No One Has Ever Been More Fittingly Named

“NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN MORE FITTINGLY NAMED”

I have written elsewhere on this website that when the County of Union was looking for an author to write a history of the Deserted Village of Feltville in the 1960s, it turned to my grandfather, Edwin Baldwin. Grandpa had a modest statewide reputation as a historian and genealogist, and had already done research on the Village. The previous history, written by Dr. Arthur L. Johnson, had been a soft-cover county publication, and the county wanted to publish a similar, but updated history. Grandpa handed the writing project off to his friend James Hawley, but helped out his friend with considerable additional research, and conducted tours at the village, as did Hawley.

For all that I consider my grandfather a careful researcher (and one given to correcting the research efforts of others), there are still representations that he made for which I cannot find the original source of information in his files, now part of my own. Some of these representations have been questioned by my colleagues, including a claim by my grandfather that Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille had stayed at the Village at some time. I must confess that the skepticism was partly my own fault. I was visualizing the woman who became Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille as having stayed at the village after her marriage, when indeed she had actually stayed there long before her marriage. I recently rediscovered evidence that Grandpa always knew it was the child Constance Adams who stayed at the village, not the married Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille.

That rediscovered evidence is in a 1965 article on the village by Jean Rae Turner, a local historian and staff writer for The Daily Journal, a newspaper out of Elizabeth, New Jersey. In that article, Turner relied on my grandfather as her history source for a full-page article entitled “History, Hidden Charm in Deserted Village.” The article featured pictures of my grandfather, and all of my siblings (except one not yet born) and I in various village locations. The only picture not of one of us is of one of the village’s cottages, with the caption “Constance Adams, later wife of Cecil B. DeMille, Hollywood motion picture producer, resided in this one-family cottage at the Deserted Village, Berkeley Heights.” Proof positive that Grandpa knew!

WHO WAS CECIL?

As I mentioned above, I only remembered that Grandpa had said that Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille had stayed at the Village. I didn’t know a lot about Mr. Cecil B. DeMille, but I knew enough that it made his wife’s association with the Village especially noteworthy. Now, when I talk about “Mrs. Cecil B. DeMIlle” I get blank stares from most people. So, a little bit of history about him will be useful here.

Briefly, he was a starving itinerant actor and budding playwright when in 1912 he is reported to have tried to induce his good friend Jesse Lasky to go to Mexico and join the Mexican Revolution, by which they apparently meant the portion of the Revolution being led by Pancho Villa, probably the most romantic of those involved in the Revolution to us gringos and gringas.¹ Cecil and Lasky always swore that this suggestion was serious, not just a joke. ² The friend and colleague involved in contemplating this scheme, Jesse Lasky, suggested that instead, they go west to begin making movies. Movies were a new form of entertainment still very much in their infancy, and mostly composed of “short-reelers” which could be used by vaudeville houses to transition between one show and the next, and were designed to make people vacate seats for the next batch of theater goers.³

The company which Cecil, Lasky and others formed, was called Lasky and Goldfish, and planned to make films which would get people to remain in their seats, not leave them. Their films would be at least an hour in length. Since a company called the Motion Picture Patents Company then had an exclusive license to make movies in the United States and was opposed to making such feature movies, Cecil’s and Lasky’s company would have to be as out of their reach as possible. Cecil and Lasky arranged to go west to be as far away as possible and because costs, including “land, labor and materials,” were cheaper in the west, and the climate and sunlight could be counted on to be more propitious.

Cecil would go on to be one of the major producers in the newly developing Hollywood movie industry, starting his first production in a Hollywood barn rented for $75 per month. Of his 70 feature films, 52 were silent films. He is most well-known for the films made with sound, which included such blockbusters as The Ten Commandments, Samson and Delilah, and Cleopatra.

WHY CONSTANCE?

You will hear more about Cecil and his part in his wife’s life later in the post. But why am I profiling Constance? As part of my continuing examination of all things which relate to the Village’s period of time as Glenside Park the resort, you may recall I chose to profile some women associated with the resort during this period. I have already done a post on what I am calling “the first generation:” Lydia, wealthy wife of the owner of the Village, and after his death, owner, herself; Ella, co-designer of the Village as resort; and Annie, an Irish immigrant, who managed the Village with her Irish immigrant husband for many years. I am turning now to three women I am calling the second generation—Constance Adams DeMille, her sister Rebecca Adams, and Anna Molloy Walsh. The first two were guests at the resort, and Anna grew up there, the child of the two immigrants who were its longest running managers. As a history geek, I am finding it helpful to look at the women both as examples of women of their time and as individuals in their own right.

I will do the “second” generation in two posts. This post will look at Constance, both what we know of her early life and time at the Village, and who she went on to be. The next post will take a similar look at Rebecca and Anna.

CONSTANCE BEFORE CECIL

As my past posts have documented, Constance’s mother, Ella King Adams, combined her design talents with those of Warren Ackerman to create a stylish Adirondack style resort from a dilapidated mill village. Indeed, this is one of the chief accomplishments celebrated for both Warren and Ella in their respective obituaries.

Ella’s timeline suggests that she worked with Warren and brought her family to the Village for the five years from 1884 to 1889. Was Constance in attendance with the rest of the family during that time? In 1884, she would have been about ten, and surely with the family, but I wonder about some of the other years, because in letters from Ella which have survived, Constance often seems to be absent or going back and forth. I get an impression of a somewhat independent oldest child, an impression which I think is only underscored by the actions, described below, which led her to meet and marry Cecil.

One of the scant sources on Constance I found was a record of her confirmation on October 24, 1888, at Grace Episcopal Church in Orange, New Jersey.⁴ Most of the rest of her history before meeting Cecil comes from family letters in the collection of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

As I have noted in a previous post, I believe an October 24, 1887 letter from Ella to her father-in-law to have been written from the Village itself, during one of the Adams family stays there. Ella says: “I do miss Constance, but I am glad that she is with you and Aunt Ellis.” In the letter, all of Ella’s other children (save the one who had not yet been born) are mentioned as being with Ella. The absent Constance—whom Ella calls “Connie”—is used as one of Ella’s benchmarks for learning, since Connie is able to learn 12 spelling words a day. Interestingly, brother John, four years younger than Constance is also able to learn 12 words per day. However, Ellis, two years younger than John, is only capable of three spelling words per day. Rebecca, whose birthday is the occasion of the writing of the letter, is clearly with the family, but Ella doesn’t tell us about her spelling word proficiency.

A September 7, 1889, item from the Plainfield Evening News gives one tantalizing outside glimpse that seems to be of Constance at the Village itself.

A masquerade sociable was held at the residence of Miss Adams at Glenside Park last evening. Several Plainfielders were present. Prof. Guttman furnished the music.⁵

In 1889, Constance was about fifteen years old, and I think, the only candidate to be the “Miss Adams” mentioned, since the only other possible “Miss Adams,” barring some other Adams family at the Village, was Rebecca. Rebecca would have been about eight, and probably not hosting a “masquerade sociable.”

After 1889, the Adams family apparently did not return to the Village, since they moved to a farm in Berkeley Heights, before going on to the first of two homes in Summit, New Jersey. Ella’s letters from this period of time reinforce the independent nature of her oldest child, again, prior to Constance meeting Cecil.

Her mother complains of Constance’s failure to help “Miss Patsy” around the house in a letter dated January 2, 1895 to Aunt Ellis, although Constance is apparently happy to go into New York to get things needed by “Miss Patsy.” Instead of helping out, Constance is attending a lot of “coasting parties.” Constance does reassure her mother that her brother John has become popular at the school he is attending, which suggests that she is at least keeping up with her siblings. Ella also reports that Constance is about to leave home on some sort of trip.

A January 28, 1895 letter from Ella, also to Aunt Ellis, confirms that Constance has indeed left home for a visit to her aunt in Boston.

I am so glad that Constance will go to Andover and see that wonderful place. Give her my dearest love and tell her I am glad she is so happy.

A later 1895 letter from Frederic (Ella’s husband) to Aunt Ellis suggests that both he and Constance are going back and forth between the family’s Summit home and East Orange, likely visiting the home they had left there, which is apparently between rental tenants.

By the time of the last letter, Constance was 21 years old. Within the year, her mother died, and there are no more chatty letters from Ella.

CONSTANCE WALKS INTO CECIL’S HISTORY

By 1900, Constance was 26, and apparently still living at home. She clearly wanted to be an actress, and with her father’s grudging acquiescence, Constance entered a contract to act in the traveling theater company of a man named Charles Frohman. Frohman was transforming the world of American traveling theater. Cecil describes him thus in his autobiography:

Charles Frohman was his name, and to our minds his power in the theater was godlike. Four years before, he had brought together the regional giants of the American theater business: Al Hayman from the Pacific Coast, Marc Klaw and Abraham L. Hayman from the South, S.F. Nixon and J. Fred Zimmerman from Pennsylvania, and, with himself representing New York, had forged a nationwide theater chain which for years dominated the business side of the American drama. . . . The life or death of the average play depended upon its being booked by Klaw and Erlanger into the theaters controlled by the Frohman syndicate; and whether or not we aspiring young actors ate or “rested” depended largely upon whether we were cast in a play that played or one which expired for lack of bookings.⁶

Cecil was also with Frohman’s company, apparently more as a means to get a foothold in the theater, rather than a burning desire to be an actor. Cecil had come from a theater family; both parents had been involved in scriptwriting; his mother had managed, in 1898, to send Cecil to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts after the 1893 death of Cecil’s father from typhoid.

Cecil graduated from the Academy in 1900 and describes himself as “one of the fortunate ones”⁷ chosen by Frohman for a small part in a play by Cecil Raleigh called Hearts are Trumps. The play had 93 performances at the Garden Theater in New York before it went on the road, with Cecil in the traveling troupe—the very one Constance was about to join.

Cecil had had to compete with other classmates trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for a coveted role in the play. Charles Frohman signed Constance to be in the troupe when it reached Washington, DC. It is unlikely that Constance had the benefit of the training which Cecil had received.

It had taken Constance considerable effort to convince her father, Judge Frederic Adams, to let her sign a contract with Frohman, and author Anne Edwards suggests that Frederic only allowed Constance to sign with Frohman, because he hoped that she would soon tire of the life of an itinerant performer.⁸ Actors were poorly paid and required to cover nearly all their own expenses. Landing a part in a play with bookings might have allowed them to eat (as Cecil had noted), but not very well.

In his autobiography, Cecil says that the newly joined Constance was beautiful, and that a first time sitting next to her at a lunch counter revealed her wit.

Then I found myself, after every performance, waiting to walk with her from the theater to the modest supper which was all either of us could afford.

Cecil and Constance became engaged within months of their first meeting, while sitting in the cold outside a boarding house on December 31, 1900. It took some time to convince Constance’s father that they should be allowed to marry. On August 15, 1902, Judge Adams arranged a small Episcopalian ceremony at the Adams home in East Orange. Edwards suggests the modestness of both the ceremony and the guest list reflected Frederic’s misgivings about Constance’s young man.⁹

The two newlyweds immediately took to the road in a theater troupe led by E.H. Sothern, a former actor long known to the DeMille family. Cecil later joked that there was hardly a location where he could not say he and Constance had been on their honeymoon. They faced continual money problems. Cecil’s autobiography contains a story which he apparently feels might reflect badly on himself, indicating that he was downstairs gambling in a hotel where he and Constance was staying, and he refused to break off his gambling to come back to the room when Constance was frightened by someone trying to enter the hotel room. Cecil sent up a message that the bulldog they had adopted could protect Constance while he went on winning, since he was hoping that his winnings would help pay their bill.

Perhaps Cecil was right to think this story reflected poorly on him. Edwards sees the anecdote as possible evidence that Judge Frederic Adams was correct in having misgivings about his new son-in-law.¹⁰

CONSTANCE AS CONTRADICTION?

Biographer Scott Eyman indicates that “Marrying Constance was the most crucial decision Cecil ever made. Constance Adams DeMille was serene, beautiful, steadfast, absolutely reliable, remembered by everyone who knew her as a perfect Victorian lady.”¹¹

Cecil’s autobiography contains a story which epitomizes his feelings about Constance’s character:

Not all the drama of those tours with Sothern was enacted on the boards of the theaters we played in between New York and California; at least not the comedy. I never cross the continent on the Super Chief and the Twentieth Century Limited now without remembering the wooden railroad coaches of 55 years ago with the windows that were called poker windows because it took jacks or better to open them. Perhaps it was the tight windows that kept our day coach from splintering when our train crashed in the middle of the West Virginia countryside. Mrs. deMIlle had been admiring the wild flowers along the right-of-way. When the train crashed to a halt and the fire extinguisher fell on my head and broke and covered me with vile-smelling chemicals and all the other passengers screamed and a traveling salesman in the coach began to chase the conductor down the aisle yelling that he didn’t care about the wreck but he wanted his mileage ticket back, Mrs. DeMille was heard to murmur through the din, “Oh, now we can get out and pick wild flowers.” Mrs deMille has always been a stabilizing influence. From that moment I have never lacked confidence in her ability to handle any situation calmly.¹²

Eyman relies on the earlier book by Anne Edwards as evidence of a sort of schism between Constance’s physical appearance and her steady nature—partly as a means of explaining Cecil’s repeated infidelities during their long and apparently devoted marriage. I repeat the description by Edwards here:

Constance Adams was a dark-eyed beauty with generous features, full brows, and glossy brown hair that she wore in a stylish pompadour that added extra inches to her tall frame. With her full bosom and small waist, and smoldering, somewhat Latin looks, Constance might have been suspected of possessing a sensuous nature. She was, instead, a cool-headed woman, brought up with strict values, deeply religious and, as C.B. later commented, ‘In the whole history of the world, no one has ever been more fittingly named.’ She carried herself with great dignity and had a certain aloofness that discouraged others from referring to her as ‘Connie.’”¹³

Elsewhere I have seen the Constance of this time described as the ultimate Gibson Girl—an image of high style and beauty reflected in drawings by Charles Dana Gibson. The Gibson girl is the independent “New Woman,” beautiful as well as poised to take her place in history. Her images still show the lovely nipped in at the waist silhouette of the earlier nineteenth century woman, suggesting a continued use of corsets.¹⁴

CECIL CHALLENGES THE UNFLAPPABLE CONSTANCE

Cecil and Constance remained married throughout their lives, but as noted, Cecil had a number of affairs. Whose fault was this? Eyman builds on Edwards’ characterization of Constance’s appearance versus character to suggest the following:

DeMille had been attracted to Constance because of her emotional solidity, her deep reserves of sense—she completely lacked the improvisational, slightly scatty qualities of his mother. Constance was sound. But Constance could not shut off her reserve in bed. And it was that more than anything else that would eventually send Cecil out into the world, looking for those qualities he could not find in his wife.¹⁵

As further evidence for this conclusion, Eyman includes a letter written by Cecil to Constance from the road, which contained the following passage:

But what am I to do? I find myself in the unique position of preferring my wife’s body to that of any other woman. Here then is a predicament. I must teach my wife those things which the mistress usually provides. But, shrieks the horrified god of morals, she is a good woman, she is pure, she has no right even to know that such things exist, [to] feel such violent and evil passion.¹⁶

Cecil’s affairs were often with the female stars he was promoting in his movies. In a somewhat ironic touch, Constance joined with movie star Mary Pickford in creating the Hollywood Studio Club, which included safe and affordable housing for rising female stars, away from possible predatory intentions of people like Constance’s own husband.¹⁷

Constance and Cecil eventually had four children, but only one was their own biological child. Eyman suggests that Constance began adopting children after a miscarriage, and I have seen a series of miscarriages suggested as a reason Constance stopped having sex with Cecil. Another source which I cannot currently find referenced letters between Constance and her father, in which she asked what she should do about her husband’s infidelity. Frederic counseled her that unless she wanted to divorce Cecil, she would have to put up with the situation.

A FAMILY AFFAIR

By the time that Cecil made the fateful decision to move to Hollywood and make his first movie, Constance appears to have largely given up life as an actress. Cecil went on ahead to get things started and then sent for Constance and their young daughter Cecilia.

Cecil does recount one story of Constance acting as an “extra” in one of his movies, before his companies began to really make money. It was a time when various family members (including daughter Cecilia) were sometimes pressed into service to cut costs.

In Where the Trail Divides, directed by James Neill, we needed to show a woman captured by Indians slung across the back of a horse, and so carried off to her dreadful fate. Someone—it could have been the director-general—remembered that Mrs. DeMille had very long beautiful hair, which, loosened and trailing down the horse’s side, would add a good touch of feminine helplessness and horror; so it was Mrs. DeMille, with tresses streaming, who was unceremoniously pitched across the horse and uncomfortably jolted away.¹⁸

But, if not as an actress, Constance remained involved in her husband’s business. In or by 1920, Constance was one of the full partners in an newly formed independent company, Cecil B. DeMille Productions.

Incidentally, one of the other partners was Ella King Adams—but not the Ella King Adams, mother to Constance, who had died in 1896. After Constance’s mother, Ella King Adams, died, her father, Frederic, appears to have moved out of the Summit home that Ella helped design, and back to East Orange. In 1904, he remarried, in a ceremony in Virginia that seems to have been as small as the wedding ceremony he arranged for Constance and Cecil. His second wife was Ella King, the daughter of his first wife’s brother, Morris King, probably named after the first Ella. The second Ella was two years younger than Constance. She was hired as a script reader for Cecil, before she went on to be one of the partners in the new company.

FITTINGLY NAMED

I always credit the Village with teaching me history, and Constance is another instance of that. Constance, in my mind, is a bit of a contradiction—something between the somewhat traditional model her mother had followed (albeit with not so secret ambitions to be an architect in her next life), and a woman with her own career—the “New Woman.”

I will leave Constance here, except to include what I think was a succinct summary of the role Constance played in Cecil’s life and history:

Over the years, Constance would endure several long-term extramarital relationships on Cecil’s part, but she learned to live with them—and with him. She instinctively understood that she was part of a family concern, very much in the French manner. She would always be the dominant part of Cecil’s emotional life as well as his professional life. Cecil’s attorney Neil McCarthy would write, “I consider her counsel and advice as valuable as that of anyone in the business, not alone because of her knowledge of the business, but because of her ability to think clearly.”¹⁹

NEXT MONTH

Next month, Rebecca and Anna. Until then.