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The View from Behind the Camera: My Family and
Old Hollywood
Old Hollywood
By Ginny Kubitz Moyer
In late 2018, when my son Luke was in fourth grade, he was assigned a report highlighting an aspect of California history. He chose the history of Hollywood, so we headed to the library to do research. There, we found that the movie industry was not a popular subject for middle grade authors; children’s books on the topic were as scarce as SoCal rain in July. I told Luke I’d find some adult sources to use, and we’d go over them together.
To be honest, I embraced the task, because I’ve always loved old Hollywood. In high school, I decorated my bedroom with a poster of Casablanca and black and white photos of 1940s movie icons. I loved actors from the Golden Age of movies more than actors my own age; there was something about their class, elegance, and talent that captivated me.
On an even deeper level, I’ve always felt a personal identification with old Hollywood because of my family history. My great-grandfather, William S. Adams, was a cinematographer in the silent movie era. His career began in his native Brooklyn, but in the mid-1920s, when the movie industry started shifting from the East Coast to California, William followed it west. He later sent for his wife and two young daughters (the elder, Ruth, was my grandmother) to join him. The family put down roots in Southern California, where my great-grandmother herself later found work in the movie industry as a film cutter for Warner Brothers.
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| The Adams family, on location in southern California, approx. 1926. Left to right: Ruth (my grandmother); William S. Adams; Ruth Lillian Owen Adams; Jessamyn Adams. |
William’s films were mostly adventure stories, including several “flying ace” movies with exciting aerial stunts. Some of the equipment he used can be seen in a photograph from the February 1927 issue of The Motion Picture Director of Hollywood, which features William and two fellow cinematographers posing proudly with their cameras. Overall, from 1913 to 1930 William worked on at least 34 films for directors such as Ralph Ince and James Stuart Blackton (William’s half-brother and the founder of Vitagraph Studios). One of these films apparently featured a very special bit player: my grandmother, who as an infant was pressed into service when the director needed a baby for a particular scene. Like many actors of the era, alas, her starring turn has been lost to time.
One hundred years later, it’s astonishing to me that my great-grandfather’s cinematography took him quite literally around the world, including to China and Fiji. He always brought back souvenirs, usually dolls, for my grandmother. Tragically, William’s travels led to his early death; he contracted malarial fever while on location in Borneo, and he died in Hollywood in December 1930. My grandmother, only eleven at the time, kept the dolls he gave her for the rest of her life. The history they represented was always a source of fascination to me.
During that winter of 2018-2019, as I helped Luke with his research (and told him his great-great-grandfather’s story), I gained a new feel for those heady early days of Hollywood. I gained a stronger sense of the historical arc of the motion picture industry. And the more I read, the more I wanted to explore old Hollywood, and the experiences of those who lived and worked there.
Simply put: I wanted to write a novel about it.
As a writer, I often have vague ideas for characters before any other details take shape. Prior to Luke’s project, I’d been captivated by the idea of a secretary and her boss on a road trip. I didn’t know much about either character, or why they were traveling together—but with the Hollywood history so fresh in my mind, it occurred to me that my protagonist could be a secretary in a movie studio, and her boss could be a producer. That idea had energy behind it. I was excited to explore it further.
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| William S. Adams, far right, with Conrad Luperti and J. Marvin Spoor. (Wikimedia Commons) |
So after Luke’s report was finished, I kept on researching. I decided to set my story in 1938, the Golden Age of Hollywood, and my deep dive into the period was utterly absorbing. I read about the powerful studio system of the time, which helped me design my fictional VistaGlen Studios from producer Lawrence Merrill’s corner office down to the backlots. I perused old movie magazines, getting a feel for the breathless publicity campaigns that propelled new actors to stardom (and which inspired the rise of my fictional ingenue Belinda Vail). And watching movies from the late 1930s immersed me in the fashion, slang, and manners of the time, a delightful kind of research that helped me bring my secretary protagonist, Frances Healey, to life.
I wish — how I wish— I could have sat down with my great-grandfather and heard his stories of the movie industry. It pains me that those experiences are not recorded for posterity. But although A Golden Life is pure fiction, I’ve tried my best to make it an accurate portrait of this unique slice of American history. I hope it faithfully captures the flavor of 1938 Hollywood, a place that was equal parts glamour and grind for secretaries and stars alike.
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Ginny Kubitz Moyer is a California native with a love of local history. Her novel A Golden Life, which earned a starred Kirkus review, moves from 1938 Hollywood to the Napa Valley. Her novel The Seeing Garden, which won Silver in the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Historical Fiction, brings to life the vanished world of the San Francisco Bay Area's great estates. An avid weekend gardener, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and one rescue dog. Learn more at ginnymoyer.org.
Instagram: @moyerginny
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