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 59
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70
Thomas Hughes was born August 25, 1859, at Rice's Landing, Greene County, Pennsylvania, a son of James and Fanny (Cline) Hughes. His education was confined to attendance at the home schools, and his ambition for success led him, as a youth of nineteen years, to go to Kansas, where he remained a short time. In 1880 he removed to Albu- querque, New Mexico, and engaged in the contracting business for three years, and it was during this time, in June, 1881, that he was united in marriage with Mrs. Perry Mosher. In 1883 Mr. Hughes recognizing the opportunities presented by Los Angeles, came to this city, and while looking for an opening worked for one year in a planing mill. Having made his decision and choice, he invested his capital of $500 in two machines and embarked in the sash business on his own account. From this humble and modest beginning grew the firm of Hughes Brothers, which in 1902 became the Hughes Manufacturing Company, of which Mr. Hughes is now president, and the plant of which now represents a value of nearly $1,000,000, employs 500 men, and is considered the largest of its kind in the West.
Mr. Hughes has various other interests, being particularly active in oil production. With Ed Strassburg, he organized the American Oil Company, one of the first formed in the southwest, which has been a steady producer and has been one of the most conservative and profitable of concerns. He has helped organize other companies and is the owner of considerable real estate at Los Angeles and in the adjacent cities of Southern California. Mr. Hughes is a purist in business and politics and has done much to aid the city and to keep its politics clean. In 1917 he was appointed to his only public office, that of harbor commis- sioner, by Mayor Woodman, and in this position has rendered valuable and valued service.
857
FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA
Mr. Hughes is widely and favorably known, not alone in business circles, but in club and fraternal life, being a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Driving Club, the Los Angeles Country Club, the San Gabriel Country Club and the Union Club, of which he was formerly president.
ERNESTINE DE PONTI is one of the recent additions to the imposing colony of artists who have surrendered themselves to the charms of Los Angeles and Southern California. Mme. de Ponti has for many years been a recognized star in the grand opera world, and her audiences have in fact been world wide, since she has appeared in nearly all the great music centers of Europe as well as America.
She was born at Milan, Italy. Her father, Count Angelo de Ponti, was a member of a celebrated old family which in recent years has devoted its fortunes to the cause of Fiume. She is also a niece of Arch- bishop Alferazzi and of Don Carlo, at one time a canon at Milan Cathe- dral. Here mother was of French nationality.
Mme. de Ponti has studied music since her earliest years. Some of her first lessons were given her by her father, who though not a pro- fessional musician, had a keen musical knowledge and an artistic sense. When only five years of age she sang "Mira Oh! Norma" from Bellini's classic opera "Norma," which after nearly thirty-five years of oblivion is being again revived. When she was twelve years of age she visited an uncle in Honolulu, then French Consul, who informed the Mendelssohn Quartet, in which she was the leading vocalist. After a stay of about a year and a half she went back to Europe to finish her education.
One particularly auspicious event in her earlier career occurred when at the age of fourteen she sang before Pope Leo XIII at the papal court. In Milan she studied with the celebrated San Giovanni, and later in Paris under Mme. Matilde Marchesi, probably the greatest voice teacher the world has known. Going to London she studied the oratorios under Mr. Deacon. At the age of eighteen she bravely met the lion impresario Lago in his den at Covent Garden and calmly told him she had come to sing. Her very audacity amused him, and after hearing her he at once engaged her as one of his leading coloratura sopranos, and she made her first public appearance at the famous Covent Garden Opera House, London. In subsequent years she again sang in London and principal cities of Great Britain under the direction of Sir Augustus Harris. She was for four years in Germany with Fabrini and has sub- sequently directed her own opera company.
At the age of twenty she was married to John Cameron of London. Mr. Cameron at that time was a professor of science and later became a mining expert, going to all parts of the world to report on mining properties. It was his report on the Mount Morgan, the largest gold mine in the world, located in Australia, that sent the stock of that cor- poration up to a value of eighteen million pounds sterling. Mr. Cameron was elected a member of parliament.
Mr. and Mrs. Cameron first visited America in 1888, and later returned every year. Mr. Cameron owned the Canavera mine in Cali- fornia. He was an ardent admirer and supporter of Gladstone and with that English statesman endeavored to unite the Anglican Church with the Church of Rome, a consummation which, in the opinion of Mme. de Ponti, would have been desirable.
858
LOS ANGELES
Mme. de Ponti came to America in 1914, and at Vancouver con- ducted her own opera company. In this company were three of her own pupils performing leading parts, and press notices give enthusiastic endorsement to the individual talents of these pupils and also to the influence of their instructor. One of them, a tenor, has developed an extraordinary voice, combining dramatic force with the most delicate, refined tone in the true Italian method, of which Mme. de Ponti is the exponent. Among others are a rich baritone, a fine coloratura soprano.
From Vancouver she moved to Seattle, making her home in that city for a time. In 1918, under her son's management, Mme. de Ponti went to Australia with excerpts from Grand Opera in costume. This son is his mother's business manager and is at present preparing grand opera for production.
While Mme. de Ponti was in Canada the war broke out and her youngest son, Ian Ernest Cameron, joined the Royal Flying Corps when only eighteen years of age, his mother giving her consent and signing all his papers. He soon attained the rank of lieutenant and distinguished himself in the service. His mother was on a tour in Australia and returned in time to meet him after the war. This former aviator since coming to California has been playing a part in "The Hope," and is now with the Lasky Film Corporation.
When she returned from Australia Mme. de Ponti intended to spend a week in Los Angeles, but became so charmed with the city that she opened a studio for teaching and is probably a permanent resident. Recently she announced an offer of four free scholarships to young and talented members of either sex who would pursue the study of singing as a career, and had no funds with which to gain the training.
HENRY SMITH CARHART. The world has for many years appre- ciated the contributions of the late Henry Smith Carhart to the science of physics and applied electricity. His residence during his later years at Pasadena and the encouragement he gave to the California Institute. of Technology make his life and attainments subjects of appropriate in- terest in this work.
Henry Smith Carhart was born at Coeymans, New York, March 27, 1844, the youngest son of Daniel Sutton and Margaret Martin Car- hart. He completed his college course at Wesleyan University, Middle- town, Connecticut, with highest honors in 1869, and in 1872 received the Master of Arts degree from the same university. He was a student in Yale during 1871-72, and in Harvard during the summer of 1876. The year 1881-82 he devoted to research work in the laboratory of the renowned Von Helmholtz at the University of Berlin. In 1893 Wesleyan University conferred upon him the degree of LL. D. in recognition of his eminence as a physicist and as a teacher. In 1912 the degree of LL. D. was also conferred upon him by the University of Michigan, and that of Sc. D. by Northwestern University.
Two of the great universities of the middle west claimed his services for nearly thirty-five years. He was professor of physics and chemistry at Northwestern University from 1872 to 1886, when he was called to the University of Michigan as professor of physics. He held that chair until 1909, when he became emeritus professor. In 1910 he was made research associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology. The position was a purely friendly and honorary relation, involving
Heury & Carhart
859
FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA
neither professional services nor salary, yet his personal prestige and his kindly interest proved a quickening power in every department of the school's technical activities. During his residence in Pasadena he was also a member of the Board of Trustees of Occidental College, in which he was deeply interested. He was prominent in the Presbyterian Church in Pasadena and in the Twilight Club. On June 8, 1910, he delivered the dedication address for Pasadena Hall, now known as Throop Hall, his subject being "The Twentieth Century Engineer."
Dr. Carhart first became known to the scientific world in 1881 for his experimental work on voltaic cells, a subject on which in later years he was a world authority. It must have been gratifying to Von Helm- holtz to have his former pupil chosen as his colleague by the Interna- tional Electrical Congress in 1893 on a commission of three to formulate the details of the standard Clark cell. At that time Dr. Carhart was the recognized authority on the subject on either side of the Atlantic.
While at Northwestern Dr. Carhart supervised the construction of a laboratory for physical science, and his first labor at Ann Arbor was to build a physical laboratory according to his own detailed plans. It is significant of the comparative youth of modern applied electricity that in 1889 the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan authorized him to introduce a course in electrical engineering, a department which received its original impetus from Dr. Carhart, and in which have been educated many of the prominent men in that profession. Dr. Carhart frequently was employed as an expert in suits involving the validity of patents on electrical devices.
A summary of his attainments in the scientific world, and a tribute by a distinguished fellow scientist has been written by Dr. George E. Hale, director of the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory. Dr. Hale said : "The death of Dr. Carhart, which comes as such a shock to his friends, will be widely felt throughout the scientific world. He was one of the pioneers of electro-chemistry in the United States, and his con- tributions in this field, especially in the development of Carhart's standard cell, gave him an international reputation many years ago. The suc- cess of the researches that culminated in the production of a constant and reliable source of electric potential was of fundamental importance to the advancement of physics and electrical engineering, as nearly all precise electrical measurements depend upon such a source.
"European men of science were quick to recognize his achieve- ments, and he was frequently called to serve on international committees. Thus he was a member of the International Jury of Awards at the Paris Exposition of Electricity in 1881, the president of the board of judges in the department of electricity at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, a member of the Jury of Awards at the Buffalo Exposition in 1901, and one of the delegates of the United States to the International Electrical Congress at Chicago in 1893, and at St. Louis in 1904. He was also a delegate to the conferences on electrical units and standards at Berlin in 1905, and London in 1908.
"At the great centennial celebration of the birth of Charles Darwin in Cambridge, England, in 1909, he represented the University of Mich- igan, with which he was connected as professor of physics and head of this department from 1886 to 1909, when he retired as professor emeritus. Professor Carhart was one of the small group of leading American men of science who attended the South African meeting of the British Asso- ciation for the Advancement of Science in 1905 as guests of the associa-
860
LOS ANGELES
tion. Further evidence of the widespread appreciation of his work is afforded by his election to membership in the London Institution of Electrical Engineers and other societies, and by the honorary degrees conferred upon him by Wesleyan University, the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, in which he began his scientific career as professor of physics and chemistry in 1872.
"Professor Carhart's influence on the teaching of physics was no less active and effective, and both his university and elementary text- books are very extensively used. His clear and attractive method of treating the subject has done much to arouse and develop the interest of thousands of students.
"The Mount Wilson Observatory was fortunate enough to enjoy Professor Carhart's co-operation in certain physical researches, the suc- cess of which depended upon the use of the standard cell. The members of its staff who thus learned to know his many attractive qualities have special reason to mourn his loss."
Dr. Carhart was a pioneer along many lines of the practical applica- tion of science. Before he had ever seen a telephone he invented one which worked very successfully; he was the first person in Chicago to utilize the incandescent lamp. In 1871 Dr. Carhart, in conjunction with his brother, Dr. J. W. Carhart, designed a steam engine for the first automobile. This crude machine was built at Racine, Wisconsin, at the plant of the J. I. Case Thresher Works. The original plan of the automobile was evolved in the mind of Dr. J. W. Carhart.
It is safe to say that a large majority of American boys and girls who have gone through high school and college in the past thirty years immediately recognize the name Carhart in connection with scientific text books. His principal works are: Primary Batteries, 1891 ; Elements of Physics, with Horatio N. Chute as collaborator, 1892-97 ; University Physics, 1894-96; Electrical Measurements, with George W. Patterson, 1895; High School Physics, with H. N. Chute, 1901; College Physics, 1910; First Principles of Physics, with H. N. Chute, 1912; Physics With Applications, with H. N. Chute, 1917. His last work went to the press just before his death; it is a compilation of his original work on cells, under the title Thermo Electromotive Force in Electric Cells.
When Dr. Carhart was granted a retiring allowance by the Carnegie Foundation, the president of the fund, Dr. Pritchett, himself a dis- tinguished American scientist, gave solicitous expression in a letter to President Angell of the University of Michigan to the high estimate entertained in scientific circles concerning Dr. Carhart as a teacher and an investigator.
August 30, 1876, Dr. Carhart married Miss Ellen M. Soule of Ossining, New York, who was at that time dean of the Woman's College of Northwestern University. Mrs. Carhart, who survives him, brought to him the companionship of a woman of fine literary attainments and social gifts. Dr. Carhart's only son, Emory Richard Carhart, has in- herited his father's interest in mechanics, which he puts to practical use as an automobile distributor on a large scale. One daughter, Margaret Sprague Carhart, carries on her father's interest in education as a teacher in California. The youngest child, Mrs. Evans Ramsey Cheese- man, lives in San Francisco.
VIOLA DANA is one of California's youngest and most beautiful film stars, and her best work on the screen has been done in this state. She was born at Brooklyn, New York, June 28, 1898, daughter or
861
FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA
Emil and Mary Flugrath. Her early education was under private tutors in New York.
Destiny brought her talents to notice at the age of five, when she was on the legitimate stage in New York with Pete Daley in "New- port Girls." She was also with Thomas Jefferson in Rip Van Winkle, and at the age of ten appeared with William Favresham in "The Squaw Man." She also had a part with William and Dustin Farnum in "The Littlest Rebel." Miss Dana appeared in vaudeville on the Orpheum circuit, and at the age of fifteen was starring in "The Poor Little Rich Girl."
At the age of sixteen Miss Dana and John H. Collins were married. Soon after her marriage she entered the film world with the Edison Company and at the age of eighteen signed with the Metro Pictures Corporation, with which she is still starring. Mr. Collins worked with her at the Metro and directed her. Mr. Collins died in service in a training camp in Pennsylvania in October, 1918.
Perhaps Miss Dana's best work in pictures is in "Bluejeans," "The Gates of Eden," "Opportunity," "The Gold Cure," "Satan, Jr." and "The Willow Tree." Besides an undeniable talent she has the inestimable charms of youth, beauty and enthusiasm. During the war she helped with the sale of Liberty Bonds and in Red Cross work. Outside of her profession her chief hobby is flying.
RUTH ST. DENIS AND TED SHAWN. Los Angeles for all that it claims so many famous men and women in its citizenship has a special sense of pride in the fact that Ruth St. Denis, one of the greatest artists of the generation, has chosen this city as the place of her home and the location of her school "Denishawn," known as the Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn School of Dancing and Its Related Arts.
That considerable part of the world's population that derives enter- tainment and instruction from the stage needs no introduction to Ruth St. Denis in her public career, but only a few realize that the wonderful success of her art has been a matter of development and experience beginning when a child, and her life is a forceful illustration of that modern education and training which begin with parentage and the earliest years of life and in which the formal and conventional schooling enters as only a minor factor.
Ruth St. Denis was born at Newark, New Jersey, January 20, 1880. Her father was an inventor. Her mother studied medicine in Phila- delphia and later received her degree from the University of Michigan. For five years her mother practiced and engaged in hospital work, until a breakdown of health caused her to enter the famous sanitarium and water cure of Dr. Jackson at Dansville, New York. Dr. Jackson has a very simple regimen, consisting chiefly of pure water, simple living and no medicines. It was after this experience and as a convert to the ideas which had wrought such great change in her, that Dr. St. Denis deter- mined to move from Newark and take her children into the country where she could teach them to live simply and in obedience to nature's laws.
Ruth was five years old when her parents took her and her brother into the rural environment. Ruth was dressed as a boy, wore bloomers, her hair was cut short, and she went barefoot until she was fourteen, growing up simply and naturally, with few of the conventional habits and restrictions of city routine.
862
LOS ANGELES
Her mother had received some instruction from Madame Pote, a famous exponent of Delsarte. In turn she imparted to Ruth these grace- ful healthful exercises, and that was Ruth's first training in physical culture. Thus was planted the foundation for her art which bloomed forth later. Her mother was a woman of most advanced ideas, and which to a large degree were accepted by her daughter and have since been developed to that stage of perfection which Ruth St. Denis exhibits in her artistic dancing.
A few times every year Ruth was taken to the city to see some of the best artists of the stage. The most wonderful impression of those early days was a ballet entitled "Egypt Through Centuries," Irene Kiralfy with Caralthe and a corps of about five hundred. At the age of sixteen Ruth St. Denis made her first appearance. She assembled a number of dances and played at Worth's Museum, 30th and 6th avenues, New York, a famous old landmark of the Metropolis. She performed six times daily, and for all the preparation and the taxing effort this required her salary was fifteen dollars a week. Later she entered vaudeville, and for five years was with Belasco in "Zaza" and "Du Barry." Ruth St. Denis was on the stage about nine years before she was attracting general public attention beyond the limited appreciation of her special friends and ad- mirers. It was about that time that she received the inspiration for her "Cycle of I Oriental Dances," which opened to her the real field of her art and which was entirely original with her. In the spring of 1906 she gave her first performance in Hudson Theatre, under the manage- ment of Henry B. Harris, who was drowned in the Titanic disaster. It required two years to produce her first series of Indian dances. Later she went to Europe, taking her company, and was engaged in making the rounds of the continental capitals in Germany and Belgium and in England for two years. In Germany and England during that tour her success was a veritable triumph. After her return to America she made at least four complete tours of the United States.
It would be superfluous to attempt to define Ruth St. Denis' public appreciation. Of her art one of the leading critics has written: "The modern revival of the love of dancing may be said to have shown its first tentative blossoming in this country when, to the wonder and de- light of all lovers of the beautiful, Ruth St. Denis made her first appear- ance in her Temple Dance Rahda.
"She remains in a class by herself. No other dancer is attempting to do just the same thing that she does so well. But the sensitive beauty of her pictorial effects, the exquisite refinements that she thus creates, the result of minute and sympathetic study have not been rivaled by any other artist on our stage. The great Russian ballets are the re- finement of one artist on the work of another, and great masters are proud to associate in the working out of their elaborate creation. And back of them all is a tradition to guide not only the performers but also the audience. But Ruth St. Denis had to create her own traditions, to find and train all her assistants, to amalgamate the work of her musicians and scene painters and incorporate their work with hers into a whole."
August 13, 1914, Ruth St. Denis married Mr. Ted Shawn. At the end of their first tour together they decided to found a school of dancing at Los Angeles, and out of that determination came "Denishawn," with its splendid equipment of four buildings and an out-of-door theatre and with Mrs. Shawn and her husband directing a large faculty of in-
863
FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA
struction that probably makes it the most complete school of its kind in America. The school has already produced some finished artists whose work is recognized and appreciated both on the legitimate and movie stage. The school has an immense prestige and following, and without speaking in detail of its equipment and facilities the following paragraph describes the spirit and principles of its management :
"The system of training at 'Denishawn' is, paradoxically, to have no system. We believe that to be one's best self is better than to achieve the cleverest imitation of some one else, and on this simple basis 'Denishawn' rests. The development of the individual is placed first and foremost. It is no part of our ambition to turn out many pupils, all of whom are immediately distinguishable as products of the same system. We seek by every possible means to discover the nature of the talent of each individual, the kind of dancing which each one does best, to which the whole personality of the pupil is best suited. In the faculty at 'Denishawn' all schools of the dance are represented-purely classic ballet of the Italian, French and Russian schools, national dancing of various sorts, Greek dancing and the entire gamut of East Indian, Egyptian, Jap- anese and other oriental dances."
Teď Shawn had been a teacher of dancing in Los Angeles before his marriage and had a studio and following of his own in that city. He was born in Kansas City, and finished his education in the University of Denver, Colorado. He, too, had artistic inheritance. His father was connected with the Kansas City and Denver papers and wrote for a number of magazines. His mother was a musical critic. Unfortunately he was deprived of their companionship and guidance when he was only seventeen years of age, and ever since he has been self supporting. He studied for the ministry, but finally decided that he could be of more value in expressing truth and fidelity through his art of dancing than as a pulpiteer. Ted Shawn has the distinction of being the first to give a church service in dance. This notable service was rendered in San Francisco in September, 1917, at the Interdenominational Church of Ad- vanced Ideas under Dr. Frank. When he gave the old rituals in move- ment he received a wonderful appreciation by the press and public, some of the most adverse critics being won over by his performance, notably Redford Mason.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.