Thursday, April 20, 1922

Cool day with intermittent brightness and snow squalls. Arose 8:30 A.M. Breakfast. Loaded up. Father & I to country place 11 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. Cleaned up yard etc. Home. Supper. To exhibition in evening with Russell. Sody at Quinns. To bed 12 P.M.

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I wonder what exhibition he went to? I can't find any notice of it in the newspaper, so . . .

Quinn's is the drugstore in town. I wonder if he and Russell flirted with any girls there at the "sody" shop?

Time to start working on the country place! Soon the crops will be planted.

Wednesday, April 19, 1922

Bright, clear day but cool. Arose 7:45 A.M. Breakfast. Read paper etc. Sorted & sprouted potatoes, cut wood etc. Dinner. Dug up and seeded lawns. Supper. Typewrote letter to H.H. To Post Office. To bed 10:45 P.M.

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Interesting that lawns had to be dug up and reseeded every year. Or maybe this was the first time in a while. It is the first time I've read about such an activity in Stanford's diaries, at any rate.

Well, he was the one who did the lawn care, that's for sure. I wonder what sort of mower they had? Here is a 1922 ad for mowers made in Lansing, Michigan:
Interesting that the Ideal Power Lawn Mower Co is owned by Mr. Olds--of the Oldsmobile, perhaps?

Tuesday, April 18, 1922

Rain in A. M. Cleared and colder. Arose 7:30 A.M. Breakfast. Sorted eggs. Wrote in diary etc. Finished 46 cases eggs for storage. Supper. Wrote letter to H.H. Out with Russell in evening to Albany Theatre. Talked etc. To bed 11;15 P.M.

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Well, Russell's arrival has sparked a movie marathon for Stanford and him, it seems! This is the third movie night for the pair. The film they saw on this night is a Cecil B. DeMille offering: Saturday Night. The bill of fare also included a one-act play, a comedy act, Mutt and Jeff cartoons and a newsreel. Here is the ad for the Albany Theater that appeared in the Tuesday Schenectady Gazette:
The film is one of the many DeMille comedies of the era. Read about it at IMDB. Or better yet, watch it on YouTube:

Monday, April 17, 1922

Cool, overcast with rain in afternoon and evening. Arose 7 A.M. Breakfast. Out on business in forenoon. Dinner. Out with R.E.N. to deliver plants to sick and shut ins of church. Home. Packed eggs. Supper. To Proctors with Russell.

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This is the first time Stanford has mentioned charitable visits to members of the congregation. He and Russell spent the day together, it seems, although Stanford doesn't say whether Russell Norris packed eggs with him.

The entertainment at Proctor's was substantial, as usual. Here is the ad for the theater in the April 17th newspaper, as well as a more detailed description of the offerings:
I think it's kind of interesting that King Solomon Jr., is set in a future time when congress is made up entirely of women (in 1950, no less!). Boy, were they wrong about that! But wouldn't it make more sense for the women legislators to pass a law allowing polyandry instead of polygamy? Hmmm . . .

The film, Her Husband's Trade Mark, stars a young Gloria Swanson, 23 years before she played Norma Desmond, the has-been actress of the 1950 film, Sunset Boulevard. Below is a poster from the film and a viewer's review. Both are taken from IMDB.

User Reviews
19 March 2007 | by marcslope (New York, NY) – See all my reviews
She's a society wife in a New York gilded cage bigger than the Time Warner Center, and her shady Wall Street husband keeps pressing her to charm his business prospects, for as some flowery title card informs us, the toughest negotiator can fall to the flame of a comely miss, or something like that. A college buddy of his still in love with Gloria enters into a Mexican oil leasing deal with him, sending the romantic triangle down to Mexico, where some Mexican bandits in unconvincing pancake makeup menace everybody and Gloria realizes what a chump she's been. (This is the kind of movie where who she'll end up with is never in doubt -- the better-looking of the two, of course.) The film was so ridiculous in its portrait of Mexican bandits that Mexico briefly banned all Paramount pictures. There's little subtlety and Gloria isn't much more than a clothes horse, but she has some vivacity, and it's fun to see her at 25 or so playing older and more sophisticated than she was. There's not a trace of Norma Desmond here, and silly as it is, it's a handsome production.

Sunday, April 16, 1922

Beautiful, bright, warm, clear, perfect, Easter day. Arose 9 A.M. Breakfast etc. To Church & S.S. Dinner. Out walking with Russell in P.M. To E.L. Good meeting. M.M.B. led. Walked about town with Ruth Pettit. Home. Lunch. Talked etc. To bed 11:30 P.M.

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There seemed to have been a lot of talking in Stanford's family. That's good!

Saturday, April 15, 1922

Cool, overcast day. Rain in A.M. Cleared in P.M. Arose 7:15 A.M. Breakfast. Out on business. Dinner. Errands etc. Shower at Y. Supper. Grace Cornell here for weekend. Supper. Out in evening with Russell to Proctors etc. To bed 11:30 P.M.

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Grace Cornell is one of Stanford's cousins, in the Cornell family that is related on his father's mother's side, although I'm not exactly sure how.

Stanford doesn't tell us the bill of fare at Proctor's that night, but we have the newspaper article showing all the many acts that night, including musical numbers, comedy acts, and the film, Boy Crazy:
Below is a synopsis of the film, which came out in 1922. It was taken from the American Film Institute Catalog of Feature Films.
Doris May was a popular young silent film actress at the time. She was two years younger than Stanford. Here is her picture:
Taken from SilentHollywood.com
Also included in the night's entertainment was a concert by the (then) famed accordionist, Pietro Frosini. Here is a YouTube recording of a concert he performed in 1941, nearly 20 years later.

Friday, April 14, 1922

Beautiful, bright, warm day. Arose 7 A.M. Breakfast. Out on Business in A.M. Dinner. Russell & Merlin home. Packed eggs for storage. Supper. Out in evening with Russell. Called on Benedicts. Up to Norris's to hear radio concert. Home. To bed 1 A.M.

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I guess Stanford doesn't have a radio with which to listen to a concert. Interesting . . . Russell and Merlin must be home on spring break from college. I wonder why Stanford only went out with Russell and not both of them? Ah well, we can only speculate.

Radio broadcasting was in its infancy in 1922. A station in the Schenectady area, WGY, is one of the oldest radio stations in the U.S. Here is some information about it, taken from Wikipedia.
WGY signed on on February 20, 1922 at 7:47pm at 360 meters wavelength (about 833 kHz),[3] with Kolin Hager at the mike, or as he was known on the air, as KH. Hager signed on with the station's call letters, explaining the W is for wireless, G for General Electric, and Y, the last letter in Schenectady.[4] The first broadcast lasted for about one hour and consisted of live music and announcements of song titles and other information.[5] The early broadcasts originated from building 36 at the General Electric Plant in Schenectady. The original transmitter produced an antenna power of 1,500 watts into a T top wire antenna, located about 1/2 mile away, also at the GE plant.[6] WGY led the way in radio drama. In 1922 Edward H. Smith, director of a community-theater group called the Masque in nearby Troy, suggested weekly forty-minute adaptations of plays to WGY station manager Kolin Hager. Hager took him up on it and the troupe performed on the weekly WGY Players, radio’s first dramatic series.[7] WGY pioneered the art of Remote Broadcasting, carrying out the first one just days after it signed on. On February 23, 1922 the station broadcast a concert from Union College.
By April 1922, they weren't the only stations broadcasting in Schenectady, but they were popular, it seems. Here is a report in the April 15th Schenectady Gazette detailing their schedule for the upcoming Easter broadcast: