Gladys Brockwell Does “His” Bit (1918) 🇺🇸
Gladys Brockwell has set out to prove that the female of the species is as useful as the male.
by Dorothy Donnell
It is a far cry from the simpering, languishing lady of Victoria’s day, whose heaviest labor was working bead stags on plush “tidies,” whose most violent form of exercise was taking a fat lapdog to walk, to this energetic little Fox feminist who can drive a nail as surely as a carpenter and climb a pole in lineman’s breeches to repair a faulty wire. The world is moving fast these days. Just now, indeed, it seems to be over-speeding along the Cosmic Boulevard, in imminent danger of arrest by some celestial cop.
It is the present crisis that inspired Miss Brockwell to discover just how many of the purely masculine jobs a woman could perform if it became absolutely necessary for men to leave for duty “somewhere in France.” The investigation covered two strenuous months last summer and carried the intrepid little star into strange places — machine-shops, boiler works, business offices, barber-shops and fire-houses. The result of her research is the surprising conclusion that the only work a woman cannot perform as well as a man is that of the bearded lady at the circus and the big guy with the gold-braid uniform who bawls out the leaving-time of trains at the Grand Central station. The United States census has a list of occupations termed “peculiar for women to enter.” The list includes elevator tenders, machinists, sailors, longshoremen and blacksmiths. Yet already there are scores of elevator-girls, and at the last accounting there were thirty-one women blacksmiths in the country! Miss Brock well spent one whole day demonstrating her ability to fit shoes on horses’ feet, and decided, from the results of her experience, that if women take up the trade of smithy there will be fewer automobiles and more horses in use than there are today. “The smith a brawny man was she” may soon be the modern version of the Longfellow lay.
As a barber she was an instant success. If the entire race of hirsute artists are drafted and replaced by the same number of gladys-brockwells, there will be no kick coming from the men. They will bravely do their bit in the barber’s chair every morning and shed their blood without a moan. True, women are famous for their habit of cutting acquaintances; on the other hand, this profession offers them a splendid chance to dye for their country. We might add also that women barbers will put the cute into cuticle and the her in hirsute, but, on the whole, we think we will leave that out.
There are at present no firewomen in the country, but Miss Brockwell feels she has paved the way for her sex in this profession. The only reason she could discover for the lack of fire-lassies is the fact that when the bell rings there is no time to take off curl-papers or even to powder one’s nose. But, doubtless, if need arises some one will invent a becoming and at the same time fireproof boudoir-cap and an automatic powder-puff attached to the fire-engine.
Driving a water-wagon holds no terrors for her. There are a good many men who find it hard to keep on the water-wagon; not so with the dauntless little Fox star. As a carpenter she proved a woman can drive a nail as well as a bargain, and as a lineman she demonstrated that social climbing is not the only method of rising in the world to a high position.
Women have already had some experience in painting. There are twenty-five hundred professionals in this line of work, as well as several million amateurs. “I have always had an irrepressible desire to seize a brush and bucket and slash away at the nearest object,” declares Miss Gladys. “I believe the instinct to apply wet paint is second only to the instinct to touch wet paint.”
Accordingly she donned the white duck uniform of a master-painter and announced her intention of climbing a flag-pole and painting the gold ball at the top. If she had been allowed to follow her inclination Mr. Fox would very probably have been minus one perfectly good star. As it was, she was given a little less exalted place to paint, and succeeded so well that she sees no reason why there should not be fifty thousand of her all over the country doing the same thing today.
But there is one branch of the painting profession in which men will doubtless continue to excel, and that is their ancient pastime of painting the town red.
Women taxi-drivers are no longer exceptions. There is every reason to expect they will soon be the rule. Grouchy fares will be less likely to quarrel with the meters if there is a diminutive blonde or stately brunette beauty behind the driver’s wheel.
Many women executives are fast taking positions that men have occupied hitherto — brokers, bankers, wholesalers, advertising agents, wear petticoats almost as often as they do trousers today.
Miss Brockwell spent a day as a commercial traveler; another as a clerk in a tobacco store, where she made good progress in learning the mysteries of stogies, perfectos, “Mechanic’s Delight” and real imported Havanas (made in New Britain, Connecticut). A woman is only a woman, and a good cigar is, of course, a smoke, but when the two are combined — oh, boy! Nearly one-half of the clerks in the United States are already women. There is no reason why they all should not be, according to this indefatigable star.
Men claim that the intricacies of machinery are beyond the grasp of minds that have been occupied for generations with putting up pickled peaches and sterilizing baby-bottles. Miss Brockwell differed with this verdict. Accordingly, she introduced her shapely person into a pair of greasy corduroys and hied herself to an electrical repair shop.
When she posed for the picture she was told that she was repairing collector-rings for a 125 H.-P. direct current motor generator.
“I did not know whether H. P. stood for heliotrope pink or for horse-power,” she confesses, naively; “but the main point is, I repaired them, and did it well too.”
Most women’s knowledge of electricity is confined to changing the incandescent bulbs in the parlor chandelier when they burn out, or turning on the current under the coffee-percolator, but they can learn as well as men if they set out to do so.
The fair sex has long been accustomed to “running things”; hence, argues our dainty investigator, why should they not run locomotives or linotype machines? There is not a single woman railroad engineer in the country, yet, in a time when transportation is so important as it is now, it behooves — or shall we say beHoovers? — them to prepare themselves for service if needed. Women are continually on the alert for signals — they know at a glance that Johnny-boy has been in swimming without leave, that hubby has a grouch, that the new neighbor across the way is a cat and every bit of thirty-five in spite of her rouge and peroxide, my dear. So they will be alert for the signals every engineer must see. Not only does Miss Gladys claim that women can fill almost any position, but she is certain she has found one capacity in which a woman is preeminent.
Early in the spring, when Uncle Sam announced, with grim finality, that only food would win the war, this dauntless little lady was one of the first to don overalls, call for a plow, and proceed to convert the little ranch surrounding her bungalow into a big, thriving garden.
To be sure, the overalls were made-to-order of dainty blue-and-white gingham with a belt, cuffs and everything. But why not? We are told by “them that knows” that we are conscious of our clothes only when we are ill-dressed; and who wants a farmer-lady to be self-conscious or to feel that she is not becomingly dressed? Just plowing is hard enough. And she plowed and planted and harvested to some advantage. Even Herbert Hoover should be satisfied.
Speaking of being dressed for the part, you should have seen her in a postman’s uniform. “Yes,” somebody remarks (a man, of course), “women are always dressed for the part when collecting and handling males.” But Gladys isn’t a vampire in reality, no matter what she is on the screen — and that wasn’t the idea at all. She acted as substitute postman, carrying a heavy mail-bag, walking miles and miles, ringing door-bells, blowing her postman’s whistle — just to show that she could do it. “And what I can do,” she says, modestly, tho triumphantly, “any woman can do.
“When women begin to realize that they can perform almost any kind of manual labor, and in many instances do it more skillfully than the men, we will have made giant strides toward our political enfranchisement, as well as the right to expect higher wages. But first of all we will be one of the biggest factors in winning the war.”
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Gladys the sprinkling-cart “man”
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Gladys makes a high-class lineman
Getting her wires uncrossed
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Armed and drilled for home defense
The duties of a social secretary
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Plowshares are not affected by the stock market
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Collection: Motion Picture Magazine, February 1918
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Gladys Brockwell made her first appearance on the stage when only a few months old, and has been almost continuously in the spoken and silent drama since her first speaking part at the age of three. She was born in Brooklyn, in 1894, and previous to her entrance in motion-picture work in 1913, played with Willard Mack, Orrin Johnson, and Henry Woodruff. She is now with Fox, her most recent releases being “The Moral Law,” “For Liberty,” “A Branded Soul,” and “The Soul of Satan.”
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, May 1918