Adela Rogers St. Johns
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Adela Rogers St. Johns (Adela Nora Rogers) (May 20, 1894 - August 10, 1988) was an American journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. She appeared in a couple of films and wrote a number of screenplays for silent movies, but she is most remembered for her groundbreaking exploits as a "girl reporter" during the 1920s and 1930s.
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[edit] Career
The daughter of prominent Los Angeles criminal lawyer, Earl Rogers, who was friends with publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, she got her first job at age 19 working as a reporter for Hearst Corporation, Hearst's San Francisco Examiner. She reported on crime, politics, society, and sports news before retiring in the early 1920s. St. Johns then became noted for interviewing movie stars for Photoplay magazine. She also wrote short stories for Cosmopolitan, the Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines and finished 9 of her 13 screeplays before returning to reporting for Hearst newspapers. Writing in a distinctive, emotional style, St. Johns reported on, among other subjects, the controversial Jack Dempsey–Gene Tunney “long-count” fight in 1927, the treatment of the poor during the Great Depression, and the 1935 trial of Richard Bruno Hauptmann for kidnapping and murdering the son of Charles Lindbergh. In the mid-1930s she moved to Washington, D.C., to report on national politics. Her coverage of the assassination of Senator Huey Long in 1935, the abdication of Edward VIII of the United Kingdom in 1936, the Democratic National Convention of 1940, and other major stories made her one of the best-known reporters of the day. St. Johns retired again from newspaper work in 1948 in order to write books, and to teach at a series of universities. In 1976, at the age of 82, she returned to reporting for the San Francisco Examiner to cover the bank robbery and conspiracy trial of Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of her former employer. St. Johns was awarded the United States Medal of Freedom in 1970.
[edit] Connection to the murder of William Desmond Taylor
St. Johns speculated that Shelby was torn by feelings of maternal protection for her daughter and her own attraction for William Desmond Taylor. She printed a picture of letters in her gossip column and also stated that night wear and lingerie with the monogrammed initials "MMM" had been found at the scene.
[edit] Trivia
Hollywood legend has it that St. Johns gave director George Cukor the idea of having the lead male walk into the sea to sure death at the end of A Star is born, as she had witnessed a failed silent actor do this on Malibu beach.
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Actress
- Reds (1981)
- The Beautiful, the Bloody, and the Bare (1964)
[edit] Writer
"No Goodbyes: My Search into Life After Death" (1982)
- Final Verdict (1962) N. Y. Times best selling biography.
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) TV Series
- General Electric Theater, The Crime of Daphne Rutledge (1954) TV Episode
- The Girl Who Had Everything (1953) (novel A Free Soul)
- Smart Woman (1948)
- That Brennan Girl (1946)
- Government Girl (1943)
- The Great Man's Lady (1942)
- Back in Circulation (1937)
- A Star Is Born (1937) (uncredited)
- A Woman's Man (1934)
- Miss Fane's Baby Is Stolen (1934)
- What Price Hollywood? (1932)
- A Free Soul (1931)
- The Single Standard (1929)
- Scandal (1929)
- Lilac Time (1928)
- The Heart of a Follies Girl (1928)
- The Arizona Wildcat (1927)
- The Patent Leather Kid (1927)
- Singed (1927)
- Children of Divorce (1927)
- The Broncho Twister (1927)
- The Wise Guy (1926)
- The Skyrocket (1926)
- The Red Kimona (1925)
- Lady of the Night (1925)
- Inez from Hollywood (The Worst Woman in Hollywood) (1924)
- Broken Laws (1924)
- The Secret Code (1918)
- Marked Cards (1918)
- Old Love for New (1918)
