The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms, or Lost in the WIlds of Florida (The Moving Picture Girls No. 4)

The Stratemeyer Syndicate published a number of series under the pen name of author "Laura Lee Hope," and the Moving Picture Girls is just one of them.  The series ran from 1914 to 1916, for a total of seven books.  Original published by Grosset & Dunlap, like so many other series back in the day, it was later reprinted by other publishers, including World Syndicate (which is the editions I have).  Although I have all seven books (in dust jacket, which I consider myself to be fortunate!), I decided to pick up this fourth book in the series, since it is set in Florida.  It has been fun to read all of these children's series books set in Florida and see just how many real references are used and how many fictional settings are created.  Unlike the Outdoor Girls' adventure in Florida, which was littered with one fictional place after another, this series actually utilized a number of actual locations.

The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms, or Lost in the Wilds of Florida tells the story of Ruth and Alice DeVere's adventures in the Sunshine State with the film company for whom they are employed, along with their father.  In the first chapter, the girls (and the rest of the acting troupe) learn from the company's manager, Frank Pertrell, that they will all be heading to Florida aboard a "steamer" to film their next dramas (p. 4).  Most everyone is excited about the prospect, and Ruth and Alice are even confident that the warm weather of Florida will help improve their father's health (which seems a bit familiar to part of the plot from The Outdoor Girls in Florida).  But right off the bat, things start to go wrong - first, one of the actors falls overboard from the ship, and then a fire in the lower decks forces all of the passengers to be ferried to another steamboat for the remainder of the journey to St. Augustine.

From the moment the troupe arrives in Florida, I perked up and started paying attention to everywhere the girls and their fellow actors went.  The mere mention of arriving in St. Augustine by way of Jacksonville - and their intended travel later down to Lake Kissimmee - well, I was anxious to see what real locales from these places would be mentioned.  Right off the bat, the girls hear about Fort Marion (Historic Fort Marion) and Fort Mantanzas (Historic Fort Mantanzas), two historic sites where the crew would be filming scenes for their movies (p. 66).  And when the girls go exploring, they decide to travel down St. George Street to see the Old City Gates (p. 67), which turns out to be exactly where the gates are located (St. Augustine Old City Gates).  The girls also pay a visit to an orange grove, said to be just a short distance from the city gates (p. 70).  While the Garnetts' orange grove was quite famous back in the day, it has since been sold off and is no longer there (St. Augustine Orange Groves).  And, of course, one cannot mention St. Augustine without mentioning the Fountain of Youth, to which the girls pay a visit (p. 73).  Of course, the book describes the fountain being located on Myrtle Avenue, when in reality it is located on Magnolia Avenue (Historic Fountain of Youth).  But let's not quibble about names...

There are a number of other factual descriptions on the story, from the old guard room and dungeon of Fort Marion to the alligator farm on Anastasia, and from Lake Kissimmee along the Kissimmee River to Lake Okeechobee.  The only hiccup I found in the locales was the mention of Sycamore, which is said to be a small town near Lake Kissimmee (p. 102).  In reality, Sycamore is a town located up in the panhandle of Florida, and well over 300 miles away from Lake Kissimmee!  However, this is a minor detail, as we certainly can't expect the author to keep all points in the story exactly as they are in the real world!  And this slight discrepancy certainly does not take away from the enjoyment of the story.  I mean, after all, these girls and their friends and fellow actors are making silent films at the turn of the century right here in Florida!  And I will admit, it took me a minute to put the film making into context with the time period, because I kept wondering why the manager was yelling out directions while the cameras were rolling, until I remember that in 1914, films did not yet have sound!  Thus, it would have been natural for directors to be calling out things to the actors from behind the cameras to keep the action and story moving.

The story itself involved only a slight mystery - it seems that two young women that Ruth and Alice had previously met on a train (perhaps in a previous book?  this story is not quite clear on that point) have gone missing, and it just so happens that they went missing from Lake Kissimmee!  As the story goes, the two women went out to gather rare wild flowers and were never heard from again (p. 103).  The locals and even their own family believe they were lost in the everglades, and all hope was given up of finding the two.  Now, it is funny that they are said to be lost in the everglades, as a similar plot actually plays out many years later in the 161st Nancy Drew mystery, aptly titled Lost in the Everglades.  In that story, a young woman goes off alone backwater camping and disappears.  Was that story lifted from this one?  Who's to say...  But the fact the two girls in this story were hoping to find a rare orchid actually has a ring of truth to it, since the Vandeae orchid, which also has a part of its tribe the holy grail of all orchid-hunters, the "ghost orchid," is said to be local to Florida (The Ghost Orchid).  Thus, yet another touch of reality thrown into a fictional tale.

The overall story does have some resemblances to The Outdoor Girls in Florida (published just one year prior to this one, also under the pen name of Laura Lee Hope!).  As indicated above, both stories feature a character who comes to Florida in the hopes of improving their health; both stories feature boat trips through the everglades, with fearful encounters with alligators; both stories feature a man/boy in tattered/ragged clothes who comes to the rescue of the girls with a gun; both stories find the girls getting lost on the river after getting all turned around following a picnic amid the everglades; and in both stories, the girls do not really play much of a part in solving the mystery - they merely stumble upon the missing individuals.  In fact, there is even a humorous reference to the fact that the two missing girls are described as real "outdoor girls" (p. 106).  Perhaps that was a slight nod by the author to the actual Outdoor Girls, who themselves got lost while boating in the everglades.

I would be remiss if I did not also bring attention to the similarities to the frontis piece illustration of both The Outdoor Girls in Florida and this book.  In The Outdoor Girls, the scene depicted shows a manatee taking off with the girls' boat, having been caught in the anchor rope.  A man in a canoe stand ready to take a shot at the manatee in order to free the girls' boat.  In this book, we see Ruth and Alice in a boat with Paul Ardite, a fellow actor and love interest of Alice, and the boat is being pulled by a manatee who is caught in the anchor line, while in the background, Russ Dalwood, the film operator, is just filming away.  It is funny that both scenes feature a manatee tangled in the boat's ropes and unwittingly pulling the boat away from where it should be.  The only difference is, in The Moving Picture Girls' story, Russ tells them to let the manatee pull them as he continues to film it, believing it will make for good drama.  And in The Moving Picture Girls, instead of using a gun to shoot at the manatee, Paul uses his oar to simply nudge the manatee to go under and ultimately loosen itself from the anchor line, thus freeing it without any injury.  I find it too much of a coincidence that the same scene would basically play itself out in both books (and in both stories, the girls are fearful at first that it is an alligator that has snagged hold of their boat!), and even much more than a coincidence that both books, just a year apart, would have basically the same scene as their frontis piece!

Two final observations I wish to make on this book.  First, I find the presence of the omniscent narrator making his/her voice known throughout the book rather interesting.  Perhaps this was more common back in the early 1900s, but to have the narrator break the fourth wall and speak directly to the reader, thus breaking out of the story itself, is rather odd.  This occurs in a big way in Chapter Two, in which the narrator point blank addresses the reader:  "...may I take just a few moments to acquaint my new readers with something of the former books of this series?" (p. 12).  And with that question, the narrator proceeds to give brief synopses of the first three books in the series, providing not only titles, but also plot details and outcomes of those stories.  The narrator then goes on to provide brief descriptions of each character who plays a part in the story, from Ruth and Alice, along with their father, to all of the members of the film troupe!  This becomes a four-page break in the story that basically has the narrator speaking directly to the reader.  There are other moments in the book where the narrator breaks in to give reasons for jumps in time or to simply skip portions of the troupe's activities that the narrator does not believe to be important to the reader nor the story.  It gives the overall a book a sense of being told to the reader, rather than an adventure the reader is actually taking part with, and the closest thing I can compare it to would the television show, Young Sheldon, where the older version of the character narrates each episode, sometimes interjecting his own personal thoughts into the events of the episode.

The second observation I wanted to make is the reference in this book, as well as The Outdoor Girls in Florida, to orange blossoms.  In both stories, the girls make comments about orange blossoms in connection with their trip to Florida, and in both instances, the references seem to have a relation to thoughts of marriage (p. 69).  I did not realize this, but after a bit of research, I discovered that orange blossoms, "[l]ike the white gown, have been associated with weddings for centuries because the flower symbolizes virtue, love, and fertility" (Orange Blossom Brides).  I guess, as the saying goes, you learn something new every day!

I definitely enjoyed this story much more than The Outdoor Girls, and despite the similarities, the actual writing of the books appears different, leaving me to believe this book was not written by Howard Garis, who wrote The Outdoor Girls' adventure in Florida.  I was not able to find any identification as to the ghostwriter for this book, but perhaps someone out there has some information and can share it one day!

RATING:  8 dangerous bogs of quicksand out of 10 for a fun romp through St. Augustine and the Everglades, with a bit of historical film antics thrown in for good measure!

The Outdoor Girls in Florida (Book Five of The Outdoor GIrls Series)

My journey through series books set in Florida continues, this time with another series that I have yet to read before - The Outdoor Girls!  Another Stratemeyer Syndicate series which used the pseudonym Laura Lee Hope as the author (the same pen name was used for The Bobbsey Twins, the Bunny Brown series, the Moving Picture Girls series, the Blythe Girls series, the Six Little Bunkers series, and the Make-Believe Stories series), The Outdoor Girls is a 23-volume series.  According to Jennifer White's website (The Outdoor Girls), the first six books (which would include this one) were written by Howard Garis, while the remaining seventeen books in the series were written by Elizabeth M. Duffield Ward, both of whom were prolific authors of children's series back in the day.  I was not really sure what to expect with this book, having never read any of this series, but I definitely was expecting more than what I ended up getting.

The Outdoor Girls in Florida is the fifth book in the series, and it features the four main girls - Betty Nelson (sometimes referred to by her friends and the narrator as "The Little Captain"), Mollie Bilette, Grace Ford, and Amy Stonington (a/k/a Blackford - as she apparently discovered in an earlier book that she was adopted when her real brother finds her).  The mystery begins with Grace and her family receiving the news that Grace's older brother, Will, has gone missing from their Uncle Isaac's home in Georgia.  The story plays with the emotions of the Ford family, as well as the readers, as the roller coaster has everyone worried for the missing boy; then they receive a delayed letter from Will that indicates he went to Florida to strike out on his own; then they receive notification that is a cry for help, as the men he signed on to work for turned out to be contractor with a bad reputation and he has been kidnapped!  And while all of these exchanges are taking place, the girls are planning a trip to Florida with Amy's family, who are considering buying an orange grove in the Sunshine State.

Thus, readers anticipate the mystery will find the girls searching the Everglades of Florida in the hopes of finding Grace's missing brother.  Well, as it turns out, the girls do very little in terms of searching for Will; rather, it seems they get caught up in a number of escapades that eventually lead them to make contact with a young scamp who happens to be trying to help someone he refers to as "the other one" - who, of course, turns out to be Will Ford.  But the girls take no active role in actually seeking out Grace's brother, which surprised me.  I was expecting them to find clues, follow up on them, and eventually locate the evil contractor and save the day; instead, they are merely a conduit by which the young boy (referred to cruelly by the contractor and his men as "the Loon" because he has some mental disabilities!) is able to obtain help from Amy's father (or rather, her "uncle") to rescue not only Will, but also another young man who goes missing when he takes the girls on a trip along the river.  The only "danger" that the girls faced in the book is when they see an alligator in the river (it does not attack them, though); when their boat is nearly stolen by a manatee; when they find themselves stuck between two sleeping alligators and a stream filled with snakes (none of which make any attempt to approach the girls); and when they get lost trying to make their way home from the island where Tom disappears.  Otherwise, the girls have no real difficulties during the course of the story.

Other than passing references to Palm Beach (p. 26), Indian River (p. 26), and Jacksonville (p. 36), all of the locales the girls visit in Florida are fictional (they never actually visit the real cities/counties named).  The orange grove where they stay is located near the town of "Bentonville" (p. 45) on the "Mayfair River" that empties into "Lake Chad" (p. 45).  A contractor tells the girls he lives upriver about ten miles in a place called "Penbrook" (p. 97).  None of these fictional places are given a clear pinpoint in the state, other than the reference to the fact that the Everglades can be reached by taking the river further on.  This was disappointing, after reading several mysteries recently which were set in actual cities and referred to real sites within the stories.  Alas, perhaps Garis told when he was writing the story to stay away from using real locations in order to give the story more creative freedom with the descriptions and the events that take place.  The only indication of where the story might take place is the fact that the girls do get tangled up with a manatee (depicted on the cover and the frontis piece, taken from page 126 of the story) - and since this takes place during the girls' winter holiday, it gives readers a time frame within which to gauge.  According to the Florida Wildlife Conservation Commission, the manatee head for warmer waters, usually found near springs throughout Florida - such as Blue Springs State Park in Orange City, the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge in Crystal River, and even Lee County Manatee Park in Fort Myers (Manatee in Florida). So, it can be guessed perhaps the girls are somewhere in Central Florida.

And since we are on the topic of the cover and internal - the illustration is the same.  My copy of the book has the duo-tone cover rather than the full color art.  The scene shows the young man in ragged clothes rescuing the girls' boat from a manatee that got tangled up in the anchor rope and was slowly pulling the boat away.  In the book, he takes a shot at the manatee with his gun (p. 127), something that would probably shock a lot of readers today, since manatee are considered to be an endangered species.  What I found surprising about the internal illustration is that the fronti piece is on glossy paper; however, the two internal illustrations are just plain paper illustrations (p. 76 and p. 153).  I don't believe I've ever come across a book that has mixed internals like that - usually they are all glossy or all plain.

A couple of final things to note: there is a moment early in the book,when it is discovered that Will Ford is missing, and the girls feel discouraged.  Mollie makes the comment, "Yes, girls always seem so - so helplessly at a time like this ... Oh, I wish I were a - man!" (p. 60).  This kind of statement is definitely a product of its time (this book was published in 1913), when girls were not thought to be of the same caliber or strength as men, and in fact, were thought to be more delicate and of lesser capabilities.  So, for Mollie to wish she were a man so she would go out and help search for Grace's brother would have been natural back then.  In today's world, of course, the Outdoor Girls would traipse off on their own without a second thought to search for the missing boy!  Another element of the story that dates the book is the "comfortable-looking" colored "mammy" who is named "Aunt Hannah" (p. 72).  Such a racial stereotype is highly offensive by today's standards; but back in 1913, readers would have read this line without even a second thought.  

Last, but not least, I must mention a comment made by Amy's brother, who makes a brief visit to Florida to see the girls.  He reports everything is fine back home in Deepdale, but also reports that "those old friends of yours, Alice Jallow and Kittie Rossmore, have started a sort of automobile club. I guess they're trying to rival you" (p. 115).  I find this line amusing, since there was a six-book published by Altemus from 1910-1913 (ending the same year this book was published) called "The Automobile Girls," written by Laura Dent Crane (likely a pseudonym, although I have no clue who the real author was).  In that particular series, there were four girls (just like the Outdoor Girls), and two of those girls happened to be named Mollie and Grace (just like the Outdoor Girls).  One has to wonder if the line was thrown into the book as a little jab at the then-cancelled series by Crane.

RATING:  6 orange blossoms and brides out of 10 for a somewhat fun adventure in Florida, albeit a very fictional one.