Film: 80 Million Women Want—?

While not quite propaganda, this classic 1913 silent film (also—and perhaps more commonly—known as “What 80 Million Women Want”) had a clear political message: Allow women to vote—doing so might just clean up politics.

The film stars Ronald Everett as Will Travers, a struggling young lawyer, and Ethel Jewett as his plucky fiancé, Mabel West. When Will gets involved with corrupt district leader Boss Kelly (George Henry), he finds himself falsely accused of shooting the crooked Boss. With most of the town’s dirty politicians thoroughly wrapped around Boss Kelly’s finger, it’s up to Mabel to clear her betrothed. Luckily, she’s well placed to do so: At the behest of the New York Women’s Political Union, whose leadership Boss Kelly infuriated by denouncing suffragists to the press, Mabel has already infiltrated the Boss’s racket by posing as a secretary. Without giving away too much of the plot, Mabel clears Will’s name and brings down a corrupt politician along the way.

Though it featured big-name appearances by suffragists Emmeline Pankhurst and Harriot Stanton Blatch (the real-life president of the New York Women’s Political Union), critics often pan the film, criticizing its garbled plot, its uninspired cinematography, and the fact that the story’s connection to its titular suffragist cause is oblique and unconvincing.

Whatever its aesthetic shortcomings, “80 Million Women Want—?” offers a valuable window into how the suffrage movement tried to market itself to the cinema-going public, and it includes actual footage of suffrage rallies.

The film can be difficult to find, but a DVD version is available via Amazon.com (Potential viewers should note that the quality of the restored film is marginal). You can access the film via a college or public library account through the Kanopy films website (you can check if you have access through the site directly by clicking the “watch now” button). Public and college libraries may also have access to the film through other streaming subscription services. You can check WorldCat to see if there is a library with access to the film near you.

You can view several discrete clips from the movie in the video below.

For more on suffrage and the silver screen, see Kay Sloan’s documentary Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema.

Video: The Oratory of Women’s Suffrage

The Oratory of Women’s Suffrage is a video documentary that recreates the speeches of leading suffragists whose impassioned words shaped the women’s movement during its inception in the late 19th century. It includes speeches by well-known suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Sojourner Truth.

It is available to purchase as a DVD or for streaming from the Films Media Group website. This link also provides a free two-minute preview of the documentary. You can also find the documentary at academic libraries (see WorldCat to check for a copy near you).

ISBN: 978-1-62290-345-0

One Woman, One Vote: A PBS Documentary

This PBS documentary is a sweeping look at the women’s suffrage movement, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s famous Seneca Falls call to arms to the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women voting rights.

Narrated by Susan Sarandon, the documentary features historical photos and video clips of the suffrage movement, as well as a number of historians who provide needed context. The film also delves into the deep divisions within the suffrage movement, like the one over the question of whether to support voting rights for black men. In addition, the film looks at regional differences within the movement and differences over whether to use militant tactics.

The New York Times called the film “inspiring without being rhapsodic,” saying it tells viewers “as much about the exigencies of American politics as about the heroism of three generations of American women.” The National Women’s Studies Association Journal also published an informative review of the film, accessible through JSTOR. 

You can buy the film through PBS, or order it through Netflix.

There is a companion book by the same name that you can buy on Amazon. The book is an anthology of contemporary and historical writing on women’s suffrage.

Op-Ed: The Suffragettes Were Rebels, Certainly, But Not Slaves

This editorial by Dr. Ana Stevenson, published on The Conversation, discusses the media controversy surrounding the 2015 film Suffragette and its use of the Emmeline Pankhurst quote, “I’d rather be a rebel than a slave.” Promotional material for the film, which stars Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan, used Pankhurst’s words, sparking debates about racism, feminism, and historical context.

In the piece, Stevenson presents a history of antislavery and women’s rights and links this history to current discourse about intersectionality and the film. She argues that “to understand the suffragettes, we need to consider what they said and why they said it; to view them as the fallible products of their time as well as the radicals they were.”

The official trailer for Suffragette can be found below:

Ken Burns’ Not For Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Stanton & Susan Anthony

This two-part documentary film shown on PBS tells the story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the duo that brought the suffrage cause to widespread attention in the United States.

The film, directed by Ken Burns, shows how the two leaders—despite their widely divergent personalities and backgrounds—came together to fight for women’s voting rights, though both died before their dream was realized.

Stanton grew up with wealth and privilege, the daughter of a well-known judge. Anthony grew up in a Quaker household, the daughter of a factory owner. The two met in 1851, and went on to found multiple suffrage organizations to advance their cause. As historian Judith Harper explains in a PBS article:

The two women not only developed a deep friendship but also helped each other prepare themselves to change women’s lives. Anthony thrived under Stanton’s tutelage—soaking up her knowledge of politics, the law, philosophy, and rhetoric. Stanton, confined to her home by motherhood (she gave birth to her seventh and last child in 1859), was stimulated by Anthony’s thoughtful critiques of her ideas.

Burns’ film traces their personal lives, places them in historical context, and underscores how the impact of their activism stretched far beyond their deaths.

The documentary garnered positive reviews in Variety and the New York Times, which latter called it “a vibrant and extremely moving portrait of a lifelong friendship and the political strategies that defined the women’s rights movement.”

The PBS website on the film is filled with teaching resources, companion articles, and historical documents. The IMBD entry contains a list of the experts featured in the film.

You can buy the film from PBS or Amazon, or search on WorldCat to see if your local library carries it.

Burns and Geoffrey Ward also wrote a companion book to the film which is also available on Amazon.

UK National Archives Footage of British Suffrage Movement

NOTE TO READERS: Some videos in this archive contain potentially disturbing scenes of violence

This UK National Archives film collection contains only four brief, silent film clips. It nonetheless offers valuable on-the-ground documentation of some important moments in the British suffrage movement, along with helpful facts about the videos: Each is accompanied by a description of the film, an explanation of its context within the greater movement for women’s voting rights, and information about “interesting or important points about the film.”

The struggle in Great Britain preceded, and in many ways inspired, the women’s suffrage movement in the US. One notable difference was that in some instances British suffragettes’ tactics were more militant—and even violent—than those of their American counterparts.

One video, for instance, shows the sensational death of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison. As the site explains:

Davidson was a militant Suffragette who was well known for her daring and dangerous exploits in trying to promote the cause of women’s suffrage. At the Derby race in June 1913 she tried to grab the reins of the King’s horse but was struck and killed in the attempt. Nobody really knows whether she was trying to commit suicide or was trying to stop the horse in a sensational protest.

For a more extensive account of some British suffragists’ use of militant tactics, see Andrew Rosen’s Rise Up, Women!: The Militant Campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1903-1914.

If you want to learn more about film’s role in the suffrage movements, see Kay Sloan’s documentary film Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema, and watch the brief silent film A Busy Day, which stars a cross-dressing Charlie Chaplin in an unflattering portrayal of a woman suffragist.

For a more light-hearted, fictional story about the British suffrage movement, check out Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons, a graphic novel trilogy.

BBC News: The Struggle for Women’s Suffrage

This short BBC News video from 2016 introduces a sculpture, housed in the British Parliament, that celebrates women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom. The work, titled “New Dawn,” is made of metal and illuminated glass whose lighting ebbs and flows in time with the tides in the nearby River Thames. The video also uses archival footage and photographs to look back at the women’s rights movement in the UK.

“New Dawn” was unveiled on June 7, 2016. The date marked the 150th anniversary of Member of Parliament (and famous philosopher) John Stuart Mill’s presentation to the House of Commons of the first mass petition advocating women’s enfranchisement. An excerpt from the UK Parliament’s website describes the watershed event:

Mill spoke on the petition on 17 July 1866. A year later, the petition led to the first debate on votes for women. On 20 May 1867 Mill tried to amend the Second Reform Bill to replace the word ‘man’ with ‘person’. He later described this as ‘perhaps the only really important public service I performed in the capacity as a Member of Parliament.’ The division was lost by 73 votes to 196, but Mill was delighted by the level of support, which came from both sides of the House.

St. Stephen Hall, the portion of Westminster Hall chosen to house the sculpture, was a frequent rallying point from which suffragettes protested and lobbied Parliament for the vote. The piece was created by artist Mary Branson.

You can view and explore “New Dawn” here, watch five short videos about it here, and learn more about the sculpture’s creation here.

You can also explore another important contribution Mill made to the suffrage movement: his May 20, 1867 speech before the House of Commons on the subject of women’s enfranchisement.

Lady Gaga Parody: Caught in a Bad Romance ‘Til We Have Suffrage

Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” is an infectious hit that easily gets stuck in your head. So it’s no wonder that Soomo Learning, an education company, decided to create a parody version for use as a teaching tool. Soomo Learning created the song, which has been watched over a million times, to teach students about the push to pass the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

The parody video, which won the Emmy for Informational or Instructional Program at the 27th Annual MidSouth Emmy Awards, features Meredith Garrison as Alice Paul, the women’s suffrage activist. Garrison as Paul sings:

Hey! We’ll raise our banner
Across this land hey!
‘Cause franchise isn’t just
The right of a man

It shows women activists marching for their right to vote, and also depicts efforts to suppress them.

Soomo Learning has put together an easy-to-use website about the parody, complete with sample lessons for teachers and lyrics.

In 2015, Sony/ATV, which published Lady Gaga’s song, filed a copyright claim with YouTube, which eventually took down the Soomo Learning parody, as the education company explains in a blog post. However, numerous copies of the parody exist online.

Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema, a Documentary Film

This 35-minute documentary takes the viewer back to a time and place when film was silent—and when movie makers used silent film to support and oppose the women’s suffrage movement.

Conceived and directed by scholar Kay Sloan, an accomplished author, Suffragettes in the Silent Cinema contains clips from a variety of surviving silent films that addressed the question of women’s voting rights. These films include A Lively Affair, which depicts women abandoning their kids and stealing bicycles to ride to suffrage meetings, and, as featured on this site, A Busy Day, which stars Charlie Chaplin playing a suffragist in drag.

“It was seen as a deeply threatening issue then,” Sloan, the filmmaker, told the Cincinnati publication City Beat in an interview. “If women voted, the whole family structure was endangered. The fabric of our society was at risk.”

But the documentary also includes examples of pro-suffrage silent films, like What 80 Million Women Want, a silent film about a detective who investigates corrupt officials. The detective’s name is Harriot Stanton Blatch, played by none other than Harriot Stanton Blatch, a notable suffragist and the daughter of women’s rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In the film, Blatch is also an ardent suffragist, in addition to her work as a sleuth.

The DVD of the film is available for $19.95 directly from the film company that made it. It is also available in many academic institutions and libraries. Search for the closest library copy on WorldCat. 

Watch this four-minute clip about the movie, courtesy of Women Make Movies, www.wmm.com.

Every Woman’s Problem, a Silent Film Imagining the First Woman Governor

Suffragists used every type of media to hammer home their message: magazine and newspaper articles, cartoons, posters, pamphlets, and more. But not all these polemics included words. Film—at that point still a silent medium—was a potent weapon in the suffragist arsenal.

One of those films was Mothers of Men, which came out in 1917 and was re-released in 1921 with the title Every Woman’s Problem. The plot centers on lawyer Clara Madison (played by Dorothy Davenport), and takes place in a future in which women can vote. Madison, a suffragist, is voted into office twice: first as a judge in a western state, and eventually as governor.

The silent film’s drama is explained in a 1921 review in Moving Picture World: After Madison is elected as judge, “a yellow newspaper opposes her to such an extent that her husband threatens the life of the editor. Bootleggers whom the paper has also opposed concoct a scheme by which the newspaper office is destroyed by a bomb and the editor killed. Circumstantial evidence overwhelmingly points to the guilt of Clara’s husband, and with the two bootleggers, he is sentenced to death.”

As governor, Madison faces an awful dilemma: Should she pardon her husband, whom she loves, or allow the law to decide his fate? Madison is saved from making a choice when one of the bootleggers confesses to the crime, saving her husband.

An essay written by Shelley Stamp, a film scholar who specializes in women and early film culture, explains the themes that the movie explores:

Mothers of Men addressed some of the most contentious questions surrounding the issue of women’s suffrage. Can women provide effective political leadership without their emotions getting in the way? Will women bring a stronger moral compass to public office? Can female leadership curtail political corruption? How will the press treat women in elected office?

Like many films of the early 20th century, Mothers of Men/Every Woman’s Man was long thought to be lost. But in the late 1990s, James Mockoski, an archivist, discovered a copy of the film at the British Film Institute, according to an article about the effort in the The Mercury News. About two decades later, Mockoski raised enough money to digitally restore the film.

It was first shown at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2016. While there is no online copy available, you can access the film at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. It is listed in their archives under the title Every Woman’s Problem, but is cross-listed under Mothers of Men. To set up a viewing, you need to make an appointment with the Library of Congress far in advance. The film is not listed in the library’s online catalog, but you can direct a reference librarian to look for it by using the title. Directions for setting up a viewing appointment can be found here.

Watch a slideshow put together by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival about the film here: