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I've been going through some 'teens issues of Motion Picture Magazine and am finding myself increasingly fascinated by "The Answer Man" column. He's not just a seemingly omniscient source of information on silent actors, but from the tone of some of his replies, correspondents were treating him as a confidant, a confessor and even a sort of proto-Dear Abby. It's as close to a gentile "Bintel Brief" as I've yet seen.

Does anyone know who the Answer Man was? Him, her or many? And whatever happened to the column - did it continue through the run of the magazine or fade out at some point?

I do not have the book, but I wonder if this is addressed in Anthony Slide's recent book on the history of the Hollywood Fan Magazines?

This is likely a false lead, but see what you think:

The AFI page for the 1914 film How Cissy Made Good states: The copyright synopsis lists "The Answer Man" as author, but this writer's true identity is unknown.

The IMDb page for the same film lists the director, George D. Baker, as scenarist.

IMDb’s listed credits are not always known for being reliable. Would anyone happen to know what is listed in the film’s actual titles?

I know nothing about George Duane Baker, to give his name in full, but he was a prolific writer and director between 1908 and 1924, and worked on several John Bunny comedies.

If indeed George D. Baker and ”The Answer Man” were the same person, it would put the following reply of his, from the February 1920 issue, in an amusing light:

"P. C. M., Manila. — Last I heard of her she was on her way to France. Can you think of a more gruesome title than "The Cinema Murder" with Marion Davies in the lead! Think of it, written by Frances Marion, and directed by George D. Baker, two of the best in the business, with a title like that. I wonder who murdered the cinema. Let me hear from you again."

rudyfan wrote:I do not have the book, but I wonder if this is addressed in Anthony Slide's recent book on the history of the Hollywood Fan Magazines?

Yes. He writes (p. 19) that the Answer Man was Elizabeth M. Heinemann.

So much for my sleuthing!

Thank you, Bruce (and everyone else). I don't have Slide's book, obviously, so I'm glad you were able to help. It is interesting that, occasionally, the AM invites people to stop in at the magazine's offices to say hello whenever they might be in town - if you were expecting a man, it must have been a little disconcerting to meet Miss Heinemann!

They might have had a substitute to greet visitors- a not unheard-of subterfuge. Theodore Dreiser edited a woman's magazine for a time but legend has it casual visitors were introduced to an assistant who was better looking

Or else perhaps they would apologetically say that the Answer Man was out of the office right now, you just missed him. Supposedly that's what was done at the New York Morning Telegraph when anyone asked for Gordon Trent.

Nostalgia Book Club has person looking after customer relations and that was listed as Arthur Greene. But, in fact, it was Marie White and she told me that the text of her letters should have told people that Arthur was really a female. I did talk to her on the phone in the 1970s whilst visiting.

The Australian Woman's Weekly(now a monthly publication, but for obvious reasons they declined to drop the Weekly name from the masthead & replace it) had a column listed as Dear Dorothy Dix(a name I believe was also used in USA) & rumor has it that it was really a man.

In US Dear Abby van... & Anne Landers, I understand were sisters. Twins?

Yes- Identical Twins. Esther Pauline Lederer and Pauline Esther Lederer were Ann Landers and Dear Abby respectively.

Bruce Long wrote:

rudyfan wrote:I do not have the book, but I wonder if this is addressed in Anthony Slide's recent book on the history of the Hollywood Fan Magazines?

Yes. He writes (p. 19) that the Answer Man was Elizabeth M. Heinemann.

And "The Answer Man" really didn't do much more than peruse Moving Picture World and Motion Picture News. There is very little in the answers that cannot be found with a little digging in the trades.

bob birchard wrote:

There is very little in the answers that cannot be found with a little digging in the trades.

Thanks for that (and, BTW and completely off-topic, I loved Early Universal City and Silent-Era Filmmaking in Santa Barbara! ). It certainly seems that much of TAMs correspondence was of a quickly answered type (since every column I've seen has a paragraph here and there of a dozen or so names followed by "your questions have already been answered"). And there's a huge amount of "who was in this movie?" "where can I get this autograph?" "how do I get into pictures?" repeats, from what I can gather from TAMs answers.

It's the little sideline bits that intrigue me, where people seem to be asking TAM for love advice, or whether they should choose a certain job or other things along lines that have nothing to do with movies. It makes me wish there were an archive of Motion Picture Magazine's letters; I'd love to spend an afternoon or three trawling through them.

If you haven't already done so, read Nathanael West's `Miss Lonelyhearts', which is about the burdens suffered by an anonymous TAM-type figure in the early 1930s.

(And don't read the Wikipedia capsule summary - it contains a huge spoiler!)

Or read Evelyn Waugh's THE LOVED ONE on the topic, a deliciously malicious little book.