King Baggot – The Story of the First ‘King of the Movies’ Begins in St. Louis

The King Baggot Tribute will take place Friday, November 14th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium beginning at 7pm as part of this year’s ST. Louis Intenational FIlm Festival. The program will consist a rare 35mm screening of the 1913 epic IVANHOE starring King Baggot with live music accompaniment by the Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra. IVANHOE will be followed by an illustrated lecture on the life and films of King Baggot presented by Tom Stockman, editor here at We Are Movie Geeks. After that will screen the influential silent western TUMBLEWEEDS (1925), considered to be one of King Baggot’s finest achievements as a director. TUMBLEWEEDS will feature live piano accompaniment by Matt Pace.

Here’s a comprehensive look at the life and career of King Baggot

Article by Tom Stockman

They gathered to see the stars at St. Louis Union Station on Saturday March 25^th 1910. President Taft had made a stop near the Twentieth Street entrance ten days earlier, but the crowd this day was much larger. Thousands, mostly excited women wearing ankle-length dresses and waving felt pennants lined up hoping for a glimpse, or perhaps the chance to touch the hand of the hometown hero soon to arrive by train. He and his travelling companion were stars of the silver screen, the first to have achieved the degree of popular fame hitherto reserved for the likes of Teddy Roosevelt or the occasional opera diva. The Union Station event was carefully orchestrated by the New York-based Independent Motion Pictures Company of America (IMP) studio. Invite the public to see a film star up close and personal. It was a concept dreamt up by IMP head Carl Laemmle as a venue to show off the first leading lady of the fledgling motion picture business. Florence Lawrence had beauty, grace, and Laemmle once famously assessed as ‘sensational bubbies’. No such publicity stunt had been devised for a movie star previously because the concept of a movie star had yet to be invented. But it wasn’t Ms Lawrence who was the subject of so much of the fan mail flooding the studio. It was her unbilled leading man.

The women of St. Louis and the rest of the country were curious about Ms Lawrence’s handsome costar – the tall, broad-shouldered fellow with the distinctive white streak through his dark hair and piercing eyes so blue that the orthochromatic film displayed them a striking ash grey. He had such magnetism and charisma and presence – but who was he? His name was King Baggot, and Laemmle hastily made arrangements for him to accompany Ms Lawrence to the St. Louis event, making the day something of a homecoming for the 30-year old actor. Buttons were plucked off their coats as souvenirs when they were swarmed by the crowd before scrambling into the back of a Packard Touring Car driven by Fred Wehrenberg, president of the locally-based Moving Picture Men’s Association. They then paraded the fifteen blocks down Market to the Grand Opera House Theater to speak and sign autographs before a showing of their newest one-reeler THE BROKEN OATH.

Florence Lawrence and King Baggot and Lawrence in THE MISER’S DAUGHTER (1909)

That Saturday in St. Louis over a century ago was historic. It marked the beginning of the star system as we know it today and King Baggot, then on the cusp of surpassing Ms Lawrence in popularity, would soon be crowned the first “King of the Movies”, the first publicized leading man in America, the first performer not already famous in another medium whose name and likeness were used in the publicity materials of a motion picture to sell tickets. And sell tickets he did. A movie star was what the public craved and this Irish boy from St. Louis was happy to fill the bill. King Baggot would enjoy unprecedented international mega-stardom, hyped as “The Most Photographed Man in the World” and “The Man Whose Face Is As Familiar As The Man In The Moon.” Yet today he is largely forgotten, even here in his home town. He’s the only actor from St. Louis with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame but not on our local one. Lay the blame on lack of early film preservation. Most silent films are long gone – scrapped for their silver nitrate content, destroyed by fire, left to decompose, or simply abandoned by an industry so lacking in foresight that it neither knew nor cared about their own products value to the future. There is scant documentation of early film pioneers, nor were the first film actors even identified, therefore it’s difficult to ascertain exactly how many films King Baggot acted in. He likely appeared in over 300 films between his most active period of 1909 to 1916, mostly one-reelers (1000 feet of film running around 16 minutes). His was a career of firsts, a significant and seminal figure in early American silent film history. St. Louis should be proud of King Baggot, this native son who deserves a place in our local cinema arts history alongside Vincent Price, Betty Grable, Shelly Winters, and John Goodman.

The Baggot family home on Union Boulevard in St. Louis and CBC High School

In November 1879, when King was born to William and Harriet Baggot, St. Louis had transformed itself from a fur-trading riverboat town to a bustling metropolis, with a population second only to Chicago. William, an immigrant from Limerick, Ireland was employed as a sheriff with the St. Louis police department. After six more offspring, William switched to a career in real estate, doing well enough to purchase a substantial home in the 1400 block of Union Boulevard. Young King attended the St. Louis public schools until he was ten, then enrolled in Christian Brothers College (CBC), a fine Catholic institute of learning. All archives were lost when CBC burned to the ground in 1916, so there no way of knowing what kind of student King was, but it is known that he excelled in sports and was captain of his school’s soccer team. After graduation in 1895, King worked occasionally in his father’s real estate office on Chestnut street downtown and at one time was with the St. Louis Browns baseball organization in ticket sales. King continued to play soccer for CBC, even though he was not a student there and in 1900 he signed to play with The St. Louis Shamrocks, the first professional soccer team here. William hoped his oldest son would join him in the real estate biz, but King was a restless and creative youth, one soon to be tempted by a life on the stage.

Early theaters in St. Louis: The Garrick on 8^th Street, the Havlin on 3^rd and the Suburban Garden Theater in Wellston  

St. Louis was a great place to pursue a theatrical career at the turn of the twentieth century. All the well-known national touring companies performed at the many theaters here: The Garrick on 8^th Street, the Havlin on 3^rd, the Olympic, The Imperial, The Grand, and the Suburban Garden Theater in Wellston. The stage is where King Baggot found his calling and he was soon touring the Midwest, performing in a variety of productions. When he made his way to Broadway in 1909, New York was the epicenter of the motion picture business. King jumped from the stage into the movies by joining IMP studios.

IMP Studio founder Carl Laemmle and what IMP’s outdoor studio looked like in 1909

For actors then, movies were considered a step down from the stage. Without sound, what were disdainfully known as ‘picture players’ were forced to gesticulate broadly and had to slather their skin with light blue pancake make-up so the primitive film stock used wouldn’t read them darkly. Stage theater managers, aware this new medium was cutting into their profits, threatened any actor who worked in film would never perform on stage again. Being uncredited not only shielded the actors reputations but producers, reluctant to bill ‘stars’ for fear they would want more money, were happy for them to remain anonymous.

King Baggot’s film debut was opposite Florence Lawrence in THE AWAKENING OF BESS. It was a success and Baggot and Lawrence would costar uncredited in several more one-reelers. Carl Laemmle knew movie patrons wanted to know more about the actors and he theorized a ‘movie star’ might attract crowds to theaters showing his pictures. With the St. Louis Union Station event, the era of the movie star had arrived – fate had made King Baggot the first publicized leading man in film. He became the above-the-credits star of comedies, dramas, thrillers, romances – usually playing the dashing hero who performs feats of derring-do and ends up with the love of a lady. When Florence Lawrence left IMP in 1911, Mark Pickford became his frequent leading lady. THE PENNILESS PRINCE, SWEET MEMORIES, THE TEMPTRESS, THE FAIR DENTIST – all popular King Baggot one-reelers. They’re all lost now but they packed movie houses a century ago. King was involved in all aspects of the filmmaking process, directing and writing many of these films. He played American cinema’s first recurring private eye in the ‘King the Detective’ series between 1911 and 1914, writing and directing himself as super-sleuth ‘King Baggot’ in KING THE DETECTIVE AND THE OPIUM SMUGGLERS, KING THE DETECTIVE IN THE MARINE MYSTERY, and more.

In July of 1912 King Baggot quietly married Ruth Constantine from Boston. With King’s persona as a matinee idol to millions of women, the marriage was kept mostly hush-hush and the spotlight was kept off her. Their son King Robert Baggot, arrived in 1914. East coast winters were hardly conducive to year-round filming, so in 1911 Laemmle made the move to the sunny climate of California where he would expand his film production and in 1912 co-founded Universal Pictures in Hollywood. IMP studios stayed in New York, their product released under the Universal umbrella as Universal/IMP productions. Considered the first Universal horror film, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE had King Baggot in the dual role and is one of the few Baggot films extant (it can be viewed on Youtube HERE).

By 1913 Universal/IMP had its sights set on bigger and better things than the one and two-reel shorts that they had been grinding out. European studios were producing ambitious feature productions and Laemmle wanted to compete. The 1913 Universal/IMP film IVANHOE was the first example of an American studio sending a cast and crew to a remote venue to film on location. King Baggot, his wife Ruth, director Herbert Brenon, and leading lady Leah Baird travelled by ship the 3000 miles to Wales for filming at Chepstow Castle there atop cliffs overlooking the River Wye. IVANHOE was an epic three reeler with a cast of 50 horses and 500 extras. IVANHOE, filled with pageantry and excitement (prints exist!), was a global hit for Universal in 1913 and made King Baggot a world-wide star.

Director Herbert Brenon and on the set of IVANHOE (1913)

While in Europe, King Baggot and company produced more films to be marketed as “European IMP Features“. MR. AND MRS. INNOCENCE ABROAD was their first follow-up, a comedy filmed in Paris with Baggot and Baird as a couple who travel to Europe for the first time. Next was THE ANARCHIST with an otherwise all-French cast in the story of a bomb maker, and THE CHILD STEALERS OF PARIS told of a youth slavery ring.To prepare for his role in ABSINTHE, the final film made during this trip, King spent a week living in Paris observing the habits, mannerisms, and dress of absinthe drinkers. It was a box-office sensation.

When King Baggot returned from Europe, a hero’s welcome awaited him. Thousands lined the pier to cheer and a banner on a tugboat read “Welcome King Baggot – King of the Movies”. King Baggot founded the Screen Club, a prestigious social organization for film actors and personnel. The purpose of the Screen Club was to “unite, advance, and preserve the motion picture art and to raise the industry to the highest status of respectability and dignity and eliminate existing evils”. Tickets were sold to the club’s balls so that the public could interact with actual film stars, an impressive feat when one considers how disrespected actors were just a couple of years earlier.

King Baggot (center) as president of the Screen Club

It’s hard to overestimate how popular King Baggot was in 1913 to 1915. Not only did his face fill screens but his image was used in product advertising and graced covers of countless movie magazines, King Baggot cigars sold for ten cents, and ‘The King Baggot Rag’ was a popular tune.

SHADOWS and THE CORSICAN BROTHERS (both 1915)

He was at his artistic peak as well. King became enamored of double and triple exposure techniques that allowed him to play multiple parts in the same film at the same time. He played three characters in THE CORSICAN BROTHERS in 1914 and in the 1915 film SHADOWS, he played ten, including an old woman and a Chinaman. Like most silent stars then, King applied his own makeup and took pride in his ability to be unrecognizable.

THE EAGLE’S EYE and THE HAWK’S TRAIL –  serials starring King Baggot

In 1916, Carl Laemmle shut down the East coast IMP facility and urged King Baggot to join him in California, to join the exploding film biz there. Whether it was Irish stubbornness or the realization that the ‘King of the Movies’ would never be ‘The King of Hollywood’, King initially refused to leave New York. The rise of the California studios marked the beginning of a new era in movies. Charlie Chaplin was already the rage and a galaxy of bigger stars – John Barrymore, Harold Lloyd, and Douglas Fairbanks – were about to come crashing down from the sky and take over the industry. King stayed East and worked for the Wharton Brothers, producers who starred him in the twenty-chapter serial The Eagle’s Eye as amateur detective Harrison Grant, who thwarted Germany’s attempts at espionage. This was a popular subject at the heart of U.S. involvement in the World War, and the first few chapters of The Eagles Eye were hits. But the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 struck and kept moviegoers out of theaters for much of the year, so after a brief, unsuccessful return to the stage, King Baggot finally gave in and moved his family to California.

THE CHEATER, THE FORBIDDEN THING, and THE TWENTIETH PIECE OF SILVER

King Baggot settled his family in the Hollywood Hotel and immediately landed the starring role in a serial for The American Film Company. The Hawk’s Trail was a 15-parter shot around downtown Los Angeles in which King played Sheldon Steele, a wealthy criminologist who solves crime as a hobby. Unlike almost all of the previous films King, The Hawk’s Trail survived and can be viewed at the Library of Congress in D.C. In 1919 King turned 40 and scored just a handful of leading roles in Hollywood. He starred opposite Mary Allison in THE CHEATER, Margareta Fischer in THE TWENTIETH PIECE OF SILVER, and Helen Jerome Eddy in THE FORBIDDEN THING, all in 1920. These films were just mild successes as a whole new crop of younger leading men had taken his place as the heroes and idols of the screen. Not only was King’s age catching up to him, but film acting in general was pulling away from the heightened melodramatic intensity that audiences had formerly embraced. By the onset of the roaring twenties, it appeared that King Baggot’s career was coming to a halt, but the luck of the Irish would hold for a little while longer.

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King Baggot on the set of MOONLIGHT FOLLIES with Marie Provost in 1921

King Baggot had made a lot of money for IMP in the earlier days and his old boss Carl Laemmle, was known for his loyalty. Aware King had directed many of those early one-reelers he had starred in, Laemmle in 1921 gave him the opportunity to helm features for Universal. King’s first film as director was CHEATED LOVE starring actress Carmel Myers. It was a success and critics of the day noted King’s fine work. MOONLIGHT FOLLIES and NOBODY’S FOOL, both starring former Max Sennett bathing beauty Marie Provost were next. In less than a year, King had become securely established in his new career behind the camera with films like LURING LIPS, THE LAVENDER BATH LADY, and THE GAIETY GIRL securing his reputation as a dependable and skilled director of women’s pictures. In 1924 King teamed up with rugged British actor House Peters for more action-oriented fare. THE TORNADO, about a restless lumberjack and RAFFLES THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN, with Peters as a safecracker showed off King’s range as a director.

In 1925 TUMBLEWEEDS would become King Baggot’s greatest triumph as a director. William S. Hart, the first great star of the movie western, played Don Carver, a “tumbleweed” (drifter) who decides to settle down after falling in love with Molly (Barbara Bedford) but first joins the Cherokee Land Rush of 1889 Oklahoma where a large tract of land was thrown open to the public for the taking by the American government. The exciting action sequences in TUMBLEWEEDS, with hundreds of horses, wagons and riders tearing across the plain and Hart racing past them on his horse, are still thrilling and King used influential and dynamic cutting techniques to generate suspense. Visually, TUMBLEWEEDS is an enthralling film and it has become an influential Western classic. The direction by Baggot and camerawork by Joesph August are magnificent. Film historian Kevin Brownlow went so far as to call it “among the finest sequences of pure action in film history.”

King Baggot on the set of A NIGHT AT THE OPERA with The Marx Brothers

King Baggot directed few films after TUMBLEWEEDS, his last being ROMANCE OF A ROGUE in 1928, and he never made the transition to talkies. When he was 49 years old, the career of the man who had been Universal’s first star and a solid, proven director came to a halt. There was series of events around this point in Baggot’s life that may help explain his decline. King’s alcoholism was well-documented and out of control and Ruth, after 18 years of marriage, filed for divorce in 1930. It was the introduction of sound which, though it led to a boom in the motion picture industry, had an adverse effect on the employability of many Hollywood actors. Stars with heavy accents or otherwise discordant voices previously concealed were particularly at risk but King did not have that problem. Stage-trained, his speaking voice was strong and resonant, yet he could not find work as an actor or as a director. To make matters worse, he was arrested in June of 1930 for driving while drunk. He was fined $50 for the offense and the Los Angeles Times ran a story about the scandal. By the early ‘30s, the great depression had hit and millions were out of work, including King Baggot. After doing nothing for over a year, King went back to work as a character actor in bit parts. The first from this stage of his career was THE CZAR OF BROADWAY where King was listed sixth in the cast and given a few lines. Other small supporting roles were in ONCE A GENTLEMAN SWEEPSTAKES for RKO, and SCAREHEADS both in 1930. In 1932, Baggot landed his best speaking part in Monogram’s POLICE COURT, ironically the story of a once-famous screen actor caught in the downward spiral of alcoholism. King played a movie director. In 1933 King appeared in GIRL OF THE RIO, George Cukor’s WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD, and HELLO TROUBLE, speaking perhaps a line or two in each. He soon had to settle into a new career as a wordless ‘bit player’. He was a Satan worshipper in the Karloff-Lugosi vehicle THE BLACK CAT in 1934, a dignitary with the Marx Brothers in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA, and could be seen applauding in several audience scenes in the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musical BABES ON BROADWAY. This went on for another decade with his cameos becoming increasingly difficult to spot. He quickly walks by Lou Costello in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO IN HOLLYWOOD in 1946 and is barely there as a courtroom spectator in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE in 1946. King Baggot’s face was no longer as familiar as the Man in the Moon.

On July 11^th 1948 King Baggot, after suffering a series of strokes, died alone and penniless in a sanitarium in Los Angeles. There were no tributes from his peers, no splashy funeral procession, no major headlines trumpeting his death. He was buried at Calgary Cemetery near Hollywood, interred with a flat stone that simply reads “King Baggot”. He had made his mark, but the one-time ‘King of the Movies’, the handsome Irish boy from St. Louis, left this world as insignificantly as he had entered it.