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Did she save her allowance to buy movie magazines? Did she sit in her bedroom when she was a teenager, living at the corner of Neece and Edwin streets, and dream of stardom?
Young Ruth Powell was born in Williamsport to parents James and Naomi (Thomas) Powell on July 13, 1891. As she was growing up, the movie industry was in its infancy, as it is generally said to have begun in 1894 as the first paying customers lined up at a Kinetoscope Parlor in Manhattan to view films made by Thomas Edison. The period between 1894 and 1931 became defined as the "silent film era." People like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Clara Bow and Mary Pickford were soon to become household names. And Ruth Powell Blair.
Ruth attended primary school at the Washington School at the corner of East Third and William Streets. Upon graduation from Williamsport High School, Ruth is said to have attended a girls seminary in Washington, D.C., where she participated in amateur theatricals.
Will she be another Marlowe?
This question, referring to newcomer Ruth Blair, was posed in the May 1916 edition of The Green Book Magazine. The magazine was a theater publication that was distributed from 1909 to 1921, and the Marlowe it refers to was Julia Marlowe, a popular Shakespearean actress in the early 1900s. Ruth may not have been the "new Julia Marlowe," but she had a career in silent film that is remembered today.
From Williamsport to
New York City
According to the March 16, 1915, issue of the Williamsport Sun-Gazette, the Smallwood Film Corporation, after receiving thirteen thousand photographs from all parts of the country, offered Ruth a three-year contract to be a leading woman of Smallwood brand comedies. The corporation, founded by Ray C. Smallwood, who worked as a cinematographer for the New York Motion Picture Company, had conducted a contest with the idea of getting the typical American girl.
And Ruth did seem to fit the mold. She was tall and slender, with a great deal of girlish attractiveness. According to her publicist, she had previously been given an education in drawing and painting, in addition to being well versed in the classics and music. Fond of all outdoor sports, Ruth took special delight in golf and tennis, and she was an expert horsewoman, a good swimmer and an exceptionally good dancer. She was also an accomplished seamstress who designed her own wardrobe.
Her career takes off
Prior to winning the contest, Ruth had spent two years in stock playing ingenue leads. She then appeared in seven silent films over the next two years: The Law of Nature (1915), Canned Curiosity (1915), His Wife's Past (1915), Pyramid Pictures (1915), The Fourth Estate (1916), His Promise (1916) and The Folly of Fear (1916). She had excellent reviews. Williamsport had seven movie theaters in 1916.
A bomb scare
The Idaho Statesman reported in the December 1, 1915, issue that Ruth Blair was in Chicago during a big strike to play the leading role in the silent film The Fourth Estate. The director made use of the strike by using some real footage for the strike scenes in his picture. Ruth became frightened by one of the striking workmen and perceived that another man had followed her to her hotel. That same night, a bellboy handed her a compact package that came by special
delivery. Ruth became aware that the package was ticking and, thinking back to the striking workers who had frightened her earlier in the day, she became convinced that the package held a bomb.
She contacted the authorities at the hotel and the house detective responded, grabbed the package and ran to the sink, drenching it with water. After gingerly peeling the wrapping from the package, he revealed an alarm clock. The next morning Ruth received a letter from her dearest girlfriend advising that she had sent the gift knowing how early Ruth must rise in the morning.
Financial trouble
Ray Smallwood and his wife actress wife, Ethel, produced several one-reel dramatic films under the Grandin Films label, but ran into financial trouble. Producing mainly short subjects, Grandin Films could not adjust to the market for features. In August 1915, the publication Moving Picture World announced that Smallwood was to direct a "long list" of films, but this venture quickly collapsed. In October of that year, Ruth was quoted as noting there was a big field for real humor on the screen. She was going to write the scenarios and was looking for a leading man. Unfortunately, before any of this came to fruition, the production business fell apart.
Fact and fiction
As always seems to be the case with these articles I write for the "Lycoming County Women" series, there is a bit of mystery in this story. Several articles stated that Ruth's mother died when she was 12, but I was able to verify that her mother, Naomi, died at the age of 74 on June 2, 1932. Ruth's father had been married once before and his first wife passed away in 1884, so it is possible that there was some confusion there. Also, in the Tulsa Tribune published in February of 1916, an article verified that Ruth's parents gave her a limited amount of money to fund her training in New York City.
Ruth was always known professionally as "Miss Blair." I believe this was to fit in with the image that the film company wanted to project. However, in real life, she had married Charles Harrison Blair, a dental technician, on June 14, 1909, one month before her 18th birthday. Their first child, Charles, was born on March 18, 1910. By the time Ruth won the contest, she had given birth to a second son, Lewis.
"Former Williamsport Girl Star in Big Film Production" was the headline in the Sun-Gazette when The Fourth Estate played in Williamsport's Grand Theater. Some of Ruth's schoolmates who remembered her from the Washington School were named in the newspaper story. Members of their families, the Bubb, Poff, and Rook families, still reside locally today.
End of her career
Ruth's career seems to have ended by 1917. She had two more children: Harriet, born in 1919, and Ruth, born in 1928. Charles and Ruth both died in Fresno, California, where they had resided since 1948. Ruth passed away on February 24, 1957, and Charles died on December 7, 1961, at age 73. But Ruth lives on in the history of silent film--a quick Google search will prove it.
Jo Ann Tobias is a volunteer at the Lycoming County Genealogical Society library. She loves history and discovering more about Lycoming County and the people who helped make it what it is today.