Conrad Nagel: Iowa's First Hollywood Star

Born in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1897, Conrad Nagel was one of Hollywood’s original leading men. He wasn’t the wild or brooding type. He knew where the exits were and how to use them.

Nagel got his start in silent films, where his calm confidence stood out against the flailing theatrics of the era. In The Mysterious Lady (1928), he held his own opposite Greta Garbo. Critics called him “the actor with the thoughtful eyes.” One said, “Nagel brings sincerity to roles that would collapse under a lesser man’s charm.” Another dubbed him “Hollywood’s gentleman.”

 

When sound arrived, his low, clear voice made him one of the few silent stars to easily transition into talkies. He starred in The Divorcee (1930) with Norma Shearer, a role that earned him an Academy Award nomination. MGM used him wherever they needed moral steadiness: the lawyer, husband, and suitor who  seemed too honorable for his own good.

 

In the 1930s and 1940s as movie roles disappeared, Nagel moved to radio. He hosted and acted in dozens of radio dramas. His voice became a familiar presence in living rooms across the country. He co-created and hosted The Silver Theatre, a prestige anthology that ran nearly a decade. He loved radio because “you could play any role and never worry if your hair was in place.” It was steady work, too, as younger stars crowded him out of Hollywood.

Eerie Iowa Booke Review

 

Iowa looks calm. Cornfields. Church bells. Pie contests. Then Eerie Iowa comes along and says, “Sure, but have you met the monsters?”

Michael McCarty and Bruce Walters take you down the gravel roads of the Hawkeye State and into the dark. They find a winged thing glowing over Van Meter in 1903. A lake monster curling under Okoboji. Bigfoot, naturally, tromping around Calhoun County like he owns the place.

 

It’s not just stories—they dig up history, too. Facts. Names. Newspaper clippings. All the little details that make you wonder if maybe it really did happen.

 

There’s a Kafka inspired sculpture that looks like it might start whispering to you if you stare too long. And Black Angels straight out of Hell that portend death if you look at them wrong.

 

The writing? Sharp. Weird. A little wicked. The kind that makes you smile right before the hair on your neck stands up. And the pictures. Bruce Walter’s drawings are haunting. Somewhat scary.

Robert Ray: The Iowa Governor Who Chose People Over Politics

Robert D. Ray was born in Des Moines in 1928. After graduating from Roosevelt High in 1946, he joined the army and served in occupied Japan with the military police.

When he came home, he went to Drake on the G.I. Bill, earned his law degree, and married his college sweetheart, Billie Lou Joyce. They settled in Des Moines, where Ray built a small law practice and a reputation for honesty and staying calm under pressure.

Politics followed. He became chairperson of the Iowa Republican Party in 1963, modernized it, raised money, and recruited new candidates, earning respect from both moderates and conservatives. Reporters called him “unflappable” and “impossible to dislike.”

America was a mess in 1968—Vietnam, protests, assassinations. Iowa Republicans needed someone calm. They picked Robert Ray. He won. Then he won again. And again. Five times. Fourteen years as governor.

People called him “the conscience of Iowa.” Others called him dull. He didn’t care. He governed like a man tuning an engine—carefully, quietly, and with purpose.

Then he did something that took real guts.

Claire Dodd: Iowa's Forgotten Hollywood Star

Born in Baxter, Iowa, in 1908, Claire Dodd was one of Hollywood’s coolest blondes—sharp, stylish, and unshakable. She didn’t play innocent. She played a woman who already knew the score.

 A Warner Bros. contract player in the early 1930s, Dodd became a familiar face in the fast, clever world of pre-Code Hollywood. She held her own against leading men like James Cagney and William Powell, delivering lines with a calm authority that made her unforgettable. In Footlight Parade (1933), she was the poised foil to Cagney’s fire. In The Kennel Murder Case, she matched Powell’s wit and charm line for line.

 

Critics called her “elegant,” “icy,” and “wickedly intelligent.” One reviewer said Dodd “could silence a room with a single glance.” Another called her “the best-dressed woman in the picture—and the smartest.” Her roles as secretary, socialite, and schemer gave her a reputation as the thinking man’s femme fatale.

 

When the Production Code cracked down in 1934, the daring parts that suited her best disappeared. “Too sophisticated for the new moral order,” one trade paper said. Still, Dodd kept working—appearing in over sixty films throughout the 1930s and early 1940s.

Susan Glaspell Quote

 

Murder At The Handy Grocery Store Davenport Iowa 1913

Floyd Sheets

February 5, 1913. Davenport was half-frozen and half-drunk. Somewhere on Rockingham Road, a boy with a .38 in his pocket decided he’d had enough of being hungry.

The Handy Grocery was open late. Ernest Dalldorf, twenty, and Clyde Jager, seventeen, were closing up when a skinny shape shuffled through the snow and pressed his face to the glass.

 

Dalldorf felt sorry for him, and unlocked the door. “Come on in and warm up.”

 

The boy stepped inside, pulled a gun, and shouted, “Throw up your hands.”

 

That’s how fast life goes sideways.

 

He shoved them against the counter, grabbed what he could from their pockets. Then nodded at the cash register.

 

Dalldorf raised one hand, pretending to open it. He grabbed a bread case with the other and hurled it. The boy panicked. Three shots cracked through the store.

 

Billy McClain: Iowa's Lost Movie Star

Billy McClain

Billy McClain was born in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1866—black, broke, and stubborn. He learned fast that the world wasn’t built for him, so he built his own. By his teens, he was blowing a cornet in Indianapolis and running with minstrel shows, where the jokes were racist and the pay barely real. He played along, twisted the punchlines, and made the crowd laugh on his terms. One critic said he had “a grin that could tame a mob and a wit that could cut glass.”

 He joined the Sells Brothers Circus in the 1880s—the first Black acrobat they’d ever hired. He flew through the air while white audiences stared, waiting for him to fall. He never did. He smiled down at them and took the applause. A newspaper out of Chicago called him “the colored marvel of the season.”

 

Billy produced, wrote, danced, and hustled until he ran his own shows. In 1895 he launched Black America in Brooklyn—five hundred Black performers, choirs, brass bands, soldiers, dancers. The press called it thunder. One reporter said, “The sound rolled like a storm across Ambrose Park—pure jubilation, raw and proud.”

Luther College. Decorah, Iowa

Luther College. Decorah, Iowa (circa 1910)

Luther College started with a few stubborn Norwegians and a dangerous idea in 1861—to build a college out on the frontier, a place where faith and intellect could share the same bottle. They didn’t have money or textbooks, but they had conviction, and that’s almost the same thing when you’re carving a dream out of the prairie.

The first setup was a makeshift operation in Halfway Creek, Wisconsin. Wooden desks, cold rooms, a lot of prayer, and probably the lingering smell of boiled coffee. When the Civil War blew the country apart, they moved west—to Decorah, Iowa.

Main Hall was the only building those first years. Students froze through morning lectures, studied by candlelight, and worked the land during the day.

From those rough beginnings came a kind of beautiful madness—a belief that knowledge mattered, faith could keep you upright, and Iowa, of all places, could produce a revolution of the mind. Luther College didn’t just survive—it grew teeth.

Lillian Russell Quote

 

What Iowans Were Reading in 1876

 

In 1876, books were like pets. You didn’t have many, and if you lost one, you never got over it.

 Iowans were still clutching Uncle Tom’s Cabin like it was the last moral compass on earth. It had been out for years, but everyone was still crying over it. Pretending they’d learned something about humanity. Spoiler: they hadn’t.

 

Little Women was everywhere. Every girl wanted to be Jo; nobody wanted to be Beth (because, you know, death). The boys pretended they didn’t read it while secretly flipping through for the fight scenes. Louisa May Alcott had basically hacked the female brain: and given them sisterhood, heartbreak, and just enough sass to make it feel rebellious.

 

Charles Dickens still haunted America. Christmas wasn’t Christmas without A Christmas Carol, and you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a copy of David Copperfield or A Tale of Two Cities. Every time someone picked one up, they said, “I’ll just read a few pages.” Three weeks later, they were still trapped in Victorian fog.

Actress Louise Carver: Almost Famous In Early Hollywood

Louise Carver was born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1869. By her early twenties, she was touring vaudeville circuits, singing, acting, and making audiences laugh. Variety called her early act with Tom Murry “great,” which, in 1912 theater-speak, meant the crowd didn’t throw anything.

Louise had a presence that filled a room before she even opened her mouth. She could sing, shout, and make a joke land so hard the audience forgot who else was on the bill. When silent movies came along, she jumped in. Her first film, The Goose Girl (1915), launched a screen career that ran for decades.

 

By the 1920s, she was everywhere—IMP pictures, Vitagraph reels, and Mack Sennett comedies. Variety said she “couldn’t take a beauty prize, but she was a scream,” which is probably the most honest compliment Hollywood ever printed. She knew she wasn’t an ingenue. She was a scene-stealer, the woman with the big expression and perfect timing who made the funny parts actually funny.

 

In The Extra Girl (1923) she was the sharp-tongued wardrobe mistress, in the Lizzies of the Field shorts (1925) a chaos expert, and in The Cat and the Canary (1927), critics said she brought “real humor to the horror.” United Artists’ press book for Hallelujah, I’m a Bum (1933) listed her among “the feminine side of comedy,” proof she could still steal focus long after silent film stars had vanished.

Arthur Davison Ficke Quote

 

Murder in Lyons, Iowa The Death of Fritz Dolph

Irene Dolph

The morning of February 29, 1908, started cold and gray over Lyons, Iowa. By noon, seventeen-year-old Irene Dolph had killed her husband, Fritz, and was halfway to Joliet, Illinois, telling her mother she was “in trouble.” That was an understatement.

Her mother, Ella Goldsmith, didn’t blink. Trouble had been the family business for years. She bought two train tickets back to Clinton and found a lawyer before the sheriff even heard the name “Dolph.” It was the most organized thing either of them had ever done.

 

Attorney F. L. Holleran told Sheriff T. J. Burke that Fritz Dolph “either murdered himself or was murdered.” The sheriff found out quickly which one it was. The Dolph house smelled like beer and gunpowder. Fritz was on the floor in a mess of sheets, his skull blown apart. A shotgun leaned against the wall with one shell missing. The Daily Times described it as “blowing out his brains,” which was accurate but not helpful to anyone trying to eat breakfast that morning.

 

Everyone in town agreed: Irene did it.

Chief Keokuk And The Price of Survival

Keokuk (George Catlin, 1834-1836)

Keokuk was born into chaos.

Everything around him was collapsing — the land, the treaties, the tribes themselves. The frontier was spilling over its banks, and white cabins were rising like weeds along every river bend. The whiskey flowed cheaply and steadily. Guns changed hands faster than words. The Americans were coming, whether or not anyone liked it.

He was born somewhere near Rock River, back when the Sac and Fox still owned the world between the Mississippi and the Des Moines. He grew into a tall, broad man with a deep voice and steady eyes. He fought young, killed early, and learned fast. In his first battle, he killed a Sioux warrior with a spear while on horseback. The elders feasted him that night and named him a brave.

That was how it started — his first taste of power, his first applause. He liked both.

By the time the War of 1812 came, Keokuk understood glory was good, but survival was better. Black Hawk didn’t. The old warrior and his “British Band” went off to fight for the King, leaving the tribe’s villages empty and exposed. When they came back, they found Keokuk sitting in the council lodge as a chief.

Clinton County Courthouse

Clinton County Courthouse (circa 1910)

Construction started on the Clinton County Courthouse in 1897. The people were feeling proud. Lumber money was flowing, new businesses were opening, and they wanted a courthouse that showed the world they were here to stay. The Clinton Herald promised it would be “a structure that shall speak of the city’s permanence and progress.”

Architect G. Stanley Mansfield imagined something strong and beautiful—with thick red sandstone walls, high arches, and a copper tower that stood high above the Mississippi.

 

Then, during construction, the ground gave out. The workers hit quicksand, and the project slowed to a crawl. Arguments broke out. The costs climbed higher than anyone had expected. A county supervisor finally sighed, “Let it be finished, if only to stop the bleeding.”