“Is the Catholic Church Bigger Than Francis X. Bushman?”

Fame is fleeting, and never more so than for movie stars. A good example is Francis X. Bushman (1883-1966), one of the silent era’s biggest stars. Long before Clark Gable was named “King of the Movies,” Bushman first held the title. Before Alan Ladd stood on milk crates to make himself look taller, Bushman pioneered the technique. Before Sylvester Stallone, Bushman was the first actor to wow moviegoers with his physique. And he was also at the center of what may have been Hollywood’s first scandal.

Born in Baltimore, the grandson of Irish immigrants, Francis Xavier Bushman graduated from Immaculate Conception Parochial School before going to work at fifteen. He joined a local bodybuilding club, and eventually he found work as a sculpting model. From there he got into small stage roles until he got into film in 1911. By 1920, he had made some 175 movies. A newspaper obituary described him as “the first great romantic leading man of films.”

During his heyday, Bushman drove a limo with his named embossed in gold on the doors. He traveled everywhere with five Great Danes (he owned nearly three hundred dogs altogether). At the height of his fame, he received thousands of fan letters, mostly from women. It was he who donated the land for Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. He once claimed, somewhat inaccurately, that he was in bronze or marble in more American cities than any other man.

Eventually Bushman fell in love with co-star Beverley Baine, and he wanted to get a divorce from his first wife, with whom he had five children. His colleagues advised him not to, arguing that he would lose fans and money, but nothing worked. Finally, his manager told him that the Catholic Church wouldn’t let him get divorced. Bushman looked at him in disbelief and asked, “Is the Catholic Church bigger than Francis X. Bushman?”

Not long thereafter, Bushman’s career went downhill, due to a variety of circumstances. Father Gilbert Hartke, who taught theater at Catholic University, grew up with the Bushman children in Chicago. In his autobiography, he writes: “People would not accept a divorced man or woman in show business in that period shortly after World War I.” The New York Times once called Bushman and Bayne “the Romeo and Juliet of the moving picture world.” But soon things went sour, and she called him a “vain, egotistical monster.”

In 1926, Bushman attempted a comeback as the villain in Ben-Hur (remade in 1959 with Charlton Heston). But his matinee idol days were past. Still, he kept busy on film, radio, and television, remarrying twice more. His last appearance was in the TV show Batman, as Mr. Van Jones, a silent film collector. It took place just before his death in 1966. His gravestone reads “FRANCIS X. BUSHMAN—KING OF THE MOVIES.”