One of my aims for the book All Wound Up: The Making of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz was to flesh out the lives of the people connected with the original 1913-14 production. So I wrote capsule biographies for many of them, drawing my info from primary sources whenever I could. This proved relatively easy for the principal actors. Less easy to find information about were the members of the chorus. Backstage workers turned out to be even harder.
One figure I wished I'd learned more about was the wardrobe mistress of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, Mrs. L. H. Coulter. My initial attempts at researching her produced virtually nothing. I couldn't even determine her full name. But since then, I've uncovered much of the tapestry of her life, while kicking myself for not finding it before publication. I knew while writing the book that this sort of thing would happen--new information would come to light after the book was out there for everyone to read. Fortunately, this weblog exists. I can present new findings here. So, this post presents the capsule biography of Mrs. Coulter that I wish the book contained.
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| Mrs. Lucia Hays "Mother" Coulter |
Lucia "Lucy" Hays (1862-1936) was born the youngest child of a farming family in Stanford, Kentucky. In 1879, at sixteen years of age, she married dry goods clerk William D. Coulter in Delta County, Texas. The couple moved to Fannin County, Texas, where they had one son and three daughters. They divorced about 1890 and William died in 1903. As a single mother with four children, Coulter ran a boarding house in Denton, Texas. Aspiring to the stage, she sang in churches and at concerts in Dallas. Coulter joined Lottie Kendall’s Olympia Opera company and for eight years sang professionally, touring the country between Los Angeles and New Orleans, her children in tow. As Coulter waited backstage to go on in such roles as Katisha in
The Mikado, the princess in
The Chimes of Normandy, and Little Buttercup in
H. M. S. Pinafore, she sewed children’s clothes. The company manager recognized her sewing talent and delegated her to making theatrical costumes. After leaving the Olympia company, she sewed costumes for Kolb and Dill’s San Francisco Opera company, traveling up and down the west coast of the USA for several years. She adopted the affectionate nickname “Mother” and was known professionally as “Mother” for the rest of her life. As her children married, Coulter settled in Los Angeles. Her job as wardrobe mistress for
The Tik-Tok Man of Oz brought Coulter to the attention of Universal Studios. She joined the motion picture industry, where in 1918 as part of Universal’s wardrobe department, she helped to costume
The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin directed by Rupert Julian. She moved to Thomas Ince’s Triangle Studios and remained there for the next seventeen years. The studio developed into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where, beloved by movie stars and studio executives, she rose to head the women’s character wardrobe department. Coulter made resplendent gowns for the most popular movie actresses of the day, such as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, and Norma Shearer. She made Lon Chaney’s gloves and scarves when he played an old woman in
The Unholy Three. She outfitted Jackie Cooper for
Treasure Island. She costumed movie versions of
The Merry Widow twice, first with Mae Murray, later with Jeanette MacDonald. For the 1925 movie version of
Ben Hur, she clothed 50,000 miniature figures. Other movies she costumed include
The Big Parade, Operator 13, David Copperfield, and
The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Reports credited her with more than 135,000 character costumes during her career. A heart attack struck her in late 1935. After seven months she returned to work at MGM, but minor heart attacks continued to trouble her. On October 20, 1936, news of movie producer Irving Thalberg’s death brought on another heart attack. Coulter never recovered and died several days later at her home of fifteen years in Venice, California.
Notes
“‘Tik-Tok’s’ Mother,” Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), 27 July 1913; “Kaiser Exposed,” Windsor (MO) Review, 20 June 1918, 4; “There’s Romance in Job of Wardrobe Mistress, Too,” Daily News (New York, NY), 24 February 1929, 65; Dan Thomas, “Hollywood Day By Day,” Los Angeles (CA) Evening Post-Record, 22 September 1934, 8; Marion Nevin, “‘Mother’ Coulter Ill, Stars Ask After Her,” Evening Vanguard (Venice, CA), 3 December 1935, 1; Marion Nevin, “Popular Wardrobe Head Welcomed Back on Job,” Evening Vanguard (Venice, CA), 17 February 1936, 1; “Death Threatens Studio Veteran,” Los Angeles (CA) Times, 20 October 1936, II 2; Eleanor Barnes, “‘Mother,’” Illustrated Daily News (Los Angeles, CA), 21 October 1936, 18, 20; “Mrs. Coulter Dies Today of Heart Attack,” Evening Vanguard (Venice, CA), 24 October 1936, 1; “Mother Coulter of M.-G.-M. Dies After Heart Attack,” Los Angeles (CA) Times, 25 October 1936, II 2.
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