The Big Gamble The Migration Of Eritreans To

Europe Milena Belloni download

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-big-gamble-the-migration-of-
eritreans-to-europe-milena-belloni/

Download more ebook instantly today - get yours now at textbookfull.com

We believe these products will be a great fit for you. Click
the link to download now, or visit textbookfull.com
to discover even more!

Fear and Uncertainty in Europe Roberto Belloni

https://textbookfull.com/product/fear-and-uncertainty-in-europe-
roberto-belloni/

The Politics of Migration and Immigration in Europe 2nd

Edition Andrew Geddes

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-politics-of-migration-and-
immigration-in-europe-2nd-edition-andrew-geddes/

Debordering Europe: Migration and Control Across the

Ventimiglia Region Livio Amigoni

https://textbookfull.com/product/debordering-europe-migration-
and-control-across-the-ventimiglia-region-livio-amigoni/

The Rise and Fall of Peacebuilding in the Balkans

Roberto Belloni

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-
peacebuilding-in-the-balkans-roberto-belloni/
True North (The Northern Shifter Legacies #1) 1st
Edition Kelsey Gamble [Gamble

https://textbookfull.com/product/true-north-the-northern-shifter-
legacies-1-1st-edition-kelsey-gamble-gamble/

A Political History of Big Science: The Other Europe

Katharina C. Cramer

https://textbookfull.com/product/a-political-history-of-big-
science-the-other-europe-katharina-c-cramer/

Migrants Before the Law: Contested Migration Control in

Europe Tobias G. Eule

https://textbookfull.com/product/migrants-before-the-law-
contested-migration-control-in-europe-tobias-g-eule/

The Public Speaking Playbook Teri Kwal Gamble

https://textbookfull.com/product/the-public-speaking-playbook-
teri-kwal-gamble/

Battle of Berlin 1943–44: Bomber Harris' Gamble to End

the War 1st Edition Richard Worrall

https://textbookfull.com/product/battle-of-berlin-1943-44-bomber-
harris-gamble-to-end-the-war-1st-edition-richard-worrall/
SOCIOLOGY | ANTHROPOLOGY

belloni
Tens of thousands of Eritreans make perilous voyages across Africa and the Mediter-
ranean Sea every year. Why do they risk their lives to reach European countries where
so many more hardships await them? By visiting family homes in Eritrea and living with
refugees in camps and urban peripheries across Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy, Milena

|
Belloni untangles the reasons behind one of the most under-researched refugee pop-

THE BIG GAMBLE

ulations today. Balancing encounters with refugees and their families, smugglers, and
visa officers, The Big Gamble contributes to ongoing debates about blurred bound-
aries between forced and voluntary migration, the complications of transnational
marriages, the social matrix of smuggling, and the role of family expectations, emo-
tions, and values in migrants’ choices of destinations.

“Milena Belloni’s engrossing ethnography—carried out across time, space, and place—
is particularly commendable because of her scholarly commitment to ‘getting things
right.’ The Eritrean women and men whose lives provided its empirical ground will see
their pain, joy, and contradictions reflected back at them. This is scholar activism at
its finest.” LAURA BISAILLON, Professor of Health and Society, University of Toronto
Scarborough

“The Big Gamble is a study of a migrant group that has received very little scholarly
attention. Its focus on the Eritrea to Europe corridor is a novel approach, and Milena
Belloni has produced a compelling and courageous account.” PETER KIVISTO,

THE MIGRATION OF ERITREANS TO EUROPE

Augustana College and University of Helsinki

“A monumental and perceptive story of migration, taking the reader on a journey not
just from Africa to Europe but through reflections on moralities, risk, and trust that are
central to contemporary mobility and immobility. Belloni’s account of Eritrean migra-
tion experiences is powered by formidable fieldwork and written with warmth and
wisdom.” JØRGEN CARLING, Peace Research Institute Oslo

MILENA BELLONI is a sociologist at the University of Trento. Her doctoral research

on Eritrean migration received the 2016 IMISCOE Award. Belloni has published in
the Journal of Refugee Studies and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. THE BIG GAMBLE
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS THE MIGRATION OF ERITREANS TO EUROPE
www.ucpress.edu | www.luminosoa.org
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of
California Press’s Open Access publishing program for monographs.
Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. milena belloni
Cover illustration: Sidet-Exile, by Ambasager Welday, 2015.
 Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program
from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and
reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases
the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published
in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high
standards for selection, peer review, production, and marketing as
those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org
 The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation
gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Anne G. Lipow
Endowment Fund in Social Justice and Human Rights.
The Big Gamble
 The Big Gamble
The Migration of Eritreans to Europe

Milena Belloni

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press
Oakland, California

© 2019 by Milena Belloni

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons [CC-BY-NC-ND]

license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/
licenses.

Suggested citation: Belloni, M. The Big Gamble: The Migration of Eritreans

to Europe. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. DOI: https://doi.
org/10.1525/luminos.82

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Belloni, Milena, author.
Title: The big gamble : the migration of Eritreans to Europe /
Milena Belloni.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019]|
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019021373 (print) | LCCN 2019980901 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780520298705 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520970755 (ebook other)
Subjects: LCSH: Eritreans—Social aspects—Europe. | Africans—|
Migrations—Social aspects.
Classification: LCC DT16.5 .B44 2019 (print) | LCC DT16.5 (ebook) |
DDC 304.8/40635—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021373
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980901

28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 C onte nts

Acknowledgments vii
List of Protagonists ix
Introduction 1
1. When Migration Becomes the Norm: Ingredients of an Ordinary Crisis 25
2. Hypermobile and Immobile: Diverse Responses to Protracted
Displacement in Ethiopia and Sudan 50
3. An Endless Journey: Transnational and Peer Pressure in Onward
Migration in Europe 79
4. Moralities of Border Crossing: Inside the World of Smuggling and
Transnational Marriages 101
5. Entrapped: Making Sense of High-Risk Migration through Gambling 125
Conclusion 137
Postscript 145

Appendix. Backstage: Notes on Methodology and Ethics 147

Notes 169
References 197
Index 225
 Ac knowle d gme n ts

This work would have not been possible without the help and care of my Eritrean
informants, whose real names have been changed to protect their safety. They are
the protagonists and the soul of this book. Among them I would like to mention
my friends Violetta, Johanna, Lwam, Alazar, Adonay, Gabriel, Esther, Saba, Baba,
Gebreyesus, Samuel, Michael, Paolos, Noah and his Kunama family, Maria, Sister
Kudussan, and Sister Lethe Brahne and the nuns of her congregation, whose work
is of immense relief to many. It is to all of them that I dedicate this book.
I am obliged to Ambassador Renzo Rosso for providing me with institutional
support while doing fieldwork in Ethiopia, and to Dr. Fekadu Adugna and the
Department of Anthropology of Addis Ababa University for facilitating my local
academic affiliation. I am also deeply indebted to Martina Messa, who welcomed me
in Asmara, Ernesto Molinari and his family in Addis Ababa for their support during
the initial phases of my stay in Addis Ababa, and to Khaled Mohamed for facilitat-
ing my entering Sudan. I owe a special thanks to Ephrem Tadesse for his logistical
support in Shire and to Mohand Hassan Fadeel for his priceless help in Khartoum.
The writing process has been long and strenuous and would have not been pos-
sible without the encouragement of my family and friends. But money also helps,
and I am indebted to the American Academy in Rome for awarding me with the
Italian Fellowship in Modern Italian Studies and providing me with the perfect envi-
ronment and means to complete the first draft of the book. I am especially grateful
to Eric Cazdyn for pushing me to get to the core of the ideas that inspire this book.
At the University of Trento, I would like to thank Paolo Boccagni for his patient
comments and Giuseppe Sciortino for his wise jokes, which made my doctoral
time much more inspiring. Finally, I would also like to thank Jørgen Carling, Nauja
Kleist, Michael Collyer and Anna Triandafyllidou, who encouraged me to turn my
thesis into a book, and the anonymous reviewers who critically assessed it.
vii
 Protagonists

NOTE:  ll names have been changed to protect the anonymity of my

A
informants. Ages are given here ca. 2014.
Alazar: a 30-year-old ex-military refugee, originally from Asmara, my
main contact in Eritrean informal networks in Rome.
Senay: Alazar’s friend and age-mate, my host in a Roman squat.
Kibreab: my main informant in a Roman shantytown inhabited by
Eritreans in transit to other destinations.
Ogbazgi: a 25-year-old refugee living in Sicily whom I met in Ethiopia
on the occasion of his marriage. I also visited his family in May
Nefas, a village in the southern region of Eritrea.
Gabriel: my 28-year-old main informant in Milan, who facilitated my
stay at his aunt’s place in Asmara.
Ester: the head of the family who hosted me in Asmara.
Salam: Ester’s youngest daughter, who shared her room with me
during my stay in Asmara.
Johanna: Salam’s friend and neighbor, who became one of my main
informants in Eritrea.
Lwam: Gabriel’s younger sister, my main interpreter during my home
visits in Asmara.
Minia: Alazar’s mother. I met with her family in Asmara and then in
Ethiopia after their escape from the country.
Sister an Eritrean nun who had lived in Addis Ababa for more than
Kudussan: three decades, where her small convent was a meeting place for
young Eritrean refugees.
Hagos: a 30-year-old refugee from Mai Nefas and main spokesperson
among the group of Catholic refugees I met in Addis Ababa
ix
x    Protagonists

Violetta:  y flat mate in Addis Ababa.

m
Adonay: a 28-year-old refugee student at Addis Ababa University.
Jeremiah: a 40-year-old translator and informant in the Adi Harush camp
in Ethiopia.
Noah: a 25-year-old Kunama translator and informant in the camp of
Shimelba.
Tsegay: the middleman I interviewed in Addis Ababa, who became a
people smuggler to earn a living and pay for the migration of
his siblings.
Maria: my 28-year-old host in Khartoum. I lived with her and her
8-year-old daughter, Anna, for over a month.
Michael: a 23-year-old successful broker of people smuggling in
Khartoum.
 Introduction

It was 2016. Surrounded by the perpetual noise and relentless coming and going
of Termini Station in Rome, my friend Alazar and I were drinking coffee at our
usual meeting point.
“My brother is saying that I should join him in Canada . . . ,” Alazar said.
“How is that possible?” I answered, surprised.
“My brother said not to worry . . . that he will find a way for me,” Alazar replied
quietly.
Alazar, whom I have known since he sought asylum in Italy in 2008, had finally
found a job in a local restaurant and seemed to be feeling quite at home in Rome.
After surviving a war when he was only eighteen, enduring a troublesome Medi-
terranean crossing, and spending a few years of unstable existence between Italy
and the few countries in which he had sought asylum afterwards, Alazar had
finally found some stability, I thought. He had a full international protection, a
lot of friends and spoke some Italian. Apparently, however, he was not yet at his
final destination as far as his relatives were concerned. Life was not easy for Alazar
and many of the other Eritrean refugees I knew in the city. They often lived in
poor housing and had few, irregular jobs. But I nonetheless had trouble under-
standing how Alazar’s brother could even think that moving to Canada, probably
through an incredibly dangerous and expensive crossing of the Mexico-U.S. and
then the U.S.-Canada borders, could be a good idea. Why gamble resources, time
and energy again for an unsure outcome?
Such situations were not new to me. The restless search for a suitable final
home in spite of all obstacles characterized the trajectories of most of the Eritre-
ans I met during my research across Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Italy. The
dream of fulfilling family expectations and finding not only a safe haven but some

1
2    Introduction

degree of socioeconomic and existential stability at one’s next destination was

typical of the stories I collected. My Eritrean interlocutors felt that migration, no
matter how risky, was their best option if they were to change their lives and those
of their families. Their resources, time, and energy were all invested in this, the big
gamble of the protagonists of this book, in which the stakes are incredibly high
and the outcome extremely uncertain.
Through the hardships of the national service in Eritrea and the adversities
of exile in refugee camps and peripheral neighborhoods in Sudan, Ethiopia, and
Italy, The Big Gamble investigates migrants’ and their families’ fears, dreams and
stratagems in navigating the opportunities and constraints produced by national
migration policies and the international asylum regime. Besides describing their
experience of deprivation and violence, I reconstruct the choices faced by my
research participants at each stage of their migration. In each site, I account
not only for the importance of socioeconomic resources for geographic mobil-
ity, but also for the role of shared moralities (that is to say, shared conceptions
of what is moral and immoral), transnational expectations and imagination in
the decision whether to stay put or move on. In each site, I illustrate the cumu-
lative impact of previous emotional and material investments to reach the
desired destination.
In a nutshell, The Big Gamble seeks to show the space of refugees’ agency—to
explore the paradox of choice for those who are defined by the lack of it. In so
doing, I break with long-standing assumptions, criticized but never really over-
come, that reduce the explanations of refugee movements to push factors and con-
fine the debate about them to the paradigm of emergency and exceptionality. By
considering the role of aspirations in the context of chronic crisis, the influence
of families on refugees’ decision-making long after they left home and the emic
perception of risk in dangerous border-crossings, this book shows the relevance
of concepts developed in broader migration studies for the theoretical interpreta-
tion of refugee movements. In particular, building on long-standing debates on
imaginaries, culture of migration and transnational moral economies, the idea of
cosmologies of destinations, explained below, is for me a way to understand the
interplay of mobility and immobility by analyzing how shared moral norms, per-
sonal aspirations, and collective emotions shape refugees’ choices for mobility and
their directions.
After introducing the idea of cosmologies of destinations and placing it within
the larger debate over mobility and immobility, this introduction briefly revisits
the history of refugee and forced migration studies and shows the theoretical as
well as political importance of blurring the boundaries between research on forced
and voluntary migrations. Then, it explains the significance of the Eritrean case in
today’s scenario and provides a historical overview of the country. Finally, I pres-
ent the main features of my multi-sited ethnography across four countries and a
summary of the book chapters.
 Introduction    3

M O D E R N C O SM O L O G I E S

Since starting to work with Eritreans in 2008, I have come to realize how the
desired outcomes of their migration trajectories are patterned along a geographic
hierarchy, with Canada, the United States, and the Scandinavian countries at the
top and Eritrea at the bottom. In the middle, countries like Ethiopia, Sudan, and
even Italy were perceived only as transit places, unsuitable for long-term settle-
ment. Although individual preferences, family connections, rumors about recent
policy changes, and other contingent circumstances could orient choices of a final
destination—“Is it better to go to Sweden, Norway, or Switzerland?”—Eritrean
refugees I encountered seemed to share common perceptions about the levels of
safety, individual freedom, and labor market opportunities in different countries
both among themselves and with their relatives around the globe. Far from being
simply a configuration of geographic imaginaries, this hierarchy—which I define
as a cosmology of destinations—also reflects a pathway of moral achievements
and recognitions. Migrants’ journeys are constructed as more or less successful,
depending on the final country of settlement.
In anthropology, cosmologies are conventionally defined as widespread repre-
sentations of the world as a hierarchically ordered whole.1 Traditionally pertaining
to the vocabulary of religion studies, cosmologies have progressively come to refer
more generally to systems of classification and their related moral and emotional
attitudes. Although for a time, this concept has been regarded as an outdated and
ethnocentric notion, it is nevertheless an important heuristic tool for linking rep-
resentations of reality with perceptions of morality and prescribed actions.2 The
concept of cosmologies has recently been used, for instance, to talk about social
security conceptions in South Africa (“cosmologies of welfare”),3 to refer to the
capitalist system and its encompassing narrative,4 and to denote the system of reli-
gious values underpinning the economic transactions involved in irregular migra-
tion from Fouzhou in China (“cosmologies of credit”).5 Cosmologies are crucial
in Liisa Malkki’s Purity and Exile, a founding text in refugee studies. Malkki illus-
trates how the mythico-historical reinterpretation of the Burundian genocide—a
cosmology in its own right—shaped refugees’ understanding of daily life in the
camps and oriented their interactions with locals. Hutu refugees regarded inter-
marriage with locals and residence outside the camp, in particular, as threats to
the purity of their identity.6
Whereas Malkki’s Purity and Exile examines the cosmological beliefs of a lim-
ited number of refugees living in a confined camp, The Big Gamble aims to make
sense of transnationally diffused worldviews among migrants in transit, their
families back home, and their relatives and friends in the diaspora. Their views
emerge not only from a national history of the Eritrean people as colonial subjects,
war martyrs, and sacrificial migrants, but also from the wider effects of global
cultural circulation on local cultures of migration, imaginaries and aspirations.
4    Introduction

These concepts have previously been examined in the context of voluntary labor
migration, but rarely in that of refugee flows from areas of chronic crisis. However,
as described by Alessandro Monsutti in the context of Azhara migration from
Afghanistan, long-term violence and related disruption of livelihoods often lead
communities to reorganize, not only practically, but also morally and symbolically,
around geographic mobility as the only significant means to survive.7 The social
expectations related to migration can be no less widespread in communities that
have experienced a long-term outflow of refugees than in those of labor migrants.
Concepts such as aspirations, cultures of migration, and imaginaries crucially
relate to the idea of cosmologies of destinations. However, there are some dif-
ferences among them. Aspirations have become an especially crucial concept in
migration studies thanks to the work of Jørgen Carling, Hein de Haas, and Ellen
Bal and Roos Willems, among others.8 The analysis of migration aspirations gener-
ally defined as “the conviction that leaving would be better than staying” has con-
tributed to overcoming the simplistic understanding of migration as economically
driven. Specifically, as argued by Jørgen Carling and Francis Collins, “unlike alter-
native terms, such as ‘intention’, ‘plan’ and ‘wish’, ‘aspiration’ marks an intersection
of personal, collective and normative dimensions.”9 As such I consider aspirations
as a crucial manifestation of the socially shared and individually incorporated set
of images, norms, and symbols that I call “cosmology of destinations.”
A culture of migration designates a widespread societal orientation to geo-
graphic mobility.10 The idea of a cosmology of destinations adds more specific-
ity, implying that mobility desires can be differentially addressed to specific loca-
tions, historically, culturally, and economically linked to the contexts of departure.
These locations are typically ordered along a hierarchy of preferences, which are
by no means fixed. Their order continually shifts, owing to feedback mechanisms
between individuals living in different countries as well as popular images, which
are at the same time rooted in specific historical experiences. In this sense the con-
cept of cosmologies of destinations resounds with one of the geographic imaginar-
ies that, as several scholars notice, often tend to be hierarchically ordered accord-
ing to a wide range of social, historical, and economic factors.11
However, if imaginaries are mostly representational systems, cosmologies are
by definition symbolic, and moral constructions. They are not only sets of images,
but include emotional attitudes and moral orientations, which encompass those
who are on the move as well as those who stay put. More specifically, within a
vision of a hierarchically ordered world, the desire to move to another location
that is deemed safer and more conducive to socioeconomic—and existential—sta-
bility, also implies a specific moral understanding of what it means to remain stuck
in one’s own place. Although moralities and emotions have certainly been touched
upon by those studying migration imaginaries, they are not explicitly connected
to the concept of imaginaries. The idea of cosmologies of destinations instead pro-
vides a frame in which the symbolic, emotional, and moral dimensions of migra-
 Introduction    5

tion can be systematically interpreted. This allows me to account for the role of
community pressures and the moral obligations as well as the emotions involved
in migrating no matter the cost.
While systematically linking images of the outside world—and different desti-
nations within it—with the subjects’ perception of their own position, the concept
of cosmologies of destinations thus enables me to analyze different dimensions
of mobility and immobility. Besides physical “stuckedness,” I unfold the different
meanings of mobility and immobility from my informants’ point of view—that is,
their protracted and reproduced sense of being trapped at different stages of their
trajectories. Without reconstructing the worldview that defines Italy exclusively as
a transit country, for instance, it would not have been possible for me to under-
stand why Alazar was still perceived by his family as “being stuck” in Rome. This is
only one of the many different instances of being and feeling immobile that I docu-
ment throughout the book.

B E I N G M O B I L E I N A N I M M O B I L E WO R L D

Immobility has in the past few years become central to the debate on migration.12
While scholars usually consider sedentary populations as the norm and simply
focus their attention on migrants, some have argued that immobility and its fac-
tors must also be analyzed. Individuals often aspire to migrate, but are prevented
from doing so by restrictive immigration and emigration policies, the devastating
effects of wars,13 or the disempowering effects of poverty.14 Limitations of mobility
are reproduced along the complex trajectories of refugees and migrants, who may
get stuck in transit, stranded at the edges of Europe, at the Mexico–U.S. border, or
in between the European legal and jurisdictional boundaries of the asylum regime,
trapped in locations from which is hard to move either ahead or back.15 Protracted
displacement—defined as the lack of prospects of return to the homeland, reset-
tlement in third countries, and local integration for those who are in extended
exile—has become the most typical and intractable issue of today’s refugee sce-
nario. Protracted displacement has become normalized for 78 percent of all refu-
gees—15.9 million people—leading to decades spent in first countries of refuge.16
The analysis of such involuntary immobility is crucial in the study of what is
normally defined as “forced migration.” Refugees’ access to mobility is not only
stratified along socioeconomic, age, and gender lines—as discussed, for example,
by Nicholas van Hear and S. C. Lubkemann17—but also depends on the availabil-
ity of transnational kinship and community networks and the ability to mobilize
them. While exploring the structural circumstances that reproduce my informants’
immobility along the Eritrea–Europe corridor, the analysis points to the paradox
first made explicit by Lubkemann’s work: mobility, even in highly constrained cir-
cumstances, represents an expression of agency, of capability to act upon one’s own
situation. Involuntary immobility is rather the condition in which the powerless
6    Introduction

and most vulnerable end up being—repeatedly—trapped, whether in their own

home countries or in transit after crossing their national borders.
However, immobility is far more than a physical condition.18 As scholars have
pointed out, using terms such as “waithood,” “existential immobility,” “chronic
crisis,” and “stuckedness,” people are stuck not only because they are not able to
migrate, but because they cannot reach a socioeconomically recognized position.
They are unable to become the men and the women they wish to be and to grasp
the future they aspire to for themselves and their families. This feeling of immo-
bility is widespread among youth living in a context of protracted crisis all across
Africa. Achille Mbembe,19 James Ferguson,20 Alcinda Honwana,21 and Henrik
Vigh,22 among others, have documented in various ways in which young Africans’
aspirations are often frustrated by the structural incapability of postcolonial Afri-
can economies to accommodate a new labor force, by the wider effects of corrupt
political establishments, the failures of developmental measures, recurrent con-
flicts, and deteriorating climatic conditions. Although specific in many regards,
Eritrean migration also represents the response to similar frustrated aspirations—
especially among the youth—in a context of chronic crisis, stagnant economy, and
political stasis. Such a context where different aspects of being forced and being
willing to move—or to stay—continuously intertwine, defies the boundaries of
forced and voluntary migration.

R E F U G E E A N D F O R C E D M IG R AT IO N S T U D I E S : O N
B LU R R I N G T H E B OU N DA R I E S B E T W E E N T Y P O L O G I E S

Article 1 of the Geneva Convention (1951) defines a refugee as someone who

“owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,
nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside
the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling
to avail himself of the protection of that country.”23 In spite of later modifications
of the Convention and the establishment of a set of juridical tools aimed to protect
refugees and expand the Geneva definition—such as the Organization of African
Union (OAU) Convention (1969) and the Cartagena Protocol (1984), not to men-
tion national legislation and, in the European Union, the regulations established
since the early 1990s24—the 1951 Convention is still the most widely recognized
one. In fact, it is the text of refugee law on which most national and international
legislation is based.25
This juridical framework shaped the early development of refugee studies as a
discipline. Refugees have long been analyzed as an intrinsically different category
from voluntary “economic” migrants. In 1973, for instance, E. F. Kunz claimed that
refugees’ migration is triggered by push factors alone, with a complete absence of
pull factors.26 B. N. Stein has similarly argued that the refugee constitutes a dis-
tinct social type, and that the main common characteristics of the “refugee expe-
 Introduction    7

rience”—that is, loss of social ties and trauma—can be delineated.27 The refugee
condition has been regarded as exceptional in the migration scenario, as well
as the responses required. Even today, refugee policies still have an emergency,
humanitarian character that does not reflect the systematic and structural nature
of refugee problems.28 This is reflected in a theoretical segregation of the field of
refugee studies from the broader debate of migration studies.
However, the contemporary asylum/migration scenario has dramatically
changed in the past sixty years and calls for new interpretative tools. At the
end of World War II, beneficiaries of international protection were perceived
to be from Europe and victims of the recently ended war and of national eth-
nic cleansing. More than sixty years later, the world refugee population mainly
originates from Africa, Asia, and South and Central American countries.29 Most
refugees come from countries marked by chronic low-intensity conflict, state
fragility, livelihood disruption, human-rights violations, and protracted socio-
economic crisis, such as Afghanistan, El Salvador, Eritrea, Guatemala, Hondu-
ras, Myanmar, and Somalia.30 Moreover, refugees are not alone in their danger-
ous journeys. Many migrants, hardly definable as refugees in a conventional
sense, are ready to take enormous risks to reach Europe or other developed
countries. Whatever the reason for leaving their country, conventional refu-
gees and other categories of migrants may accumulate the same vulnerabilities
and share a similar need for protection. The multiple, interlinked motivations
that push migrants and refugees to embark on high-risk journeys are reflected
in concepts like “the asylum-migration nexus”31 and mixed-migration flows.32
This points to the difficulty in distinguishing between refugees and purely “eco-
nomic” migrants, since causes of forced mobility, such as wars and human rights
abuse, are often linked to failed development and poverty. This has led to a reex-
amination of previous categories that were crucial to the birth and development
of refugee studies as a discipline.33
It is no surprise, then, that the international asylum discourse has progressively
multiplied labels for vulnerable individuals in need of protection, variously called
IDPs (internally displaced people), environmental refugees, cultural refugees,
gender-based persecuted refugees, and so forth. Some academics have proposed
new categories such as “survival migration”34 and “crisis migration,”35 which may
be more inclusive than previous ones.
As the legal and humanitarian regime concerning asylum was looking for more
encompassing definitions and new grounds to provide protection, another cat-
egory, that of the “forced migrant,” has become prominent in the academic debate
since the mid-1990s. This has come to include and replace the label “refugee” in
the literature. The definition of forced migration, although far from well delimited
and clear, mainly refers to all people who leave their homes owing to forces beyond
their control. It includes legal categories such as IDPs, environmental refugees,
and other less well defined populations of migrants.36
8    Introduction

However, the shift from refugee studies to forced-migration studies has not
corresponded either to a substantial shift in the theoretical development of the
field or in the global political agenda. The change has, rather, been a superficial,
nominal one. Even today, in the literature and especially in policy documents of
humanitarian agencies, it is not rare to encounter the commonsense assumptions
that “refugees have no choice but to leave,” “forced migration is a reaction to a sud-
den threat,” “political refugees are intrinsically different from economic migrants,”
and so forth. Even the most recent international policy developments, represented
by the Global Compact on Migration37 and the Global Compact on Refugees
(2018),38 adopt a binary approach (migrants vs. refugees) that does not address the
asylum-migration nexus. As a result, in spite of their structural existence and their
repeated patterns, refugee movements keep being defined as emergencies, excep-
tions in migration scenarios.39
In sum, although the category of forced migration has its own merits, including
that of showing the limits of previous definitions, it does not seem to be a solution
in itself, inasmuch as it reproduces a binary distinction between those who can and
those who cannot choose. Such clear-cut distinctions have been widely criticized
in the past decade by scholars from different disciplines, such as law, anthropol-
ogy, political science, and sociology.40 Marta Bivand Erdal and Ceri Oeppen argue,
for instance, that although the forced/voluntary dichotomy may serve migration-
management purposes, it does not reflect the complex reality of migration deci-
sions.41 To define a migration flow as forced does not clarify under what circum-
stances it takes place, or how it is distinguishable—if at all—from other kinds of
migration, and to what extent constraints, personal agency and enabling resources
interact to produce mobility. Finally, this dichotomy between forced and voluntary
migration tends to reproduce limited access to protection rights for some groups,
who are deemed to originate from safe areas or not to fit the label.
However, when stating the continuity between forced and voluntary migration
and the space for choice in migration dynamics, researchers may face a major ethi-
cal dilemma. On the one hand, we are afraid to undermine the system of categories
that protect research participants. On the other hand, we feel the need, as Thomas
Faist puts it, “to challenge the power of categorization which oppresses the sub-
jects we talk about.”42 The more the distinction between economic migrants and
refugees gets blurred; the higher the risk of moral and political claims for interna-
tional protection losing momentum and cogency. The cynical but not implausible
question could then be, if refugees are not fundamentally different from voluntary
migrants, why should an international legal system to safeguard them be main-
tained at all? In the European political arena (and Europe is not an exceptional
case), xenophobic declarations are popular, and fears focused on migrant popula-
tions orient the political agendas of leading parties. It is therefore understandable
that providing scientific foundations for such an argument is a cause of concern
for academics, myself among them.
 Introduction    9

Presenting my work to a diverse audience of students, practitioners, and refu-

gees, I found out how unsettling the statement “economic migrants and refugees
are not categories apart” can be. In one occasion, one refugee auditor exclaimed
that while I was talking, “people who need protection and have the right to be
saved” were dying at sea. Others, mainly practitioners, told me that I should not
mix “bogus refugees” with “real ones.” The former felt that my argument was ques-
tioning refugees’ entitlement to be protected and welcomed in Europe; the latter
felt that I had perhaps missed the point, and that the people I was talking about
had in fact no entitlement to international protection. These comments shocked
me: Was I saying that my Eritrean informants, my friends, in fact, had no proper
right to obtain asylum in Europe? Although I felt that some of my critics’ asso-
ciations of ideas were off-target, their comments made me think of the potential
implications of my own argument.
For me, rejecting the dichotomy between forced and voluntary migration
means contesting the exclusion and illegalization that inevitably derives from a
stereotyped understanding of reality. Instead, the focus on mobility and immo-
bility in their manifold aspects across borders enables the researcher to untangle
factors underpinning migration pathways. It allows us to go beyond deperson-
alized accounts of forced migration, whether humanitarian or security-oriented,
and to provide insights into how gender, age, class, cultural, and social background
influence not only the possibilities but also the desire to be mobile and the expe-
rience of being immobile. Together with scholars such as Faist, Erdal and Oep-
pen, and Sandro Mezzadra,43 I believe that the debate on refugees and migration
calls for creative solutions to interpret mobility going beyond the categorization
of forced and voluntary. There is a need to think out of policy-driven categories,
to portray real stories in their complexity, to account for vulnerability as much as
for capabilities, aspirations, and desires in migrants’ struggles for mobility. These
struggles over mobility reflect more or less implicit political contestations about
the nature and the fairness of borders, migration regulations, and related distribu-
tion of rights.

WHY ERITREA?

Although specific in many regards, Eritrean migration is a typical response to the

constraints and opportunities produced by the contemporary asylum regime in its
interaction with national migration policies. Its analysis can illuminate the effect
of this system on the daily lives of millions of refugees, as well as its consequences
on their mobility choices. At the same time, Eritrean pathways respond to a dis-
tinctive structure of opportunity. Emigration is severely restrained by the Eritrean
government, which grants its citizens passports only after they have done their
national service. However, even those who are legally permitted to leave the coun-
try often cannot move to their preferred destination. Visas to study, work, or visit
10    Introduction

Western countries are extremely hard to obtain for those coming from developing
countries, and even more so for those who originate from a refugee-producing
country like Eritrea. Western embassies tend to believe that Eritreans applying for
temporary visas are unlikely to return home on expiry of their permission of stay.
Those who manage to leave Eritrea, with or without authorization, usually end
up in Sudan or Ethiopia, with limited possibilities for legal and socioeconomic
integration there.
Since resettlement rates are extremely low—less than 1 percent of the refu-
gee population worldwide—and work and study visas are hard to obtain, most
Eritreans, like most refugees in the first countries they reach—usually low-income
nations—live in encampments with few prospects of long-term solutions. Those
who do reach developed countries usually have wider prospects to study, work,
and enjoy a decent life—although other forms of deprivation may be present.44
The repeated migration attempts I document in the book mirror the contradiction
between the immobility of substantive rights and the physical mobility required
to gain access to them.45 It is important to note that, although things could quickly
change, Eritreans, unlike other nationalities, have high rates of recognition as
“legitimate” refugees in Europe. As Erdal and Oeppen point out, it is impor-
tant also when analyzing forced migration to keep in mind “the anticipation” by
migrants “of the particular labelling by immigrant authorities in Europe.”46 This
is crucial, inasmuch as it provides them with some prospects of access to legal
and social protection once arrived in Europe, unlike those migrants whose asy-
lum applications are typically rejected based on the fact they come from what are
deemed “safe areas.”47
Eritreans were one of the main national groups of the 2015–16 European refu-
gee crisis. UNHCR estimates that the number of Eritrean refugees, asylum seek-
ers, and other categories of concern was over half a million at the end of 2017,
making Eritrea the ninth-greatest source of refugees worldwide, with one of the
relatively most numerous diasporas in the world.48 Although statistics on the
Eritrean population are largely unreliable and out of date, it is safe to say that
there are at least a million and a half Eritreans who live outside their country, out
of a total population of fewer than five million.
Aside from its timeliness and statistical significance, the theoretical relevance
of this case has primarily to do with the state of chronic emergency that char-
acterizes not only Eritrea but most “refugee-producing countries.” In spite of its
contemporary momentum, migration from Eritrea is much more than a simple
reaction to an individual life threat. Rather, it is a historically developed com-
munal strategy against hardships. As such, it represents a key case to understand
how concepts, such as aspirations, imaginaries and transnational moralities,
originally elaborated in the study of labor migration can apply to the research on
refugee movements.
 Introduction    11

A History of Migration
Geographic mobility is ancestral history in the Horn of Africa. Different ethnic
groups have long moved from one area to the other in search of better pastures for
their animals, to find better lands to cultivate, to escape violence, to take control of
the resources and the people of other regions. For some ethnic groups, especially
pastoralists, systematic and periodic geographic mobility has been a normal part
of their social organization and livelihood strategy in facing harsh climatic condi-
tions. However, it was at the end of Italian colonization that Eritreans systemati-
cally started traveling across national and international borders.
The history of Eritrea is not a unitary tale of a people on a delimited territory.
As revealed by archaeological findings at the ancient Red Sea port of Adulis in
the northeast of the country, the Eritrean coast was part of the kingdom of Axum,
which flourished from 100 to 800 CE. The Axumites spoke a Semitic language,
adopted Christianity, and had a sophisticated political system and trading rela-
tionships with India, China, the Black Sea region, and Spain.49 When the coast
was invaded by Arab expansion in the eighth century, the kingdom of Axum was
cut off from trade and its decline became inevitable. After the fall of Axum, the
region became politically fragmented: people from Sudan and Egypt occupied
the coast and the western lowlands, while in the highlands mostly Tigrinya and
Amhara local rulers based in different regions competed for power until the nine-
teenth century.50
Although the Eritrean highlands have often in the course of history been
a partly independent province, they have historically been linked to the Ethio-
pian highlands. Alemseged Abbay speaks of a trans-Mereb identity (the river
Mereb marked the Eritrean and Ethiopian border in colonial times) founded on
precolonial institutions,51 which would have included the Coptic Church and its
monastic culture, the linguistic roots of the Amharic and Tigrinya languages in
the Geʽez script, the land tenure system, and the feudal political order of the sev-
eral regional kingdoms. The self-designation “Habesha,” used both by Tigrinya-
speaking Eritreans and the inhabitants of the Ethiopian side of the plateau, such
as Tygraians, Amhara, and Oromo, is evidence of this ethnic, cultural, social, and
political connection.52
Eritrean and Ethiopian Tigrinya speakers and the Amhara (Coptic Christian
Amharic speakers), who inhabit the more southern Ethiopian highlands, have
historically been the dominant political groups of the area.53 In Eritrea, lowland-
ers are usually Muslim nomadic pastoralists (with several exceptions among the
Kunamas and the Bilen groups, who are agriculturalists and often non-Coptic
Christians). They belong to different ethnic minorities (see “Eritrea at a glance”).
The history of Eritrea as one country begins with Italian colonization (1889–
1941).54 Italian occupation lasted for almost fifty years and had a profound impact
on the country, especially on the highlands.55 Many Italians came to settle in the
Map 1. United Nations map of Eritrea
 Introduction    13

Eritrea at a Glance
Population: The United Nations estimate is five million, but Fusari 2011 suggests
3.2 million, taking into account the emigration rate and decreased fertility since
the 1980s. The only available census dates from 1993.
Geographic features: The southern and central regions of Eritrea are dominated by
Ethiopian north-south trending highlands, which descend on the east to the coast-
al desert plain, on the northwest to hilly terrain, and on the southwest to plains.
Climate: Eritrea consists of a hot, dry strip of desert along the Red Sea coast,
cooler and wetter central highlands (rain falls mostly between June and Septem-
ber), and semiarid western hills and lowlands.
Capital: Asmara, recently listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Main religions: Muslim (47%), Christian Orthodox (39%), Roman Catholic (5%),
Evangelical Protestant (1%), vernacular religions (2%), other Christians (4%).
There are groups of Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other Christians in
the country, but they are not institutionally recognized.
Main ethnic groups: Tigrinya (50%), Tigre (27%), Saho (5%), Afar (5%), Hidareb
(4%), Kunama (3%), Bilen (2%), Nara (2%), Rashaida (1%).
These percentages are provided by the Eritrean government (www.eritrea.be/old/
eritrea-people.htm).
Languages: Tigrinya and Tigre are the main spoken languages in the country.
Like Amharic (the main spoken language in Ethiopia), they derive from ancient
Ge’ez. Arabic and English are also widely spoken. Ethnic minority languages are
also studied in school and widely spoken.
Essential timeline:

• 1000 BCE: Semitic peoples from the South Arabian kingdom of Saba’
(Sheba) migrate across the Red Sea, absorbing the Cushitic inhabitants of
the Eritrean coast and adjacent highlands.
• 100 to 800 CE: Emergence and fall of the Axum empire, a strong trading
and political power that developed around the port of Adulis. Christian-
ity becomes the area’s main religion around 300 CE.
• 9th–19th centuries: Arabs invade the coast. Solomonic dynasties rule in
the Ethiopian highlands, with Eritrea the northern province of their king-
dom. The western lowlands are controlled by Sudanese empires and the
eastern lowlands mostly by Afar rulers. From the 16th to 19th centuries,
the coastline around Massawa was part of the Ottoman empire.
• 1869–1944: Italian colonization. The Genoa-based Rubattino shipping
company buys the bay of Assab from the local Afar sultan and Italians
progressively expand their control as far as the Mereb River.
• 1941–52: After Italian defeat in World War II, Eritrea becomes a British
protectorate.
• 1952–62: Ethiopia and Eritrea are federated but maintain a degree of
political and administrative independence.
14    Introduction

• 1961–62: Following forcible annexation of Eritrea to Ethiopia under the

emperor Haile Selassie, a liberation struggle starts in the lowlands.
• 1974: Haile Selassie is overthrown in Ethiopia by Menghistu Haile
Mariam, who establishes the Derg regime.
• 1983: Conflict between the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and the
Eritrean People Liberation Front (EPLF). The EPLF defeats the ELF and
becomes the only militant Eritrean front.
• 1991: De facto independence. EPLF and TPLF (the Ethiopian Tigray
People Liberation Front) enters Addis Abba and overthrows Menghistu’s
government. The EPLF becomes the Party for Freedom, Democracy and
Justice (PFDJ), which has ruled Ethiopia since then.
• 1998–2000: Conflict with Ethiopia, allegedly for disagreement on border
demarcation around the village of Badme.
• 2000: The Algiers agreement. A period of “no peace, no war” between the
two countries begins. Diplomatic and trade relations are blocked.
• 2018: Peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ethiopia recognizes
that Badme belongs to Eritrea, and the newly established Ethiopian prime
minister, Abyi Ahmed, pays the first Ethiopian diplomatic visit to Eritrea
in eighteen years.

country, where they were given land confiscated from the local population; cities,
roads, and other infrastructure were built and several industries were established
around the region. The colonial rulers imposed a hierarchical system that system-
atically limited the rights of the indigenous population. Under racial laws passed
in 1935, indigenous Eritreans were allowed to study only up to fourth grade. At
the same time, new modes of production, the introduction of modern technology
in agriculture, and the construction of urban centers deeply influenced the tradi-
tional social structure of Eritrean society. Local imaginaries, aesthetic tastes, and
cultural models were also significantly shaped in those years, with long-standing
implications for contemporary politics, Eritrean people’s horizons of meaning,
and migration pathways.56
In 1941, Eritrea then became a British protectorate. The British dismantled
industries and infrastructure such as the Asmara-Massawa Cableway, built by the
Italians, as war compensation. They also lifted the ban on higher education for
indigenes and allowed the growth of a free press and political parties. This was a
period of lively political activism, from which the protagonists and ideas of the
later independent Eritrea sprang.57
Starting in the 1950s, many Eritreans who had been working for Italians moved
to Addis Ababa. Others, mostly female domestic workers, followed their employ-
ers back to Italy. Still others, mostly Muslims, left for the Arab world (mainly
 Introduction    15

Sudan, Egypt, and Gulf countries) to work and pursue further education.58 Then,
with the beginning of the thirty-year-long war against Ethiopian rule, Eritrean
international migration skyrocketed.
In 1952, Eritrea was then federated to Ethiopia, but kept most of its political,
administrative, and judicial autonomy. In 1961, however, the emperor of Ethiopia
dissolved the Eritrean parliament and unilaterally annexed Eritrea. Hamid Idris
Awate, a former ascaro (indigenous soldier in the Italian army), fired the first
shot against Ethiopian occupation in the western lowlands on September 1, 1961,
launching the country’s long independence struggle.

The seeds of crisis: the independence struggle and “no peace–no war”
The Eritrean independence struggle has complicated historical roots in ethnic
conflicts, regional instability, and political claims, which have been thoroughly
investigated by several historians.59 In fifty years of Italian colonization, Eritreans
had developed a separate political identity from their Ethiopian cousins. More-
over, Muslims, traditionally marginalized by Christian highlanders, interpreted
the annexation to Christian Orthodox Ethiopian rule as a new attempt to subor-
dinate them. It was mostly owing to them that the independence struggle started.
The Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), initially constituted by Muslim lowlanders,
began the rebellion in the western plains, triggering retaliation by the imperial
army against civilians in those areas.60 This led thousands to cross the border with
Sudan in search of refuge.61 In 1974, the Derg, a military regime led by Menghistu
Haile Mariam, overthrew the Ethiopian emperor and the war spread to the high-
lands and the cities. Thousands were killed and more were displaced throughout
Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the United States, creating the bulk of the
numerous, worldwide population of Eritrean origin that was a crucial ally for the
liberation fronts in the war and for the government subsequently.62 In that period,
moreover, the original liberation front—the ELF (the Eritrea Liberation Front)—
and a newly emerged Eritrean People Liberation front (EPLF) came into conflict
(1982), which resulted in further displacement.
In 1991, the military regime in Ethiopia was defeated by an alliance of Ethiopian
and Eritrean liberation fronts and Eritrea gained its de facto independence under
the rule of the EPLF. Since then EPLF cadres have ruled the country through the
PFDJ (People’s Front for Democracy and Justice) party. Initially enjoying wide-
spread support among the population and the Eritrean diaspora, this regime was
praised by the international community for its progressive agenda on social and
economic development and gender equality. Some Eritreans who had fled decided
to return home, and the fragile economy of the country seemed to benefit from
government intervention and foreign investment.
This illusion lasted only until 1998, when a new conflict broke out with Ethio-
pia. Allegedly, the war was triggered by an issue of border demarcation around
16    Introduction

the small town of Badme, but the reasons behind it are far more complicated and
range from the control over the ports to deep-rooted ambitions in regional poli-
tics.63 Around a hundred thousand Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers died, and hun-
dreds of thousands of people were displaced. At least seventy thousand Eritreans
were expelled from Ethiopia in 1998, and thousands of Ethiopians were forcibly
returned from Eritrea.
The conflict officially ended in 2000, when the two countries agreed to a cease-
fire. The UN Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) ruled that Eritrea
had a legitimate claim to Badme, and that Ethiopia should withdraw its troops
from the town, but Ethiopia never respected this decision. Although the war had
ended, hostilities continued. Diplomatic and trade relationships ceased, with neg-
ative consequences for both countries. Ethiopia lost cheap access to the sea, and
Eritrea lost its natural trading partner. Moreover, Eritrea has progressively become
isolated on the international scene, owing partly to bad relations with all its neigh-
bors and partly to a deep-rooted mistrust of the international community.64
Eritrea’s economic and political efforts at self-reliance since its independence
have reflected a wary anti-colonialist mentality, reinforced by the fact that whereas
Ethiopia’s noncompliance with the UN recommendation over the border issue was
not followed by international measures, Eritrea has been a target of UN sanctions
since 2008. Although these sanctions have mainly been an embargo of weapons
and freezing the financial assets of the Eritrean leadership, these measures argu-
ably had a widespread negative effect on the Eritrean economy, discouraging
investors, increasing the diplomatic isolation of the country, and thus indirectly
worsening the living conditions of the population.
Twenty years of cold war and isolation have recently been interrupted by a
drastic change in regional politics. In July 2018, following a shift of power in the
Ethiopian leadership, the newly appointed Ethiopian prime minister Abyi Ahmed
withdrew Ethiopian troops from Badme. This has led to the peace agreement
between the two countries and the reopening of the border between them. Since
then, families who had been separated for decades have able to meet again, and
trade and diplomatic relations have resumed, decreasing the cost of living and
leading to renewed hope among Eritreans at home, as well as fear among those
who sought asylum in Ethiopia, who wonder about their safety. The short- and
long-term implications of this radical change are still hard to forecast.
Whether it is simply revealing its true nature, as some believe, or reacting to the
constant threat from Eritrea’s more populous and powerful Ethiopian neighbor,
the repressive attitude of the PFDJ has remained unchanged since 1998. Eritrea
has not had free elections since its independence, the Constitution has never been
ratified, and all of the PFDJ’s political opponents have been eliminated as sup-
porters of the Ethiopian enemy.65 There is no free press, and religious and cul-
tural liberties have been severely curtailed. Parallel to this political atmosphere,
development efforts have mostly fallen on the shoulders of young citizens, who are
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
the United Press Association with head
 1929 The MOTION PICTURE ALMANAC 79 thi'ee picturefi
they sisned with Fox Film Corpoi'ation to organize their news reel
"Fox News." in 1919. Spent four years with this corporation as news
featui'e director, new-s editor and later director in chief of "Fox
News." Leavinpr Fox he went with Macfadden Publications as
director of illustrations in their magrazines. with them one year :
then struck out as an independent and made a score of illustrated
sontrs in motion pictures for i>rominent mtisical publishers. On
September 14. 192.i. he entered his present work which comprises
several duties. He directs and writes publicity for "Topics of the Day."
"Ae.sop's Fables." "Sportlipht." and "Curiceities." Also reads for and
edits "Topics of the Day." and does considerable title writinK for
"Curiosities" and some for the "Smitty Comedies." and is film editor
for all of the products. Is a member of the Asfiociated Motion Picture
Advertisers and was chairman of the A. M. P. A. Hollywood Masque
Ball which took place March 2. 1929. at the Hotel Astor. Lives at 43-
49 Lowery street, Long Island City. N. Y. HAYS. WILL H.: b. Sullivan.
Ind.. November 5. 1879 ; p. Mary Cain and John T. Hays,
nonprofessionals ; e. bachelor of arts depree in 1900. master of avts
degree in 1904 from Wabash college and later a doctor of laws
degree from Mt. Union college. On his twentyfirst birthday he was
admitted to the Indiana bar. later becoming a member of his father's
law firm, known for two generations a-s the firm of Hays and Hays,
and served as city attorney in Sullivan. Shortly after beginning the
practice of law. he became interested in politics. He accepted the
chairmanship of the Republican county committee for Sullivan county
and by successive stages in the state organization, he became
chairman of the Republican central committee of Indiana in 1914.
During the war. he was chairman of the Indiana state council of
defense. In February. 1918. he became chairman of the Republican
national committee. Following the election of President Harding, he
was appointed postmaster general of the United States, resigning
early in 1922 to become president of the Motion Picture Producers &
Distributors of America. Inc. As ixistmaster general, he quickly raised
the postal service to a high level of efficiency. He furthered the air
mail service, waged a relentless war on mail bandits by arming
employes and placing Marines on trains, and succeeded in
humanizing the iKistal department by a plan of making every
employe a "partner in service." Under his guidance, many changes
have been brought about in the motion jncture industry. The practice
of arbitration in settling trade disputes, for instance, has become the
universal practice of distributors and exhibitors, with the result that
in four years more than 50.000 controversies have been amicably,
economically, and promptly settled with a resultant huge saving in
time, money, and friendship. By self-government of the industry at
the source of production, new high artistic and moral standards have
been established. Not only do producers now exercise judgment in
the selection of screen material through the oiv eration of a
cooperative study of books and plays which have possible
objectionable subject matter, but a studio relations committee is
constantly taking to the men and women in the studios, accurate
reports, advices and suggestions from authoritative individuals and
groups in the pul>lic. Through a committee on public relations,
which has now grown into a department oi public relations, good will
has been promoted everywhere. The department disseminates not
only accurate and reliable information regarding the industry's
purposes and accomplishments, but it serves as a channel through
which helpful suggestions are received from the interested public
and passed on to the studios. Muuh of his attention has been
direoteany of Sullivan and a director of the Chicago & Bastern Illinois
Railroad Company. He is a former national president of the Phi Delta
Theta fraternity, a 32nd degree Mason, a Shriner. and a life member
ot the Elks. Among the other clubs of which he is a member are the
Metropolitan. National Press, and University Club of Washington. D.
C. ; the Union League. National Republican. Bankers. Army and
Navy. Friars, and the Advertising Club of New York City; the Chicago
Club; Illinois Athletic Club; California Club; and the Mayfair Club of
Hollywood. HOFFMAN, M. H. : Vice pre.sident and general manager.
TiiTany-Stahl Productions ; b, Chicago. 111.. March 20. 1881 ; e.
graduate ot public school in Chicago, also ot New York City college,
with a title of bachelor of law from New York university. 1900. Prior
to the study of law he studied the arts, consisting of music and
painting. Practiced law until 1910 in New York, having been admitted
to the bar in New York. New Jersey and Massachusetts ; then
became interested in theatres in Massachusetts as an exhibitor and
still continued with the practice of law in Springfield. Mass. Then
became a.ssociated with W. E. Green, managing his Springfield
exchange. Universal Film Company then bought out Green and after
a short time he became general manager for Universal Film
Company; resigned in 1917 and for several years was in the
independent state right market, producing and distributing pictures.
In 1920 organized Tiffany Productions and made eight Mae Murray
pictures, which were at that time considered outstanding
productions. These pictures were distributed through Metro Jilm
Corporation. After completing this series, the TitTanv Company
under his management launched into its own production units and
started the establishment of exchanges, Ihe liresent company,
known as Tiftany-Stahl Productions, is the completed outcome of the
original Tiffany Company, which went into the p-oduction of the Mae
Murray pictures. On heb. 19. 1929. he announced he had just sold
his holdings in TifEany-Stahl. HUGHES. HOWARD R.. JR.: Founder
and liresident of The Caddo Company ; b, Houston, Tex., December
24, 1904 ; p. Alene Gano and Howard R. Hughes, brother of Runert
Hughethe writer, and founder of the Hughes Tool Companv, also one
of the out.standing men identified with the oil industry ot Texas, died
in 1924 ; c. Rice Institute, Houston ; m, Ella Rice in 1925 ; and at
the age of 20 took over the management of his father's business.
About two years ago he turned over the management to his
associates and went to Hollywood to invest a portion of his capital
and his abilities in the business of motion pictures. His first
production. "Two Arabian Knights." made for United Artists release,
established Louis Wolheim in the front ranks of the character actors
and won international recognition for Lewis Milestone, the director.
Then signed contracts with both United Artists and Paramount
Famous Lasky to release his pictures ; and also signed Thomas
Meighan for two pictures and placed other prominent stars and
players under contract, including Ben Lyon, Raymond Griffith, Lucien
Prival and John Darrow. His second release. "The Racket." .starring
Thomas Meighan. with Wolheim and Marie Prevost in the chief
supporting roles, followed by "The Mating Call" from the novel by
Rex Beach, also starred Meighan. His latest release. "Hell's Angels."
is directed by Luther Reed with Ben Lyon. James Hall, Greta Nis<5en
and others. HUMM. JOHN: Treasurer of Pathe Exchange. Inc. ; b.
Hatzfeld. Hungary, December 18. 1892 ; e. graduated from the
Commercial-Oriental Academy of Budape.st ; m. and has five
children^ Spent two years in Paris as siwcial agent of the Minister of
Commerce of Hungary, also taking a special course at the Sorbonne.
In 1913 came to New York as special agent of the Hungarian
Ministry of Commerce, serving in that capacity until the outbreak of
the war. In October. 1914. he entered the motion picture industry
affiliating with Pathe as translation clerk and then joined the
distribution unit, the Electric Film Company in the same capacity.
Moved along with Pathe Exchange. Inc.. when that company was
organized December 28. 1914 and worked practically every position
in the accounting department, became auditor, assistant general
manager, assistant treasurer, and finally, treasurer, the po=ition he
now holds. Member of the Motion Picture Club of New York, the
Freeport B. P. O. E.. No. 1253. the Rockville Country club, the
Baldwin Country club, and is also a member of various civic,
commuters and traveling men's associations. INNERARITY, LEWIS:
Secretary and attornev for Pathe Exchange, Inc. ; b. Sherwood,
Baltimore County, Maryland, July 23, 1886 ; e, graduate of the
University of Maryland and was admitted to the Maryland bar 19
years ago. Was connected with the Colonial Trust Company of
Baltimore for some six years and was on the legal staff of the United
States Fidelity & Guaranty Company for eight years. Entered the
motion picture business in May. 1918. in the capacity of secretary of
Pathe Exchange. Inc. Innerarity originated the plan for the present
Hays organization and he and Gabriel Hess did all of the work
incident to the creation of what is today a guiding moral force in the
industry and the work of thes.e two men was turned over to a
committee of which Innerarity was chairman which perfected the
present organization and turned it over to Will H. Hays. Among the
various offices held by him are the following: vice president and
director of Pathex. Inc. ; vice president and director of Pathe
Studios, Inc. ; director of Pathe Exchange. Inc.. and vice president
and director of Safeway Stores. Inc. Is a member of the Merchants
Association of New York and the American Arbitration Association.
JOHNSTON, W. RAY: President, Rayart Pictures Corporation ; b,
Janesville, la.. January 2. 1892 ; e, high .school in Janesville, la., and
the College of Commerce. Waterloo. la. Joined the news staff of the
"Waterloo Daily Reporter." where he remained for some months,
then delved into banking and real estate for several years. In this
connection he met Wilbert Shallenberger, brother of W. E.
Shallenberger. who later organized the Arrow Film Corporation. The
brothers were interested in the old Thanhouser Film Corporation
with Charles J. Kite, who invited Johnston, then 22. to come to New
York as his secretary, which iiosition covered every angle ot studio
and distribution activity. Within two months he was made treasurer
of Syndicate Film Company, which made "The Million Dollar Mystery."
the serial that proved such a bonanza for its producers. Followed the
treasurership of Thanhouser and the presidency of Big Productions
Film Corporation. Around the same time he also introduced Al
Jennings, the famous Oklahoma bandit, to the screen in "Beating
Back " Nor did he overlook another branch ot the business, for in
addition to running the Thanhouser studio in Florida for eight
months he also had experience in theatre management. When the
affairs of Thanhouser were wound up Johnston joined W. E.
Shallenberger in the Arrow Film Corporation, soon to be elected to
the office of vice president, which position he held until 1924 when
he organized and Ijecame president of Rayart Pictures Conioration.
which shortly became one of the leaders among the independents.
He is still president of the Big Productions Film Corporation, which
serves as an affiliated unit, and also president of the Kayart
Syndicate CoriMration. a producing unit. KATZ. SAM: President.
Publix Theatres Corporation; b. Russia. 1892 and brought to this
country at the age of three months ; raised m the ghetto of Chicago,
where his father was a barber. In 1905. at the age of 13. he got a
job playing the piano in Carl Laemmles first 5-cent motion picture
house on Chicago s West Side, while continuing his school work. At
tlie age ot 16. he had his own theatre with 144 folding chairs, which
he later increased to .70 and installed an orchestra ; the next year
he bought two more theatres. His main ambition was to become a
lawyer and. graduating from high school at this time, he entered
Northwestern university where he attended nignt school while
continuing his business a^nvities^ In 1914, he acquired a theatre
seating 800 and soon afterwards formed the Amalgamated Theatre
Corporation, About this time he met Barney Balaban, and the
meeting bore fruit in the erection of the Central Park theatre, the
first really fine theatre in Chicago devoted exclusively to films. The
venture secure
 80 The MOTION PICTURE ALMANAC 1929 DAVID Butler
THE HIGH SCHOOL HERO" " PttEP and PEP" "WIN THAT GfRL" "SON
OFANAK'H ppeparatonJ "THE NEWS PARADE" ^CHASING THRU
EUROPE" bank examiner; on Januai-y 2(1. 1914. at the age of 25,
elected president of the Columbia Trust Company of Boston. Mast;. ;
December 4, 1914, exi>osed the collateral loan Gcandal in Boston ;
April. 1P18, resiRned as president of the Columbia Trust Company to
become assistant jreneral manager of the Fall River Shipbuilding:
Corporation ; June 30. 1919, resigned to become manager of
Hayden. Stone & Company ; in 1923 resigned to take up investment
banking ; February, 1926, elected president and chairman of F B O
Pictures Corporation and subsidiaries until December, 1928; and
during 192S chairman of the board of directors of Keith-Albee-
Orpheum Corixjration. and consummated deal whereby Radio
Corporation of America took over F B O and K A O ; February 15,
1923. elected t^pecial advisor of Pathe Exchange, Inc. Director of
New England Fuel & Trant^portation Company. Columbia Trust
Company, Boston Morris Plan. East Boston Company. Dexter School
of Brookline. Mass., and Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of
America. Member of Exchange Club of Boston. Chamber of
Commerce of the United S'tates ; Harvard Club of Boston and New
Yoi-k. Hudson River Country Club of New York, Seaview Golf Club of
Atlantic City. Woodland Golf Club of Boston and Hyannisport Club.
KENT. SIDNEY R. : General manager and member of the board of
directors of Paramount Famous La.sky Corporation ; b, Lincoln. Neb.,
and at the age of 14, just after he had finished grammar school, got
his first job stoking boilers in a greenhouse at $5 a week. From this
humble beginning he has developed a business career which is one
of the most strikingly successful ones, in the annals of the picture
industry. Befoie he was 20 years old he had pushed up in Wyoming
and was occupying a responsible position with the Colorado Fuel and
Iron Comjjany. He was one of an engineering company and he and
five other men were the sole inhabitants of 36 miles of desolate
county. They built their own roads and pipelines, established camjis
and literally oi^ened up territory to civilization and business activity.
In 1912 he went to the Pacific Coast with the American Druggists'
Syndicate. Shortly afterwards he returned East where he became a
salesman at $50 a week. Three months later he wa« the company's
assistant sales manager, then assistant to the president and for
three and one-half years he was virtually in charge of the entire
business. A friend talked to iiim enthusiastically of the motion picture
business. He liketl its prospects and cast his lot with the films with
the old Vitagiaph Comjiany. It was not long after that the Genera!
Film Comiwiny was indicted under the Sherman Law and buried
under judgments aggregating $25,000,000. PVank Hitchcock had the
job of unravelling the tangle and he called Sidney Kent to help him.
The job was cleaned up and Kent walked into the ofhce of Adoli)h
Zukor. ]>r&sident of Famous Players, and sold his services, but not
at a price. That was to be determined if and when he made good.
He went to work in the comliany's administration bureau, and at the
end of eight months was getting $250 a week. His first work, in the
distribution department, was as special district manager of the
territory which included the Kansas City, St. Louis, Omaha and Des
Moines offices, which position he held until May. 1919, when he was
called to the home oftice to become general sales manager. On
January S. 1921, Mr. Zukor apl^ointed him general manager of
distribution and a year later he was elected to the company's board
of directors. In 1926 he was named general manager of the
company. KOHN, RALPH A.: Treasurer of Paramount Famous Lasky
Corporation ; b. Chicago, March 11. 1.S90 ; e. Chicago and New
York public schools, graduating in 1903; was graduated fiom
Townsend high school in 1907, and from New York university, with a
B.S. degree, in 1911; m, Marion Feinberg in 1924 and has two
children. Entered the law ofhce of EIek John Ludvigh as clerk and
attended law school evenings. Admitted to the bar in June, 1913.
Became assistant counsel and assistant secretary of Famous Players
Film Company on its formation in 1913, and assistant secretary and
assistant treasurer of Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation on its
organization in 1916. Continued in this capacity. excei>t during the
war. when he was first a private and then a second lieutenant of the
Signal Corps. United States Army. Returned to Paramount after the
war. and was elected director of the coiiitiany January 31, 1923 :
elected treasurer of Paramount and its subsidiarie." in August. 1927.
Member of City Athletic, Fairview Country. Army and Navy and Friars
clubs. LAEMMLE, CARL: b. Laupheim. Germany, January 17. iMfiS; h.
5 feet o inches: grey hair and blue eyes; w. 140 pounds; p. Rebekka
and Baruch Laemmie, non-professionals ; e. (Germany; m, Recha
Stein of Flieden. Germany, non-professional. Fiom 1SS4 to 1906 he
worked in a drug store in New York, then a department store in
Chicago, then employed on a farm in South Dakota ; returned to
Chicago and went to work for Butler Brothers ; later employed as a
bookkeeper for the wholesale jewelry firm of L. Heller & Company ;
then clerk in the stock yards for Nelson Morris & Company ; also
worked for the firm of Otto Young & Company, wholesale jewelers ;
thence to Oshkosh as bookkeeper in Continental Clothing house, and
after four years was promoted to manager. Back to Chicago in 1906
and intended establishing a chain of 5 and 10-cent stores but
became interested in moving picture theatres instead. Opened his
first theatre, the Whitefront. on Milwaukee avenue. Chicago : two
months later opened his second theatie on Halsted street : then
established the Laemmie Film Service, Chicago ; the next year
(19071. establi.'^hed exchanges in Evansville. Memphis and Omaha,
and in June of that year returneti to Euroi>e for a visit. In 190S
established exchanges in Minneapolis. Portland. Ore., Salt Lake City.
Montreal and Winnipeg. In April. 1909, he quit the Patents Company
and became Hn independent, organized the Imp Com])any
incorporated as "Yankee Films Company;" relea.sed his first picture.
"Hiawatha," 989 feet in length : second release being "Love's
Stratagem." 954 feet in length; in 1909-12 fought Patents Company;
and in May, 1912, Laemmie. Charles Bauman. David Horsley. P. A.
Powers. W. H. Swanson combined their interests an
 1929 The MOTION PICTURE ALMANAC leadership of Mary
Pickford and other celebrities of screen and stape who worked for
him. LASKY, JESSE L. : First vice president in charpe of production of
Paramount Famous L^sky Corporation ; b. San Francisco. Cal. : e.
hinh school of San Francisco. One of the first men from the West
Coast to ko to Alaska at the time of the earliest p:oId rufih and one
of the first hundred to reach Nome, this after a brief I'^portorial
experience on a San Francisco ne\v.si>apei. On his return from
Alaska he became a musician and leader of the Royal Hawaiian Band
of Honolulu. When he came back to the states he capitalized his
experience by associating hims;elf with vaudeville enterprises and
presented a number of important musical acts in association with the
late Henry B. Harris. In fact, L:isky's musical acts are t^till the
recognized vaudeville standards for that character of entertainment.
The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, of which he was president
and which he oriranized in association with Samuel Goldwyn and
Cecil B. DeMille. bepan business in January. 1914. The company
produced several of the famous Belasco dramas inciudinpr "The Rose
of the Rancho." "The Girl of the Golden West." "The Warrens of
Virsrinia," "The Governor's Lady" and "The Woman." Among the stais
who appeared under the Lasky banner were Edward Abeles. Edmund
Breese. Thomas W. Ross, Blanche Sweet. Dust in Far num. Max
Fijjman, RobL*rt EdesonH. B. Warner, the late Theodore Roberts.
Edith Taliaferro, Wallace Eddinjier. Edith Wynne Mat hi son. Victor
Mooie. Mabel Van Buren. House Peters, Charlotte Walker, Ina Claire.
Fannie Ward, Donald Brian, Cariyle Blackwell. Laura Hope Crews,
Rita Jolivet and Geraldine Farrar. When the Famous Players Film
Company and Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company combined in
July. 1916. Lasky was made first vice president of the new
corporation and has continued as such ever since. From the outeet
he hae been in complete charge of the company's production,
dividing his time between the bipr Lasky studio at Hollywood and the
home oflice in New York, where he is in close touch with the
activities of the Eastern studio on Long Island. LEE. ARTHUR A.:
President. AmerAnglo Corporation ; b. Harlem. July 18, 1894 ; e.
public school No. 184 and Stuyvesant high school. Has been in the
motion picture industry for IS years ; started out by roadshowing
one of the first five- reel pictures ever produced. Nat C. Goodwin in
"Oliver Twist," throughout the Dominion of Canada ; one year later
with the General Film Company in Montreal and was later appointetl
manager of their special feature department in Canada j left Canada
and went with the Picture Playhouse Film Company and opened
branch offices for them throughout the United States. Resigned from
this company and went with the Gaumont Company of New York
with headquarters at Flushing. L. I., and resigned from the Gaumont
Company and enlisted in the army. July 1. 1918. Was discharged
from the army December 25. 191S. and went back to the Gaumont
Company until they dissolved their New York corporation. Then
started the Lee Bradfoid Corporation which operated until Mr.
Bradford's death in 1925 at which time the Amer Anglo Corporation
was formed, of which he is president. Also the American
representative of Gainsborough Pictures, Piccadilly Pictures,
Gaumont Company, Ltd., Gaumont British Corporation and Welsh
Pearson Elder Corporation ; also vice president of the Gaumont
British Corporation of Canada, Ltd. : a member of the Motion Picture
club, Westchester Hills Golf club and Canadian club. LUDVIGH. ELEK
JOHN: General counsel. Paramount Famous Lasky Cprporafion ; b.
New York City ; e public schools and graduated from the College of
the City of New York in 1891. Admitted to the bar in 1894: New York
Stale Civil Service Commissioner 1910-12; retired from general
practice of law to devote himself exclusively to general counselship
of Paramount about 10 years ago* MARCUS. LEE: Vice president,
RKO Productions, Inc. : b, Butfalo. N. Y., December 7, 1893; e. public
school and high school in Buffalo. Four years general conti"acting :
in the army for 26 months ; and has been in the motion picture
busine^^s for 10 years. McCONNELL. FRED J. (Mac) : Sales director
of short product and complete service of Universal Pictures
Corporation ; b. Waseca. Minn., October 2.5, 1S82 ; e. Ashland, Wis.,
high school. Chicago Manual Training school and the University of
Wisconsin. Captain of university sunmming team and member of
Chicago Athletic Water Polo Team, and New York Athletic Team.
1916-2:1 ; m. and has two children. A trained lu-wspaper man and
has been connected with the "Chicago Herald." "Chicago Tribune."
"Cleveland News;" four years New York City representative for
"Chicago Herald ;" later in advertising agency field with Kaufman &
Handy Agency and Taylor Critchfield Comjiany. both in Chicago ;
advertising manager "North w&st Agriculturist," farm publication.
Serial representative for Pathe, serial manager for Universal; then to
the Coast; in charge of serial production and Western pictures at
Universal City ; general manager short product for Universal since
1921 with the exception of a year and one-half, during which time
he wa.-i editor and vice president of "Exhibitors' Daily Review" and
an indei)endent producer of Western and dog features for Pathe.
Member ot Wampas, Athletic club, New York, and Elks. METZGER,
LOU B. : General manager of Uni\ersal Pictures Corporation ; b,
Kansas City, Mo.. 1895. When barely 17 years of age. he undertook
his first job in a film exchange, that of his uncle, in Portland, Ore., as
an inspector when that organization handled the Laemmle Film
Service. He soon graduated into the salcj end of the business and
remained in that territory until the war when he resigned and
entered the army, joining the 81st field artillery of the Sth regular
division. Starting in the ranks he rose to be chief brigade telephone
officer of the sth field artillery brigade. He has successfully filled
every job in a branch office working in Kansas City and in New York.
Became special representative for "The Heart of Humanity,"
Universal's great war picture; called to New York in 1920 to be a
special salesman for the Stage Woman's War Relief put out by
Universal. He attained national reputation through conception and
execution of the complete service contract. Since that time he has
been located at the home office in New York City. At the end of 1925
he was made sales director for the Western division. The success of
his division in completing long term contracts with Balaban & Katz
and other circuit bookings was largely due to his leadership. Upon
the eve of his departure for Europe in June. 1926. Carl Laemmle
appointed him general sales manager in charge of distribution
throughout the United States and Canada. When E. H. Goldstein
resigned in October. 1928. Metzger was made general manager of
the corporation. MEYER, FRANK A. : Assistant secretary. Paramount
Famous Lasky Corporation ; b, St. Louis. Enterwl banking business in
1908 ; a year later he became connected with the Cameraphone
Company. New York City, one of the first talking i>icture comjianies
which numbered in its roster of stars some of the best known names
then on the legitimate stage ; in 1909 returned to St. Louis where he
formed an association with the Western Film Exchange Company,
later being sent to New York to ojien a branch office for that
company ; among his clients was Adoljih Zukor who booked film
from the Western exchange for his Comedy theatre. Through
business dealings Mr. Meyer and Mr. Zukor came to know and like
each other with the result that in 1912 when Famous Players was
organized. Mr. Meyer was taken into the new company. He has
served in many capacities with Famous and is now general manager
of the Paramount laboratory and general purchasing agent in
addition to his executive duties. MOELLER. A. J.: b. Detroit. Mich..
July S. 1889; e, public school. From 1904-1911 was on the stage in
vaudeville and stock: in 1911 purchased the Temple theatre, Howell.
Mich., and sold theatre in 1914 to become a'^sociated with W. S.
Butterfield Theatrical Enterprises at Saginaw. Mich. ; resigned in
1915 to supervise construction and become managing director of
Theatre de Luxe, Detroit. Mich. : resigned in 191(1. During the
period of years from 1913 to 1919 was secretary of the M'chigan
Exhibitors League and Micbigan Exhibitors Association. In 1920
ajipointed general manager of Michigan Exhibitors Association, and
efi'ected its reorganization to the Motion Picture Theatre Owners of
Michigan ; resigned in 1921 upon ajipointment as general manager
the Motion Picture Theatre Owners of America, and resigned in 1924
to organize Moeller Theatre Service as personal representative for
theatre owners and theatre owner organizations ; discontinued
service in 1926 upon election as president of the American Cinema
As=ociation and resigned in 1927 to proluce and distribute features
and short subjects, pai'ticularly screen adaptations of the jwems by
Edgar A. Guest. In 1928 added the production and distribution of
talking pictures and sales and distribu'ion of talking picture
equinment to other activities under the name of Talking Picture
Distributors. MORRIS. SAM E.i Vice President of Warner Brothers: b.
Oil City, Pa.: e. Cleveland. O. When he finished his schooling he went
with the American Tobacco Comoany and as foreign manager for
that concern travpl*»d all nvpr the world. A little later he settled in
Cleveland where he acquired the Home theatre and two or three
other houses in the same city. It was during this time that he was
elected chairman of the film committee of the Cleveland Chamber of
Commerce and his work in this connection eventually developed the
basic idea of film arbitration boards now so successfully in operation
throughout the country. From exhibitor, he became an exchange
manager in Cleveland for the World Wide organization ; then came
to New York as vice president and general manager of Select
Pictuies Corporation. Eight years ago he came to Warner Brothers as
head of distribution. One of his most notable accomplishments was
the reorganization of the selling force when Warner Brothers
acMuired the old Vitagraph Comi)any. More recently his efficient
sales methods have been devoted to the popularizing of Vitaphone
talking pictures. MURDOCK, JOHN J.: President of Pathe Exchanges,
Inc.. and member of the board of directors of Radio-Keith-Orpheum
Corporation. Began his career as a factor in vaudeville 33 years ago
when he launched, managed, directed and brought to phenomenal
success the memorable Masonic "Temple Roof theatre of Chicago.
That achievement, logical, cumulative and enduring, made him a
leading spirit in the inevitable tendency to nationalize vaudeville as
the favorite American form of amusement and to bring him into
executive and managerial contact with the late B. F. Keith and the
present E. F. Albee, founders and steadfast promoters of the swiftly
expanding institution of American vaudeville. His advent to New York
21 years ago, added a newly dynamic influence to major vaudeville.
He was one of the first theatrical managers to recognize the novelty,
the attractiven&ss and the growing possibilities of the motion
pictures. When the miracles of radio, with its accompanying
experiments in television, sound-pictures and the Photophone, were
first realized, he immediately became a student and enthusiast of
these new forms of amusement combining all of the arts and
sciences available for vaudeville. Has three personal hobbies, oi-
diveisions. wholly detached from the theatrical business. They are
the cultivation of flowers — especially orchids — the collection (by
hearsay) of authentic old-time stories, and the scientific fight against
cancer. NEEPER, CREED A.: b, Loogootee, HI.; e, public school.
Farina. 111., Marion Norman College. Marion. Ind., Brown's Business
College. Centralia. III., and graduated from the University of Denver,
Denver. Col. ; entered United States Forest Service in 1911. Became
assistant purchasing agent of the United Stat»; Department of
Agriculture in 1924 ; resigned from the department of agriculture to
become associated with the Harold Lloyd Corporation in 1924; and
was made sales manager for the corporation in 1928. O'TOOLE, M.
J.: b, Scranton, Pa.; m, and has four children, two sons and two
daughters. One son a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania,
department of mechanical and electrical engineering ; another a
medical student at Georgetown university at Washington, D. C. Both
daughters attending girls' seminaries. Apprenticed to the machinist
trade at 13 year.-: of age ; became a journeyman machinist and in
that capacity was in the service of the Lackawanna Railroad
Company and American Locomotive ; reporter for one year, editor
for about 24 years of different daily and other newspapers in
Scranton. Wilkes-Barre and other cities in Pennsylvania. Handled
legislative work and specialized in political writing ; manager of a
pleasure park for two years ; then became identified with the
Comerford Theatre Company in 1920 and is still affiliated with that
indenendent circuit. Elected president of the Motion Picture Theatre
Owners nf Annerica in 1924 ; elected secretary and business
manager in 1927 and re-elected in 1928. Has also bsen chairman of
national public service, national legislative and other committees of
that organization and has handled considerable business for the
theatre owners at Washington and state capitals. Is a member of the
New York Press Club. New York Athletic Club. New York Lodtre of
Moose. Tyiweraphical Union. Knights of Columbus. E
 82 The MOTION PICTURE ALMANAC 1929 ALA/V ROSCOE
general commercial manager. Western Electric Company, 1924-26;
general manager, vice president and director. Electrical Research
Products, Inc.. 1927 ; president and director. Electrical Retiearch
Products. Inc.. 1928 Director New Haven hot;pital : past president
New Haven Chaml>er of Commerce ; director American Arbitration
Association. Member of A.S.M.E., Soc. Ind. Engrs., Soc. Naval
Architects and Engineers, Taylor Society (past president). Member of
University club (New York), Army and Navy. Navy Athletic
association. Embassy (New York and London). New Haven Country
club. Lawn club. Graduates Club association (New Haven. Conn.).
Lives at 77 Edgehill road, New Haven, Conn. QUIGLEY, GEORGE E.:
b. Weehawken. N. J., September 17. 18S6 ; e. public school and high
school, the College of the City of New York and the law school of the
New York university, being graduated from the latter institution in
1906 ; m. Louise Denio in 19Ui and has two 6on.s. aged respectively
17 and 10. Associated with various prominent lawyers from 1906-10.
including James Troy and Asa Bird Gardiner. Practiced law
independently in 191018 : then became a member of the legal
department of Western Electric Company, Inc., later becoming
assistant general attorney of that company and of its associated
company, Graybar Electric Company, and general attorney of
Electrical Research Products. Inc. Continued association with the
Western Electric Company and its subsidiary companies until
October, 1927, at which time he became vice president and general
manager of the Vitaphone Corporation, also a director of that
company and of Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. Resigned as director
of Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc.. December, 192S, becoming vice
president and director of First National Pictures, Inc., director of
Stanley Company of America and Stanley-Mark Strand Corporation.
Is a member of the Alumni Association of New York university,
American Bar Association. Mystic Tie Lodge No. 72, A. F. & M.. of
which he is past master. Jerusalem Chapter No. 8, R._ A. M.. and
various other organizations. Resides at Bernardsville, N. J. RAMSAYE,
TERRY: Editor-in-chief of nondramatic production for Pathe : b,
Tonganoxie. Kaji.. November 2, 1885 : e, in Kansas and
Massachusetts ; first position with the engineering department of the
Bell Telephone Company and the Western Electric Company ; in
1905 joined the editorial staff of the "Kansas City Star and Times,"
and was subsequently connected with various newspapers a-s
feature writer and editor, including the "Leavenworth Times," the
"Omaha Bee." the "St. Paul Pioneer Press," the "St. Paul Dispatch,"
the Associated Press, the "Chicago Evening American." Universal
News Service and the "Chicago Tribune." The "Chicago Tribune's"
adoption of the motion picture serial for circulation exploitation
brought him into contact with the screen industry. He became the
advertising and publicity director of the Mutual Film Corporation in
1915 and there founded the Screen Telegram, a newsreel of
conspicuous success through the World War. Subsequently, he joined
Samuel L. Rothafel's staff at the Rialto and Rivoli theatres on
Broadway. In 1919. he. in collaboration with Ray Hall, now editor of
Pathe News, launched Kinograms. In 1920 Ramsay e cut all official
connections with Broadway, and in the remoteness of a Long Island
farm, engaged in writing for various magazines, meanwhile carrying
through to completeneri> his two volume history of the motion
picture. "A Million and One Nights," a labor of some five years. Also
produced an array of adventure and scenic pictures for the
Associated Screen News, Ltd., of Canada, and edited various feature
productions, principally expeditionary and adventure releases,
including "The Cruise of the Speejacks" and "Grass" for Paramount,
"Martin Johnson's African Hunt" for Metro, and the current
roadshow, "Simba." With the advent of the Kennedy-Brown
administration at Pathe. he was given his present editorial post, in
charge of non-dramatic releases, both sound and silent, meanwhile
electing to personally edit Pathe Review, to make it a vehicle of a
new and somewhat aggressively modern journalistic expression on
the screen. REISMAN. PHIL: General sales manager. Pathe
Exchange, Inc. : b. St. Paul, Minn.. September 14. 189(1 ; e. Central
high school and St. Paul College of Law ; m. and has two children. In
1917 became salesman for Triangle, and a year later joined the
Goldwyn sales staff, I'eturning to Triangle a year later as manager of
the Milwaukee branch. His next step was with the Hodkinson
organization as manager in Minneapolis. In 1920 he become
salesman for Paramount. Six months later he was made manager of
their Minneapolis exchange and in 1922 was advanced to district
manager, sujiervising Minneapolis, Omaha. Dee Moines and Sioux
Falls. After two years success as such. Paramount transferred him to
Canada as general manager in that territory. In June, 1925. he was
brought to New York acting as sales manager of the Eastern division
and remained there until May. 1927, when he accepted his present
position with Pathe as its general sales manager. Lives in New
Rochelle, N. Y. ROGERS, CHARLES (BUDD) : Vice president Lumas
Film Corporation and Gotham Productions. Inc. Originally in the
automotive industries. Having established unusual record as sales
executive in this field, decided to join hands with the film business to
apply successful methods used in former business. Joined Lumas
organization at its inception, five years ago. ROSENZWEIG, CHARLES
: General sales manager. R K O Productions ; b, Bucharest. Rumania.
December 15. 1894: eighteen months old when his i:»arents came
to New York ; e. public schools of New York and graduated from
evening high school ; married : hy, selling of motion pictures.
Started his business career with the Ben Hampton Advertising
Agency : then went with the United Cigar Stores ; left their employ
to join the American Tobacco Company as division manager ;
entered the film business at the Big U Exchange as a salesman. After
18 months as salesman, was made manager of the Big U Exchange:
two years later was made Eastern division manager of the Big U.
Four years later, he joined the old F B O Pictures Corporation as
manager of the New York exchange : and four years later he was
made Eastern division manager for F B O and at the merger of the
radio interests with F B O into R K O Productions was made general
sales manager of R K O. Belongs to the Motion Picture club, the
Masonic Lodge and the Shrinfe and Level club. SARNOFF. DAVID:
Chairman of the board of directors of Radio-Keith-Orpheum
Corporation ; b, Uzlian, Russia. 1892 : came with his parents to New
York City in 1901 : e, publij schools ; m. Lizette Hermant, July 4.
1917, and has three children, Robert William, Edward and Thomas
Warren. First position as messenger boy for the Commercial Cable
Comixiny : later became junior operator for the Marconi Wireless ;
gained fame and promotion by sticking to his post atop
Wanamaker's for 72 hours taking the reports of the sinking of the
Titanic. Became commercial manager of
 1929 The MOTION PICTURE ALMANAC 83 the Marconi
company and when that orKanization was absorbed by the Radio
Corporation of America was appointed to the same pot^ition with
the new organization. Is also a graduate electrical engineer of the
Pratt institute. Brooklyn : has the honorary degree of doctor of
science from St. Lawrence university, Canton. N. Y. ; Poland
conferred the order of "Polonia Re*:titutia" in 191S; holds a
commission ae lieutenant colonel of the U. S. A. signal corps ; and
i.> a member of the Lotus club, the Institute of Radio Engineers, the
Railroad club, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the
Radio Club of America, the American Geographical society, the
Economic Club of New York, the Chamber of Commerce of New York
State, the Epsilon chapter of Omicron Alphu Tau and other scientific
and social organizations. SAWYER. LEROY P. : Vice president of RCA
Photophone. Inc.; b. Schoolcraft, Mich.. December 26, 1878 ; e,
graduate of the University of Nebraska. Has been general manager
of the Buckeye Lamp division of the General Electric Mazda Lamp
interests in Cleveland ; later chairman of the sales organization of
the National Lamp Works, and for past two years has been in the
New York office of the company in connection with administration
and executive direction. SAX. SAM: President. Gotham Productions:
started as sjiecial sales representative for Carl Laemmle ; then
general salefi manager of Select Pictures ; later becoming sales
manager of Robertson-Cole. Then organized own distributing
company, five years ago, the Lumas Film Corporation ; following
which he organized his own producing company. Gotham
Production^. Inc.. and is pre^^ident of each. SCHAEFER. GEORGE
J.: Division sales manager. Paramount Famou? Lasky Corporation ; b.
Brooklyn. N. Y., November 5. 18SS ; e. Brooklyn public and high
schools and HatTley institute. Entered business with an automobile
manufacturing concern remaining until 1914 ; started in picture
business as secretary to L. J. Selznick remaining with him until 1916
when he joined World Film Company as assistant sales manager ;
promoterofes5ional. Started out as a druggist ; later became owner
of an amusement park. His introduction to motion pictures was while
he was active in the management of his amusement park through
the late Marcus Loew. Loew sought space at Fort George for the
showing of moving pictures in a car on the park grounds. Schenck
realized the motion pictures' possibilities in catering to the masses,
and as he was always a partisan of popular amusements he invested
with Loew and in time became one of the chief figures in the Loew
Theatrical Enterprises. Not wishing to remain when the real struggle
for supremacy should start. Schenck purchased the screen rights to
a magazine story and engaged Roland West, who still is one of
Schenck "s associates, to direct the picture. Having disposed of his
first picture to the Fox Film Corporation on terms which netted him a
moderate profit, he entered upon i)roduction in earnest and soon
attracted the attention of the entire industry by his happy selection
of stories, stars and directors. In addition, he is chairman of the
board of directors of United Artists, which includes stars and
producers .^uch as Mary Pickford. Douglas Fairbanks. Charlie
Chaplin, Norma Talmadge. Buster Keaton John Barrymore. Samuel
Goldwyn. Morris Gest and others. The late Rudolph Valentino was
one of the United Artists stars. Schenck also served for three terms
as president of the West Coast Producers' Association and on retiring
from office was presented with a bronze plaque extolling him and
paying tribute to his services to the motion picture industry.
SCHNITZER. JOSEPH I.: President. RKO Productions : b. Pittsburgh,
Pa.. March 14. 18S7 : e. schools in Pittsburgh : married and has two
children. A veteran of the motion picture industry, having entered it
21 years ago, in his twentieth year, as manager of the Des Moines
branch of the Pittsburgh Calcium Light & Film Company. Within the
next nine years, he was at^i^ociated with the MuUin Film Service as
manager of their Minneapolis branch and later became general
manager of the same company with head(iuarters in Syracuse. N. Y.
Two years later he was made general sales manager of the
company. From 1920 until 1922 he held the post of president of
Equity Pictures, going from Etjuity to the vice presidency of F B O. Is
a member of the Rancho Golf Club, the Ambassador Athletic Club of
Los Angeles, the Oak Ridge Golf and the Beach Point Club of New
York, the Motion Picture Club. Lives at 262 Central Park WesL. New
York. SCOTT. HARRY: Short subject sales manager. Pathe Exchange,
Inc. For a number of years he was actively identified with theatrical
interests and for five years was press rei>resentative for Ringling
Brothers' circus. As a circus press agent he traveled to all parts of
the country and became intimately acquainted with newspar)er men,
theatrical men and motion liicture men in practically every city and
town. Leaving the circus business for motion pictures, he made his
first film affiliation with George Kleine. for whom he managed branch
offices in Columbus, Dallas. Boston and Philadelphia. Later promoted
to the post of Eastern division sales manager for the Kleine
organization, which he held for some time. At the termination of his
connection with Kleine. he joined the Goldwyn organization, for
which he served ai^ special representative. Later he joined First
National and for four years managed its Detroit office, resigning to
become Detroit branch manager for Pathe, He ret^igned shortly
after to accept the position of New York branch manager for
Educational, and later was made manager of distribution for Ritz-
Carlton Pictures, from which post he joined Pathe as feature sales
manager in October, 1923. From the past of feature sales manager
he was appointed general sales manager in August, 1925. and in
1926 put into effect his famous "personal contact sales plan." At the
time of the merger of P D C and Pathe he assumed the position
which he now holds. SHEEHAN, WINFIELD: Vice president and
general manager. Fox Film Corporation ; b, Buffalo, N. Y. : e. in that
city. Volunteered and fought all of the campaigns of the
SpanishAmerican war with the first regiment of United States troops
to land in Cuba. Having had a taste of newspaper writing during his
school days, he took up this work in earnest, working at various
times on the "New York Journal." the "American," and the "World."
Was taken away from newspaper work to become secretary to
Rhinelander Waldo, fire commissioner of New York, who later
became police commissioner. While on this job William Fox. looking
about for a capable young energetic man. chose Sheehan as one of
his aides and from this point on his success was rapid. A few
activities since joining the Fox Film Corporation, which led to his
being designated general manager of this corporation, are: building
up of the earliest Fox studio in New York City to supply the needs of
the Fox chain of theatres ; solving formidable problems of
distribution, establishing branch offices in the principal cities of the
United States and Canada ; one of the first to open up foreign
countries to American films, recognizing the value of markets abroad
; invading South America and later the untapped fields of Australia
and the Far Ea.st : promoting of Fox News, an achievement in a
long-established competitive field, with more than 1.100 cameramen
throughout the world daily submitting the material from which a
single reel is assembled semi- weekly under the management of
Truman H. Talley at New York headquarters ; organizing Hollywood
studios, the William Fox studio and the Fox Hills studios, including
Movietone City which was dedicated to the achievement of sound
productions in October, 1928. SKIRBOLL. JOSEPH S. : Sales manager
of World Wide Pictures, Inc. ; b. Pittsburgh. October 12. 188lt : e. in
public and high schools: m. and lives in New York City. Entered the
picture business in 1905. operating theatres at New Kensington and
Taraunta, Pa. : then joined Harr>- Davis and John P. Harris as the
manager for their theatrical enterprises. Entered the distribution
business as a district manager in charge of Pittsburgh and Chicago
territory for Alco ; next joined Metro as district manager for the
Central and Mid West territories. Joined First National and was
successively the manager of the Pittsburgh branch, later becoming
West Coast district manager and thence to Europe as general
representative. In 1928 joined World Wide Picture; as SA\e&
manager. STARR. HERMAN: Pre.sidrnt. First National Pictures: b.
Camden, N. J.. September 30. 1898: e. public schools (jf Camden.
Nine years ago he became associated with Warners, a connection he
retained up to the time of his installation as president of First
National. His main hobby is work and owing to concentrated effort,
combined with exceptional ability, he rose to a place of high
executive reEiX)nsibility at Warner Brothers. Hie present home is 135
Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. STUBER. WILLIAM G. : President of
Eastman Kodak Company : b. Louisville, Ky., Ain'il 9. 1S64 ; e, j)ublic
schools of Louisville. His natural inclination toward photography was
inherited from his father, Michael Stuber, who jtioneered in the art
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

textbookfull.com