteen thirteen. By the time she takes it on, it's a very well known formula. She gives her film a generic title to tell us that she's taking on this formula and that she is going to better the master

at his own game. Shelley and I watched the film together. It's only ten minutes long. And let me tell you, suspense is gripping and what's happening here. One of the hallmarks of the Last Minute Rescue is that you have the woman on the phone with police or her husband, and often the phone line is cut, and so that cross cutting back and forth of the phone call is a key element of suspense. What whatever does is she puts the three elements together in the frame. Yes, I

see it. The screen is split in three. There's the wife at home on the phone, the husband at work, and the intruder coming further and further into the house right sawing the phone line, peeking through the door. So we see all three elements at once, and there he is looking right at us. A tramp is prowling around the house and he's good and bad guy's good in this and she's on the phone, and that's Lois Webber playing the woman. She wrote it. She started it as

she's directing it. How did Lois Webber present if she were to walk in here, would you think, well, there she is, that's a groundbreaker or she's a radical? Absolutely not, No, she had what that is What I think is really interesting about her. Her persona was that of a kind of very dignified, married, white, middle class woman. She really presented herself that way. But I think that persona was a way for her to tackle the issues that she tackled.

She describes herself as a missionary in several places that I've seen. Well, she took that description very seriously. Early in her career when she was pursuing music, she was involved in evangelical work in New York, and she really saw cinema as she said, it's it's a meeting where I can preach to my heart's content. One of the

issues that she tackled on film was birth control. In nineteen sixteen, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in America, That same year, Weber directed a film called Where Are My Children, which was considered so controversial that Universal preface to the film with a big, full screen warning to parents not to let their children watch the film unsupervised. The studio also defended the film subject matter by pointing out that birth control had been in the

news fair warning to this audience. Though the film's point of view has not aged well at all, her take on legalizing contraception is very mired in the eugenics of the period. She said, media case for legalized contraception for largely for women living in poverty and for immigrant population. So that's a sort of classic eugenics argument, right, And that's one half of the film. The other half of the film is vilifying wealthy, privileged white women who repeatedly

use abortion to avoid pregnancy. They're not propagating the right stock. Absolutely, they're not propagating the right stock. And so the reproductive politics of this film are pretty distasteful from a contemporary point of view, right, you know, we can't really shy away from that fact. But they were relatively typical of the time. Lois Webber was not part of some fringe No no Now, Lois Webber didn't earn recognition just for her directing. Just when I thought nothing else would surprise me,

I learned about her political career. In nineteen thirteen, feigned Hollywood director Lois Webber gained national attention for another role. She was mayor of the Universal City. Yes, Universal City, the home of Universal Studios. Any family that's been lucky enough to take a trip to Los Angeles and we went as a family in nineteen eighty when I was in the fifth grade, hopefully took the Universal Studios tour where you see the Psycho House and you know, Jaws

comes up and you think it's gonna bite you. What they don't tell you on that tour. The city once had a mayor, a female mayor, seven years before women gained the right to vote nationally. What was this about? Was this a big Hollywood publicity stunt kind of but it was an important publicity stunt. Right. Universal City imagines itself as a place where work in life are combined. Right, that making motion pictures is so fun, that it's it's a community. You live there and you work there together,

and so part of that is having a mayor. But Webber runs on an all female ticket with other women, other Universal stars running as distric attorney and police chief. And some of the publicity was really negative, right about women taking over the Universal city, and the Amazons, the Amazons and you know they hate men and all all this sort of stuff. Now it gets a little calm implicated because Webber didn't win this election, but the guy who did left the studio six months later, and she

took over the job a largely ceremonial post. Really, I don't think it had any real function, but I think it was an important ceremonial post and that it demonstrated to the world that Universal was led by a woman. So why don't we know Lois Webber's name? What happened? I think there's a whole bunch of complicated things that happened with her decline. Once we get into the twenties, once we get into the height of the jazz age

entertainment and Hollywood in particular shifts to more escapism. Lois Webber doesn't do escapist and she doesn't do escapism, and she's out of stab. But there's a bunch of other stuff that's going, yes, yes, which are well, what happens is by the early twenties. The movie industry is incredibly profitable. So so guess what power consolidates. I'm a managing like a bunch of cigar choppers, like guys like the monopoly man, coming in and going all right, all right, all right, ladies,

step aside, because now this is getting serious. There's big money here, and this is a man's job. That is basically what happens. I mean, the studios in order to buy up Holly Theater chains had to borrow a lot of money from Wall Street, and in doing so they sort of bought into a corporate culture which was highly male and as a result, disvalued, forgot about female filmmakers.

So and it happens really fast. You know, by the late twenties and early thirties, when the first histories of Hollywood are being written, there is no mention of Lois Webber or any of the female filmmakers. It's all about the female stars. It's all about Pickford and Swanson. Great, but they are forgotten very very fast, in a sort

of effort to as you say, legitimate the industry. You know, step aside, ladies, Well you know, we're gonna make this very profitable industry legit you could say women in Hollywood went the way of silent films. The Jazz Singer premiered in nineteen twenty seven, talkies became all the rage in the following decades. Women directors were the exception to the rule. There was Dorothy Artisner. She was a big deal in

the nineteen thirties and forties. Then in the nineteen fifties, Hollywood actress Ida Lapino you know her from crossword puzzles, moved on to directing films and later television. And to this day, female filmmakers are told, well, it's never been done before. You're gonna have to reinvent the wheel. Oh my goodness. You know, I don't think a woman can direct a big budget film. I don't think a female lead can carry a picture. I don't think a film

about so called women's issues can be successful. These arguments were one a hundred years ago, and yet we're still fighting about them because we've forgotten. It's a lot easier to imagine something as possible if you know it's happened before. Absolutely, that's why history matters. We talked about the forces that made it difficult for Lois Webber. Did she retire at one point, she did not retire. To her credit, she made her last film in nineteen thirty four, which was

her one and only sound picture. She took a boatload of generators to Kawai. She shot the first film on location on Kawaii. Jurassic Park was shot. You can't even imagine doing that. I mean, it's it's phenomenal. So she That was her last film in nineteen thirty four. She died five years later in nineteen thirty nine, and in those intervening five years, she continued to write scripts. She

continued to try to get films made. She never gave up, even in industry that was became very inhospitable to women, Just like we did for Elizabeth Jennings and Moses fleetwood Walker. We tracked down the newspaper coverage of Lois Webber's passing. She didn't get a ton of ink in the major papers, with one exception, a big front page item in the Los Angeles Times penned by famed gossip columnist had a Hopper.

Hopper paid tribute by writing, I don't know of any woman who has had a greater influence upon the motion picture business than Lois, or anyone who has helped so many climb the ladder of fame, asking for nothing but friendship in return. Hopper added, I have a feeling she wasn't sorry to leave this world for a better one. Shelley Stamp hopes for a better legacy for Lois Webber.

I feel confident that over the long haul, the histories of Hollywood will be rewritten to feature her and all of the other women that were active at the beginning industry. But the more films that come out and the more textbooks that get rewritten, the more at tension that's paid to her. I think we can correct this amnesia. These are the story of just three forgotten four runners, the Pioneers before the Pioneers. But in any story of firsts

and four runners, you've got to be careful. We talked about Elizabeth Jennings as the Rosa Parks of New York Parks is one of the most famous symbols of the Civil rights struggle, But nine months before her arrest, a

woman named Claudette Colvin did the very same thing. And as far as Moses fleetwood Walker well, baseball researchers recently came across the story of William Edward White he played one Major League game in eighteen seventy nine for the Providence Grays White was actually a former slave, but lived his free life as a white man. So was he really the first? I don't know. Maybe proving who was

first isn't as important as we think. Maybe it misses the point that all these people, whether they were first, second, or one hundred and second, had guts and made things at least a little bit better for the people who came later, sometimes much later. Of course, that depends on us remembering their stories next time. On Mobituaries, The Unforgettable Audrey Hepburn, Were you aware that the day of your inauguration,

Audrey Hepburn died? No, you didn't know that. No. I certainly hope you enjoyed this mobid Be sure to rate and review our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. For more great content, including photos of our forerunners, please visit mobituaries dot com. You can subscribe to Mobituaries wherever you're getting your podcasts. This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Meghan Marcus. Our team of producers also includes

Gideon Evans, Kate mccauliffe, Meghan Deetree and me Morocca. It was edited by Ashley Cleek and engineered by Dan de Zula. Indispensable support from Genius Dineski, Kira Wardlow, Zach Gilcrest, Richard Roarer, everyone at CBS News Radio, and Frank Petersburger at Tony Paco's. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart and as always, undying thanks to Rand Morrison and John Carp without whom

Mobituaries couldn't live. Hi, It's mo. If you're enjoying Mobituaries the podcast, may I invite you to check out Mobituaries the book. It's chock full of stories not in the podcast. Celebrities who put their butts on the line, sports teams that threw in the towel for good, forgotten, fashion defunct diagnoses presidential candidacies that cratered, whole countries that went caput. And dragons, Yes, dragons, you see. People used to believe

the dragons will reel until just get the book. You can order Mobituaries the Book from any online bookseller, or stop by your local bookstore and look for me when I come to your city. Tour information and lots more at mobituaries dot com.