USA > California > Los Angeles County > Los Angeles > Los Angeles from the mountains to the sea : with selected biography of actors and witnesses to the period of growth and achievement, Volume III > Part 54
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The late Dr. Daggett was born at Norwalk, Ohio, January 30, 1855. He had a public school education, and as a school boy manifested that singular interest and powers of close observation in his natural environ- ment which, with continued training, eventually opened him many of the most remote secrets of nature. At the age of fifteen it is said he started collecting butterflies. At the time of his death he had the second largest collection of birds in California. This collection contained over eight thousand bird skins, and he also had a collection of over two thousand species of beetles. While he never had the advantage of university training and the open fields were his laboratory, his name was spoken with esteem by many of the great naturalists and scientists of the world, and many of them were his personal friends. His work was very thorough and finished, and it is characteristic of his quiet and unassuming nature that he often did all the foundation work for which others took credit, and more than one experience of this kind did not in the least embitter him, since he appeared to be perfectly satisfied to satisfy his ambition as a seeker for knowledge and let the credit go where it would.
Dr. Daggett lived for several years in Milwaukee and in Duluth, Minnesota, as a grain man, and at one time served as president of the Grain Board of that city. His wonderful business ability enabled him to achieve a distinctive success, and he could at will concentrate his energies almost upon any undertaking. While in Duluth he was chosen a member of the School Board, though he had been a resident of the city only two years. He served as chairman of the finance committee when the Duluth High School was built, at that time ranking as the second finest building of the kind in the United States. He was deeply interested in education, particularly scientific training, and on his pleasure trips to Florida and elsewhere he would always bring back collections of specimens to be used for study in the schools.
Dr. Daggett made several trips to California and finally came here to live in 1895. He was one of the older members of the Cooper Ornithological Society, and was frequently a leader among Los Angeles boys in expeditions to study nature. The greatest delight he could ex- perience was a tramp in the woods and under the open skies. All his evenings were spent in reading and studying, and the companionship of his home circle.
Dr. Daggett took charge of the Museum of History, Science and Art at Exposition Park when it was first built nine years ago. He had charge of the design and arrangement of the interior of the Museum, which was built by the county at a cost of two hundred fifty thousand dollars. This Museum contains many archaeological treasures as well as a department of Fine and Applied Arts. It was through Dr. Daggett that the peculiarly rich geological and archaeological field of the Rancho la Brea was investigated and made to give up its treasures, including fossils of the mastadon and other specimens of gigantic prehistoric ani- mals, many of which have a permanent home in the Museum. Dr.
Frank D. Daggett .
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Daggett was untiring in his care that the material should be available for those who were studying it, and it was for the scientific manner of his handling the collection that he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science.
On this topic it is appropriate to quote a portion of a letter from Dr. Chester Stock, of the University of California, who says: "The research on the Rancho la Brea Pleistocene fauna, conducted by scientists from the University of California and from elsewhere, has in very large measure received stimulus through the hearty co-operation of Dr. Daggett. I have realized this particularly in the monographic study of the ground sloth group, for the investigation would necessarily have been incomplete were it based only on materials collected by the University of California at Rancho la Brea. Dr. Daggett wanted us to incorporate the studies of the Museum collections with those based on materials in the Department of Paleontology, and with this in view he strongly advocated keeping the Museum materials intact until such studies had been completed. The wisdom of this view has been fully shown."
Though accounted an authority, Dr. Daggett wrote little of a techni- cal nature. Some of his short articles, in the nature of suggestions and criticism, betraying his accurate and comprehensive knowledge and largely on subjects of Arnithology and Entomology, appeared in the Condor Ornithological Magazine and the Entomological News.
It was largely through the personal influence of Dr. Daggett that the late General Otis was induced to give the present "Otis Art Institute" to the county as an auxiliary establishment of the Museum of History, Science and Art. That, too, came under Dr. Daggett's direction, who secured C. P. Townsley as managing director. Both of these institutions in the higher life of Los Angeles are practical monuments to the thoroughness and work of Dr. Daggett. Besides the institution at Los Angeles destined to carry on his life studies, students of natural history everywhere have become familiar with his name, which is part of the terminology used in describing several species of birds and animals. Among the noted scientists who gave his work personal tribute of praise was Dr. Osborn.
His youthful enthusiasm never deserted him, and for that reason his death at the age of sixty-five seemed the greater loss to his friends and the community. He died Easter Monday, 1920, after having at- tended Sunrise Service at Mount Roubidoux and having taken a trip to Smiley Heights with his wife and wife's mother. Dr. Daggett married Miss Lela Axtell, at Augusta, Wisconsin, in 1884. Two children were born to their marriage: Ethel, Mrs. Paul Stewart Rattle, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Axtell Daggett, who died at Pasadena at the age of nine.
DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS. While English-speaking people everywhere might stoutly assert their claim to the art and smile of Douglas Fairbanks as one of their inalienable rights, the fact remains that for several years his home, his workshop and playground have been at Hollywood. No apology is required, therefore, for including a sketch of his life among other famous people of Southern California represented in this pub- lication.
Douglas Fairbanks was born in Denver, Colorado, thirty-six years ago. His father was a New York lawyer who went west to look after some mining interests and remained there to live. The elder Fairbanks
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was a profound Shakespearean scholar, and the study of the poet's dramas was included in Douglas' earliest curriculum. He began learn- ing the famous speeches of Hamlet and Othello at seven, and by the time he was ten years old he knew by heart all of the familiar passages.
The interest of the elder Fairbanks in Shakespeare had gained him a wide acquaintance among the exponents of the playwright's works, and when these players visited Denver they were invariably entertained in the Fairbanks home. So it came about that at the age of ten the future king of the movies was spouting "To be or not to be" to the best actors of the time in a Denver drawing room. "Of course, I didn't know what the words meant," says Mr. Fairbanks, "but I could recite them all."
When Douglas was seventeen the family moved to New York, and with his Shakespearean background it was but natural he should decide upon a stage career, and also that his first chance should come in the company of one of his father's friends, Frederick Warde. At first the young man had only bits to do, but when the troupe played at Duluth, something happened to one of the principals and he was promoted to the roles of Cassio and Laertes. Thereafter, according to Mr. Fairbanks, the newspapers of the towns in which the company appeared, invari- ably contained some such notice as this: "Frederick Warde appeared at the opera house last night in 'Hamlet.' His supporting company was bad, but the worst was Douglas Fairbanks as Laertes."
The young actor's body had not then acquired the symmetry that was to make it famous in later years, and he admits now that the scrawny legs, round face, and long feet of youth, coupled with his sing- song declamation, a heritage of his boyhood, were not calculated to give the provincial critics pause. The more he pondered their harsh ob- servations, the more certain he became that what he needed before he became the Shakespearan actor his father wished him to be was a liberal education.
So after this season with Mr. Warde he went to Harvard. He found the credits he had brought from the Denver city schools and the Colorado School of Mines were not sufficient to allow him to enroll as a freshman, and he became a special student with courses in elementary Latin, French and English literature. That sounded cultural enough, and what with liberal courses in freshman caps, bull dog pipes and Blumenthal posters, young Fairbanks was kept interested for five months. Then he grew restless and decided he didn't have time to become lib- erally educated.
He returned to the stage, this time in the support of Effie Shannon and Herbert Kelcey in "Her Lord and Master." When that engagement was over, the wanderlust, always a throbbing reality in his life, sent him to Europe on a cattle boat. He and two pals started on their trip with fifty dollars apiece and worked their way safely home at the end of three months.
Wall street saw him next. It was quite the thing to become identi- fied with the street even in those days, when leaks were unknown, and he went in because most of the young men he knew were becoming brokers, rather than for any aptness for figures or finance. Nevertheless, before six months had passed he had become the head of the order depart- ment of the brokerage house of DeCoppett and Doremus, a considerable position for a youngster. He might have continued as a broker had not the fear that his employers would learn his real ignorance of stocks and bonds caused him to resign.
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Next he thought he would like to become a captain of industry, and in the approved manner of books he put on overalls and learned all about the manufacture of bolts, nuts and hinges in a downtown hard- ware manufactory. When he had mastered the secrets of all the floors of the factory he began investigating the other departments. One of the first things he discovered was that the head of the concern was drawing a salary of ten thousand a year and that this reward had come at the end of many years of hard work. Shortly after that the embryonic captain of industry folded up his overalls and returned to the stage.
He played a year in Alice Fisher's support in "Mrs. Jack," follow- ing Edward Ables in the role he created. His engagement ended pre- maturely after a duel of words with the company manager, a gentleman who subsequently became a producer in his own right. It was only nat- ural that youth and vitality such as Mr. Fairbanks possessed should not be confined to the limits of one role, and on many occasions it overflowed in the form of interpolated lines and business. After an unusually ex- uberant performance, the manager "called" him before some of the other members of the company. The result of the riot that followed was the resignation of Fairbanks and its immediate acceptance.
The episode so discouraged him that he decided to become a lawyer, and for all of three months he read law in the office of E. M. Hollander & Son. Mr. Fairbanks might be influencing juries with his irresistible smile had not a wave of Japanese operetta submerged the local stage just when he began to toy with Blackstone. At that period no musical comedy was complete without its geisha girls fanning 'neath the shade of cerise-blossomed cherry trees. To the impressionable young counselor at law far off Japan seemed one huge tea party of geisha girls, and he was consumed with a desire to taste of its exotic delights. The time fuse of his wanderlust had about burned out anyway, and when the spark reached its desire Mr. Fairbanks was hurled across the Atlantic enroute to the Orient with an idea of disposing of the rights to an elec- tric switch for enough to enable him to spend the rest of his life riding in a rickashaw with room for two. But in London he stumbled upon a New York friend and forgot all about the geishas.
When he returned home he went under the management of William Brady, an association that lasted on and off for seven years. He ap- peared under Mr. Brady's direction a season in New York in "The Pit," and the end of the engagement following a disagreement about a reduction of salary he was again at large.
In London again (whenever in doubt he invariably went there, he says) he met Lee Schubert, who engaged him for a part in "Fantana," his first role in a musical play, and while he was still appearing in it Mr. Brady wired and asked him if he would consider a five years' con- tract. Mr. Fairbanks was so surprised, recalling their parting, that he telegraphed the manager to see if the message had really come from him.
A short time afterward he was a star in "Frenzied Finance." There followed in the five successive years during which he was starred by Mr. Brady roles in "The Man of the Hour," "All for a Girl," "The Gentle- man from Mississippi," "The Cub," and "A Gentleman of Leisure." These plays had runs that varied from three weeks to a year and a half.
It was during the shortest run, that of "All for a Girl," that the Fairbanks smile first suggested its possibilities. Most of the critics were fascinated by it and mentioned it in their reviews. The play opened
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Monday night and Wednesday morning's papers contained a large ad- vertisement exhorting people to come to the matinee and bask in the radiance of the Fairbanks smile. That afternoon there was thirty dol- lars in the house.
"A Gentleman of Leisure" was not the success the notices indicates it would be, and one night after the performance, in a moment of depres- sion, Mr. Brady summoned Mr. Fairbanks to his office and asked him if he would be willing to cancel his contract, which still had some time to run. The suddenness of it appealed to the star, and it was immediately arranged with great good feeling.
The bond was signed at 2 a. m. and at ten o'clock the same morning Mr. Fairbanks had been engaged by Cohan & Harris to be starred by them for the next five years. "This is immense, Doug," said George M. Cohan in high glee, through the southeast corner of his mouth and the left nostril. Mr. Cohan reserves the northwest corner and right nostril for ordinary conversation. "Immense, Doug, I've always wanted to write a play for you. You're the typical young American and I want to put you in a play. We'll open Thanksgiving night." It was then late October. Thanksgiving came without the play, and to kill time the typical young American went to Cuba and walked across the island with a comrade, then took a ship for Yucatan and walked from Progreso to Merida. When he came back the play was still unfinished. "I've got the young man into the drawing room and can't get him out," said George M. While he was still trying to rescue the hero his star put on a vaudeville sketch called "A Regular Business Man," and after that he was sent to play the leading role in "Officer 666" in Chicago. It was while he was in the western city that the late Lewis Waller told him of a play he once did in London that he thought would be suitable for Fairbanks. When the play reached the local stage it was called "Haw- thorne U. S. A." Mr. Cohan eventually succeeded in extricating Broad- way Jones from the drawing room, for the hero was none other than the young chewing-gum manufacturer, and, because his new star was occu- pied, he broke his own vow and returned to the stage. Between "Haw- thorne U. S. A." and the movies, Mr. Fairbanks appeared in "He Comes Up Smiling," "The New Henrietta," and the "Show Shop."
Mr. Fairbanks' athletic prowess is the result of years of participa- tion in every sort of sport. The acquisition of it antedates even that of his declamatory skill. When he was two years old he escaped from his nurse, climbed the side of a mountain far enough to get on the roof of a shed built against the slope and then walked off the edge of the roof. When he struck the ground below a great gash was cut in his forehead and the scar is still plainly visible. It stretches almost across the left side and is no doubt visible in a close up.
The athletic actor holds an interesting theory about his capacity to perform physical prowess feats. He believes that the possession of a certain nervous force that acts at the psychological moment in conjunc- tion with the muscular force is as much a part of this ability as the mus- cular force itself. When he is about to undertake a stunt that requires unusual strength, this nervous force manifests itself in a vocal outburst, as if he were under the influence of some violent emotion. While he does not underrate his physical strength, he believes he possesses this nervous force in such a degree that he can perform feats in excess of his physical capacity. It is a sort of an athletic version of the Kantian
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philosophy of the will to do. As for climbing over buildings and doing stunts at high altitude that is possible through absence of fear born of elevation above the ground.
A few years ago when Mr. Fairbanks was earning eight hundred dollars a week, he used to think that if he could ever save a hundred thousand dollars he would retire and never again speak of work. With the prospect of making many times that amount he knows that he would Houdini out of the strongest chains that might seek to hold him from work.
This, then, is the life of Douglas Fairbanks, and through it all his smile has grown wider until now he possesses the sunniest, most in- fectious, most celebrated American smile.
LEWIS W. ANDREWS has had all the better successes and distinc- tions of the able lawyer. He is a member of the law firm of Andrews, Toland & Andrews, and has been a resident of Los Angeles upwards of twenty years.
He was born at Mount Vernon, Missouri, April 22, 1869, son of Lindley M. and Elizabeth W. (Gorton) Andrews, the father a native of Ohio and the mother of New York. They were married in Shelby County, Kentucky, June 4, 1860. At the time of the Civil War Lindley M. Andrews became captain of a volunteer company in the Union Army and saw most of his army service on the western frontier, especially around Fort Dodge, Kansas. He was an able lawyer, who in his later years became a minister of the Universalist Church and was well known as a forceful and eloquent speaker. After filling the pulpit in several eastern churches in 1888 he came to California and established the Uni- versalist Church at Santa Paula in Ventura County. He built a fine church edifice there and was engaged in the congenial duties of the pas- torate for many years, until his death in 1902. His widow survived him until May, 1916, just prior to her eightieth birthday. She was a woman of brilliant mind, an early graduate of Alfred College in New York. She was prominent in many social ways, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution ; and active in religious, literary, club and welfare work, and was an artist of more than ordinary ability.
Lewis W. Andrews spent his early years in the several localities where his parents resided, and received most of his early education in the public schools of Ohio and Illinois. He graduated B. S. from the sci- entific department of Northern Illinois Normal School at Dixon, Illinois, in 1887. His first employment was in the office of Newton Wagon Works, Batavia, Illinois, and subsequently he spent a year in the audi- tor's office of the Santa Fe Railway at Topeka, Kansas. He came to California in 1889, studied law in the office of Hon. B. T. Williams, judge of the Superior Court of Ventura County, California, and later in the office of his brothers, prominent lawyers in Ohio, and was admitted to the California bar October 9, 1894. He was subsequently admitted to practice in the Federal District and Circuit Courts, and to the Supreme Court of the United States in February, 1911. From 1895 to 1900 he was associated in practice with Hon. Thomas O. Toland in Ventura, Cali- fornia. In 1900 he moved to Los Angeles, where he engaged in practice for a number of years, being subsequently joined by Judge Toland and later by his brother, Mr. A. V. Andrews, who for a number of years have been engaged in practice under the firm name of Andrews, Toland & Andrews.
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During 1901-02 Mr. Andrews was business manager of the "Los Angeles Herald." He was the first secretary of the Throop Polytechnic Institute at Pasadena, and for a time was instructor of history there. Mr. Andrews has been actively interested in many enterprises contribut- ing to the development of Los Angeles and Southern California, and has been identified as officer, director or counsel with a number of the larger oil and industrial corporations of this section of the state. He is a member of Bar Associations, the California Club, Los Angeles Athletic Club, Sierra Club, Automobile Club of Southern California, and Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. He is a member of the Universalist Church, and is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason. For years he has been prominent in the republican party, being active both in Ventura and Los Angeles. He worked in many campaigns over Southern Cali- fornia, and was speaker in the Mckinley campaign.
January 21, 1892, Mr. Andrews was married to Miss Abbie Crane of Ventura County, California. She was born in Ohio, and with her parents moved to Ventura County in 1883. She attended school there and also at Oberlin College, Ohio. Mrs. Andrews is a member of the Friday Morning Club and Ebell Club of Los Angeles. They reside at 274 Andrews Boulevard, in a district with the development of which Mr. Andrews took a very active part. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews have four children, Ellen L., Horace C., Violet and Lewis W. Jr., the last two natives of Los Angeles, while the oldest was born at Pasadena and the son Horace at Ventura. Miss Ellen Andrews, after two years at Wellesley College, was transferred to and later graduated A. B. from Leland-Stanford University, and subsequently received the degree Master of Arts from the University of Southern California. Horace Andrews, after completing his second year in the Throop College of Technology of Pasadena, enlisted in the 472d Engineers and only recently has re- turned to complete his college course in engineering. Miss Violet An- drews is a student at Stanford University.
GEORGE G. CRANE was one of the most interesting pioneers in the development of the great fruit industry of Southern California. He had many characteristics of that lovable group of men who devote their lives to the production of nature's fruits, including the kindly face, the patient benignant manner and in later years the snow white hair and beard that seem to belong to the patriarch of the fields and orchards.
Mr. Crane, who died at the venerable age of eighty-four at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Lewis W. Andrews, in Los Angeles on April 10, 1919, was born in Sharon, Medina County, Ohio, July 7 1835 of old American ancestry. His mother, Louisa (Briggs) Crane, was a sister of California's pioneer fruit man, George G. Briggs, who came west in 1849 and was first the "melon king" of California and later achieved historic fame as "father" of the raisin industry in this state.
George G. Crane came to California in 1855 to assist his uncle in putting out a two hundred acre orchard, and worked in some of the pioneer orchards of this state for several years. He then went back to Ohio and in 1859 married Adeline Huntley. She was also a native of Medina County. They had two children, Amy, widow of E. E. Huntley of Ventura County, California, and Abbie, wife of Lewis W. Andrews.
Mr. Crane lived for ten years on a farm in Ohio after his marriage, was also a Missouri farmer, and later engaged in the wholesale fruit
J. K. Kellogg
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business with Denver as his headquarters. He also had extensive ex- perience in the mining region of the Black Hills in Dakota. He returned to California permanently in 1883, buying a tract of land in Ventura County, and soon becoming interested in the possibilities offered by the then infant industry of growing soft-shelled walnuts.
After having made a thorough investigation from all sources then available Mr. Crane planted upwards of a hundred acres to the best varieties of walnuts that had been developed. The wisdom of his judg- ment has been demonstrated by a magnificent grove near Saticoy. Mr. Crane was a prominent figure in the life and growth of Southern Cali- fornia for upwards of thirty-five years. He was an early proponent of the association plan of handling and marketing of fruits and nuts, and assisted in organizing the Walnut Growers' Association.
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