One hundred years ago this month, Grace Kingsley reported on a rare career advancement in a movie studio:
This good old feminist movement was given an upward boost yesterday when Dorothy Howell, formerly secretary to Harry Cohn, vice-president of the Columbia Pictures Corporation, was appointed assistant general production manager of that company. Prior to her connection with Columbia, Miss Howell served as secretary to Irving Thalberg, when he was at Universal, and later she was with B.P. Schulberg.
Kingsley didn’t mention that Howell had another qualification for the job: she’d been successfully selling screenplays since 1924. However, no matter how much experience they had, in 1926 women rarely got the opportunity to make decisions about what films were being made and Kingsley wasn’t the only one to particularly mention her gender. The Los Angeles Examiner said she’d be “one of the few women executives in motion pictures.” Moving Picture World reported why she’d been promoted: “Mr. Cohn believes that there should be a feminine touch and voice in production matters.” Variety agreed, saying that Cohn “believes that women are very practical from the production angle. He has made a daring departure from tradition and appointed Dorothy Howell, his secretary, assistant production manager for the organization.”
Unfortunately, her new job didn’t last long. In September, Motion Picture News still called her the assistant production manager when they said she’d written the screenplay for Obey the Law, but that was the last mention of her executive title, and nobody reported on why it didn’t work out. She quietly returned to writing, and in December Film Daily reported that she had signed a five-year contract as a scenarist with Columbia (which was probably a much better job than being the volatile Harry Cohn’s secretary).
Dorothy Howell had a writing credit on over 60 dramas and comedies, and, as a member of the script department, probably contributed to countless more. Because she worked for Columbia, a “poverty row” studio, her movies were low budget and featured minor stars, and they aren’t often remembered now.
Dorothy Howell was born to Elmer and Caroline Lorenz Howell in Chicago Illinois on May 10,1899. Her father was a railroad foreman and her mother kept house. She had an older brother, Raymond. The family moved to Elgin (35 miles northwest of Chicago) and she graduated from Elgin High School, where she acted in plays, belonged to the glee club, and did lots of committee work. In 1920 she was working as a secretary for a publishing company and still in Elgin. She moved to Hollywood in the early 1920’s and was hired as Irving Thalberg’s secretary at Universal. Later she became independent producer B.P. Schulberg’s secretary. In 1924 she went to work as Harry Cohn’s secretary at Columbia, where she spent the rest of her career.
She retired from the movie business in the early 1930s when she married someone who might very well be a character in an upcoming Steven Spielberg movie: Mendel Silberberg. He was born on November 22, 1886 in Los Angeles. He co-founded a major (and still active) law firm in 1908 with Shepard Mitchell when he graduated from law school. In their early decades they specialized in entertainment law, and they were West Coast counsel to Columbia as well as RKO and MGM. Considering how much Silberberg was quoted in the newspapers after the infamous death of Jean Harlow’s husband Paul Bern, it’s fair to say that he was a studio fixer. He was active in the Republican party, and he advised Richard Nixon. He was also a member of the Beverly Hills city council and the planning commission. But none of that is what he is mostly remembered for.
Mendel Silberberg co-founded, with Leon Lewis and Joseph Roos, the Jewish Community Relations Committee in 1933, which helped organize anti-Nazi spies who infiltrated the pro-Nazi German-American Bund, the Ku Klux Klan and the fascist Silver Shirts in California. The Committee helped undercover volunteers find jobs within the organizations and helped pay their expenses, then turned over their spy reports to military intelligence and the FBI, which led to convictions of Nazis in the United States. Silberberg served as its chairman for many years. Their story was told in the book Hitler in Los Angeles (2017) by Steven J. Ross, in the Rachel Maddow podcast Ultra, and in the upcoming Spielberg film based on it. It’s a shame Dorothy Howell never wrote that screenplay–it’s terrific story.
The Silberbergs had two daughters, Doria and Susan, and they had a comfortable life in Beverly Hills; according to the 1940 census, they employed a live-in butler, cook and governess. During the war Dorothy Silberberg did volunteer work with the National Council of Jewish Women. In 1952 she made a brief return to the movie business, producing Quest for a Lost City for Sol Lesser, about Dana and Ginger Lamb’s search for a lost Mayan city. Mendel Silberberg died on June 28, 1965, and Dorothy on June 8, 1971.
“Asks Annulment of Marriage to Star,” Evening Express, July 22, 1926.
“Columbia’s Obey the Law to Star Bert Lytell,” Motion Picture News, September 4, 1926, p. 830a.
“Dorothy Howell Gets Columbia Executive Post,” Los Angeles Examiner, February 28, 1926.
Cecile Hallingby, “Hollywood Women Learn of War Needs,” Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1940.
“Civic Leader Silberberg Dies at 78,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1965.
“Miss Dorothy Howell Assistant Prod. Manager,” Moving Picture World, April 3, 1926, p. 326.
“Quick Rise to Fame,” Colusa Herald, August 2, 1927.
“Signs Dorothy Howell,” Film Daily, December 29, 1926, p. 2.
“Woman As Ass’t Prod. Mgr. in Coast Studio,” Variety, March 3, 1926, p. 25.
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