TRAPPED By The Mormons

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 8:50 am

I just finished enjoying "Trapped By Mormons". A truly jaw-dropping experience. But something about that Extra short Edison film "A Trip To Salt Lake City" puzzled me. On the train, we see all the wives take their place in the sleeper beds. Then the husband brings out a strange object with long connections to each bed. The live audience laughed so I guess they got the joke, but I didn't. Just what the heck was that thing?

Danny

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 9:41 am

Trapped by the Mormons is not as jaw-dropping an event as Mae Murray's A Mormon Maid.

I've asked this in other forums.... what exactly was the deal with movies and this sort of sensational/exploitation material in the teens and 20s? I can't recall much of an anti-Mormon theme in literature of the that era....

R Michael Pyle · Post by **R Michael Pyle** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 10:28 am

drednm wrote: I've asked this in other forums.... what exactly was the deal with movies and this sort of sensational/exploitation material in the teens and 20s? I can't recall much of an anti-Mormon theme in literature of the that era....

Read a good amount of Zane Grey. You wouldn't believe how much anti-Mormon material is peppered throughout. Lots of it. As you learned in "The Mormon Maid" the Ku Klux Klan supposedly got its idea of a robe with an insignia from the Mormon "guards". The resurgence of the Klan in the teens and especially in the 20's led to a huge revival in reviling several types of peoples and ideas, including the Mormons paradoxically.

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 10:41 am

Yes I had noted the KKK tie in with the Mormons in A Mormon Maid. There was also a KKK element in the Mary Pickford film Heart o' the Hills in which a sheeted Pickford actually joins the "night-riders" to drive developers out of their mountains. Quite an astonishing sight.

I must admit that although (or because) I have a PhD in 20th C American Lit, I have never read anything by Zane Grey. But it makes sense that a "western" writer would have more interest in Mormons than other, less-regional writers.

rollot24 · Post by **rollot24** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 11:19 am

And a bit earlier, and not American, IIRC the first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, also uses the Mormons as villians.

Rodney · Post by **Rodney** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 11:20 am

drednm wrote:Trapped by the Mormons is not as jaw-dropping an event as Mae Murray's A Mormon Maid.

I've asked this in other forums.... what exactly was the deal with movies and this sort of sensational/exploitation material in the teens and 20s? I can't recall much of an anti-Mormon theme in literature of the that era....

This Mormon-bashing mostly stemmed from an actual massacre of emigrants by a band of radical Mormons in 1857, and this became -- for a while -- a source of exotic villains in popular literature, though of course getting the details correct about Mormon religion was never a top priority. Here's an overview of the Mountain Meadow massacre:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre

Zane Grey's "Riders of the Purple Sage" has Mormons as the villains (though there are a few good Mormons as well, including the heroine). Tom Mix's silent film version removes the Mormon subtext. The first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, also has a Mormon-massacre backstory. And Mark Twain mentions the massacre in "Roughing It."

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 11:39 am

Hi Rodney.... fascinating information. Most bizarre is the Sherlock Holmes connection. Although there is a large population of Mormons in this area of New Mexico, I know basically nothing about them or their history (aside from the basic stuff).

Interesting that these films mentioned have tied Mormonism to the KKK and Mesmerics, which movement is tied to Mary Baker Eddy and the Christian Scientists.

R Michael Pyle · Post by **R Michael Pyle** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 11:51 am

Danny wrote:I just finished enjoying "Trapped By Mormons". A truly jaw-dropping experience. But something about that Extra short Edison film "A Trip To Salt Lake City" puzzled me. On the train, we see all the wives take their place in the sleeper beds. Then the husband brings out a strange object with long connections to each bed. The live audience laughed so I guess they got the joke, but I didn't. Just what the heck was that thing?

Danny

Danny,
If you watch closely, the husband brings back a milk can for all of his children and the long "connections" are like rubber hoses, basically "straws" from which each child can drink! It's simple and would have been hilarious in 1905. It's easy to "not get it" when we see the technology about one hundred years out of date.

Post by **Mike Gebert** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 11:55 am

As you learned in "The Mormon Maid" the Ku Klux Klan supposedly got its idea of a robe with an insignia from the Mormon "guards".

Who all got it from Spanish pentitentes. It takes a little adjustment for an American to watch this (a Holy Week procession in Madrid) and realize you're not looking at the descendants of the Klan— merely, of course, the descendants of the Inquisition.

R Michael Pyle · Post by **R Michael Pyle** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:02 pm

Rodney wrote:
drednm wrote:Trapped by the Mormons is not as jaw-dropping an event as Mae Murray's A Mormon Maid.

I've asked this in other forums.... what exactly was the deal with movies and this sort of sensational/exploitation material in the teens and 20s? I can't recall much of an anti-Mormon theme in literature of the that era....
This Mormon-bashing mostly stemmed from an actual massacre of emigrants by a band of radical Mormons in 1857, and this became -- for a while -- a source of exotic villains in popular literature, though of course getting the details correct about Mormon religion was never a top priority. Here's an overview of the Mountain Meadow massacre:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_massacre

Zane Grey's "Riders of the Purple Sage" has Mormons as the villains (though there are a few good Mormons as well, including the heroine). Tom Mix's silent film version removes the Mormon subtext. The first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, also has a Mormon-massacre backstory. And Mark Twain mentions the massacre in "Roughing It."

If you look at the films of Evelyn Brent who was in "Trapped by the Mormons", this was actually the second of two made in 1922, both starring Brent. The other, "Married to a Mormon", actually was released first. Both were directed by H. B. Parkinson. The reason I mention this is that they were both made in the UK, not the US. The Holmes connection, it seems, must have been very strong. The UK exploited the theme ever as heavily as the US. "A Mormon Maid" wasn't the only film made in the US, either, where the Mormons are portrayed as evil. I think most of the others have been lost, but I'm not sure.

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:04 pm

LOL... gotta love that Inquisition!

Locally, we actually have people who wear similar get-ups for the Easter parade on Chimayo and its holy dirt. Of course most of the penitentes wear jeans and sensible shoes.

R Michael Pyle · Post by **R Michael Pyle** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:16 pm

That pointed hat goes back even further than that:

"Ancient Etruscan coins from the city of Luna have a head on one side which may be the goddess Diana, who is associated with witches. The head wears a brimless, conical hat."

"In addition, medieval Jews were made to wear conical hats. Jewish people were rumoured to hold blasphemous Sabbaths paralleling the Sabbats of witches. Perhaps the hat and its connotations of sin and depravity were transferred over to the stereotypical depiction of the witch (Guiley 1989 388)."

All in all, evil or out of bounds with traditional religion, no matter what you call it.

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:21 pm

Original source for Trapped by the Mormons was a 1911 novel by Winifred Graham titled The Love Story of a Mormon.

About Winifred Graham: Winifred Graham (Mrs. Theodore Cory), a professional anti-Mormon novelist, charged that Mormon missionaries were taking advantage of World War I by proselytizing women whose husbands were away to war.

http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/resp ... ns_EOM.htm

Graham was apparently also into the occult and wrote a book about her automatic writings based on letters from her dead father!

Jack Theakston · Post by **Jack Theakston** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:28 pm

Who all got it from Spanish pentitentes. It takes a little adjustment for an American to watch this (a Holy Week procession in Madrid) and realize you're not looking at the descendants of the Klan— merely, of course, the descendants of the Inquisition.

NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!

R Michael Pyle · Post by **R Michael Pyle** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 12:45 pm

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 2:01 pm

[color=darkred]Danny,
If you watch closely, the husband brings back a milk can for all of his children and the long "connections" are like rubber hoses, basically "straws" from which each child can drink! It's simple and would have been hilarious in 1905. It's easy to "not get it" when we see the technology about one hundred years out of date.[/color]

Thank you, Michael, for answering my question. A "milk can"! Of course. And since the responses to my Post are all over the map, I'll add something else. The irony was not lost on me regarding the irrational fear and hatred that many people had for those "strange" people who broke society's "traditional marriage" law by wedding more than one woman. Then cut to 2008 in California when the same religious group, who was persecuted against a hundred years previous for not respecting "traditional marriage" laws of just one wife, then persecutes yet another minority group who wishes to marry just one spouse of the same sex.

What goes around...

Danny

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