Maibelle Heikes Justice

Maibelle Heikes Justice (1871 — March 11, 1926) was an American novelist and screenwriter.

Maibelle Heikes Justice, from a 1916 publication

Early life

Maibelle Heikes Justice was born in Logansport, Indiana, the daughter of James Monroe Justice and Grace E. Heikes Justice (later Grace Justice-Hankins). Her father was a lawyer and politician, and an American Civil War veteran.[1] She was educated in New York City and Philadelphia, and spent two years with the military, for which she was given honorary rank of captain in the U.S. Army.[2]

Career
A movie poster for The Glory of Yolanda (1917) crediting Maibelle Heikes Justice under title

Justice was credited as a writer on over 40 silent films between 1913 and 1925, most of them shorts. Among her notable films was The Post-Impressionists (1913; Hardee Kirkland, dir.), a comedy based on her visit to the Armory Show that year.[3] The Song in the Dark (1914) was about a blind canary and her blind owner.[4]

Her Husband's Honor (1918, working title The Gadabout) starred a fellow Logansport native, actress Edna Goodrich.[5] She visited the "death house" at Sing Sing prison to research her screenplay for Who Shall Take My Life? (1917), a drama about the execution of an innocent man.[6] In 1917 she was commissioned to write a movie about the World War I work of the Red Cross.[7]

Justice published fiction in The Cosmopolitan and other national publications.[8][9] She also wrote a novel, Durand of the Bad Lands, which was adapted for film in 1917, and again in 1925.[10]

Personal life

Her sister Anne Shymer, a chemist and president of the United States Chemical Company, was among the passengers who died in the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915.[11][12] Maibelle Heikes Justice died in 1926, aged 55 years.[13]

Justice inherited a large portrait of a young Abraham Lincoln, The Railsplitter (1860), from her father.[14] She donated it to the Chicago History Museum, where it remains on display.[15]

References
  1. Jehu Z. Powell, History of Cass County Indiana (Lewis Publishing 1913): 238-239.
  2. "Scenario Writers and Editors". Motion Picture Studio Directory and Trade Annual: 289. 1921 – via Ancestry.com.
  3. Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915, Volume 2, Part 2 (University of California Press 1994): 268. ISBN 9780520085343
  4. "Miss Justice in Wider Field" The Moving Picture World (June 24, 1916): 2226.
  5. "Edna Goodrich Starts 'The Gadabout'" Motography (June 8, 1918): 1092.
  6. Daniela Bajar and Livia Bloom, "Maibelle Heikes Justice" Women Film Pioneers Project.
  7. "Red Cross Movie Drama Latest Idea of World War" Pittsburgh Daily Post (August 5, 1917): 31. via Newspapers.comopen access
  8. Maibelle Heikes Justice, "The Other Man" The Cosmopolitan (May 1913): 787-796.
  9. Maibelle Heikes Justice, "The Wasp" Green Book Magazine (August 1909): 322-331.
  10. Larry Langman, A Guide to Silent Westerns (Greenwood Publishing 1992): 128. ISBN 9780313278587
  11. "Anne Shymer", The Lusitania Resource.
  12. "Tiding of Lusitania Message from Grave?" Los Angeles Times (May 9, 1915): II1.
  13. "Dead Woman Named Heir" El Paso Evening Post (October 17, 1930): 1. via Newspapers.comopen access
  14. "Rare Lincoln Painting Carried in Civil War" New York Times (February 13, 1916): SM7.
  15. The Railsplitter (1860), Chicago History Museum.
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