Hollywood Timeline: 1920

1920 sees D. W. Griffith continue his remarkable sequence of successes with Way Down East, while Douglas Fairbanks reinvents himself as an action hero in The Mark of Zorro. On a more tragic note, the unfortunate death of actress Olive Thomas is the first in a string of scandals that will have far-reaching consequences for Hollywood.

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, married on 28th March 1920.

Date	Event
6^th January	Loew’s Inc., which owns a chain of theatres throughout the USA, enters production with the purchase of Metro Pictures.
12^th January	Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates, a scathing indictment of racism that includes scenes of rape and lynching, is released.
18^th January	Pollyanna, Mary Pickford’s first film for United Artists, is released.
1^st February	French comic Max Linder announces he will return to Hollywood for a second attempt at cracking the American market after recovering from health problems.
8^th February	The Bray Picture Corporation release The Debut of Thomas Katt, the first colour cartoon.
8^th February	The Land of Opportunity, the first film released under former Secretary of the interior Franklin J. Lane’s ‘anti-Red’ Americanization Plan, is released. Ralph Ince stars as Abraham Lincoln.
15^th February	World Heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey makes his screen debut in Pathé’s new serial Daredevil Jack. Lon Chaney also features.
22^nd February	River’s End, Marshall Neilan’s first production for First National, is released. Lewis Stone and Marjorie Daw star in the tale of mistaken identity set in the Canadian Northwest.
23^rd February	Famous Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck arrives in the USA after signing a contract with Sam Goldwyn to write one screenplay a year.
27^th Feb	The Los Angeles Times reports that audience members at a screening of Theda Bara’s Kathleen Mavoureen rioted after a scene in which pigs were shown in an Irishman’s parlour.
3^rd March	Mary Pickford divorces Owen Moore, her husband of nine years.
Evelyn Preer in Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates (1920)
14^th March	Tarnished Reputations, directed by Alice Guy Blaché, cinema’s first female director, is released. After losing four friends to Spanish influenza and falling prey to the illness herself, she retires from filmmaking.
28^th March	John Barrymore stars in John S. Robertson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, which goes on release at the Rivoli Theatre in New York. Its release is brought forward from June due to demand from exhibitors.
28^th March	Following years of tabloid gossip about their love affair, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks wed at the Temple Baptist church in Los Angeles.
4^th April	Maurice Tourneur’s Treasure Island is released. Lon Chaney, Shirley Mason (playing Jim Hawkins) and Charles Ogle star.
7^th April	Charlie Chaplin and Louis B. Mayer fight in the dining room of Hollywood’s Alexandria Hotel after Mayer criticises the comic over his treatment of his estranged wife Mildred Harris, who is under contract to Mayer. The studio boss fells Chaplin with a single blow.
21^st April	The Attorney General files a suit to nullify the marriage between Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks on the grounds of fraud and perjury.
20th May	The Frohman Amusement Corporation announces it has signed Lillian Gish for a period of three years from August after she completes filming of D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East.
13^th June	Lillian Gish directs her sister Dorothy in Remodeling Her Husband, the celebrated actress’s sole effort behind the camera.
15^th June	Hiram Abram succeeds Oscar A. Price as president of United Artists.
21^st June	While honeymooning in London, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks are mobbed by adoring crowds.
8^th July	The first branch of the Screen Writers Guild is formed at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. Approximately 125 screenwriters are enrolled as members.
John Barrymore in John S. Robertson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)
20^th July	Rex Ingram begins directing Alice Terry and Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for Metro Pictures. Ingram will wed Terry in November 1921.
20^th July	2,000 laboratory workers who are members of the Motion Picture Craftsmen strike for better pay and conditions.
21^st July	The Bob Pender Troupe, a popular British comedy act, sail for New York. One of the troupe is 16-year-old Archie Leach, who will one day achieve fame as Cary Grant.
24^th July	Mecca Pictures announce that attorney Jesse James Jr will play his father, the notorious outlaw Jesse James, in the forthcoming Jesse James Under the Black Flag.
2^nd August	Famed aviator Ormer Locklear and pilot Milton Elliott perish in an airplane crash while filming James P. Hogan’s The Skywayman for Fox. The crash is reputedly included in the released film, although no prints are believed to exist.
8^th August	Erich von Stroheim’s The Devil’s Passkey is released in New York and Chicago before going on general release on 30^th August. The film, which stars Sam De Grasse and Una Trevelyn, receives rave reviews.
29^th August	One Week, Buster Keaton’s first solo comedy short is released.
August	Robert Flaherty arrives in Hudson Bay on the first leg of his journey to shoot the documentary film Nanook of the North.
1^st September	The strike staged by the Motion Picture Craftsmen comes to an end.
3^rd September	D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East, ‘a simple story of plain people,’ is released. Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess star.
Olive Thomas died on 10th September 1920 after swallowing bichloride of mercury
5^th September	Actor Robert Harron dies of a gunshot wound he received on 1^st September. The shot is reported as accidental, but a rumour circulates that he committed suicide after the director D. W. Griffith, for whom Harron had worked many times, cast Richard Barthelmess over him for the lead role in Way Down East.
10^th September	Actress Olive Thomas dies after ingesting bichloride of mercury in a Paris hotel room following a night out with her husband, Jack Pickford.
29^th September	Twenty-one-year-old James Cagney makes his Broadway debut in the show Pitter Patter at the Longacre Theatre. It is his second stage role after appearing in drag as a chorus girl in Every Sailor at Keith’s 81^st St. Theatre.
10^th October	The Round-Up, Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle’s first feature, is released.
1^st November	The first issue of American Cinematographer is published by the American Society of Cinematographers.
12^th November	Charlie Chaplin and Mildred Harris are divorced in Los Angeles. Harris receives a settlement of approximately £200,000 according to newspaper reports and agrees not to use the name of Chaplin professionally.
21^st November	Maurice Tourneur’s The Last of the Mohicans, starring Wallace Beery and Barbara Bedford, is released. Assistant director Clarence Brown took over filming when Tourneur was injured during shooting.
5^th December	Fred Niblo’s The Mark of Zorro, the first of Douglas Fairbanks’s swashbuckling roles, is released. Marguerite De La Motte and Noah Beery also star.
12^th December	Ernst Lubitsch’s German production Madame DuBarry (retitled Passion for the US market) premieres at the Capitol Theatre. Pola Negri and Emil Jannings star in the tale of court intrigue during the reign of Louis XV.

	Brothers Edward and Barney Durwood buy a Kansas City movie theatre in partnership with Maurice Dubinsky. It is the first in a chain that will eventually become AMC.
	Brothers Harry and Jack Cohn form C.B.C. Film Sales with business partner Joe Brandt. The new organisation will be renamed Columbia Pictures Corporation in 1924.

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