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Welcome to America between 1905 and 1945. On this website and blog you will meet two path-breaking women– a psychic grandmother who became a national sensation in 1909 and her irrepressible granddaughter, Hollywood screenwriter Jane Hall.  Rosa Sutton and Jane Hall both faced devastating tragedy with grit and humor.  Rosa’s unprecedented fight with the Navy after the death of her oldest son, a “fascinating tale,” is the murder mystery and ghost story at the center of A Soul on Trial. Her feisty spirit inspired Jane — at ten she had already decided she would be a writer like her father Dick Wick Hall.   Historian Robin Cutler draws on a large archive of family papers that has never been made public to follow her mother’s transformational journey from the tiny hamlet of Salome, Arizona  to  Virginia, Manhattan, and ultimately to  Hollywood’s “dream factory” during its Golden Age.

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Featured Post

From Tomboy to Glamour Girl

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Cosmopolitan Oct 1939
Jane Hall and Kate as pictured in “Beauties” by Bradshaw Crandell. Cosmopolitan Magazine, October 1939 (Copr. Hearst Publications)

WATCH FOR “NANCY GOES TO RIO” ON TCM . The film is a remake of ”It’s A Date” which Jane worked on in 1939. She kept her story and screen credit.

Here’s a bit of background for the posts and images in the  Salome to Hollywood Blog and Gallery. (Posts began on 11/16/2011.)  So who was Jane Hall and why is her journey of interest today?

“I was a candle on the President’s birthday cake!” On January 30, 1934 Jane Hall was exuberant as she whirled around the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria at a pageant in honor of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fifty-second birthday. For nineteen-year-old Jane, this Depression ...

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Recent Posts

Poplar Springs– “That Great Pile of Rocks”

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Poplar Springs Driveway and Surrounding Area Circa 1932 (The triangular lot on the corner was not part of the property.The road at the bottom left is the road from Calverton.)

On this exciting September afternoon the Calverton train was likely met by Rose and Randolph Hickses’ farm manager in their Ford Model T or their Locomobile. He may have picked up a few provisions at the Calverton Market and filled his tank at W.H. Spicer’s gas station. It was a crowded car as they all five headed about two miles north down a road that paralleled the WBL tracks. They turned left onto a section of “Rogues Road” (Route 602) and made another quick left where two square fieldstone piers marked the beginning of the three-quarter-mile driveway to the main ...

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  1. “An Aristocratic Arcadia of Gentility and Manners”– and History
  2. Does the Ghost of Jimmie Sutton Still Haunt Annapolis?
  3. “The Street of Streets”
  4. Notes from the Road. No. 1, “The Power of Place.”
  5. “We’ll Have Manhattan”
  6. Passages
  7. “Old ladies and old gentlemen are my weakness . . .”
  8. “I’m caught in the mesh of the desert’s grip. . .”
  9. “With you, my heart and soul have flown . . .”
  10. “Take It on the Chin”
  11. “Writer’s Career Shines Bright”
  12. “Do Your Best” – Calamity as Inspiration
  13. “The Safest Beach in America”
  14. Dick Wick Hall’s Family and His Legacy
  15. Christmas in Salome, Arizona 1925
  16. “A Genius Passed Away”
  17. How Did Salome Become Famous?
  18. It All Started in Salome in 1925
  19. Author Q & A: Why Does Rosa Sutton’s Crusade to Save Her Son’s Soul Still Matter?