At least they tried: May 1916

Rembrandt’s version of St. Paul. One hundred and ten years ago this month, Grace Kingsley wrote about a new film company: The expected has happened—a motion picture company organized and controlled by women. The American Woman Film Company is its name, and its finances are backed up almost entirely by wealthy literary society women of this locality, whose avowed intention it is to produce motion pictures of the highest moral and artistic tone. May Whitney Emerson. Mary Mallory has written an excellent biographical article about her. I’m surprised that Kingsley expected a women-run studio to come along, but I’m less surprised that they felt they need to justify themselves by making movies that would improve the audience. The company’s president was May Whitney Emerson, “a writer of national reputation,” and it was set up to adapt her stories into films (I guess that’s why ‘woman’ was singular, not plural). The vice president was Alice L. McCaldin, who Kingsley called “a prominent…