LA Autry Blog

Part X of a Series: To learn more about the Lummis Housebook Digitization Project, read the introductory post So Lummis Pretty Much Knew Everybody, Didn’t He?  For the other posts in the series, click here.

Hello, everyone. As promised, it’s October and the Harbach and the Housebook blog has returned . . .

Drawing and inscription by Edward Borein, 1915.
Charles Fletcher Lummis Papers, Braun Research Library Collection, Autry National Center; MS.1, page 249.

As I prepared this new list, I was particularly struck by the diversity of the men and women who visited Charles Lummis. That’s not to say that the previous lists lacked diversity—just that this one seems to be the best example of it. This list includes, among others, a famed attorney who defended teaching the concept of evolution, a president of the American Olympic Committee, the “Mother of the Hollywood Bowl,” a founder of the League of Women Voters, an important twentieth-century photographer, the first Anglo child born in San Francisco, a Shakespearian actor, an international religious leader, a Uruguayan-born cowboy, and an archeologist who discovered a pharaoh’s tomb. Could any list of visitors and acquaintances be more diverse? What do you think?

1. Clarence Darrow—one of America’s most famous attorneys. He is best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their 1924 trial for murdering fourteen-year-old Robert Franks (at the time, the trial was referred to by newspapers as the “trial of the century”) and for defending John Scopes in the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial,” in which he opposed three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan on the issue of teaching evolution in public schools.
2. Caspar Whitney—an author, editor, war correspondent, and explorer who originated the concept of the All-American team in college football in 1889 when he worked for Harper’s magazine. A strong advocate of athletic amateurism, he served as president of the American Olympic Committee and as a member of the International Olympic Committee.
3. Artie Mason Carter—widely known as the “Mother of the Hollywood Bowl,” she was most active in promoting the Bowl project to the community, raising money, and developing plans for symphonic concerts. The long-standing relationship between the Hollywood Bowl and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra began when the orchestra’s founder agreed to Carter’s request that he donate their services for the 1921 Easter Sunrise Service.
4. Alvin Langdon Coburn—an important early twentieth-century photographer who was the first to emphasize the visual potential of elevated viewpoints and later made some of the first completely abstract photographs.
5. Mary E. Davis-Bucknall—the first Anglo child born in San Francisco (then known as the Pueblo of Yerba Buena), she represented California in its first Fourth of July celebration following its admission into the Union as a state.
6. Florence Canfield Whitney—helped found the League of Women Voters.
7. Walter Hampden—actor noted for Shakespearean roles and for playing Cyrano. He also played the father of Humphrey Bogart and William Holden in the 1954 movie Sabrina.
8. Bishop Ivan Lee Holt —served as president of the Federal Council of Churches in America and the World Methodist Council.
9. Charles Dazey—an American writer and playwright who, after writing for Broadway, wrote for films, including Manhattan Madness for Douglas Fairbanks (who also visited Lummis and signed the housebook), The Mysterious Client for Irene Castle, and Shifting Sands for Gloria Swanson. Lummis noted in the housebook that Dazey was a friend and classmate at Harvard.
10. Joseph Jacinto (“Jo”) Mora—Uruguayan-born cartoonist, illustrator, and cowboy who lived with the Navajo and Hopi from 1904 to 1906, photographing, painting, and recording their daily life. He also visited many of the Spanish missions in California by horseback.
11. Guy Orlando Rose—an American Impressionist painter widely recognized as one of California’s top Impressionist painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
12. Charles T. Currelly—Canadian-born clergyman and archeologist who was the first director of the Royal Ontario Museum from 1914 to 1946. In 1903, he discovered the tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Ahmose I and a stone that revealed the parentage of the founders of Egypt’s eighteenth dynasty.

In the next issue of this blog, you will meet a female physician who founded the United States Army Nurse Corps and became famous for her medical work with both the U.S. and Japanese armies. Because of her accomplishments, she was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. You will also meet an abolitionist and suffragist who had a major impact on the development of Los Angeles. See you soon.