William Ray Johnston

W. Ray Johnston came to New Rochelle to work as an aide to Hite, who was president of the Thanhouser Film Corporation. His exact time of arrival is not certain. The Florida Metropolis, in a biographical article in the issue of May 21, 1916, stated that he arrived in January 1913. Most other accounts state that his official duties began on January 1, 1914. A few months later, in the first week of May, Johnston was named personal secretary to Hite. Johnston held various financial positions, including assistant secretary and treasurer, with the firm and was an actor in numerous films. In 1914 he was named treasurer of the Syndicate Film Corporation, which was set up to distribute The Million Dollar Mystery.

On May 16, 1914 he married Violet Hite, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lemuel Hite, of Lancaster, Ohio, and sister of Charles J. Hite. The ceremony took place in New Rochelle at the Trinity Church, with the Rev. Charles F. Canedy officiating. In 1914 the couple lived at 19 Rhodes Street, in 1915 they resided at 63 Bay View Avenue, and in 1916 their address was again given as 19 Rhodes Street. Johnston traveled extensively for the company, including frequent trips to Chicago to visit bankers and others associated with the Mutual Film Corporation. A typical trip was taken in February 1915 and included stops in Columbus, Ohio on the 9th, Chicago on the 10th, Omaha on the 11th and 12th, Waterloo, Iowa on the 13th, Chicago again on the 14th, and Pleasantville, Ohio (birthplace of his wife, Violet) on the 15th, and back to New Rochelle on the 17th.

When the so-called “Thanhouser ‘Big’ Productions” were announced, Johnston was named president of the branch set up to distribute them. In 1916 he was the financial manager of Thanhouser’s short-lived Jacksonville (Florida) studio. While there, he was mentioned frequently in the local newspapers. According to a reminiscence he voiced in 1939, he played a role in the last Thanhouser film, The Heart of Ezra Greer, released in October 1917.

The following article appeared in The New Rochelle Pioneer, November 7, 1914: “In his 26 years of youth, W. Ray Johnston knows not the word fail. He has made a success of everything his hands have touched, and it seems incredible to find one in his years holding the high positions of: treasurer and director of the Delta Theatre Corporation of New York, which operates the Broadway Rose Gardens; assistant treasurer of the Syndicate Film Corporation of New York, distributors of Thanhouser’s The Million Dollar Mystery, which is said to have booked orders aggregating $1,900,000 - the greatest film booking ever recorded; secretary and director of the Thanhouser Syndicate Film Corporation, distributors of the new Thanhouser serial, Zudora; secretary-treasurer and director of the ‘Big Productions Film Corporation’ of New York, which distributed all of the Thanhouser ‘big’ features; secretary-treasurer and director of Beating Back, the feature film picturizing the life of Al Jennings, a former notorious Oklahoma outlaw, in his efforts to ‘beat back’ into the society that shunned him, and it shows him doing so (Jennings recently made a campaign for governor of Oklahoma, and is a successful lawyer there); and president of the North Avenue Theatre, Inc., New Rochelle.

“These six offices (some of them multiples) do not take in all of Mr. Johnston’s activities. Yet, he recently told the Pioneer representative that outside of the above, he had nothing to do but work. Notice, you youthful readers, that Mr. Johnston said work. That is the secret of his success. He works. His time is limited only by the face of the clock swinging round from 12 to 12. He never puts off till tomorrow what should be done today.

“W. Ray Johnston was born on January 2, 1888, son of Mr. and Mrs. J.B. Johnston, of Bristow, Iowa. His father was a prosperous furniture merchant, and Ray is one of a family of six, with three brothers and two sisters completing the family circle. His mother was laid at rest when Ray was seven, but the family, three years before that time, removed to Janesville, Iowa, where Ray graduated from the Janesville High School. On the first of September, 1908, when he was 20, he went to Waterloo College of Commerce, in an Iowa city of 35,000, and the following year graduated therefrom, during his year at college working morning and evening as mailing clerk for the Waterloo Daily Reporter. Upon graduation he accepted the position as assistant to the circulation manager of the paper, but resigned a year later to become secretary to the general manager of the Citizen’s Gas and Electric Company in Waterloo, which position he held until May 1911, when he became cashier of the Iowa Mausoleum Company, a half million dollar corporation at Waterloo. His great capacity for work did not go unnoticed, for in December of that year he was promoted to secretary of the concern and became sales manager with 18 salesmen under him. This position he held until January of this year (1914), and through his connection with the Mausoleum Company he became identified with the Vaughn Land Company, where he held the office of vice-president. He was also treasurer of the Western Realty and Investment Corporation.

“In January through Dr. Wilbert Shallenberger, now president of the Thanhouser Film Corporation, he was introduced to the late lamented Charles Jackson Hite, the then president, and at Mr. Hite’s suggestion Ray accepted the position of auditor of the Thanhouser Company, and the following month was made confidential secretary to Mr. Hite, which position he held at the time of Mr. Hite’s tragic death. [This account indicates that Johnston had no knowledge of the Thanhouser enterprise prior to 1914.—Ed.] Connection with Mr. Hite, the wizard of the motion picture industry, gave Mr. Johnston the opportunity he sought to display his remarkable ability in mathematical lines, and Mr. Hite was quick to recognize it. Hence the perfect harmony that existed between them, and his loss has been greatly felt by Mr. Johnston, who was also the dead president’s brother-in-law because on May 16, this year, Mr. Johnston was married to Miss Violet Hite, Mr. Hite’s favorite sister, and now ‘With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy’ at 9 Rhodes Street, where Mr. and Mrs. Johnston find surcease from the daily humdrum and grind of business life, where W. Ray returns to find that the wife is much dearer than the bride.

“And the end is not yet. Mr. Johnston will keep on soaring higher and higher toward the top through sheer determination. He has the native ability for prodigious work and it is being recognized as the days roll on. His achievement is an excellent lesson to the American youth of today who feel that all the big things were accomplished before they were born. It is not so. When you become discouraged think of W. Ray Johnston’s rise in life, and go thou and do likewise.”

A biographical article in The Standard-Star, New Rochelle, New York, July 7, 1939, included comments concerning his work with Thanhouser: “During his brief career [with Thanhouser] he was the hard-boiled foreman in The Six-Cent Loaf with Florence LaBadie, ....a professional gambler in Innocence at Monte Carlo, and the ringmaster in The Flying Twins, which featured the Fairbanks twins. His first starring picture was His I.O.U., in which he played the part of a senator and wore a borrowed suit. Recalling those early days before the era of specialization, Mr. Johnston pointed out that everyone was a ‘jack of all trades.’ ‘If an unexpected snow descended on the studio,’ he said, ‘the scenario editor, who lived next door, would rush to the studio. By noon the company would be shooting on a snow picture. Likewise, when Long Island Sound froze over, a quick scenario was rushed through called My Cousins from Labrador [sic; apparently the reference is to Her Nephews From Labrador, released January 26, 1913]’”

Many of Johnston’s recollections were fanciful or inaccurate. Apparently, he liked to tell “a good story” and didn’t let the facts get in the way. In a somewhat colorful story given to feature writer Regina Crewe (nom de plume of Regina Kruh), Johnston told of Thanhouser days: “Then there was the time when a water main broke, flooding a New Rochelle side street over the curb. We wrote a Johnstown Flood super-colossal on the way to location, and rescued actors in rowboats until the town’s plumbing department stopped the flow and spoiled our set.

“Jim Cruze [in The Million Dollar Mystery] needed a small car for some scenes, and someone suggested that he should get one free for the sake of the publicity this make of car would get in the picture. To his surprise, an automobile agency agreed...but then phoned that they had changed their minds and the deal for the free car was off. But the Cruze inventiveness saved the day. Jim shot a scene showing an automobile breakdown, and cut in a title saying: ‘Everything’s wrong with this car, it never did run right!’ Cruze and the car people came to terms, and that scene went right on the cutting room floor.”

In 1917 he joined W.E. Shallenberger, a Thanhouser Film Corporation stockholder who had organized the Arrow Film Corporation. He remained with Arrow for seven years and served as a vice president, working with such players as Gladys Leslie, Norma Shearer, Edmund Breese, Maurice Costello, Rosemary Theby, Lew Cody, Mildred Harris (Charles Chaplin’s first wife), and Zena Keefe. Johnston remained in the film business for many years. In January 1924 he organized Rayart Pictures with an investment of $10,000, which was parlayed into a much larger sum. By 1927 Rayart was grossing a reported $1,250,000 annually. In 1931 he was a founder of a cooperative venture in film distribution known as Monogram Pictures, whose stated goal was to produce and distribute 36 pictures a year.

In 1935, at a time when Monogram was in turmoil due to litigation, he formed Republic Pictures. In 1936 he left Republic and endeavored to reorganize Monogram. From August 1936 until March 1937 his use of the Monogram name was barred by court action, therefore he did business under the name of Sterling Pictures Corporation. The Monogram name was subsequently revived, and by 1939, with Johnston as its president, Monogram had 38 exchanges in the United States. Johnston reported that about 35% of Monogram’s receipts were derived from Westerns, which found their best audiences south of the Mason-Dixon Line and in states such as Oklahoma and Texas. In New England the market for such features was virtually non-existent.

In the 1930s, Johnston lived at 40 Carleon Avenue in Larchmont, New York, not far from New Rochelle. In 1938 he published a list titled “Representative Monogram Productions,” which included numerous films by Thanhouser, Arrow and Rayart, before Monogram was started! His recollections were further confused with the attribution of a part in Silas Marner to Jeanne Eagels. His list of one film each year presumably comprises pictures in which Johnston was associated in one capacity or another (he was an executive with Thanhouser when the films in the 1914-1916 list were made, for example), together with leading players in the films: 1914 The Million Dollar Mystery, James Cruze; 1915 (should be 1914) Beating Back, Al Jennings; 1916 Silas Marner, Jeanne Eagels; 1917 The Deemster, Derwent Hall Caine; 1918 The Masked Rider, Harry Myers; 1919 Lightning Bryce, Jack Hoxie; 1920 Before the White Man Came, all Indian cast; 1921 The Golden Trail, Jane Novak; 1922 Ten Nights in a Barroom, John Lowell; 1923 Man and Wife, Norma Shearer; 1924 Easy Money, Mary Carr; 1925 Flame Fighter, Herbert Rawlinson; 1926 Scotty of the Scouts, Ben Alexander; 1927 Shanghai Rose, Irene Rich; 1928 Casey Jones, Ralph Lewis; 1929 Phantom in the House, Ricardo Cortez; 1930 Worldly Goods, Lila Lee; 1931 Mother and Son, Clara Kimball Young; 1932 The Thirteenth Guest, Ginger Rogers; 1933 Sweetheart of Sigma Chi, Mary Carlisle; 1934 Jane Eyre, Virginia Bruce; 1935 The Healer, Ralph Bellamy; 1936 The Harvester, Ann Rutherford; 1937 Hoosier Schoolboy, Mickey Rooney; 1938 Gangster’s Boy, Jackie Cooper.

William Ray Johnston died in Los Angeles on October 14, 1966. Obituaries listed his widow’s name as Doris.