Canons

1922 · 262208 — New York: Labor Film Service 1922. Seven letters on eight 8.5x11 inch sheets of LFS letterhead one signed by business manager Herman Ross and four signed by Field Director Joseph D. Cannon two subscription agreement slips unsigned and one sheet asking for a list of friends who may be interested in the subscription not filled out the mailing envelope with return address and 1 cent stamp. and finally a brochure/playbill for the company's first film "The Contrast" written by John W. Slayton directed by and starring Guy Hedlund illustrated with photos of cast and crew including Slayton the screenwriter all items very good with fold creases for mailing and mild handling. The Labor Film Service was one of the most important Progressive Left film organizations in the 1920s. Cannon was a union organizer and the Socialist candidate for governor of New York in 1920. Slayton the screenwriter of "The Contrast" was his close comrade and in 1910 ran on the Socialist party ticket for governor of Pennsylvania. He also led the 1909 McKees Rock Strike. The addressee L. Ellen Northrop was a scion of the Northrop Family in Elliottcottville NY who was corresponding with such Progressives as Eugene Debs and Emma Goldman. Her papers are at Cornell.<br/><br/>The LFS had two films under way at the time of these requests for investors and subscribers. The first was Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" which had been filmed in 1914 but unreleased. The release of the film was delayed awaiting new scenes starring George Nash. That film was eventually bought back by Sinclair and has since been lost. The first film to be produced and distributed by the LFS was Slayton's "The Contrast" directed by and starring D.W. Griffith protégé Guy Hedlund. It was Hedlund who brought the Service to the attention of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI as he became concerned with certain statements in the literature and advertising for the company. The film's story sound like the strike lead by Slayton. It too appears to have been lost. Labor Film Service unknown books