June Mathis
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June Mathis
June Mathis, studio executive Born June Beulah Hughes
June 30, 1889(1889-06-30)
Leadville, Colorado, U.S. Died July 27, 1927 (aged 38)
New York City, New York, U.S. Years active 1916â??1927 Spouse(s) Sylvano Balboni (1924â??1927) June Mathis (June 30, 1889 â?? July 26, 1927) was one of the most influential American screenwriters and among the highest paid Hollywood executives in the 1920s.[1] A short woman with untamed brown hair and a love of Parisian fashion, she was also one of the first "writer-directors"[2] and laid the groundwork for the later development of screenwriters becoming producers.[3] The American Film Institute catalog credits her with 113 films in a 12-year career; among them Camille, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Blood and Sand. A spiritualist with mystical bents, her scripts featured many heroes with a Christ-like demeanor. A believer in reincarnation, she always wore an opal ring when she wrote, convinced it brought her ideas. Mathis was the first female executive for Metro/MGM, and at only 35 she was the highest paid executive in Hollywood. In 1926 she was voted the third most influential woman in Hollywood, behind Mary Pickford and Norma Talmadge.[4]
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[edit] Biography
Born June Beulah Hughes in Leadville, Colorado, the only child of Virginia Ruth and Dr. Philip Hughes. Her parents divorced when she was seven and her mother remarried, this time to William D. Mathis, a widower with three children whose name she would eventually adopt as a stage name. She had been a sickly child and believed she healed herself through her sheer force of will. She believed everything was mental and everyone had certain vibrations stating, "If you are vibrating on the right plane, you will inevitably come in contact with the others who can help you. It's like tuning in on your radio. If you get the right wave-length, you have your station."[2]
Mathis as a young girl
Mathis was educated in Salt Lake City and San Francisco. It was while in San Francisco she got her first stage experience, dancing and doing imitations in vaudeville. At the age of 12 she joined a traveling company and at 17 became an ingenue, performing with Ezra Kendall in The Vinegar Buyer.[2] Later she appeared in several Broadway shows and toured for four seasons with the female impersonator Julian Eltinge in the widely popular show The Fascinating Widow. Supporting her now twice widowed mother, she would continue to perform in theatre for the next 13 years.[5]