The Urn in the River

Helen and Howard Hawks

Theda Clark

1898. Neenah, Wisconsin. Helen Hawks with her son, future Hollywood Director, Howard Hawks. She was the former Helen Howard, the daughter of wealthy Neenah industrialist, C.W. Howard. C.W. was a larger than life character - loud, funny, often drunk, a fabulist, a trickster and a sometime amateur thespian who would become fictionalized as "Barney Glasgow" in Edna Ferber's 1935 best seller, COME AND GET IT. The book was described by Ferber, a girl from the nearby river city of Appleton, as "primarily a story of the rape of America by the wholesale robber barons of that day." Pictured below is Helen's best friend, Theda Clark. She was the daughter of Charles Clark,a co-founder of the Kimberly-Clark corporation. The two women were the leading lights of Neenah, a small city well on it's way to becoming one of the wealthiest cities in the United States. Headstrong, intelligent and independent, the two women attended college together. Later, they would both marry men of considerable wealth from Goshen,Indiana. Helen to Frank Hawks and Theda to Will Peters. The two are thought by many to become the template for the strong women's roles that are typical in Howard's films - the prototype of what would be known as the Hawksian woman. Howard Hawks was born in Goshen, Indiana in 1896. The family moved to Neenah, where Theda and Will Peters were waiting for them, in 1899. Theda Clark's tragic death in 1903 while giving birth to a daughter, coupled with Helen's failing health due to being continually pregnant(five children in short order)prompted the family's move to Pasadena, California in 1906. The Hawks would, however, spend their summers in Neenah until Howard was 15 years old.
C. W. Howard, the grand old Lion of the paper industry, died in 1916 at the age of seventy. He was buried in a family plot at Oak Hill cemetary in Neenah. Years later, Helen, now a devout Christian Scientist and proponent of cremation, returned to her hometown. She had her father, mother, and brother Neil - who had drowned in Lake Winnebago at the age of 5 - dug up and cremated. " After mixing the ashes in an urn, she went out to Riverside Park and threw it in the river, where it was discovered decades later, with the names and dates still legible, by scuba divers. " Howard Hawks was the first director assigned to the 1936 film version of COME AND GET IT. He was later removed from the project and replaced by William Wyler. Producer Sam Goldwyn felt that Hawks was "too close" to the material to deliver a good movie.

The photos are from Neenah Public Library Local History Collection at the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections/WI/NeenahLocHist

Posted 3rd November 2011 by flasputnik