very strict guidelines to be worthy of her attention, let alone her approval.
Entering first grade at the age of four, Fred set himself on a steady course to win approval at school and avoid punishment at home. His mother’s idea of high praise was to tell him that he was “fairly obedient and never obtrusive,” yet he flourished academically and excelled in everything athletic. Acclaimed as the star fullback of the Occidental Academy High School football team, he was accepted at Occidental College as a sixteen-year-old freshman and played all four years for the varsity team. He won event after event, local championship after local championship, and the Los Angeles Herald declared “Thomson was practically the Occidental team,” but good grades and athletic awards weren’t enough for Clara Thomson.6
Musical instruction at home was a daily occurrence and Fred was also active in the YMCA, played in the college band, joined the literary society, worked on the staff of the college yearbook, and served as student body president his senior year. After graduating from Occidental and a brief stint as the director of the Long Beach YMCA, Fred decided to follow his father and older brother Williell in becoming a Presbyterian minister.
It was the summer before he entered Princeton Theological Seminary that Fred was first heralded as “the All Around Champion Athlete of the World,” winning the AAU National Championship by accumulating the most points in a series of events—the 100-yard dash, the shot put, high jump, 880-yard walk, hammer throw, 120-yard hurdles, pole vault, throwing a fifty-pound weight, the one-mile run, and the broad jump.7
He played football for Princeton and represented the college when he defended his title as National All Around Athlete at the AAU meet of 1911, again held in Chicago. He scored a total of 6,709 points, exactly 500 more than his nearest competitor, yet after completing his second year of seminary, “the red blooded divinity scholar” announced on his return home to Los Angeles in the spring of 1912 that he would not enter the Olympics.8
Although he was “almost certain to make the team,” Fred was morally opposed to competitions held on Sundays and the Olympic schedule in Stockholm would have challenged those convictions. Still, he claimed the primary reason for his decision was that “I have spent two of my summers at athletics and will not give up all my time to sports again this year. While I would very much like to make the trip, I cannot see my way clear to do it. I will spend the summer practicing my profession, preaching.”9
Fred served as pastor at Peck Memorial Chapel in Washington, D.C., in July and August of 1912. He stayed in training during his final year of seminary and competed in various AAU National meets, beating not only his own record but those set by Jim Thorpe in the Olympics only months before, and then won the National Championships one more time when they were held at the University of Southern California in July of 1913. As the three-time champion, he formally ended his athletic career, turning all his energies to his ministry.
His father had died that spring and Williell junior, who had served as a missionary in Chile for a year, now left the ministry to teach Spanish at Occidental College. Fred replaced him as the pastor at Hope Chapel in Los Angeles, more dedicated to his calling than ever and writing a fourteen-week series of articles in the Los Angeles Evening Herald advocating training, dedication, and, as always, “clean living.”10
Fred also resumed his relationship with his college sweetheart, Gail DuBois Jepson, a pretty, soft-spoken young woman who had become a teacher after graduating from Occidental. His father had expressed concern that with a history of tuberculosis, Gail was not physically strong enough to keep up with Fred, but the couple were formally engaged on August 1, 1913, and within the next two months, he was ordained by the Presbytery of Los Angeles and they became the Reverend and Mrs. Frederick Clifton Thomson.11
Gail fell into the role of preacher’s wife, playing the piano and teaching Sunday school. They were assigned to the Presbyterian Church of Goldfield, Nevada, a remote mining town on the edge of Death Valley halfway between Carson City and Las Vegas. Fred preached in the local Presbyterian and Methodist churches and his work throughout the state as Nevada’s commissioner of the Boy Scouts of America, an organization created only a few years earlier, demanded much of his time and gave him the most satisfaction.
In June of 1916 they were called home to Pasadena because Williell junior was ill and dying. He had been diagnosed the year before with leukemia, but the death of his adored older brother at twenty-seven was a shock to Fred. Gail stayed on with her family to recover from a flare-up of her tuberculosis and soon after Fred was notified it had developed into meningitis. He just missed the train that stopped at Goldfield only once a week and frantically borrowed a motorcycle to ride to Pasadena, but lost his way in the desert for a day before finally arriving almost twenty-four hours after Gail had died at home in her sleep.12
Fred returned to Goldfield, but within months the United States entered the war and he quickly decided to enlist. He visited his mother for a few days before heading for the Los Angeles recruiting office. He had been gone from the area for over a year, but he was still a popular personality and his picture headed a two-column article in the Los Angeles Tribune announcing “Fred Thomson to Act as U.S. Army Chaplain” and his enlistment was used to recruit other young, athletic men.13
Fred was commissioned as a second lieutenant and assigned to Battery F of the 143rd Field Artillery, stationed first in Arcadia and then Camp Kearney. He served as chaplain to 1,200 men and ran the Regimental Exchange, organized sporting events, conducted religious services, served as general counsel for the enlisted men, and helped in determining “whether or not the soldier is receiving just and fair treatment from the officer.” It was as the regiment’s star fullback that he broke the leg that put him in the hospital when Frances came to visit and decided to change her plans. She had agreed to write the scenario for Johanna Enlists, but after meeting Fred “I became so conscientious about my work that I decided to stay and supervise the entire production.”14
Rupert Hughes’s original story begins, “Johanna Renssler is a homely spiteful stupid lazy young girl of nineteen who lives with her pa and ma on an isolated farm. They are ashamed of her and never allow her to meet any men.” Obviously, changes had to be made for a starring vehicle for Mary Pickford, and Frances’s version introduces “Johanna, pretty little daughter of a backwoods farmer who sighs for romance for all she knows is drudgery.”15
Just as in A Girl’s Folly, the heroine “prays for a beau to be sent to her,” but this time an entire regiment arrives to encamp at the family farm. Frances has a mischievous Mary smiling serenely as she sits on the fence “reviewing the troops,” certain they are marching only so she can make her choice. After the obligatory complications and comic misadventures, Mary rides off into the sunset with her captain, played by Douglas MacLean, and the regiment in the background is the 143rd.
When his leg healed, Fred managed a brief leave and visited Frances at the studio in Los Angeles. They had known each other less than a month, but were already making plans to marry as soon as the war was over. Fred claimed not to care about her past, but insisted on following his own moral code; he would not sleep with her until after they were married.16
With Fred as added inspiration, Frances was more determined than ever to be assigned overseas. A government commission offered her the greatest opportunity to travel unimpeded, so with Mary’s and Al Cohn’s help, she headed to Washington and an appointment with George Creel, head of the Committee on Public Information [CPI], the same week Fred began his trip to France.
Neutrality had been the official American position for so long, the CPI’s challenge was to shift popular sentiment to support a state of war. Wilson’s reelection the previous November had been due in large part to keeping the country out of international conflicts and as late as January of 1917, he was advocating the possibility of a negotiated end
