Giving Credit Where It's Due
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Miss Beatrice Matthews at age nineteen in 1911. One year later she became Mrs. Elmer Page and, in 1914, joined Mack Sennett's Keystone Comedies adopting the stagename Peggy Page |
The Sad Life of Actress PEGGY PAGE
At long last I’ve been able to add new information on Charlie Chaplin’s frequent Keystone leading lady and mystery girl of 1914. For nearly a hundred years she’s been completely overlooked and sadly unidentified to the general public until twelve years ago when one diligent researcher put the potential name of Helen Carruthers to her face. Now presumedly identified, further stories of Helen’s near-fatal suicide attempt in Oregon in May 1915 turned up and, ten years later in the summer of 1925, her tragic (accidental or suicidal?) demise — as young Baroness Helen (nee Carruthers) zur Muehlen — from a window at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City. Quite sad for a sweet girl from San Antonio, Texas. Yet whatever few 1915 newspaper clippings I had of Helen Carruthers to compare with were often dark and impossible to compare to for verification with the films of the petite movie actress. Several years ago I was fortunate to luck onto an original, sharp 1925 glossy photo of a smiling Helen Carruthers taken just a few days before her horrific death. There was a resemblance in her round face and soft features but, after all, she was also ten years older in 1925 since her supposed last Keystone comedy of late 1914 and, I wasn’t convinced either way. Yet the attribution of Carruthers in name has recently stuck with present day film historians, researchers and buffs and has since perpetuated, erroneously, in new resources over the last dozen years.
Twelve years ago I decided to track down the life of this mystery woman, one of the only unknown Keystone players, and soon found in the then-contemporary movie fan magazines of the day that the little actress in several of those Chaplin films (thanks to a then-inquiring public) was now and again credited as ‘Peggy Page,’ a new name to me that I’d never heard before after more than fifty years of researching silent comedies, comedians, producers and personnel. For years I sporadically continued this often confusing, frustrating and dead-end research for the obscure and elusive Peggy Page.
Most recently I just found out that the little actress ‘Miss Page’ who appeared in a bunch of Keystone Comedies of 1914 was born Beatrice Maria Matthews in April 1891 in Bozeman, Montana. She came to Long Beach, California with her parents, Albert Lenard and Jessie (Collins) Matthews in the early 1900s. On January 21, 1907 Jessie filed for divorce against her husband charging him with desertion and failure to provide for her and their three children. They soon divorced, Beatrice and her little sister Helen staying with their mother and, older brother, Collins Cameron Matthews, parting with their father. On July 28, 1909 their mother married a realtor, George Brewster Earley, and the two raised the girls.
On October 10th, 1911 women were granted the right to vote in California. Just over a year earlier Beatrice Matthews, once described as petite and demure, drew a lot of attention when she handled the wireless transcription transmissions from the big court story of the day, the McNamara Trials, when two brothers bombed the Los Angeles Times building where twenty-one people perished and many injured. Beatrice had been working as a telegrapher for Western Union at least as early as 1910 when she was 18. The Los Angeles Herald singled her out, “Miss Beatrice Matthews, one of the youngest and prettiest of the employees of the Western Union Telegraph company’s office here (the Hall of Records Building), will handle millions of words of newspaper ‘copy’ telling the story of the progress of the McNamara trial to the outer world.” On November 28, 1911 The Morning Call complimented her, “In the month Miss Matthews has been in charge, she has become most popular with the reporters.” She had plenty of local suitors and was also capturing many hearts nationwide with the publicity.
On December 31, 1912 in Los Angeles, Beatrice marries Elmer
Fred Page, an assertive 22 year old buyer and salesman for the
Mullen and Bluett Clothing Company. About the Spring of 1914 she winds
up at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios in Edendale and, over the next
nine months, appears in approximately twenty comedies with their most
famous stars including Mabel Normand, Mack Swain, Roscoe ‘Fatty’
Arbuckle, Charley Chase, Chester Conklin, Harry McCoy, Charlie Murray,
and Charles Chaplin among others. Though she is merely an unbilled stock
player whose screen time was increasing with each new release, the then
movie-going public does notice her, particularly in the Chaplin films,
yet few knew her name. It was soon divulged to inquiring minds (in very
small doses) to readers of the early fan magazines of such regular
columns as The Answer Man as Miss Peggy Page, although she
herself was never advertised nor rarely mentioned elsewhere in studio
publicity. One such movie answer man once quipped, “Keystone don’t give
cast lists for all of their plays.” Perhaps a load of the local LA boys
recognized and remembered her from the Hall of Records Building.
When Chaplin’s Keystone contract expired in December 1914, Peggy's contract also ended and she was scheduled to appear in a series of Pokes and Jabbs comedies (Bobby Burns and Walter Stull) to begin in January 1915, and produced by the C-K company of Santa Barbara for distribution by Kriterion. In the film trade mags at the time, Kriterion is the first to list ’Peggy Page’ or ‘Paige’ in their ads and publicity hype as having formerly starred with Charles Chaplin; but the C-K series never happened. Rather Burns and Stull never happened with C-K so neither did Peggy. In the Los Angeles City Directory of 1915, ‘Peggy Page’ is listed as residing at 1042 Sanborn Ave and an ‘actor,’ possibly hoping to resume her growing film career, or perhaps already acting. Sadly very little if anything can be found regarding Peggy Page’s acting career beyond Keystone if any.
Having soon divorced after her first marriage, in March 26th, 1916 in Santa Ana, she marries another salesman, Samuel Kennedy Strickler. Only three months later Peggy filed a divorce complaint against her husband whom she alleged called her ‘a nut’ and bought her only two pairs of shoes and one pair of gloves in their three months of married life. San Francisco Call, June 10, 1916
On August 13, 1919 in Santa Ana, Peggy’s sister Helen of Long Beach married Lawrence Harvey Mayer, a ship laborer at the time and, according to Helen, they too separated only two days later. Six years later - in the summer of 1925 - she files for divorce charging husband Mayer with desertion and non-support. Days later in July 1925 he marries a well known West End society girl, Jean Kelly Thorpe.
Back in the 1920 Los Angeles census, Beatrice Strickler (Peggy Page), age 28, working as secretary in a bank and, although separated, listed as ‘married,’ soon divorce in 1925. In 1927 Beatrice is residing at 291 Lowena Drive, Long Beach and working as a bookkeeper for Lawler and Degnan, attorneys. On June 27, 1927 her step-father George Brewster Earley dies three weeks before his sixty-fifth birthday. Also about this time Beatrice 'marries' Curtis Cameron Porter, a native of Kansas who came to Long Beach with the Navy’s submarine division during WW1 and retained a life-long love of automobiles. In 1930, Curtis is selling auto insurance, Beatrice working as a secretary for the law firm and sister Helen a stenographer for an oil company. In July 1939 Curtis is convicted in Newport Beach on a drunk driving charge and ordered to serve fifty days in the county jail.
On September 4, 1939 Beatrice and Helen’s mother Jessie (Matthews)
Earley dies at 68. Records are unclear whether Jessie remarried after
her second husbands passing in those last twelve years of her life. In
1940, Beatrice is still working as a secretary in a law office and
husband Curtis now a city assessor, both living together in Long Beach.
The Santa Ana Register of July 8, 1940 accounts that early on
that same morning Mrs. Beatrice Porter, age 50, of 379 Bay Shore Ave,
Long Beach, was arrested in Laguna Beach when she refused to sign her
name when being booked at county jail, police alleged.
In early 1942 Curtis was now working for Western Pipe and Steel Company before being assigned to the Merchant Marine where he served continuously in various war zones and occupied areas until an illness became serious necessitating his admission to the San Francisco Marine Hospital in October of 1947. Curtis C. Porter died March 18, 1948 in the Marine Hospital, San Francisco, where he’d been for over the last five months to combat a serious illness. He was buried in Clay Center, Kansas, with his parents, Dr. M. C. and Mrs. Isadora (Risdon) Porter. Although a marriage record still hasn't been located at the time of this writing, apparently Beatrice and Curtis had divorced or separated by the early 1940s.
After her divorce from Porter, Beatrice supposedly marries a man named Barnett or Burnett sometime during the 1940’s and is living in San Diego by 1950. By the early 1960’s Beatrice and Helen are operating a dry-goods store in Gardnerville, Nevada, they called The Yardstick. Soon Helen took ill and entered the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California where she later died on February 23, 1965. A private funeral service was held followed by cremation and inurnment in Long Beach. Her sister Beatrice was the only known survivor and it remains the last tangible trace of Charlie Chaplin’s last and formerly unknown Mack Sennett leading lady. The vague records of the Social Security Death Index does list a Mrs. Beatrice Barnett whose last known residence was Carson City, Nevada who had succumbed in December 1977, coincidentally the same month and year as Chaplin's passing.
From January 1914, Helen Carruthers (right) and her older sister, Gladys
The tragic Helen Alice Carruthers (or Caruthers), later the Baroness Helen Zur Muehlen, was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1900, the younger daughter of two, to James W. and Estella Carruthers. At ten, in 1910, Helen was seriously shaken and painfully hurt from a fall from a horse though healed quickly. In May of 1915 Helen attempted suicide by swallowing Mercury Bichloride supposedly in a case of despondency and nearly died in a hospital. She survived and later met and married the elder Baron Fransiscus Gerard Zur Muehlen in 1917. According to a 1920 passenger identification card, Helen was 20 years of age, had red hair, blue eyes, and stood five-feet-ten; much taller and younger than little Peggy Page. Five years later on a hot July night in 1925, the Baroness Helen fell from a seven story window of the Ritz-Carlton in New York City and died instantly at the age of twenty-five. Her husband, mother, and sister survived her. She was privately buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.
This continues to be a work in progress. Copyright 2022 by Steve Rydzewski.
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