Solving ‘Why Girls Leave Home’
One hundred years ago this week, railroad agents at Pine Bluff arrested two 18-year-old Jonesboro women for stowing away in a boxcar.
The Arkansas Democrat reported that Miss Ruby Cone and Mrs. Rachel Mahan left home because they were tired of farm work. Alone when discovered, they must have admitted to traveling with a man, because police later arrested 18-year-old Jesse Berry.
The Democrat called them “girls.” The girls said they were headed to El Dorado.
Let us pause here so English majors may enjoy the ironic history of the name.
★★★
Runaway teenagers were not surprising news in 1922, and wandering young women were a social disaster. Were these innocents, led astray? Had their romantic natures revolted at the routine of rural life, causing the bright lights and natty men of the big city to loom in the mind’s eye? Could they possibly be predatory girls?
Unattended 18-year-olds might be anything.
Agents had turned them over safely to Pine Bluff Associated Charities (a predecessor of the Community Chest and United Way) while their case was investigated. Whatever the outcome, it was not reported in Little Rock newspapers as far as I can tell from the archives.
But by coincidence, that week the very popular Warner Bros. silent film “Why Girls Leave Home” was opening at the New Theater, 118 Main St. in Little Rock. (Some sources put this place at 112 Main, but that was Bauman’s Men’s Shop.)
The New Theater (or Theatre) did not show new films. Tucked between retail shops, it was a second-run house. “Why Girls Leave Home” enjoyed its first run at Little Rock in February, when the seven- or eight-reel 1921 silent film caused a thoughtful sensation at the Royal, 407 Main St.
Decorated in old rose and ivory, the 1,200-seat Royal was a prestige house with a gold-fiber screen, a Reuter pipe organ, folding opera chairs, heating, cooling …
The Democrat in those days was heavily, heavily invested in moralizing, and it took a keen interest in promoting the film’s week at the Royal. On Feb. 5, the newspaper announced a writing contest with a prize of $5 in gold for the best essay about “Why Girls Leave Home … one of the pulsating dynamic problems of the hour”:
“Sixty-five thousand girls disappeared from their homes last year, according to a compilation of police records. They were girls from every walk of life and from every type of community from the great metropolitan centers to the smallest country village.”
From time to time, the paper continued, it had attempted to throw light on the problem by quoting the views of social welfare workers. Travelers’ Aid secretaries on duty at the Missouri Pacific and Rock Island stations had seen many pathetic cases, “friendless girls without a place to lay their heads, or without the price of a meal, driven in desperation to the verge of going on the streets.”
“Practical experience and investigation,” the paper continued, suggested that “the typical underlying reasons that have driven girls to break the home ties and run away fall within a comparatively few clearly defined classifications,” to wit:
The cruelty of parents. The lure of the big city. Shattered romances. Town scandal. Fake matrimonial advertisements. The natural craving of girls for romance and fine clothes. And “probably the most prevalent of all,” the deceitful promises of designing wooers.
Intelligent discussion of the question “will probably accomplish a whole lot of good by getting people to think about it,” the paper said. Hence, the Democrat’s essay contest. Contestants were to sum up the problem in no more than 300 words.
Write on one side of the paper only. If you use ruled paper, write only on every other line.
“It has been suggested,” the paper continued, “that contestants might receive some valuable suggestions by witnessing the photoplay touching on this subject which will be shown at the Royal theatre all next week.”
LOST TO TIME
According to IMDb, “Why Girls Leave Home” is one of the lost Warner Bros. films (see arkansasonline.com/627lost). No known footage exists.
Produced in the United States by Harry Rapf Productions, directed by William Nigh and filmed by Jack Brown, the silent drama appears to be unrelated to a 1913 Pathe film with the same title (see arkansasonline.com/627clip and arkansasonline.com/627clip2). That British version is farcical; it hardly resembles the serious social drama the Democrat described in 1922.
I found two synopses of the 1922 film, one from the American Film Institute catalog and another from allmovie.com (arkansasonline.com/627afi/ and arkansasonline.com/627all). They disagree with each other. But the Democrat mentioned a fancy fashion show and an elite nightclub.
The paper said that a good girl named Anna Hedder (played by Anna Q. Nilsson) is accused by her strait-laced father (George Lessey) of stealing a silk gown from a department store. The proprietor, John Wallace (Claude King), assumes Anna is running wild and tells Hedder it would do her good to be arrested (the allmovie.com synopsis says Hedder tells Wallace to hit her).
In fact the gown was a gift from a friend. Anna leaves home and moves in with two gold diggers, Ethel and Edith.
Wallace has a daughter, too, Madeline (Maurine Powers). He’s lenient and naively unaware. But she’s flirting with danger. Belatedly, he finds out and grounds her. So, she bolts.
Madeline and Anna meet at the gold diggers’ apartment.
Madeline is stepping out to shady nightclubs with a scheming rake named Reynolds (Coit Albertson). He entices Madeline to be alone with him, but Anna and the gold diggers arrive just in time to save her virtue.
Anna sends a chastened Madeline home. Then Anna’s father has a change of heart, and he welcomes Anna back. Reconciliation all around!
The Democrat’s judges selected an essay by one V. Craig whose address was “310 Donaghey Building.” The gist of Craig’s essay is that girls leave home because they are unhappy. Unhappiness comes through lack of understanding. Parents are supposed to help their children understand. Therefore, parents are to blame when girls leave home.
“If parents would answer the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of their daughters; teach them respect for moral and physical laws; encourage them to think for themselves; supervise their reading; welcome their friends and, particularly if the family lives in the country, take them about the city and point out its misery as well as its joy; girls would snap their fingers — and not home ties — at the beckoning of the false God of Happiness.”
(To be clear, that’s from the essay the Democrat liked in 1922 and not my opinion.)
A few weeks later, the paper published other contest entries expressing a smorgasbord of differing views. For your delight, I’ve chopped them up and pasted them into a photo gallery at arkansasonline.com/627hit.
The success of “Why Girls Leave Home” inspired a 1926 sequel, “Why Girls Go Back Home.” (Kid you not.) Also a lost Warner Bros. film, its cast included Myrna Loy. And in 1945 another movie used the same title. Its score and one of its songs were nominated for Oscars (see arkansasonline. com/627cat).
I sure do hope that’s more than you wanted to know about “Why Girls Leave Home”!