Wish List

During his brief career, Nelson Evans photographed some of the biggest stars in Hollywood.  Among them: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Buster Keaton, Roscoe Arbuckle, Lon Chaney, Wallace Reid, Gloria Swanson and Colleen Moore.  But there were many more that apparently did not sit for an Evans portrait, so I decided to put together a list of those who I wished he had photographed (the list only includes actors who were active during Evans' career).  It goes without saying that I have not seen every photo taken by Evans and so it is possible that some of the following actors did have a portrait taken by Evans.  If I come across one or someone out there points me to one, I will edit the list accordingly.

And so, my wish list:

-Marion Davies   With her beautiful eyes, Davies would have been the perfect subject for Evans.

-Edna Purviance  For whatever reason, there seems to be fewer portraits of Edna than would be expected, so maybe it's not too surprising that she never worked with Evans.

-John Barrymore  Evans didn't typically photograph men's profiles, but I would think he would have made an exception in this case.

-Richard Barthelmess  Perhaps not the most exciting subject for a portrait, but I wonder how Evans would approach the task.  UPDATE: from the July 1919 issue of Motion Picture Magazine.

-Jobyna Ralston  Another seemingly ideal subject for Evans.

-Harold Lloyd  With or without glasses?

-Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy  Even though they were still a few years away from becoming a team, I lump them together here for convenience sake.

-Mabel Normand  Okay, Evans took lots of photos of Mabel for her movie Mickey.  But I have yet to come across an actual portrait of her by him.  Mabel seems to have favored New York photographers over those in Los Angeles.

-Elsie Janis  Of everyone I have listed, Janis is the most surprising one to have never been photographed by Evans.  Both were natives of Columbus (he grew up just 3 miles north of her house, which sat across the street from the Ohio State University campus) and she was a very close friend of Mary Pickford, who frequently worked with Evans.  I'm still holding out hope that there is a photo out there somewhere...

There's a few famous names missing from my list.  That's because there is some evidence that Evans did photograph these actors, but it's far from solid fact.

-Charlie Chaplin  I've seen an early photo of Chaplin with the Evans signature, but I came across another photo that appears to be from the same shoot that was attributed to Albert Witzel.  While it's possible that Evans did an apprenticeship with Witzel, the date of the photo (1914) would put Evans out of the picture, so to speak, as he was back in Ohio at the time.  But it is something I need to research further.

-Lillian Gish  One of my complaints about John Kobal's Evans-centric book Hollywood- The Years of Innocence is the lack of attribution to almost all of the photographs, except to say that most of the photos were by Evans.  One of the photos in the book is a group shot of Gish along with her mother, sister Dorothy, Mary Pickford and Mildred Davis.  Evans photographed other Griffith actors, so it's possible that the photo is by him.  The book also includes a still of the great Babylonian set from Griffith's Intolerance.  Does that mean it was taken by Evans?  Wish I knew!

-Alla Nazimova  Two Nazimova photos appear in Kobal's book, one explicitly credited to Evans, the other not.  However, the uncredited one (outside the Garden of Alla) seems more likely to be an Evans than the one attributed to him!

If anyone finds an Evans photo of any of the actors listed above, let me know.    

Marriage Mystery Part Three

In the first two posts (here and here) about Nelson's marriage history, I covered his annulled marriage to Helen Hysell in 1909 and the unnamed wife listed on his 1917 draft registration.  For this third and final installment I will try to untangle some of the details of his marriages to his last 2 wives.

On March 27th, 1919, shortly after leaving military service, Nelson married Genevieve Cover Finklestone in New York City.  Genevieve was a divorcee and this was her second marriage.  Interestingly, the marriage certificate indicates that this was Nelson's first marriage.  So why did he list a wife on his draft registration two years earlier?  At first I thought he may have lied in order to get out of serving, but that didn't seem to fit someone whose brother and grandfather both died in battle.

The answer was found in a voter registration list for 1916.  Here is what was listed:

The wife of 1917 was the same one he married in 1919!  So, what to make of the 1919 marriage?  No record of an earlier marriage between the two has yet surfaced, so one possibility is that they were not married but living together under the guise of man and wife.  More likely, however, is that Genevieve's divorce from her first husband was not finalized as they thought and Nelson discovered this during his time in New York during the end of the war.  That would explain two things.  First, Genevieve's last name on the marriage certificate is her married name, Finklestone, not her maiden name, Cover.  Second, the timing of the marriage.  If Nelson discovered the divorce situation while in New York, where Genevieve had married her first husband in 1913, he probably asked (or probably demanded) that she come back east to take care of the divorce and then get (re)married.

One question that remains unanswered is where did Nelson and Genevieve first meet?  As she was living in New York City, it's most likely that it happened during one of his business trips to the city in 1914 when he was still working as a film exchange man.  Perhaps it was their 'marriage' that prompted him to return to Los Angeles that year and begin a new career in photography.  In any case, the 1919 marriage didn't last.  The last record of them being together is the 1920 census; sometime between then and 1922, they divorced.

Nelson's last wife was Rosalie Knight.  The two were married on January 21st, 1922 at the Madison Ave Methodist Episcopal Church in Manhattan.  A few weeks later, the couple set sail for a honeymoon in Eygpt, eventually returning the the States at the end of June.  Sadly, this marriage ended just a few months later when Nelson died at the age of 33.

Rosalie at age 14

After Nelson's death, Rosalie returned to New York, eventually remarrying in 1934.  Her third and last husband was Carl Schraubstader, whose one claim to fame is writing the music to oft-recorded hit song "Last Night on the Back Porch" in 1923 while a student at Cornell University.  Rosalie was 11 years Carl's senior, although she seems to have cut 12 years off her age on various records (when she married Nelson, she listed her age on the marriage certificate as 26, although she was actually 30).  Rosalie and Carl remained married until her death in 1979.

So there you have the history of Nelson Evans' marriages.  Four weddings, three women, two wives.  A man truly not lucky in love.   

Photo Hunting at Cinecon

  Last week I attended my first Cinecon, the long-running movie convention held in Hollywood (this was the 51st one).  While the main focus of the convention is the great films that are shown at the historic Egyptian Theatre, I was equally interested in the dealers rooms, with the hope of finding a few Evans photographs to add to my collection.  Although there were far fewer dealers than one would find at the Cinevent convention here in Columbus, there was one who was selling vintage photos.  Out of the dozens of Evans pictures they had, I purchased seven.  Some I bought because they caught my eye, others because the actor was of interest.

The first one I bought (I made 3 buying trips over the weekend) was this one of Louise Fazenda.  I had been hoping to find a copy of this particular photo, so that's why I got it first.  It most likely dates from 1917-18.

 Another full-body portrait I purchased was this one of Laura La Plante.  This one dates from the beginning of her career when she was working for Christie Studio, again around 1917-18.

For some forgotten reason, I had hoped to find a photo of Pauline Frederick.  Perhaps it was because there's something timeless about her.  In any case, of the two that I found, this is the one I came away with.

Wallace Beery was another one on my want list.  Nothing fancy, but that's a great mustache.

Although I wasn't looking for a photo of Wanda Hawley, it was those ubiquitous pine branches that won me over.  They also appeared in photos of Marie Prevost, Mary Pickford, and Mary Miles Minter, among many others.

The last two I bought for aesthetic reasons.  Evans was at his best when he played with light.  This striking photo of Gladys Brookwell seems to be lit with sunlight.

Finally, here is a photo of Monroe Salisbury in his costume for the movie The Barbarian.  Just one light, but it works perfectly.

Who's That Girl?

It may surprise some of you that this is my first post about Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties.  It may also surprise you that I am not going to write a general article about them.  I'll probably get around to one of those eventually.  What I want to talk about right now is the challenge of identifying some of the Bathing Beauties and the sometimes humorous misidentifications that have occurred over the years.

A large part of my Evans collection consists of over 100 arcade cards of Sennett's Bathing Beauties.  The photos were taken in 1917 and 1918, typically during a movie shoot.  Of course, I wanted to identify the women in the photos and started searching the internet.  Fortunately, most of the information I found was reliable, verifiable, and consistent.  I quickly learned who was who among the most common of the photos.  Marie Prevost, Mary Thurman, Marvel Rea, Myrtle Lind, Phyllis Haver, and Vera Stedman were among the most photographed.  Others proved a bit trickier.  It doesn't help that the photo reproduction on some of the cards are very poor.  In this example, a clearer picture might make it easier to tell just who she is:

She might be Gonda Durand, but I'm not willing to bet the farm on it.  Another issue is that some of these women aren't really Sennett Bathing Beauties.  Here's a card with Annette Kellerman.  Now, it's more than appropriate that the world famous swimmer, entertainer and designer of the one-piece bathing suit would be placed beside the other women who also had a great impact on the history of beachwear.  But, to my knowledge, she never appeared in a Mack Sennett film.

So far, I've probably managed to identify the women in about 90% of the cards in my collection.  Some may be eventually be identified at some point, while others will forever remain nameless.  But I will keep trying.

Now, I have made a few mistakes in some of my identifications.  These things happen.  But in doing research on the Bathing Beauties, I've been amazed and amused at some of the mistakes others have made.  Some of the mistakes I can understand.  It can be easy to mistake Marie Prevost for Mary Thurman, and visa versa, for example.  But others border on the bizarre.

The first, and maybe funniest, errors I came across on the internet was by another collector (I won't name names).  He was struggling to identify some of the women, so he asked for help from another collector.  It turns out that collector wasn't very good at it either, so he called in a third, supposedly more knowledgeble, collector.  Here's an example of what he came up with.  This young lady was identified as Myrtle Lind.

The next card he showed was this one:

This time the same women was (correctly) identified as Lillian Langston!

Sometimes no one seems to be able to decide who a Bathing Beauty is.  For example, this young lady has been identified at various times around the internet as Vera Stedman, Marie Prevost, Viola Dana (!), and Cecille Evans.

And the winner is: Cecille Evans (no relation to Nelson; and this is not one of his photographs).

But don't think this whole misidentification thing is a recent phenomenon.  One of the photos above has the name of the 2 women within it, Lillian Langston and Miss Anderson.  By Miss Anderson, it can be assume to mean Claire Anderson.  However, the woman on the right is not Miss Anderson, Claire or otherwise.  It's Edith Roberts.

Umbrellas!

Going through my collection earlier this week, I noticed quite a few pictures with umbrellas.  Perhaps Evans had a brolly fetish.  Or it was just an ideal prop.  Whatever the reason, here are some examples.

Bathing beauties have to protect themselves from the sun, of course.

 Apparently, you need umbrellas indoors, too.

Another indoor model.

The more the merrier.

The Perfect Flapper

After finally getting around to watching (and greatly enjoying) the recently rediscovered "Why Be Good?" (1929), I thought I would post a couple of Evans photos I have of the star of that film, Colleen Moore.  Colleen is best known as the quintessential flapper and the very definition of the word 'cute', but before she did the Charleston and started wearing her trademark bangs, her film roles tended more towards the Mary Pickford type.  These two photos, taken only a year or so apart, already show her trending away from the Pickford curls and towards her now iconic look.

Mickey

Although it is difficult to say with any kind of certainty which films Nelson Evans worked on in the capacity of still photographer, there is one that we know for sure.  "Mickey", released in August of 1918 but started in mid 1916 and completed a year later, starred Mabel Normand as an orphan who is sent East from her late father's mine to live with her aunt.  Produced by Mack Sennett, but made at Normand's own studio, it became the biggest hit of the year, in part thanks to unusually heavy promotion, promotion that Evans not only took part in, but took great pride in as well.

A few months before the film's release, news stories appeared in several trade magazines, including the May 18th, 1918 issue of Motion Picture News, telling of Evans' work on designing the lobby display for the film.  Evans talks about his philosophy behind his design, stating that:

"I first studied the story and determined to cater to this demand for continuity, to perfect my lobby display, so that the story would be presented to the public pictorially and in chronological order, and further to combine with this phase the wonderful story which 'Mickey' possesses".  

Elaborating, he says:

"My first purpose was to place before the public a series of panels which would pictorially represent the continuity of the story, and my selection of the panels gave me that element.  They accentuate the story values and render the public in an expectant mood for what is to be shown."

It's unclear what he means by panels, but they were most likely either stills or lobby cards.  Here are examples of both:

An unusual feature of both the still and the lobby card is that they have Evans' signature.  Although I am no expert on lobby cards, the ones from 'Mickey' are the only ones I have seen signed by the photographer.  It's possible that the Evans Studio was responsible for creating the cards (which might explain why the signature is always next to the title of the film), or perhaps it was part of his contract.  In any case, it is unusual.

Other promotional pictures that he shot for the film appeared on some of the variant covers of the million-copy-selling sheet music of the film's theme song.

It's clear that Evan's was proud of his work on the film he called "the greatest comedy-drama ever presented for the public's entertainment on the screen."  Although remembered today only by silent movie fans, the movie did indeed prove to be popular with the public of the day.

Grace Cunard

I had planned on writing a post on my Evans purchases at last weekend's Cinevent here in Columbus, but one of my finds warrants some attention of its own.  Since one of the focuses of this blog is local history, I thought I might highlight the subject of a postcard I picked up at the convention.  The subject is Columbus native Grace Cunard.

Harriet Jeffries (aka Grace Cunard) was born in Columbus in 1893 to Washington and Lola Jeffries   (studio publicity claimed that she was born in Paris to an American mother and a French father).  Washington doesn't appear to have held down any job for very long and the family was continually moving around, mainly in the area just north of downtown known as the Short North.  Although it is difficult to find much detail about her early life, Harriet took to the stage in 1906, adopting the name for which she would be later known to her film fans.  Her father died in 1910 and her mother was still in Columbus in 1911, but it's unknown exactly when Harriet left town for good.  Her first screen credit is for the 1911 film Before Yorktown.  For the rest of the decade, the rechristened Grace would make dozens of popular films for Universal, mostly of the action variety and usually co-starring Francis Ford, the older brother of director John Ford.  Not only was Grace the star of these films, but frequently was also the writer and occasionally the director.  She also dabbled in politics, becoming the first city assessor of Universal City in 1913.  A true pioneer of cinema, her popularity began to wane in the Twenties, but she continued to occasionally act until her retirement from the screen in 1946.  She passed away in Los Angeles in 1967 at the age of 73.

An interesting side note: Grace was not the only future Hollywood star living in the Short North at the turn of the 20th century.  Also in the neighborhood was a young Warner Baxter.  It's doubtful that they knew one another, but it is possible that they attended the same school, Dennison Elementary, which is still standing.  Although 4 years older than Grace, Warner's career didn't start taking off until after her's had already peaked.  He earned a Best Actor Oscar in 1928 for In Old Arizona playing the Cisco Kid.  He also starred in the hit musical 42nd Street in 1933 and played the title character in the series of Crime Doctor films in the Forties.  Warner died in 1951. 

The Drigo Mystery

In John Kobal's 1985 book Hollywood: The Years of Innocence, a chapter is devoted to the 'art studies' (i.e. nude photographs) of young actresses.  Although most of the photos in the book are supposedly by Evans (Kobal does a poor job of attribution), many of these 'art studies' are signed 'Drigo'.  Who was Drigo?  Kobal doesn't bother commenting on the photographer.  And he only identifies one of the women, dismissing the rest with an 'it doesn't really matter'.  Very helpful.

A search for Drigo on the internet brings back lots of hits, but no photographer by that name.  The only piece of information that I found was an ad for Drigo Art Studies in a couple of 1923 issues of the spanish language film magazine Cinemundial.  Offered for sale were photos of bathing beauties, movie actresses, and 'fotografias artisticas' (hint, hint).  The address given is 5617 Hollywood Blvd, which was just a few blocks east of the Evans Studio.

     
With the photos appearing in Kobal's Evans-centric book and an ad with a nearby address, was Drigo in fact Nelson Evans?  The answer finally came this week when I purchased this Drigo photograph:

Thanks to those ubiquitous windows, this is easily identifiable as an Evans photo.  Here's a photo of Louise Fazenda in front of the same windows.  Notice that the curtains are the same in both photos.

As for the identity of the young lady, she is possibly Alice Maison, one of Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties, but it's difficult to say with any certainty.  But unlike John Kobal, I think her name does matter.

So where did the name Drigo come from?  It's unknown if these photographs were sold before 1923, but if not, it's possible the name was not Evans' own invention.  Perhaps after his death the studio decided to market the photos under a pseudonym to hide their origins.  If so, one hopes that the money from any sales went to the charity that the studio gave all of their profits to at the end of the year. 

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who came out last Tuesday (4/14) to the meeting of the Clintonville Historical Society for my presentation of "Nelson Evans: From Clintonville to Hollywood".  I appreciate the interest and enthusiasm that was shown for one of Clintonville's native sons.  One of the goals of my research is to make Nelson better known in his hometown and this was a big step in meeting that goal.

For those who were not there, here's a rundown of my presentation:

• Overview of Nelson's life and career
• Nelson in Clintonville
• Nelson's film exchange business
• His work with Mack Sennett/Bathing Beauties
• Fan magazine appearances of his photographs
• Other uses of his work, including fan photos, post cards, and advertising
• Selections from my collection

I would love to give the presentation again.  And as my research continues, the presentation will probably expand.  In fact, I found some interesting information just hours before the meeting and came across some more a couple of days ago.  Who knows what the next presentation will be like! 

Thanks again!

Is it an Evans? Part Two

I came across this curious photo of Carmel Myers on EBay recently.  I found it curious because, even though the signature of Apeda of NY is in the bottom right corner of the photo, it had appeared in the August 1918 issue of Motion Picture Magazine with a very prominent Evans signature on the bottom left corner, as well as the June 1917 Photoplay with credit to Evans.  So, what gives?

A closer examination of the 'Apeda' version shows evidence of the Evans signature having been covered over.  Clearly, whenever Triangle added their code to the photo, they also changed the signatures.

 Apeda/Triangle version

 Motion Picture Magazine version

 The reason for the change may be tied to Evans' employment by Mack Sennett as the head of his Stills Department.  When Evans started working with Sennett in March 1917, Sennett's Keystone Studio was part of the Triangle Film Corp.  However, in a few months Sennett split with Triangle and left the Keystone brand with them.  The new Mack Sennett Studio continued with the same personnel minus any Triangle management that had been on the lot.  Evans stayed with Sennett until he entered the Army in October of 1918.  Because Sennett's leaving of Triangle was anything but amicable, it seems very likely that Triangle removed Evans' name from the photo because he was an employee of Mack Sennett. 

Ruth Roland

It's been awhile since I last posted a picture from my collection, so here's one of Ruth Roland, one of Evans' favorite subjects (or was he one of her favorite photographers?).  The photo was published in Motion Picture Magazine in 1918 to promote her then-current film Hands Up!.

Marriage Mystery Part Two

As mentioned in Marriage Mystery Part One, in the 1910 census Nelson was listed as being married, but no wife was listed in the household.  Was this just a data entry error?  Was Nelson married or not?

On September 7th, 1909, Nelson married Helen Hysell in Dundee, Michigan.  Since neither of them had connections to Michigan, it would seem that they had eloped.  The 19-year-old Helen was the daughter of Francis Hysell, a railroad agent in Columbus, just like Nelson's father, so it's safe to assume that the two men knew one another, perhaps even worked together.  It would also seem that at least one father was not too pleased about the marriage.  In the 1910 census, Helen is living with her parents and listed as single.  The marriage had been annulled.

So what became of Helen?  Interestingly, her life somewhat parallels that of Nelson's.  She stayed with her parents until her mother Harriet's death in 1949 (her father died in 1928).  They moved from Columbus sometime in the late 1910's, to New York City.  While in New York, Helen took up writing, authoring a business book, The Science of Purchasing, as well as several short stories for various pulp magazines (like her distant cousin H. P. Lovecraft).  She was also briefly the vice president of her father's NY business, the Hysell Cocoa Co.  By the mid-Thirties, Helen and her mother had moved west to the Los Angeles area.  Helen died in L.A. in 1964.  She never married.

How much of an impact did their doomed romance have on the rest of their lives?  Is it the reason Helen never married?  Was Helen Nelson's inspiration, the face that launched a thousand beautiful portraits?  It's a romantic thought, but we will never know.   

For the Love of the Beautiful

In 1929, Nelson's family had a biographical sketch and photo included in the National Cyclopedia of American Biography.  I will not quote the entire entry, but a few of the passages are worth highlighting.

Foreseeing that motion pictures would become a permanency and a world success, in 1909 he founded the Independent Feature Film Co. in Cleveland, O., and devoted himself to its management until 1914.

Obviously a bit of hyperbole, but he should be given some credit for taking the risk of starting his working life in a relatively new business.  There are a couple of errors in the passage, however.  The Evans family was still living in Columbus in 1909.  The best evidence I have at the moment suggests that he started his film exchange business sometime between 1910 and 1912, and in Los Angeles, not Cleveland.  As seen in the previous post, the name of his first business was The American Feature Film Co.  It wasn't until early 1914 that he changed the name to the Independent Feature Film Co, after joining forces with a couple of former theatre owners.  At that point, he did move to Cleveland and the ended his film exchange business in late 1914.  But whoever wrote the biography can be forgiven, as they were probably relying on memory.

His artistic ability and his love of the beautiful prompted him to found the Evans Studio at Hollywood, Los Angeles, Calif., and through his original art studies of the celebrated stars of the moving picture world gained for himself widespread recognition.  This studio, one of the largest and best equipped in the world, represented the greatest diversity of lights and shadows, and his inventive genius in constructing artistic settings and light effects gave his work peculiar originality and value.

I'm tempted to call this more hyperbole, but this is more of a case of taking pride in your son's accomplishments.  Further proof of that pride can be found in the next sentence.

Following his death the Nelson Evans studios were operated in the founder's memory, the profits being devoted to the establishment of a fund for charitable purposes, to be expended each year at Christmas time in a manner to be designated by the executors of his estate.

One thing has been clear throughout my research: Charles and Mary Evans were very devoted to their son.  Whether this was due to Nelson being in poor health or just doting on their only surviving son, they were always close by.

And here's the photo that accompanies the biography.

Dayton Flood Disaster- 1913

The Great Flood of 1913 is forgotten by most of the world and probably little known in the areas affected by the disaster.  While the destruction began in Nebraska, where over 100 people were killed by several powerful tornadoes, Ohio suffered the most, with over 500 dead, hundreds more missing, and property damage of at least several billion in today's dollar.  A majority of the deaths and damage was in one city: Dayton.

After an estimated 10 inches of rain fell in a few days, levees around the city failed and flooded the city under upwards of 20 feet of water.  This was on March 25th, a Tuesday.  By the 27th,  relief trains were able to enter the area.  On these trains came several film crews, among them an Essany group, who were in the region recording the damage from the Nebraska tornadoes from a few days earlier, and another from Toledo, the American Feature Film Company, headed by Nelson Evans.

The American Feature Film Company was not a film producer, but an exchange.  It seems odd for a company that dealt exclusively in the distribution of foreign feature films (more on the business in a later post) to produce a one reel picture on a local event, but Evans was an astute businessman and knew what exhibitors and the public wanted.

In the April 1913 issue of Moving Picture World, Evans tells of making the film Dayton Flood Disaster.  They arrived in the city on the 27th as the water was receding.  Because of that, no film crew was able to capture footage of rescues; Evans warns exhibitors that any film showing rescues are fakes (one film available on YouTube does indeed show people being rescued, but it is clearly from a different source than the footage in the film showing the aftermath of the flooding).  Evans also touted the editing of his film, stating that he had "cut out all superfluous matter in the film, and that every foot will be interesting and full of action."  Also in the same issue is a full page ad for the film.

Does the film still exist?  Possibly.  A few years ago someone in northwest Ohio found one of the films on the flood in their attic.  Considering it was found in or near Toledo, it is possible that it is Evans' film.  Unfortunately, the copy on YouTube is missing it's title.  In any case, if it is not his film, it at least gives an idea of what the film would have been like.  (And I apologize for subjecting anyone to the ineptitude of the person who made this copy.  Be warned that viewing this will be occasionally frustrating and may lead you to yell at your computer screen.)

Go West Young Man

Sitting here, mid-way through another Ohio winter, it's not too difficult to understand why the Evans family would want to pack up and move to California.  Looking at the available information, it would seem that climate may have been a deciding factor in sending them westward.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the family was listed on the 1910 census as living in the Hartman Hotel in downtown Columbus.  At first glance, it seems unusual that they would have moved from a very nice neighborhood and into a hotel.  However, the Hartman was not just a hotel, it was also a sanitarium.  Was it possible that one of the family was in poor health?  And if so, which one?

A possible answer might be found in an unusual situation.  I discovered just this morning that Nelson and his mother are also listed in the 1910 census in Los Angeles.  It's unlikely that they headed to California leaving a sick father behind at the sanitarium, so it's a safe bet that either Nelson or his mother was sent to LA to convalesce.  Based on the fact that he died young, Nelson would seem the logical choice.

However Nelson didn't stay in Los Angeles very long.  He does appear to have started his first film exchange business, the American Feature Film Company, there, as it is mentioned in the Oct- Dec 1912 issue of The Moving Picture World under the Doings at Los Angeles column.  But, perhaps feeling better after 3 years in the California sunshine, he headed back to Ohio with his father, continuing his exchange business in Toledo and then Cleveland.  The return to Ohio only lasted a couple of years, ending with him moving back to LA by the beginning of 1915 and staying there for the rest of his short life.  

Is it an Evans?

One of the more frustrating aspects of researching a photographer is coming upon photographs that seem like their work, but are unsigned or unattributed.  In going through the many magazines found on the extremely valuable Media History Digital Library website (mediahistoryproject.org), it's not uncommon to find such a photo that makes me wonder if it could be an Evans.  Every photographer has a certain style, but it is clear from looking at the work of the many Hollywood photographers of the day that they borrowed ideas freely from one another.  It's next to impossible to say who was taking from whom, but some of the studios that produced work that was most like Evans were the Hoover Art Studio, Hartsook Studio and Northland Studio.  I could probably go on and on (and may in a later post), but my point today is that it doesn't make my research any easier.

A good example of an 'is it an Evans' photo is (like the previous post) one I have in my Louise Fazenda collection.

Unfortunately, the right third of the photo is missing, most likely taking with it the photographer's signature.  The back has nothing but a snarky remark about it being suitable for a "How the Stars Recline" series.  It is, however, stylistically similar to 2 other photos in my collection, one of Louise Glaum and another of Ms. Fazenda (maybe Evans was working on a "How Louise's Recline" series).

     
You can see the similarities, but it's not necessarily enough to say with any certainty that it is an Evans.  If I were to name another possibility, it would probably be Albert Witzel, but I've yet to come across anything quite the same coming out of his studio.  For now, I am tentatively identifying it as an Evans, but would not be surprised in the least to find out it is the work of another studio.

UPDATE 8/3/15: A complete copy of the photo has appeared on EBay and it is indeed a Witzel photograph.