Juliann Graham (1915–1935): Ballad of a Small-Town Girl in Hollywood

The story of Juliann Graham is more than one of those cautionary tales found in the newspapers of the day; it is actually a primer, a how-to, on understanding the way that the Hollywood industry has always handled misconduct, sexual exploitation, accusations, and scandal – from the stories of the extra girls in the 1910s to the accusations exposed in the #MeToo movement a hundred years later. It has never been about cleaning up; it’s about covering up.

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The #MeToo movement exposed some of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, directors, and actors as predators who sexually harassed or assaulted actresses on the path to stardom. Those unfamiliar with Hollywood history were shocked at the extent of the harassment as well as the prominence of the men involved, but the truth is that sexual exploitation has been part of the power structure in Hollywood since the silent era. As a film historian who pokes around the kind of history most scholars shun, I have researched murders, suicides, sexual assaults, drug addictions, and studio payoffs to corrupt city officials.

Digging into scandals, rumors, and outrageous behavior can be disturbing, shocking – even unintentionally funny. While I am accustomed to setting aside personal reaction in order to draw conclusions about the impact of scandal and unscrupulous behavior on the industry, on the public, and on the content of films, the case of Juliann Graham haunts me. Periodically, I return to her story to dig deeper into the circumstances surrounding her mysterious death, looking for . . . what? More evidence? More historical perspective? More of her voice in her story? I’m not really sure.

Graham’s story nags at me in part because generations of my family were born and raised in Tyler County, West Virginia, where Graham was born in 1915. Her hometown of Sistersville is a tiny hamlet in the Northern Panhandle along the mighty Ohio River. I know the people, the region, the customs. I have walked past the house of her prominent grandmother for whom Juliann was named.

Juliann Graham’s grandmother’s home in Sistersville, WV. She spent time there but also was brought there after her death for the funeral. Photo by the author

It was longtime residents of Sistersville who first told me of Graham. She was one of those ultra-popular small-town girls who are on every page of the high school yearbook: She was editor of the school newspaper, art editor of the yearbook, and salutatorian of her graduating class. She also worked in the Sistersville Library, performed in productions in the Little Theater, and sang in the choir at the Presbyterian Church – a detail later exploited by an unforgiving press. In her spare time, she went to the movies at the Paramount Theatre on Wells Street. Graham was the proverbial big fish in a little pond when she graduated from high school in 1933.1

The present-day Gaslight Theater in Sistersville, formerly the Paramount Theater. Juliann attended movies here. Photo by the author

Without disclosing her plans to her family, Juliann withdrew her life savings of a few hundred dollars shortly after Christmas and took a bus to Hollywood. Perhaps she thought her amateur experiences were enough to make it in the movie business. Or she may have been encouraged by the contests and articles in fan magazines of the time, which enticed hundreds of girls to come to Hollywood every year. But Graham did not become a star – she became a statistic.

Once in Hollywood, Juliann wasted no time in pursuing her goals, simplifying her name to Julia. She rented a room at the famed Hollywood Studio Club, a dormitory-like facility for young women trying to break into the movies. She visited the Central Casting Bureau in the hopes of finding daywork at the major studios. The fact that she sought out both Hollywood institutions within a few weeks of arriving suggests she knew of their reputations for protecting and assisting young women in pursuit of careers in the film industry. The Hollywood Studio Club (HSC) and the Central Casting Bureau (CCB, aka Central Casting) had been established during the 1920s as a response to a decade of bad publicity over the plight of the “extra girl.”

In the mid-1910s, after the film industry was centralized in and around Hollywood, newspapers, trade magazines, and fan magazines began to write derisively about the growing numbers of movie extras.2 Each morning, dozens of people would line up in front of the major studios in the hopes of being selected for extra work in any of the films in production. While it is likely that some of those waiting in line were men, the articles focused exclusively on young women, often painting them as starstruck girls whose goal was to see themselves on the big screen or to be picked out of the crowd by a producer, star, or director. The girls were dubbed “extra girls” or “movie-struck girls,” while the act of being singled out from the ranks was known as “being discovered.”3

Some newspaper and trade articles warned of the dark side of the life of an extra girl. The chances of financial success as an extra were limited, and so young girls risked hunger and homelessness. And most disturbing were cases of sexual harassment, exploitation, and assault on female extras, which were reported as early as 1913. Trade magazines, such as Variety, and newspapers acknowledged that sexual harassment was prevalent, though the accepted practice in journalism of the day was to use euphemisms in articles and columns to cloak sexual misconduct or situations.4

The role of the press in the extra girl phenomenon was extensive and yet contradictory. On the one hand, the appeal of Los Angeles was touted in travel and lifestyle magazines, and columns like Motion Picture Classic’s “How They Got In” exaggerated the ease in which various stars had been discovered. Such articles glamourized and mythologized the film industry, providing incentive for young women to move to Hollywood so they too could be plucked out of the crowd to be discovered. On the other hand, newspapers, trades, and women’s magazines revealed the difficulties and dangers faced by extra girls and warned them not to come to Hollywood.

Will Hays. Courtesy of Will H. Hays collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Indiana State Library

In the early 1920s, after a series of high-profile scandals outraged the public regarding the offscreen behavior of those in the film industry, former postmaster general Will Hays was hired as president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). Today, Hays is most often remembered for organizing the film industry’s system of self-censorship of onscreen images and content by adopting a set of guidelines and rules called the Motion Picture Production Code, aka the Hays Code. However, his purpose was more than controlling what viewers saw on the screen. It was actually to reform the image of Hollywood, not only in terms of onscreen content but also the offscreen behavior of those connected to the industry. Beyond appeasing the public, this “cinema uplift” as Hays referred to his goal, was designed to deter any calls for government censorship by watchdog groups and newspaper editors. Also, the positive publicity generated over his stated purpose to reform and uplift likely smoothed his efforts to lobby in Washington on behalf of the film industry.5

Part of Hays’s cinema uplift involved addressing the problem of the extra girl through the establishment of the Central Casting Bureau and the Hollywood Studio Club. Prior to the opening of the CCB in January 1926, extras were handled by an informal, chaotic employment agency called the Service Bureau, which had been set up by the studios in 1919 in a shabby, run-down building. The new CCB’s purpose was to systemize the process of obtaining and paying extras – to make it more professional and to counter bad publicity about the exploitation of the extra girls. After registering with the CCB, men and women would be sent as needed to those studios that were members of the MPPDA. Standardized wages and working hours were established. Marian Mel, a former assistant secretary of the California Industrial Welfare Commission, was hired as a spokesperson for the CCB, and she effectively articulated their mission to the press. Clearly, Hays understood the value of public relations for all of his initiatives through the MPPDA.

Even more than the Central Casting Bureau, the Hollywood Studio Club provided an opportunity for positive publicity. Under the aegis of the MPPDA, the Hollywood Studio Club was inaugurated by the YWCA and opened in May 1926. The HSC was intended as a chaperoned, elite dormitory that would be a safe home for young women seeking work in the film industry. The earliest YWCA studio club for “movie-struck girls” opened in 1916, housing about 20 women in a structure rented from local businessmen. Most of the original residents had met while studying Ibsen in the public library. After moving into the club, they had access to classes in drama, dance, gymnastics, makeup, and pantomime. Reportedly, wives of studio executives, female stars, and female directors hosted teas or get-togethers at the club.

“Girls from the Hollywood Studio Club cleaning house.” Image from Los Angeles Times, April 1927, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Hays began planning with the YWCA for an expanded club in 1923, and the spouses of well-known industry leaders, such as Mrs. Cecil B. DeMille (Constance) and Mrs. Jesse Lasky (Bessie), joined the committee. When the Hollywood Studio Club opened, it housed about 90 young women. Life at the HSC included classes in drama, dance, and makeup; social opportunities such as teas and luncheons; and rules designed to protect residents, including curfews. The wide-ranging press coverage of the HSC hailed Hays (and, by extension, the MPPDA) as the driving force behind the club from the planning stages in 1923 through its opening in 1926. Articles appeared in national magazines (such as the Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping), major newspapers (including the Boston Globe), and movie magazines (including Photoplay and Picture Play).6 The stated goal was to solve the crisis of the extra girls, providing protection and edification, but in retrospect, the underlying goal seemed to be a public relations campaign to turn the troublesome “extra girl” into the sophisticated “studio girl” in the collective mind of the public.7

So, when Juliann Graham stepped off that bus in Los Angeles shortly after Christmas in 1933, she should have benefitted from Hays’s cinema uplift, specifically the standardization of the Central Casting Bureau and the establishment of the Hollywood Studio Club. However, young hopefuls like Graham quickly learned that the real nature of the film industry had little to do with Hays’s uplift, cleanup, or reform. It was patriarchal, hierarchical, and fiercely insular – a place where power protected itself, and access and opportunity were more often bartered than earned. The story of Juliann Graham is more than one of those cautionary tales found in the newspapers of the day; it is actually a primer, a how-to, on understanding the way that the Hollywood industry has always handled misconduct, sexual exploitation, accusations, and scandal – from the stories of the extra girls in the 1910s to the accusations exposed in the MeToo movement a hundred years later. It has never been about cleaning up; it’s about covering up.

By March 1934, Graham – now Julia – had been in Hollywood for a little over two months but had not caught a break, and she had run out of money. According to a Los Angeles newspaper, her situation prompted a suicide attempt. The headline blared: “West Virginia Girl Near Death. Failing in Movies, Takes Sleeping Powders.”8 In her suicide note, she confessed that at age 19, she was tired of living and hated life – a bleak outlook considering she had been pounding the pavement for such a short time.9

Newspaper articles about Graham’s suicide attempt drew the attention of legendary Earl Carroll, producer of Broadway’s Vanities, a musical-variety stage show famous for its scantily clad showgirls. Carroll was staying in Hollywood during the shooting of Murder at the Vanities (1934), a movie based on his show. An expert at milking publicity, he visited Graham in the hospital and promised to arrange for Paramount to give her a screen test. An AP photo of Graham and Carroll circulated in the major newspapers with a caption noting the would-be actress’s new fortune.10 She does appear in Murder at the Vanities as one of the chorines, though uncredited.

Murder at the Vanities shows Hollywood at its most salacious, before the Hays Code began to be enforced in June 1934. The film exploited the legs and ample cleavage of the scantily clad chorines, but a production number called “Sweet Marijuana” deserves special mention. Unbelievably, star Gertrude Michael sings the praises of pot as topless chorus girls pop out of giant fake cactus flowers. The girls cross their arms to cover their bare breasts, but the lack of clothing is obvious. Graham, who was still 19 during production, was not among the cactus cuties, but she appears in other song-and-dance numbers. I wonder if the folks back in Sistersville caught Murder at the Vanities at the Paramount on Wells Street.

Graham appeared in other films, including a George Burns and Gracie Allen vehicle titled Many Happy Returns (1934) and the musical comedy Shoot the Works (1934). According to columnist Harrison Carroll (no relation to Earl), Julia had received a contract from Paramount with a modest salary. In an interview with gossip columnist Robbin Coons dated May 14, Julia noted that she did not expect to be playing “atmosphere” much longer.11 She anticipated news of a speaking role every time the phone rang. Graham was a contract player, meaning the studio inserted her into any film that needed a pretty face. What long-term plans – if any – Paramount may have had for her are unknown.

In September or November 1934, Graham reportedly attempted suicide again. I am skeptical of this second suicide attempt because I could find no evidence of it in newspapers, and stories about this event did not surface until later, after Julia’s situation turned tragic. Perhaps it did occur but studio execs covered it up. In those days, studios kept “widows and orphans funds,” a euphemism for accounts used to eliminate indelicate situations caused by stars or personnel. If a simple payoff to authorities was not enough, studio heads turned to fixers, who quietly handled any tricky or illegal actions required to contain trouble.12 Or perhaps Graham lied about the second attempt in order to elicit sympathy or to land more work. Or perhaps it did not happen at all.

In the spring of 1935, Graham received a speaking role in a Burns and Allen comedy called Love in Bloom (1935). She played a waitress in a scene with Joe Morrison and Dixie Lee in which Morrison talks about his struggle to make it in show business – an ironic coincidence considering Julia’s story. However, the new year proved eventful for another reason, because Graham had taken up with veteran cinematographer Ben F. Reynolds, sometimes credited as Benjamin Reynolds. A respected Hollywood cameraman of the silent era, Reynolds had worked for such industry giants as John Ford and Frank Capra, though he is best remembered as Erich von Stroheim’s cinematographer.

Joe Morrison, Julia Graham (standing), and Dixie Lee in Love in Bloom

Julia met Reynolds at Paramount while he was working on the studio’s comedy vehicles, including those starring W. C. Fields. Sources conflict over the state of Reynolds’s career in the sound era,13 and reporters never missed a chance to make a snide comment about his enormous girth. But, most importantly, Reynolds was a member of the “Colony,” that loose-knit community of stars, producers, and studio personnel who had turned the dirt roads and orange groves of Southern California into an industry known as the Hollywood Dream Factory. The members, who were revered and privileged, lived near the studios, though the Colony was more about reputation than location.14 Reynolds, a 360-pound married man in his mid-40s, was not the most attractive suitor, but his connections and standing undoubtedly improved his appeal.

Reynolds claimed he met Julia on the set of Rose of the Rancho (1936), which was in production in the late spring of 1935. He escorted the 20-year-old girl to the hottest nightspots for a few weeks, before asking her to go to Catalina Island for a weekend. Adelaide Reynolds, his unfortunate wife, was apparently back east visiting friends or relatives. Feigning sickness, Graham left the set of Rose of the Rancho early on Saturday, July 13, to cruise over to Catalina with Reynolds. The two registered in a hotel under assumed names and proceeded to drink heavily. According to Reynolds, Julia continued to drink long after he had stopped, and she was still intoxicated when the pair returned to Hollywood on Sunday evening.15

Reynolds was the only person to know the truth of what happened that night, and he took the whole story to the grave. However, he did offer colorful – and conflicting – versions of the events of July 14-15, which the newspapers eagerly printed. Either Graham was too drunk to return to her room at the Hollywood Studio Club or it was past the club’s curfew. According to the philandering cameraman, he had initially refused Julia’s pleas to stay at his home because his wife was out of town. He claimed she was so drunk that she passed out on the sofa in the living room, taking the decision out of his hands. He allegedly retired to his bedroom. During the wee hours, Graham stumbled around his apartment and found a gun. She shot herself in the left temple. Reynolds raced toward the sound and found her on the floor. Newspapers recounted that he grabbed the telephone, telling the operator, “For God’s sake, send the police” –  a line straight out of a crime drama of the era.16 Julia lingered about an hour at the hospital before she died from the gunshot wound.

Los Angeles Times article titled “Efforts of Dead Actress to End Her Life Recalled,” July 16, 1935. Original caption: “Ben F. Reynolds, left, points out to Detective Lieutenant Knepper the place in his bedroom where the body of Juliann Graham, screen actress, was found yesterday with a bullet hole through the temple.” Courtesy of UCLA Digital Archive

In late editions of newspapers, or those printed July 16, Reynolds admitted that Julia shot herself in his bedroom. He was forced to make this adjustment to his story because a news photo of him with Detective Lieutenant Knepper in his bedroom showed him pointing to the floor where Julia’s body had fallen.17 However, he claimed she slipped into his room unbeknownst to him, completely disrobed, found a gun, and shot herself at the foot of his bed. He declared he did not hear anything until the gunshot, because he was “a heavy sleeper.”18 I don’t know which version of events is more unbelievable, but you don’t need to be a detective to see through Reynolds’s attempts to clean up his story. The two were most likely in his bedroom at the same time, and her death by a gunshot wound to the head had a lot more to do with Reynolds than he was admitting.

The police stopped investigating Reynolds as soon as District Attorney Buron Fitts determined her death a suicide – without benefit of an inquest. After her death, news of Julia Graham’s second suicide attempt was revealed for the first time.19 Reynolds may have been the source of this information; if he was not the source, he wasted no time in lending it credence. A United Press story circulated around the country in which Reynolds mentioned that Julia had tried to kill herself twice before. He informed authorities that she told him repeatedly that “the third time will be the charm.”20

Los Angeles District Attorney Buron Fitts examining his automobile after recovering from being shot in the elbow by a mystery assailant. A reward was immediately offered for the identity of the would-be assassin. March 10, 1937. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I recognized the name Buron Fitts because of his connection to other Golden Age scandals. His office handled the 1932 death of MGM producer Paul Bern. The bookish Bern had wed sexy star Jean Harlow, then reportedly committed suicide two months later, leaving a cryptic suicide note. In his 1990 book Deadly Illusions, Samuel Marx accused Fitts of taking a bribe from MGM (which, along with the other studios, had financially supported Fitts’s campaigns for district attorney) to accept suicide as the official cause of death to avoid a scandal that would damage Harlow’s box office appeal.21 E. J. Fleming in The Fixers goes a step further, claiming Fitts choreographed the inquest for the “prearranged verdict of death by suicide.”22 The year before Graham’s suicide, Fitts was indicted for bribery and perjury for taking money to drop a rape charge against a wealthy real estate promoter. In 1937, Fitts tanked a rape case involving an underage dancer named Patricia Douglas who was beaten and sexually assaulted at an MGM Convention party. MGM bribed witnesses to lie and paid partygoers to disparage the girl’s reputation, resulting in the grand jury dropping the charges. When Douglas sued several MGM executives, Fitts used the studio’s manufactured information to destroy her in open court.23 The case dragged on until she lost it because of a series of technicalities engineered by MGM.24 Fitts’s name crops up regularly in newspaper articles about studio shenanigans.

Julia’s father, Harry Graham, did not believe the sordid stories of his daughter’s behavior and demanded an investigation. Fitts reopened the case, but it was clear that he had little intention of changing his determination. After the case reopened, accounts of Graham’s second suicide attempt became very detailed, and newspaper articles began to quote an alleged suicide note, though no reporter bothered to question who had held onto the note for over eight months. The note supposedly read, “Had I known what faced an inexperienced girl without dramatic training, I would never have left home for Hollywood. The fight is terrific. It forced me to choose death rather than carry on.”25 I can’t imagine a 20-year-old turning a phrase like “an inexperienced girl without dramatic training.” People just don’t talk that way – except in notes ghostwritten by studio press agents.

Even more unbelievable was the discovery of Julia’s diary out of nowhere on July 29. In an undated entry that sources described as a scrawled note, she allegedly wrote, “Soon I shall die . . . I just miss therefore I’m illusive. I can’t even grasp myself. I can’t live, but I’m too confused. . . I know what fiendish thing I shall do. I’ll steal Ben’s gun, and – .”26 The telltale diary entry that conveniently spelled out her exact intent was labeled conclusive evidence by Fitts, who reiterated his original conclusion that she had killed herself over her failed career. Case closed, again. By this time, Reynolds’s participation in her death had been reduced to mere bystander, meaning he was no longer at the center of the story, which must have pleased both him and the studio. Reporters turned their attention away from Reynolds to focus on exaggerated accounts of Julia’s show business failure and her inability to overcome it. Information about the diary was released immediately to the press. Headlines reinforced the new spin on the story: “360-lb. Film-Man Freed of Murder by Girl’s Diary” and “‘Soon I Shall Die,’ Julia Ann Graham [sic] Wrote Before Death.”27 The studio had taken control of the narrative, using the press to paint Graham as pathetic, crazed, and shameless, essentially victimizing her again. It was more than the silencing of her voice: It was the gendered power structure of Hollywood reframing her story, burying the truth in the process.

Virginia Rappe, 1920. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I have researched a lot of tragic tales from the 1920s–40s in which young women came to Hollywood to chase stardom – Virginia Rappe, Peg Entwhistle, Thelma Todd, and Mary Miles Minter, among others. There is a pattern to the way such stories unfold: First, a sensational event involving an actress makes the front pages of the newspapers; then the event is reinterpreted – or spun – by the studio or a press agent in subsequent coverage. A patsy – usually someone dead or already ruined – is produced who shoulders most of the scandal. In this case, the patsy was unknown Julia Graham from Nowhere, West Virginia, who was so new to the industry she couldn’t even be called a starlet. In these scandalous situations, studio executives took charge to minimize the negative publicity and to close ranks to protect their own, as they likely did with Reynolds. The police, district attorneys, and the courts tended to support the studios’ versions of events, because, after all, Los Angeles was – and is – a company town.

From the beginning, I was convinced there was more to Julia’s story than disappointment over a failed career. After all, she had been in Hollywood for only a year and a half, and in that time, she had become a contract player for Paramount, even landing bit parts with a few lines. While she had not been “discovered,” she was also not merely an extra girl. And, so, I dug deeper. In August 1935, about a month after the Graham case was closed, Rosalind Shaffer wrote a feature article that was syndicated in newspapers around the country. The article was an odd mix of sordid tales of women who met bad ends in “cosmopolitan” Hollywood combined with stories of showbiz success. Notably, she offered new information on Graham. Shaffer had interviewed her just after her first suicide attempt in March 1934, and Julia relayed many of her alarming experiences as a young Hollywood hopeful, which, according to Shaffer, exposed “the seamy side of the glitter of Hollywood.”28

Apparently, Graham had been sexually molested or assaulted. The assault occurred during the weeks she had tried to sign up at the Central Casting Bureau while also making the rounds of the studios’ casting offices. The CCB wouldn’t let her fill out a card with her name and information, because “they had more girls than they could possibly use.”29 While seeking extra work on her own at a studio, she “fell into the hands of a ruffian,” according to Shaffer, “who tried to mistreat her. She escaped, crying.”30 Words such as mistreat are euphemisms in feature articles of the time for uglier phrases like sexual assault or rape. The addition of “she escaped, crying” suggests that perhaps the assault did not result in rape, or that Julia did not want anyone – including family – to know exactly what happened.

Original Central Casting office inside the Hollywood & Western Building (1929). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Shortly after this incident, Julia landed a singing job at a café but only if she “would live in the owner’s bungalow,” suggesting the job was contingent on sleeping with the owner.31 Also, during this time frame, she was the victim of a scam in which con artists promised her work in the movies if she paid them a fee. They took her money and vanished.

If this article is accurate, she had been assaulted, propositioned, and robbed of most of her money within her first two months in Hollywood. With this revelation, the desperation that led to a suicide attempt in March 1934 makes more sense. Obviously, it was about more than her failure to get a break in the movies. Why didn’t she reveal any of this to other reporters while she was in the hospital? Was she pressured not to? Or if she did, did reporters prefer to focus on the happy ending in which Earl Carroll came to her rescue?

The Shaffer article prompted me to review the newspaper coverage of her first suicide attempt to see if I missed anything. I found a cryptic statement in Robbin Coons’s column of May 14 that could be taken as corroboration of the allegations in Shaffer’s article. In recounting Julia’s experiences during her short time in Hollywood, he wrote, “She meets big bad wolves who make problems, but Beauty has read about big bad wolves, too. She runs faster than the three little pigs.”32 Taken at face value, Coons’s statement is an allegory about the perils of Hollywood for any young woman seeking her big break; in conjunction with the Shaffer article, it becomes an allusion to the assault on Graham.

Graham’s experiences at the Central Casting Bureau confounded me. Why didn’t they allow her to fill out a card with her information? That does not seem to fit Hays’s stated goal for the new CCB, which was to standardize the treatment of extras. I tried to make a connection between her experiences with the “big bad wolf” and a scandal involving the CCB that was exposed in April 1934, a month or so after Graham was refused an extra’s card. Central Casting manager Dave Allen was arrested on a morals charge for taking an extra to another extra’s apartment to have sex with her. The implication was that the sex was in exchange for work as an extra.33 Had Graham been propositioned as well but she refused? Or could her assault have occurred at the CCB rather than a studio? Was a compromising experience the reason she did not get an extra’s card? To date, I have no information to suggest that Graham was propositioned or assaulted at the CCB, but the timing is quite the coincidence. At the very least, Allen’s arrest and trial reveal that the efforts of Hays and the MPPDA did little to eliminate the frequency of sexual assault and harassment for extras. So much for reform and uplift.

Caption on the back of a press photo of David Allen.

Allen’s case went to trial in July 1934, and he lost his job at Central Casting. The trial ended in a hung jury, but after a series of strategic delays and unexplained incidents with disappearing witnesses, Allen was never retried. As I said, LA is a company town. Also, the industry takes care of its own, and Allen landed a cushy job at Columbia, which he held till he died. Just to be clear: Allen, an accused predator who abused his position at the Central Casting Bureau, was given a position of authority at a major film studio.

Julia’s relationship with Benjamin Reynolds the following year was obviously inappropriate, compounding her experiences with sexual exploitation. Whether she was a willing participant in the affair or was coerced into something, he was a married man twice her age who, in taking advantage of her dreams to break into the movies, actually shattered them. Reynolds’s status and connections did allow him to escape legal entanglements related to Julia’s death, but it can’t be a coincidence that he retired to obscurity immediately after the case was closed. He was only 45.

Each time I come back to the Juliann (Julia) Graham story, I uncover more facts or more historical context. Like a detective who is too personally involved with the case, I am convinced that she did not kill herself because she failed to get into the movies. If she did kill herself, it was a consequence of the transactional nature of the film business in which ambition is often met with exploitation rather than opportunity. Young women bartered themselves and their bodies for that big break in the movies. In the process, their confidence, self-esteem, sense of identity, and innocence were destroyed. Graham’s small-town values and sensibilities were no match for Hollywood, a town that takes no prisoners.

As a historian, my job is to posit Graham’s experiences as more than just a Hollywood scandal with tragic consequences. Following the trajectory of her story as it unfolded daily in the press reconfirmed what I knew regarding studio tactics for handling unfortunate news or scandal, so that no person or facet of the industry was ever at fault. The ease with which her suicide was turned into a familiar cautionary tale with the blame placed at her feet suggests how practiced the studio was at handling scandals involving sexual exploitation. With the promise of scoops and access to the “real story,” the complicit press dutifully reported whatever spin the studio gave them, while local politicos knew it was to their political advantage to adopt the studio’s versions of events. None of this is a revelation to anyone with even a passing knowledge of cinema history, but Graham’s story puts a personal face on it. Someone’s bright, young daughter was dead, while the industry, the press, and the local authorities conspired to destroy all that she was and all that she would ever be.

Julia’s experiences underscore the heartbreaking impact on individual women while also suggesting how widespread the exploitation truly was. Her story exposes how little value was placed on the welfare of hundreds of young women who left home for Hollywood, whether they were movie-struck girls dreaming of their discovery or actresses eager to hone a genuine performing talent. Does this indicate that Will Hays’s goals to uplift the industry through the Central Casting Bureau and the Hollywood Studio Club failed? Only if you believe that the safety and welfare of the women were the primary goal. I don’t. His objective was to use a well-orchestrated public relations campaign to change the negative perception of the film industry in the minds of the public, the watchdogs, and Washington politicians in order to prevent government intervention in the industry. The adoption and enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code to control onscreen content was likely the primary reason for Hays’s success in his goals, but the widespread publicity surrounding his efforts to fix the extras crisis through the Central Casting Bureau and the Hollywood Studio Club also proved enormously helpful.

EPILOGUE

In July 1935, Graham’s body was returned home to Sistersville, where she became Juliann once again. Calling hours and the funeral were held in her grandmother’s home at 718 Main Street. After the services, her casket was allegedly removed via a picture window along the far side of the house because too many reporters and onlookers had turned up to gawk and look, though another story claims she was buried just after sunrise to avoid reporters and spectators.

Juliann’s grave in the Greenwood Cemetery in Sistersville. Photo by the author

One Memorial Day a few years ago, my cousin and I visited Graham’s burial site atop the hill in Sistersville’s Greenwood Cemetery. Someone had placed yellow flowers on her well-tended grave. Benjamin Reynolds died in obscurity in 1947. Buron Fitts was voted out of office in 1940 and, ironically, committed suicide in 1973. Most of the Hollywood Colony are long forgotten.

But Juliann Graham is remembered.

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All images are in the public domain.