Journal Notes

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

While attending college in Pennsylvania, Mary Lawser was part of a group comprised of several accomplished female artists.  They were known as the Philadelphia Ten.

Among the members was a talented painter and sculptor named Mary Louise Lawser.  Like Mary Colter, Mary Lawser was hired by a major rail line company to help promote westward travel.

Born in 1906 in Pennsylvania, she exhibited at a young age.  She attended the Pennsylvania Museum School, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.  Mary’s work was exhibited in galleries in Europe and New York.  She was recognized by her peers as a gifted, bronze work artist.  After graduation she took a position as an art instructor at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and at Bryn Mawr.

In early 1940, she was hired to work for notable architect Paul Cret.  The French-born, Philadelphia architect and industrial designer was impressed with Mary’s design and execution of bronze tablets found inside Alexander Hamilton’s home, The Grange.  Commissioned by the American and Historic Preservation Society, the tablets were made to honor Alexander Hamilton, first secretary of the United States treasury.  In addition to designing buildings on the University of Texas campus and the Pan American Union Building in Washington, D.C., Paul Cret designed railroad cars for the Burlington and Santa Fe rail lines.  While Mary was employed by Cret, she contributed to decorating various railroad passenger cars with sculptures, wood carving, and mixed metal creations.

When Cret passed away in 1945, Mary was hired by another respected Pennsylvania architect, John Harbeson, to aid him in creating a new look for Burlington’s Pioneer Zephyr.  Although in the employ of Harbeson, Mary was singled out by the Budd Company, a railroad industry manufacturer, to design murals for the interior of the passenger cars that would inspire ticket-buyers to go west.

To learn more about Mary Louise Lawser and other women who helped build the railroad read

Iron Women.

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Cowboys, Creatures and Classics:  The Story of Republic Pictures.

The most influential woman at Republic Pictures from the early 1940s to the studio’s demise in the early 1960s, was Vera Hruba.  Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, on July 12, 1919, the blonde beauty caught Republic Picture’s president Herbert Yates’ attention in 1939 when she toured the United States with an ice-skating show called Ice Vanities.

Vera was an exceptional ice skater, having placed 17^th in the 1936 Olympics behind figure skater Sonja Henie.  Yates was captivated with Vera’s talent and looks and believed she could be as successful as Ms. Henie who was one of the leading stars at 20^th Century Fox.  He cast Vera, and the entire company of the Ice Vanities, in a musical film entitled The Ice Capades.  Critics called the picture “sheer enchantment on ice.”  Vera was mentioned along with five other skaters as “spectacular”.  Yates couldn’t have agreed more and in 1943 signed her to a long-term contract with the studio and added Ralston to her name.  He added Ralston, a name borrowed from the cereal, because Hruba was difficult for moviegoers to pronounce.

The first movie Vera Hruba Ralston appeared as a star, minus the skates, was Republic Pictures’ 1941 horror film The Lady and the Monster.  Her costars were Erich von Stroheim and Richard Arlen.  Billed as “a picture from out of this world” the plot involves a millionaire whose brain is preserved after his death, and telepathically begins to take control of those around him.  Von Stroheim portrays the diabolical Dr. Mueller who retrieves the brain of a financial genius who crashed to his death in an airplane mishap near the laboratory.  The doctor carries out a fiendish plot to put the super brain to work for him.  Richard Arlen plays the doctor’s assistant who falls in love with the doctor’s ward, Vera Ralston.  The film reviewer for the Havre Daily News referred to Ralston’s debut as a dramatic actress as “the find of the season.”

Most did not agree with the critics who found the foreign ingénue to be a promising star.  Many complained that her performance was wooden and that her accent was too thick.  Yates ignored every voice but his own and quickly reteamed von Stroheim and Arlen with his discovery in another feature entitled Storm Over Lisbon.  In this spy thriller Ralston played an allied operative in Lisbon and Arlen an American newspaper man who she helps get out of Portugal with important information.  Audiences found Ralston attractive, but struggled to understand what she was saying.

Yates hired acting instructors and speech coaches for Ralston.  While her English and her acting soon improved she could not lose her strong Czech accent.  Yates felt that ticket buyers would eventually see how compelling the stunning blonde’s talent truly was and learn to embrace her way of talking in much the same way they did Marlene Dietrich.  In order to help Ralston, gain a broader acceptance he paired her with an actor that had mass appeal – John Wayne.

To learn more about Vera Ralston and the other leading ladies of Republic Pictures read

Cowboys, Creatures, and Classics. 

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Cowboys, Creatures, and Classics:  The Story of Republic Pictures

Take one well-oiled effective killing machine, add a familiar hero on the ground, in the air, and on horseback; stir in a ghastly end that’s surely impossible to escape, add action, add passion, made on a shoestring budget at breakneck speed, and you’ve got the recipe for Republic Pictures. Who, after all, cannot forget The Atomic Kid, starring Mickey Rooney, or The Untamed Heiress, with an un-Oscar-worthy performance by ingénue Judy Canova?

Exploding onto the movie scene in 1935, Republic Pictures brought the pop culture of the 30s and 40s to neighborhood movie houses. Week after week kids sank into their matinee seats to soak up the Golden Age of the Republic series, to ride off into the classic American West. And they gave us visions of the future. Visions that inspire film makers today. Republic was a studio that dollar for dollar packed more movie onto the screen than the majors could believe. From sunrise on into the night over grueling six-day weeks, no matter how much mayhem movie makers were called upon to produce, at Republic Pictures it was all in a day’s work.

Republic Pictures was the little studio in the San Fernando Valley where movies were made family style. A core of technicians, directors, and actors worked hard at their craft as Republic released a staggering total of more than a thousand films through the late 1950s.

Republic Pictures was home to John Wayne for thirty-three films. Always inventing, Republic brought a song to the West. It featured the West’s first singing cowboy. Republic brought action, adventure, and escape to neighborhood movies houses across America. And they brought it with style. Scene from westerns such as The Three Mesquiteers and the Lawless Range gave screaming kids at the bijou a white-knuckle display of expert film making.

Republic Pictures became a studio where major directors could bring their personal vision to the screen. Sometimes these were projects no other studio would touch such as The Quiet Man (which brought director John Ford an Oscar) and Macbeth.

Killer Bs, Cowboys, Creatures and Classics: The Story of Republic Pictures is for anyone who likes B movies magic. It is the honest account of an extraordinary production house, one whose ability to turn out films quickly boded well for its transition into television production. Not only were its sets used for such shows as Leave it to Beaver and Gilligan’s Island, but stock footage from Republic’s movies was also used on such shows as Gunsmoke and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.

To learn more about Republic Pictures read Cowboys, Creatures, and Classics

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, with independence won and the Indians largely subdued, the great tide of western movement across the North American continent was gaining momentum.  One of the first railroad lines that transported people from the East to the West was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  Construction on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began in July 1828, and the first stretch of rails was completed in 1830.  More than ninety years later, the rail line was still carrying passengers to destinations beyond the Missouri River and still establishing themselves as leaders in the industry.  In 1920, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad executives made the bold decision to hire a woman in their engineering department.  Not only was Olive Dennis the first female professional engineer hired by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, but she was also the first female ever to be hired in that field for a major rail line.

As a child growing up in Baltimore, Olive enjoyed working with tools.  She frequently borrowed her father’s tools to disassemble her mechanical toys.  Olive was born on November 20, 1885, in Thurlow, Pennsylvania, and at the age of eleven decided to build her own playhouse.  She spent days watching the construction of a new home across the street from where she lived and was convinced she could duplicate the work she saw being done.  Using recycled wood from an old shed her father had torn down, Olive designed and built a playhouse complete with windows, shutters, doors, and a full porch with stairs.

Olive excelled scholastically, graduating from Western High School with honors and a scholarship to attend Goucher College.  She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa there and achieved a Bachelor of Arts degree.  From Goucher she went on to Columbia in New York where she received a master’s degree in mathematics.  While teaching school in Wisconsin, she decided to study civil engineering at Cornell University.  Olive was only the second woman in the school’s history to pursue such a degree.

To learn more about Olive Dennis and other women who helped build the railroad read Iron Women

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

Although the physical task of building the railroad had been achieved by men, women made significant and lasting contributions to the historic operation.  The female connection with railroading dates as far back as 1838 when women were hired as registered nurses/stewardesses in passenger cars.  Those ladies attended to the medical needs of travelers and also acted as hostesses of sorts, helping passengers have a comfortable journey.

Susan Morningstar was one of the first women on record employed by a railroad.  She and her sister, Catherine Shirley, were hired by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1855 to keep the interior of the cars clean and orderly.  The feminine, homey touches they added to the railroad car’s décor attracted female travelers and transformed the stark, cold interior into a more welcoming setting.

Miss E. F. Sawyer became the first female telegraph operator when she was hired by the Burlington Railroad in Montgomery, Illinois, in 1872.  The following year, Union Pacific Railroad executives followed suit by hiring two women to be telegraph operators in Kansas City, Missouri.

Inventress Eliza Murfey focused on the mechanics of the railroad, creating devices for improving the way bearings on the rail wheel attached to train cars responded to the axles.  The device, or packing as it was referred to, was used to lubricate the axles and bearings.  Murfey held sixteen patents for her 1870 invention.

In 1879, another woman inventor named Mary Elizabeth Walton developed a system that deflected emissions from the smokestacks on railroad locomotives.  She was awarded two patents for her pollution reducing device.

A cattle rancher’s daughter, Nancy P. Wilkerson, from Terre Haute, Indiana, created the cattle car in 1881.  Using a rack and pinion mechanism, she devised sliding partisans that separated the livestock from the food compartments and water troughs.

To learn more about the women who helped build the railroad read Iron Women

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

The Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad operated as it usually did on April 10, 1901.  It ran as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.  The wood burning engine proceeded along its customary route without delay or interruption, giving no indication that the line’s president and owner had passed away.

John Flint Kidder had taken charge of the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad in 1884.  He was a construction engineer with both the vision to maintain the line and the business sense to manage it.  The twenty-five-mile route connected the gold mines in northern California to the outside world.  The tracks threaded the canyons and rolling countryside between Nevada City and Grass Valley and the Central Pacific main line in Colfax.  The route included steep grades, two tunnels, and several trestles, the highest being ninety-five feet above the Bear River.  Kidder’s Narrow Gauge carried more gold (some $300 million) than any other short line in the state.  He was well respected and admired by a community that owed its progress to him.

Concern over the economic impact Kidder’s passing would have on the area was so great it’s surprising the railroad ran at all the day he died.  Business owners whom benefitted from the railroad worried there would be an interruption in service that would threaten their livelihood.  Rumors about who would take John Kidder’s place as head of the rail line did not immediately set the minds of those businessmen at ease.

John Kidder’s widow, Sarah, was aware there were those who doubted she was the right one to assume control of the Narrow Gauge Railroad, but she was determined to prove she was up to the task.  Less than a month after her husband’s death, stockholders chose Sarah as John’s successor.  According to an article in the September 20, 1901, edition of the Oakdale Leader, when Sarah Kidder accepted the job “she had the distinction of being one of the very few women, if not the only one, who ever held such a bona fide position and title.”

To learn more about Sarah Kidder and other women who helped build the railroad read Iron Women

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Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

The cold, gray January sky above Virginia City, Nevada, in 1867 unleashed a torrent of sleet on a slow-moving funeral procession traveling along the main thoroughfare of town.  Several members of the volunteer fire department, Virginia Engine Company Number One, were first in a long line of mourners following after a horse drawn carriage transporting the body of soiled dove Julia Bulette.  Playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me”, the Nevada militia band shuffled behind the hearse.  Black wreaths and streamers hung from the balconies of the buildings along the route which the remains of the beloved thirty-five-year-old woman were escorted.  Miners who knew Julia wept openly.  Out of respect for the deceased woman, all the saloons were closed.  Plummeting temperatures and icy winds eventually drove the majority of funeral-goers inside their homes and businesses before Julia was lowered into the ground.

Julia Bulette was murdered on January 19, 1867 at 11:30 in the evening in her home on North D Street in Virginia City.   The fair but frail prostitute told her neighbor and best friend Gertrude Holmes she was expecting company but did not specify whom the company might be.  Twelve hours later Gertrude discovered Julia’s lifeless body in bed.  She had been beaten and strangled.  Gertrude told authorities that Julia was lying in the center of the bed with the blankets pulled over her head and that the sheets under her frame were smooth.  She told police that it appeared as though no one had ever been in the bed with Julia.

To learn more about women who helped build the railroad read Iron Women

Enter now to win a copy of

Iron Women:  The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, with independence won and the Indians largely subdued, the great tide of western movement across the North American continent was gaining momentum.  One of the first railroad lines that transported people from the East to the West was the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.  Construction on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began in July 1828, and the first stretch of rails was completed in 1830.  More than ninety years later, the rail line was still carrying passengers to destinations beyond the Missouri River and still establishing themselves as leaders in the industry.  In 1920, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad executives made the bold decision to hire a woman in their engineering department.  Not only was Olive Dennis the first female professional engineer hired by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, but she was also the first female ever to be hired in that field for a major rail line.

As a child growing up in Baltimore, Olive enjoyed working with tools.  She frequently borrowed her father’s tools to disassemble her mechanical toys.  Olive was born on November 20, 1885, in Thurlow, Pennsylvania, and at the age of eleven decided to build her own playhouse.  She spent days watching the construction of a new home across the street from where she lived and was convinced, she could duplicate the work she saw being done.  Using recycled wood from an old shed her father had torn down, Olive designed and built a playhouse complete with windows, shutters, doors, and a full porch with stairs.

To learn more about the women who helped build the American railroad read

Iron Women

Enter now to win a copy of

Iron Women:  Ladies Who Helped Build the American Railroad

Phoebe Snow might have been a fictional character created by executive Earnest Elmo Calkins for the Calkins and Holden Advertising Agency in 1900, but she was one of the most influential women in the area of railroad travel for more than twenty years.[i]

Phoebe Snow was created to sell the idea of cleanliness in traveling on a railroad, specifically the Lackawanna, a short line that ran between Buffalo and New York City.  The Lackawanna used sootless anthracite coal exclusively for locomotive fuel.  Phoebe always wore a spotless white dress that was always cool looking, comfortable, and corsaged with orchids.  She became so popular as a symbol of cleanliness, and was lodged so surely in the hearts and minds of train travelers, that her name was printed in big, bold, white letters on every piece of equipment owned by the Lackawanna.[ii]

Sometime prior to the first World War, the Lackawanna decided to introduce a fast, new passenger train to compete in the luxury market for wealthy rail travelers.  This new train was to be the last word in elegance, comfort, prestige, and speed.  When it came time to find a name it seemed as if the “Phoebe Snow” was the only name that was considered – yet up to this time, no train had been named for a woman.  From that day forward, Phoebe Snow was to become the most famous of all deluxe passenger trains.[iii]

In the history of railroading, there were only two other passenger trains that were comparable in elegance, grandeur, and speed to the Phoebe Snow.  They were the New York Central’s Twentieth Century Limited and the Great Northern’s Empire Builder.[iv]

The real Phoebe Snow was the first of all pin-up girls, and she was the rage of her day.  She was the figment of the imagination of Earnest Elmo Calkins and was first painted by Harry Stacy Benton.  The model was Marian Murray Gorsch, one of the first models used in advertising.[v]

Many of the advertisements featuring Phoebe Snow included a short poem.  The poem associated with the first advertisement read as follows; “Says Phoebe Snow, about to go upon a trip to Buffalo.  My gown stays white from morn till night upon the Road of Anthracite.”[vi]

Phoebe’s career ended in 1922, four years after the end of World War I.  Anthracite was needed solely for military use and was subsequently prohibited by railroads.  Phoebe’s services were no longer needed.[vii]

To learn more about the ladies who helped build the railroad read Iron Women