The film “Watermelon Woman” was a fictional tale about a filmmaker who becomes intrigued by a character actress she comes across in several old movies. She comes to find that the actress was a lesbian and involved with the leading lady. This week’s profile, Joseph Eckhardt, stumbled across a similar fantastical story but, in this case, it’s all real. And it’s magnificent.
Joseph P. Eckhardt holds the title of emeritus professor at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell. After retiring from full-time teaching, he began work on an in-depth study of American history painter William T. Trego. His biography of this nearly forgotten artist, “So Bravely and So Well: The Life and Art of William T. Trego,” was published in 2011. His first book, “The King of the Movies,” published in 1997, was a biography of Philadelphia film pioneer Siegmund Lubin, who founded Betzwood Studios, one of the first film studios in America.
Eckhardt’s most recent book was inspired by an actress featured in the “Toonerville Trolley” comedies he acquired for the Betzwood Film Archive at MCC. The book tells the story of Wilna Hervey, a 6-foot-3 300-pound heiress who played the role of The Powerful Katrinka in the “Toonerville Trolley” comedies of the early 1920s.
While filming on location in the Philadelphia suburbs, Hervey met Nan Mason, the daughter of her “Toonerville” co-star Dan Mason. The two women became close friends and ultimately life partners. Discovering that they had a mutual passion for art, after Hervey’s cinema work ended the pair moved to the famed artists’ colony at Woodstock, N.Y. The Big Girls, as they were known locally, carved out extraordinary lives for themselves as artists in a variety of mediums. They became known for their frequent and colorful parties, and their legendary “full-moon” soirées were held to raise money for local causes such as the Woodstock Library and the children’s health center. The two built a real-estate empire, dabbled as farmers and became friends with notable figures such as director Frank Capra, photographer Edward Weston and numerous artists of various mediums.
We have Professor Eckhardt to thank for unearthing and writing about these two pioneers in his heartwarming book “”Living Large: Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason.”
PGN: What is the first movie you remember?
JE: The first movie that I ever saw in a theater was “Singing in the Rain.” I was in third grade and my mother took me and my sister to see it. It’s still one of my favorite movies all these years later. What’s interesting is that it was a film about the transition from silent films to “talkies” and I think that instilled part of my interest in silent movies. Though even before that, I saw them on the old “Howdy Doody” show. It used to be one of the features of the show. They’d show silent films at fast speed and make fun of them, but I was entranced.
PGN: What kind of kid were you?
JE: I was a little nerd; actually I was more like a little adult. By the age of 4, my mother had taught me to write my name and recognize letters and words. My grandfather was so impressed by it that he used to call me “The Little Professor.” And lo and behold, years later I became a big professor! I was the kid who loved to read books, who enjoyed going to school. And I was pretty well-behaved; in those days the rule of thumb was if you got smacked by the teacher in school you’d go home and get smacked for needing to be smacked.
PGN: What’s a fun family memory?
JE: I’m the oldest of four and we had a big extended family. I had an Italian grandfather so Christmas was always very festive. On the other side, I had 50 cousins so it was always a mob scene at my grandmother’s house, but a very enjoyable mob scene.
PGN: What was a first inkling that you might have been “different?”
JE: It’s funny because that’s just how I thought of it. It wasn’t a sexual thing, it was just a sense of difference. My parents took me to an amusement park when I was about 4 and took me to the carousel. All these years later I still remember this … My father kept trying to put me up on the horse, but I spied a little boat shaped like a beautiful swan with a seat inside and I made a beeline for that. I still can see the looks on my parents’ faces.
PGN: You’re a teacher now. Who was your favorite high-school teacher?
JE: There was a wonderful woman who taught drama and coached the plays, Marguerite Anderson. I usually played a nonessential character — in fact, in one show I was the corpse — but I remember she treated everyone as an adult. She’d say, “You will do what you have to do and on opening night I won’t be anywhere near the theater.” It was terrifying and exhilarating at the same time because there was a sense of responsibility. There was an audience and when the curtain went up we had to deal with whatever happened. There was no adult supervision. I think most teachers would be reluctant to do that today, but it worked.
PGN: How did you get into teaching?
JE: I always wanted to be a teacher. I think I was programmed from the time I was a little kid. Until the day she died, my aunt still called me The Little Professor. Also being the oldest — not just of my siblings but my cousins as well — I was often put in charge of organizing whatever we did. I went to school at Clarion State Teacher’s College with the intent on becoming a teacher. I have a friend who’s a psychotherapist and his line is, “We live the lives that we lived,” meaning that the things you were doing as kids are often the things we do as adults.
PGN: And what did you teach?
JE: I taught history and art history, mostly European. We used to joke we taught history from the cave man to the atom bomb.
PGN: [Laughs] As someone who is often mystified by the merits of modern art, how do you explain the proverbial blank canvas with a single dot?
JE: You know I wasn’t fond of modern art until I had to teach it. I did a lot of reading and museum visits and developed an appreciation for a lot of it. There’s still some I have nothing but contempt for, but I got over my initial reluctance in order to teach it.
PGN: You taught from 1968-2007. That’s quite a span. I assume somewhere along that road you came out.
JE: Yes, I was married for 10 years … to a woman no less. It was a slow, strange process, but it was during those years that I emerged as who I really am. Fortunately it wasn’t a problem. No one batted an eye at the school, except for one colleague who reacted badly; we were at a party and I introduced my partner and he had this wide-eyed look of surprise. The next day at school, I noticed that he was avoiding me. So I went out of my way to seek him out and finally I wore him down. It just became too time-consuming to avoid me any more and he got over it. My family also was fine with it. In fact, I think they enjoy my partner Brent’s company more than they do mine! He’s much more of a people person. We’ve been together for about 30 years now.
PGN: Congrats! How did you get involved with the Betzwood Studio?
JE: I’m from Western PA and we moved to this area in 1962, just before I went off to college. At the time, they were tearing down parts of the studio and it was in the papers. Years later, I heard they were going to write about the history of Montgomery County and I called the editor and asked who was going to write about the old movie studio because I wanted to learn more about it. She’d never heard of it and asked me to write something about it. I thought, How hard can that be? And then found out. There wasn’t any information out there so I had to start from scratch. A few years later, I had sliding cabinets full of over 10,000 items and I decided to write a book about it, “The King of the Movies.” I never planned it; it was something that reached out and grabbed me.
PGN: Give me the Reader’s Digest version.
JE: The studio was founded by Siegmund Lubin. His studio was in North Philadelphia, but like now, movie studios need open space so he bought a big estate in Montgomery County and built a studio by the river in a town called Betzwood. It was their backlot so to speak, even though it was 20 miles away from the main studio. They made several-hundred movies there between 1912-22: dramas, comedies, even disaster movies. They actually built a whole town and burned it down for a film. It was fascinating and I eventually opened an archive at Montgomery County Community College where I taught to preserve the memory of the studio. That led to a film festival, which is no longer running, which led me to Wilna Hervey and Nan Mason.
PGN: Do tell.
JE: Wilna Hervey was one of the actresses at Betzwood. She starred in what they called the “Toonerville Trolley” comedies. The premise was there were a bunch of country bumpkins living in the boondocks and their only means of transportation was this old ramshackle trolley, piloted by an eccentric old man. One of the characters was “The Powerful Katrinka.” She was a big girl who was very strong and absolutely clueless; she would do things like load up a wheelbarrow with rocks and then pick it up and carry it, all sorts of wonderful sight gags. I fell in love with the character and for years wondered about Wilna Hervey, the actress who played the role. She was 6-foot-3 and weighed about 300 pounds and was an absolute delight. She was perfect for the part: She was light on her feet and wore a totally clueless expression and one day I decided to see what happened to her. And the story began to unfold. I found out through the census that she’d been living in Woodstock, N.Y. But she was listed as a farmer and underneath was listed the name of another woman, Nan Mason: “house wife.” I thought, Oh my! This just got a lot more interesting. The farmer and her wife, back in 1920. Turns out they weren’t really farmers at all, it was just a passing fancy — they were artists. As the story unraveled, I knew I had to make a book out of it. I was very lucky in that they were packrats and saved everything: all of their letters and photographs, all of their artwork, letters written to them, thousands of papers all stuffed into the attic and garage. When they died, a local artist cleaned it all out and thankfully had the good sense to save all of it. He kept some and donated the rest to the Archives of American Art.
PGN: It’s not going to be very much fun for the next generation of archivists since we’re all told to shred everything these days. There will be a digital trail of course, but that won’t be as much fun.
JE: I think about that often, and so much stuff is digitally manipulated, who’ll know if you’re looking at a real image or something Photoshopped?
PGN: Good point. You’ve written so much about films, how about a fun fact or two?
JE: I think people don’t realize that Philadelphia had a very large, very active film industry in the very early days. There were thousands of films made here in the 1890s that were quite literally shown around the world. Silent films were easy to market overseas because all you had to do was change the inner titles. A lot of people who became famous first worked for the Lubin company. Marie Dressler filmed at the Betzwood Studio in 1915.
PGN: Who was Siegmund Lubin?
JE: He was America’s first movie mogul. He was a Jewish immigrant from Germany and he was an optician so when he came to America he traveled around the states selling eyeglasses. He was a marketing genius, very entrepreneurial. Few people in those early days took movies seriously; they used them in vaudeville houses to chase the audience out! But he realized that it was going to change soon and that he could make a fortune from it. One of his insights was that it could be used as a teaching method. He used to let the doctors from the various hospitals and universities come to his studio on Sundays and use the equipment for free to shoot teaching films. He was a visionary.
PGN: What are some of your other outside interests?
JE: I have an abiding interest in art. My second book, “So Bravely and So Well,” was about a seriously handicapped artist from North Wales, Pa., William T. Trego, and that led to the first-ever retrospective exhibit of his work at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown. I even have someone interested in making a movie based on the book.
PGN: What was your favorite cartoon as a kid?
JE: “Sylvester and Tweety.” There’s just something about that poor cat getting thwarted at every turn that I get a kick out of.
PGN: Celebrity encounter?
JE: I went to high school with Joe Namath but as a nerd in high school I wasn’t able to talk to any football stars.
PGN: Best conversation piece?
JE: Oh, my house is like a museum! I have an original movie projector from 1904 that’s in working condition. And I recently bought a painting by Nan Mason, one of the women I wrote about.
PGN: A favorite movie line or scene?
JE: Ha, so many of my favorite films are silent! It would have to be the end of “Sunset Boulevard,” where Gloria Swanson comes wide-eyed down the staircase and says, “Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” n
For more information on Joseph Eckhardt’s work, visit https://mc3betzwood.wordpress.com.
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