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Eleanor Gates

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Eleanor Gates
Born26 September 1874
Shakopee, Minnesota, U.S.
Died7 March 1951(1951-03-07) (aged 76)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
EducationUniversity of California and Stanford University
OccupationPlaywright
Spouse(s)Richard Walton Tully[1]
1901–14 (divorce)
Frederick Ferdinand Moore
1914-16 (not legal)

Eleanor Gates (26 September 1874 – 7 March 1951) was an American playwright, novelist, short story writer and screenwriter.[2] Her best known work was The Poor Little Rich Girl, which was produced by her husband in 1913[3] and adapted into films for Mary Pickford in 1917 and for Shirley Temple in 1936.[4] Gates's literary works often drew upon her experiences growing up on the American frontier, and she was noted for her vivid characterizations and exploration of themes such as class disparity and personal discovery.[5]

Career

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Eleanor Gates ca 1916

Gates had worked initially as a writer for a newspaper in San Francisco, as well as writing novels. On 1906 she spoke out in Cosmopolitan about the problem of unwanted sexual advances made to women and girls when travelling. In the following issue she continued the theme highlighting the problem in how it effected working women in particular.[6][7] In 1907, one of her novels was illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

Her best known work was the play The Poor Little Rich Girl, which was produced by her husband in 1913.

In 1914 The New York Times published a story about her idea that there should be places where working women and their children could stay.[8]

At the beginning of 1915, Gates founded the Liberty Feature Film Company, which was said by Motion Picture News to be the only film company to be owned and managed by women. The company was led by the wife of an Alaskan businessman, Sadir Lindblom. In the year that it existed, the company created several two reel films.[9]

The first film, produced in 1917, was The Poor Little Rich Girl, which starred Mary Pickford. Shirley Temple starred in the 1936 remake of the same name. The film story, created to cash in on the talents of the eight-year-old Temple and the rights to the "changing places" story, was obtained for $40,000 to Gates and an additional $20,000 to Mary Pickford's company which had made the 1917 film. The new film had made two million dollars by the end of 1939.[4]

Personal life

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Eleanor Gates was born on 26 September 1874 in Shakopee, Minnesota, southwest of Minneapolis. While she was an infant her family moved to the Jim River Valley of South Dakota where the family ran a cattle ranch.[10] These early frontier experiences would later serve as inspiration for her literary works. She later described her early life in her novel The Biography of a Prairie Girl.[11][5]

Gates married fellow playwright Richard Walton Tully in 1901 while they were both students at the University of California, in Berkeley.[12] Tully divorced her in 1914 citing desertion, which Gates admitted.[1]

Before Gates's divorce had been finalized, she married another divorcé, the novelist and short story writer Frederick Ferdinand Moore, in Paterson, New Jersey, in October 1914.[13] In 1916 she annulled the marriage as they both realized that they were not legally married.[14] At the time they both said they intended to remarry when it could be arranged. They never re-married but lived together and collaborated on works until the early 1930s.[14]

Death

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Gates was struck down near her home by an automobile and died on 7 March 1951 in Los Angeles County General Hospital.[2][15][16] She was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale on 28 July 1951 after delays caused by a fruitless search in New York for a will.[17]

Selected Works

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An illustration by Arthur Rackham for her 1907 novel, Good-Night

References

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  1. ^ a b "R. W. Tully Seeks Divorce. Playwright Sues Eleanor Gates on Ground of Desertion". The New York Times. 24 March 1914. Retrieved 16 October 2010. Richard Walton Tully, playwright, instituted suit in the Superior Court here to-day for a divorce from Eleanor Gates Tully, the author. The charge is desertion.
  2. ^ a b "Eleanor Gates, 75, Playwright, Dies". Los Angeles Times. 8 March 1951. Archived from the original on 2012-11-04. Retrieved 2010-10-17. Eleanor Gates, 7, writer of "The Poor Little Rich Girl" and seven other plays produced on Broadway, died yesterday in General Hospital.
  3. ^ Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Tully, Richard Walton" The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Retrieved October 16, 2010 from Encyclopedia.com:
  4. ^ a b "Poor Little Rich Girl". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 17 October 2010.
  5. ^ a b Alexander, Ruth Ann (September 23, 1983). "South Dakota Women Writers and the Emergence of the Pioneer Heroine" (PDF). South Dakota History. 13 (3): 178–205.
  6. ^ Abel, Richard (1996-01-01). Silent Film. A&C Black. ISBN 978-0-485-30076-5.
  7. ^ Franz, Kathleen (2011-06-07). Tinkering: Consumers Reinvent the Early Automobile. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-0193-2.
  8. ^ "PLANS A BIG HOTEL FOR MOTHERS AND CHILDREN ONLY; Eleanor Gates, the Playwright, Believes That Important Sociological Problems Would Be Solved if Working Women and Their Youngsters Had a Holstelry of Their Own". The New York Times. 1914-01-04. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-02-07.
  9. ^ Mahar, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (2008). Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood p.66. JHU Press. ISBN 9780801890840.
  10. ^ "How Cattle Herding Helped an Author to Success". The Kansas City Star. 1922-03-12. p. 42. Retrieved 2021-08-11.
  11. ^ "Realized Dream of Love Aids Them to Work". San Francisco Bulletin. 1908-01-25. p. 7. Retrieved 2025-06-29.
  12. ^ "Illness Divulges A Secret Marriage". The Berkeley Gazette. 1901-05-27. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-06-29.
  13. ^ "Eleanor Gates and Frederick Ferdinand Moore wed". Oakland Tribune. 1914-10-18. p. 17. Retrieved 2021-07-06.
  14. ^ a b "Eleanor Gates Doubly Wed". The New York Times. 1 July 1916. Retrieved 16 October 2010. Eleanor Gates Moore, author of "The Poor Little Rich Girl" and other books, under the name of Ellen Gates, started suit here today for the annulment of her marriage to Frederick F. Moore. The couple were married in Paterson, N.J. in October 1914. ...
  15. ^ "Eleanor Gates, 75, Playwright, Dies". The Los Angeles Times. 1951-03-08. p. 18. Retrieved 2021-07-06.
  16. ^ "Playwright Eleanor Gates killed by car". Daily News. 1951-03-08. p. 4. Retrieved 2021-07-11.
  17. ^ "Eleanor Gates Burial Tomorrow". Los Angeles Evening Citizen News. 1951-07-27. p. 2. Retrieved 2025-07-08.
  18. ^ "The Biography of a Prairie Girl". librivox.org. Retrieved 2025-02-07.
  19. ^ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Plow-woman, by Eleanor Gates". www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
  20. ^ "Eleanor Gates writes Cupid the Cowpuncher". The New York Times. 1907-07-06. p. 16. Retrieved 2025-07-01.
  21. ^ "Mrs Dick Tully Is A Playwright". The Evening Mail. 1910-09-23. p. 7. Retrieved 2025-07-01.
  22. ^ "Gates Story Is Basis Of Bijou Talkie". Battle Creek Moon-Journal. 1934-10-27. p. 9. Retrieved 2025-07-03.
  23. ^ "Eleanor Gates Tell Literary Experiences". Hartford Courant. 1922-06-25. p. 38. Retrieved 2021-08-24.
  24. ^ a b c Walker, Cynthia L. (1979). "Eleanor Gates". In Mainiero, Lina (ed.). American women writers: a critical reference guide from colonial times to the present. New York : Ungar. pp. 107–108. ISBN 978-0-8044-3151-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  25. ^ "Six Notable Books Written By California Women". Oakland Tribune. 1918-04-07. p. 18. Retrieved 2021-08-24.
  26. ^ "The Poor Child Rich, Rich Child Poor; A Paradox as Proved by Eleanor Gates". The Evening World. 1922-02-04. p. 11. Retrieved 2021-08-24.
  27. ^ "Eleanor Gates's Fish Bait to be performed". The Herald Statesman. 1928-06-13. p. 5. Retrieved 2025-07-03.
  28. ^ "Eleanor Gates Writes of Father's Devotion to Child". Deseret News. 1936-02-29. p. 32. Retrieved 2025-07-03.
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