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North Brookfield Mass.

New England in Early Film

A century before the film Manchester by the Sea was nominated for six Academy Awards, New England played many a starring role on the silver screen.

Connecticut’s own Katharine Hepburn created the iconic New England woman in 1933 as Jo in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. She spoke to the entire region’s unvarnished character (well, except maybe for Newport) with her pronouncement, “I loathe elegant society.” See the trailer here.

Katharine Hepburn as Jo in Little Women.

New Englanders brought the film industry to maturity as actors, producers, cinematographers, studio owners and financiers. And it was a New Englander who helped move it out west.

New England in Film

“From the early days of projected motion pictures, representations of New England appeared on screens wherever movies were seen,” wrote Karen Sheldon, co-founder of Northeast Historic Film.

Five major New England themes run through American films, according to Sheldon. They are small town life vs. city values; Yankee characters, often the sage rustic; family secrets; seafaring tales; and haunted New England.

Lon Chaney starred in the 1909 film The Miracle Man, in which New York con men try to use a faith healer to collect money in a small New England town. George M. Cohan, who considered North Brookfield, Mass., his home, wrote the screenplay. Watch the surviving parts of it here.

Bette Davis in The Way Back Home

The Yankee rustic appears in the 1931 film Way Back Home. Philips Lord, a radio personality from Hartford, Vt., created the Seth Parker character, a clergyman and backwoods philosopher based on his real-life grandfather. Way Back Home was also the film debut of Bette Davis, who owned a farm in Sugar Hill, N.H., and often shopped at the Carol Reed shop in Littleton, N.H. (See a clip from Way Back Home here.)

Secrets, Sailors and Ghosts

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, a story about a family secret, was made into film for a third time in 1926 starring Lillian Gish, which you can watch here. It would be made for the big screen two more times, including the disastrous 1995 version starring Demi Moore. It was also made for television three times. (“This will not do,” wrote Roger Ebert in a review that gave the film one-and-a-half stars.)

Lobby card for the 1934 version of The Scarlet Letter.

Playwright Eugene O’Neill, took the family secret theme to new heights (or depths) with plays that were adapted for film, including Long Days Journey Into Night and Desire Under the Elms.

During the 1920s, at least a half-dozen films featured the salty New England sailor, presaging George Clooney in The Perfect Storm and Casey Affleck in The Finest Hours decades later. Rin Tin Tin foils bootleggers in 1924 off the Maine coast in The Lighthouse by the Sea. The Pearl of Love in 1925 was based on a Harriet Beecher Stowe novel also about the Maine coast. John Barrymore starred as Captain Ahab in The 1924 movie, The Sea Beast. (Watch the love scene here.)

Still from The Sea Beast

Stephen King is only the latest in a long line of writers whose stories about haunted New England appear in film. The Salem witch trials happened here, after all.

Maid of Salem, starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert in 1937, is a story about a girl who falls in love with an adventurer and is sentenced as a witch. Watch it here.

At least a dozen movies inspired by the Salem witch trials have been produced since then, from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible to Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost.

The Movie Business

Before film production moved to California, there were dozens of film studios in New England, including the Eastern Film Corporation in Rhode Island, the Commonwealth Photoplay Corporation in Massachusetts and Dirigo Pictures and Pine Tree Pictures in Maine.

Thomas Ince, film’s first tycoon, was responsible in part for the industry’s migration out west.

Thiomas Ince in 1918

A native of Newport, R.I., he invented the shooting script and the five-reel film, created the first movie studio and put the producer in charge rather than the cameraman and the director. Ince died in 1924 after a sojourn on William Randolph Hearst’s yacht with Charlie Chaplin and Marion Davies.

Another New Englander, G.W. ‘Billy’ Bitzer, helped bring the film industry out of its infancy with his innovative cinematography.

He was born in Roxbury, Mass., in 1872. Bitzer developed early cinematic technologies and techniques such as the fadeout, the soft focus and the close-up. Like other cameramen of his day, he traveled the country shooting scenes of real life. Seeing Boston By Streetcar on film in 1906 was once such film.

Moguls

Joseph P. Kennedy

Louis B. Mayer, who co-founded MGM, got his start in the film business in Massachusetts with the purchase of a burlesque theater in Haverhill. It was nicknamed the ‘Garlic Box’ because it catered to poor Italian immigrants. Mayer cleaned up the theater’s reputation by showing a religious film when it opened in 1907. He bought more theaters, eventually controlling the largest theater chain in New England before moving west.

Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the president, only ran his movie studios from 1926 to 1930, but he is credited with launching the talkie revolution and creating the modern entertainment conglomerate. He was the first financier to buy control of a studio – actually, he bought three — rather than build it up.

For a list of films with New England themes or locations, click here. For a story about award-winning films shot in New England, click here.

This story last updated in 2022.

With thanks to Northeast Historic Film.

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George M. Cohan Brings American Patriotism to Broadway

George M. Cohan wrote one of Broadway’s greatest hits in 1904 with Little Johnny Jones, featuring the song, I’m a Yankee Doodle Boy.

James Cagney starring as George M. Cohan.

He was only 25 years old, but he already had his share of flops behind him.

At 22, George M. Cohan produced The Governor’s Son, a play with energy and speed. It opened on Feb. 25, 1901 featuring exuberant characters who spoke like Americans. Unlike most theatrical productions of the time, it was not a rehash of European operettas.
Then came I’m a Yankee Doodle Boy (now known as Yankee Doodle Dandy). It marked the first of many successful patriotic and show tunes, including Over There, You’re A Grand Old Flag and Give My Regards to Broadway. But it flopped at first.

George M. Cohan

Cohan was an actor, singer, producer, director, composer and lyricist. He had a reputation as ‘the man who owned Broadway’ and ‘the father of musical comedy.’ New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia praised him for putting the symbols of American life into American music.

George M. Cohan was born in a small theatrical hotel on July 3, 1878 in Providence, R.I., a few hours before midnight. He always insisted his birthday was on the Fourth of July. As soon as he learned to talk and walk he was performing on the vaudeville circuit. Along with his parents, Jerry and Helen, and sister, Josie, they formed The Four Cohans.

As a child, Cohan spent summers with his relatives in Podunk, Mass., now part of East Brookfield. He became friends with Cornelius McGillicuddy, better known as Connie Mack, who grew up nearby.

He loved Podunk and what he called its ‘hayseed hicks,’ making them famous in his shows. Other entertainers picked up the word Podunk to mean a small, dull town.

George M. Cohan takes an at-bat as Connie Mack catches, July 10, 1934. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

George M. Cohan takes an at-bat as Connie Mack catches in North Brookfield, Mass, July 10, 1934. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Jaunty and Dapper

On stage, he had a swaggering, energetic persona, characterized by The New York Times.

An old trouper and hoofer, whose dapper costumes, derby or straw hat cocked jauntily over one eye, wisecracks from the corner of the mouth, and lively caper across the stage with his fast-swinging cane, were nationally known trademarks, he was regarded for years as just a Broadway vaudeville performer, but astonished the theatrical world by developing into a serious actor and dramatist whose work won praise even from the intellectuals who had previously ignored him.

One of his favorite theatrical devices was to close a show with a flag-waving finale that usually brought down the house. For his inspirational patriotic songs – particularly You’re a Grand Old Flagand Over There – Congress awarded him a gold medal under a special act. President Franklin Roosevelt, who Cohan had impersonated in the play I’d Rather Be Right, presented the medal to him.

George M. Cohan

Soft Touch

He became a very rich man, but he lived simply and gave away a great deal of money. As a soft touch, he replied ‘Okay, kid,’ to anyone who approached him for money. He gave allowances to many people he and his family knew in the theater and had fallen on hard times. Cohan once loaned several hundred thousand dollars to a friend who lost money in the stock market.

He died in New York City on Nov. 5, 1942 at the age of 64, but not before a biopic about him was made. Yankee Doodle Dandy starred James Cagney, another Irish-American song-and-dance man. Cohan wasn’t impressed by the film, which was the biggest box office hit in Warner Brothers’ history and won several Academy Awards. It is preserved in the National Film Registry because of its significance. You can see a great clip from the movie here.

A statue of Cohan stands in Times Square in New York City.

This story was updated in 2021.

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Remembering Martin Bergen, From Beaneaters Star to Murder-Suicide

In the summer of 1934, three very different lives converged in North Brookfield, Mass.: song-and-dance man George M. Cohan; Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack; and Martin Bergen, a Boston Beaneater who murdered his family and killed himself 34 years previously.

George M. Cohan takes an at-bat as Connie Mack catches, July 10, 1934. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

North Brookfield

All three had grown up in or near North Brookfield. Cohan, born in 1878, spent summers in North Brookfield at his grandmother’s house when he wasn’t traveling on the vaudeville circuit with his family. He loved the town. His musical Fifty Miles From Boston was inspired by North Brookfield and includes the song Harrigan.

In 1934, Cohan told a reporter, “I’ve knocked around everywhere, but there’s no place like North Brookfield.”

Geoge M. Cohan on Broadway

Cornelius McGillicuddy, better known as Connie Mack, was born Dec. 22, 1862 in East Brookfield, Mass., to a large Irish family. He quit school at 16 to work in a shoe factory and help support his family. He played baseball, or what was then called town ball, any chance he could get.

In 1886 he began his 10-year career as a light-hitting catcher in the National League. Then he went on to manage, and become part owner, of the Philadelphia Athletics for 50 seasons. He won, lost and managed more games than anyone in baseball history, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937.

Martin Bergen

Martin Bergen. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

Martin Bergen was also a catcher, and some said he was the best defensive catcher ever to play the game. He was born on a farm in 1871 in North Brookfield.

From 1896 to 1899, he played for the Boston Beaneaters (later the Braves), growing increasingly erratic. Sometimes he would disappear for days. Once he suddenly slapped a teammate without provocation. He claimed people were trying to poison him and he began to walk sideways so he could detect his potential assassins.

His teammates mistook his behavior for alcoholism, but Martin Bergen suffered from mental illness.

When his three-year-old son died in the summer of 1899, Martin Bergen complained his teammates kept reminding him of his son’s death. Some of the Beaneaters, on the other hand, said they wouldn’t play the next year if he were still on the team.

Boston Beaneaters in 1897

On Jan. 19, 1900, Martin took an axe and bludgeoned to death his wife and two small children. He then slashed his own throat so savagely his head was nearly severed. Doctors concluded he had schizophrenia and possibly manic depression.

Cohan and Mack knew Martin Bergen. Mack had played baseball with him. Mack and Cohan had become friends, and in 1934 they helped collect enough money to establish a granite monument to Martin Bergen at his gravesite in St. Joseph Cemetery.

Connie Mack Day

The Brookfield Chamber of Commerce planned July 10, 1934 as a special day to dedicate the monument. George M. Cohan agreed to play master of ceremonies. He asked Connie Mack if his Philadelphia Athletics, on pace for a losing season, would play a top town team, the Armortreds.

Ironically, the day to honor Martin Bergen became Connie Mack Day. The town bedecked itself in patriotic bunting and American flags. The 181^st Infantry Band serenaded a crowd of 6,000 with tunes. NBC broadcast the game, with Cohan doing the play-by-play when he wasn’t umpiring or sitting next to Connie Mack, eating hot dogs or signing autographs.

Connie Mack, 1911

After the Athletics lost 9-5, Connie Mack spoke to the crowd:

I cannot begin to tell you the pleasure it has given me to come back to North Brookfield today. It was 51 years ago on the Fourth of July that I played my last ball game on this common … And I lost that one too. I don’t know if I have set foot on this field since.

Mack had returned to North Brookfield 34 years earlier to attend Martin Bergen’s funeral. Only two others had joined him for the sad ceremony: his brother Bill Bergen and his teammate Billy Hamilton.

The inscription on the monument read, “In memory of Martin Bergen, 1871–1900. Member of the Boston National League Club. Erected in appreciation of his contribution to American’s national game.”

With thanks to Connie Mack: A Life in Baseball By Ted Davis. This story about Martin Bergen was updated in 2022.

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