[*NAWSA GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE Rock, Jo*] Silver Productions Inc. Jo Rock Managing Director Fox Studio Blog, 450 West 54th Street New York City Universal City California 123 Pall Mall S.W. London, England Columbus 5-7200 Mrs. Edna L. Stantial, July 27th, 1942. 21 Ashmont Street, Melrose, Mass. Dear Mrs. Stantial: Many thanks for your most interesting letter and many more thanks in advance for the books you are sending me. Some years ago in London, I acquired ten British Broadcasting Co., radio scripts for the purpose of producing ten films, based on episodes of the years these stories dramatized. The scripts were called "SCRAPBOOKS" and in some form or other they were like The March of Time. Among the many stories throughout the scripts, I came across the SUFFRAGETTE struggle and many episodes that seemed to me to be most opportune to tackle at this time. I got in touch with Mrs. Flora Drummond (General Drummond, as she was called) and also Lady Selsdon and the Honorary Secretary to the Federation of Women's Business and Professional Clubs. They were all very keen on my idea and Flora Drummond proceeded to turn her entire office over to me which contained all her private manuscripts, books and papers and also gave my two writers as much time as they wanted in preparing their treatment on a story based on Women's affairs from the time just before Equal Rights for Women was a law in England, through the many stages of their fight for Votes up to and including their efforts in this war. Of course the theme and the many episodes are mainly British, altho many of the speeches echoed from all over the world. For various reasons, I have come to America and when my good friend and writer Pierre Loving, read my treatment, he immediately suggested that same be re-written so that we could include American women and causes and episodes well known and some that were never made public, but would be most interesting and entertaining and would further the good work that is being carried on all over the United States. In this respect, we are at the moment trying to come to some understanding with Miss Susan B. Anthony, whereby we will have the right to work from her book, which is in the process of publication. I understand that Eleanor Roosevelt is very interested in this work and she might have a foreword in same. Flora Drummond mentioned many of the names you write of. She is still very active, especially with the British Empire League of Women. For her cooperation and help I have promised to donate a certain percentage of the profits from the film to her organization. Their work is mostly educating the women of England to take advantage of their rights with their votes and to encourage the women to take a more active part in communal affairs. I have all necessary finances in London to produce my film, if I go there to film it, but my two children who are now in Hollywood, do not wish me to go back and are urging me to stay here and possibly make the picture here. I am an American, although I have been in England for the past nine years producing pictures there and also built one of the finest studios in London. The British Ministry of Information, films division, are also keen for such a picture to be made and have promised me stock film of scenes already shot that will fit in to our story and cooperation to get stars out of the service if they are willing to play in the picture. A picture like this, with all the documentary angles portrayed so that the picture will be accepted for general release as a regular entertainment film, can make enough money to allow all the organizations who help in its production, share liberaly in the profits. The major film companies will gladly get behind such a film and distribute same for a reasonable percentage, if the film was produced independently, but they would want all the receipts, if they had to finance the film. The amount of exploitation value such a film would have is beyond calculating, because there are so many Women's organizations in every locality in the United States and they would be the biggest boosters, when the film was released. I am looking for a great outstanding personality to play the whole scheme around and would be pleased to have them present the entire project as a separate screen card in the film and possibly show them on the screen in some vital foreword, that would be both stirring and helpful to the cause of "Women's Rights". Miss Grace Roe and Lady Christobel Pankhurst are also keen to be connected with us, but I havent actually tied them in, altho I want their cooperation. I am sorry if I have appeared boring in my explanation, but I did want you to know my position. I arrived from London three months ago and have been working quietly and did not want the publicity to break so soon, but it did. Trusting to hear from you again and with my sincere thanks, I, remain, Sincerely, Jo Ruck July 16, 1942. Dear Mr. Rock: I have just read with a good deal of interest the reference made by Hedda Hopper to you and your work in arranging an allwoman picture. Those of us who had a good deal todo with the campaign for the enfranchisement of women, and who know the background of the movement and the history of the pioneers, are delighted to anticipate this step in the recognition of some of these women. For a long time we have hoped that a picture might be done around the life of Lucy Stone who is probably of of the, if not the most famous of these pioneer women. Because of your interest, I am sending you under separate cover an autographed copy of the story of Lucy Stone's life for your personal library. this was written by her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, now an old lady of 84 who lives at 1010 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Mass. The play enclosed with the book was written by Mrs. Maud Wood Park of Portland, Maine, for Miss Blackwell's 80th birthday. Mrs. Park also had a good deal to do with the organizing of women for suffrage work, and was especially famous for her work throughout the women's colleges of the country. She is the woman to whom the greatest amount of credit is given for the passage of the Federal Suffrage Amendment because of her work during the congressional campaign as head of the Washington lobby. Her co-worker, Mrs. Helen Hamilton Gardener, was known as the "diplomatic corps". They were a great team. Both of these books will give you a good deal of the background of the woman's rights movement, and you will appreciate how dramatic were some of the incidents of the campaign over the years. Mrs. Park could furnish you no end of additional data about other women in the movement, as could Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt of 120 Paine Avenue, New Rochelle, New York. Mrs. Catt has recently gotten together a famous feminist library of hundreds of books having to do with the progress of women and these are now in a separate section of the Congressional Library in Washington. For some years Mrs. Catt has been designated as the most important and most famous woman of the world. Do let your secretary let us know about the progress of the picture and tell Miss Hopper that we really do read her column. Because the movement began in Massachusetts, the real premiere ought to be held here!! Cordially yours, Mrs. Guy W. Stantial 21 Ashmont St. Melrose, August 2nd Dear Mr. Rock: Your letter of July 27th was most interesting, and I hope by this time you have received the copies of the biography of Lucy Stone and the play by Mrs. Park. I have been going over the details of your letter very carefully, and have wondered if the name of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt had occurred to you as the "great outstanding personality". Mrs. Catt came into the woman's rights movement before the great leaders - the pioneers - had all died. She, more than anyone else in this country, knows their stories. It would be splendid if you were to be in New York if you would try to get an appointment to see her at her home - 120 Paine Avenue, New Rochelle, N.Y. This could best be arranged by contacting Miss Mary Gray Peck, 30 Eastchester Road, New Rochelle, who is at work at the present time writing Mrs. Catt's biography. I wrote of your plan to Mrs. Park, who along with Mrs. Catt, appreciates the work of the pioneers, and who is at the present time getting her own papers into proper shape for posterity. Mrs. Catt would be Mrs. Park's choice for the important personality about whom you will build your story. I wish it might be Lucy Stone who could be featured at the pioneer woman. I am thinking of the women inmy age group (45) who know little about the work done by the past generations to give us our freedom. The only reason I know it is because I was in the office of the suffrage association during the last five years of the campaign, and in the past twenty years some of us have been trying to keep alive the memories. You spoke of Susan B. Anthony in your letter to me. This same Susan B. Anthony, together with Frances Willard and Julia Ward Howe, gave public testimony at a meeting in 1888 of the International Council of Women, that they had beenconverted to the cause of woman's rights by Lucy Stone. Lucy Stone's daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, is still alive and live in Cambridge, Mass. I am sure I told you that in my other letter. I am sure the enclosed dramatic criticism of the play "Lucy Stone" as given by the Federal Theatre in Boston in May 1939, will tell you more than any words of mine, and because they are Elliot Norton's will have much more effect. The photo enclosed is the one taken at the time she was doing most of her speaking for the cause, and the article in the September 1893 leaflet gives you in brief what the book tells in detail. The article was written just before her death. I have always had a hope that either Helen Hayes or Katherine Cornell might make a movie of Lucy Stone's life. Mrs. Catt could still be the one, and she is really the only living woman who could do the vital foreword that would be both stirring and helpful. Mrs. Park said of this: "Your suggestion about Mrs. Catt as the outstanding figure is excellent, for she did get into the work before the older group dropped out and she was the leader who brought victory. Then, too, she means more to all kinds of women's organizations than anyone else." This last statement is of value of course from the financial point of view because it is these women's organizations that will make or break the play. Mrs. Catt has been elected the most important woman of the world for years now, and women who know her and of her work, never heard of Susan B. Anthony and some of the others. Mr. Jo Rock, page 2. This is a quotation from a manuscript of Mrs. Park's concerning Mrs. Catt. I think it gives you a pretty good idea of what the leaders of the cause during the years which brought victory, think of their great chief: (It is taken from a chapter of her "Rampant Women" never published) " The other name to conjure with is that of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, who led the suffrage cause to its final victory. One word has been applied to her with striking frequency. That is the word "statesman". No one who knows her well could doubt that it fits, for her wide knowledge of public affairs and of human nature and her grasp of underlying principles give her insight and foresight that few men and no other woman of her time can be said to possess. She looks on the world with a kind of ironic recognition of its weaknesses and its futility, yet she is able to keep aflame an invincible faith that "all things work together for good". "In another respect too, she unites what are usually thought to be opposing qualities. She sees large and she sees small. Her plans are of extraordinary scope, but they are worked out to the tiniest detail. That combination stood her in good stead when, as the last president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association she had to draw together and focus upon the Congress the suffrage activities of all sections of the country, east and west, north and south; the states in which the primary stage of educational work was still needed and those in which women had voted for twenty years or more. "Never hurried or flurried, she went on her carefully thought-out way, turning off a colossal amount of work, much of it in harassing detail. Only a person of unusual calm and poise could have worked on without a break through the tormenting years of hope deferred, which are often harder to bear than the hopeless situations where mistakes do not matter. Once, when the president of a state suffrage association had made a particularly stupid blunder, Mrs. Catt remarked, "Well, we've done our best to spoil this cause of ours, but we can't do it. It's too big for us'. That was always her conviction, that if each one of us did her best, sometime, somehow, in spite of the blunders of friends and the opposition of enemies, the work would bring the longed-for reward. ........ "Once when we were preparing press notices, I wrote to ask her for biographical material. She replied 'I hardly know what to tell you about myself for use in the papers. I do not think there is much to say about me except that I have given my life to the suffrage work and that I have performed all the various obligations which an enlistment inthe Cause puts uponone. I have opened the doors of churches and halls, and lighted the kerosene lamps; attended the babies while the meeting was in progress; made the speech; taken the collection; pronounced the benediction; organized the club or committee, etc. etc., and have held all the offices imaginable from club president up and down and sidewise. As I look back upon it, this seems to be a record of annual and even weekly drudgery, doing each day what the cause seemed to demand of me, but I do not perceive in that record any glorious heroism or headlines to atrract public attention. If you find any if will be due to your imagination'. 4 This is a long letter, but I want you to get all you can about Mrs. Catt before you go on with any further plans. Mrs. Park, who wrote this series on "Rampant Women" has included all of the important women she came to know after her entrance into the fight upon her graduation from Radcliffe in 1898. It is to this Mrs. Park that Mrs. Catt gives credit for the final passage of the Suffrage Amendment[x] in 1919. Mrs. Park was the Congressional Chairman in charge of the Lobby, called the "Front Door Lobby" and she was chosen by Mrs. Catt to do the job. The pen which was used by Vice-President Marshall to sign the amendment was given to Mrs. Park by him, thus acknowledging that he believed Mrs. Catt's organization to be the ones responsible for the final achievement. You must write sometime to Mrs. Park. Her address is Mrs. Maud Wood Park, Surf Road, Cape Cottage, Maine. She can give you invaluable information. She has a great store of manuscripts, press clippings, etc. which colleges all over the country are seeking for their archives. Among her papers you would find valuable additions to your own material. Miss Peck, to whom I have already referred, could give you an endless amount of material about Mrs. Catt. Mrs. Catt's birthday is January 8th. I think she will be 84. When she was 80, 400 women met in the Hotel Astor in New York for a big celebration. At that time newspaper pictures which had appeared duringher public life, had been made into slides, and the story of her life was thrown on the screen in that way, with Mrs. Park and one or two other women giving the story as the pictures were shown. Somewhere I have the story of this dinner, or luncheon, as I wrote it on the train coming home. If I can find it I will send you a copy. Do let me know what you finally decide. So many times something like this gets a start and then falls by the wayside, or goes on to completion and we do not hear of the final result. I have the story of Esther Morris' work for the cause in Wyoming and it is a wonderful story. The picture "Lady from Cheyenne" wove some of her story into the plot, but none of us who had the real story in our files would have recognized it from the picture. Your picture could be done so that it would be of inestimable value throughout the country and the world. Girls in college now have no conception whatever of what the women of [xxxx] past generations went through to get this freedom we now enjoy. They will not read the books which tell the story, but they will go to see the pictures, and the pictures can be taken to them. Good luck to you,whatever the outcome. I do hope I have not bored you to extinction! Faithfully yours, Mrs. Guy W. Stantial Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.