Film Star Griffith Writes in Support of Dodgers

On May 15, 1958, Corinne Griffith, film star of the silent screen era and best-selling author, wrote in a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Mirror News about how youngsters have turned to baseball since the Dodgers came to Los Angeles. 

Griffith began her film career in 1916 and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in “Divine Lady” in 1929. Known as the “Orchid Lady of the Screen”, Griffith transition into film producing after talkies arrived. She also became a self-made successful businesswoman in real estate, investing and developing many properties in Beverly Hills, California.

In her letter she writes, “A few weeks ago, before the opening game of the Dodgers in Los Angeles, I drove into my driveway and seven or eight youngsters, playing on the sidewalk after school, pointed everything from a toy pistol to a toy machine gun and began to ‘Ack-ack-ack’ in my direction. Since the Dodgers have moved to Los Angeles, I have noticed a decided change with these youngsters. Now, when I return home I find them so busy trying to hit a baseball with a baseball bat that I can actually come home without being killed or even ‘play’ killed. This sort of thing is taking place all over our city. Anything, today, that will take the minds of our young off killings and murder, is a great and wholesome influence. And, whether the team is in a temporary slump or not, I say: ‘Hail to the Los Angeles Dodgers! Win, lose or draw!’”

Dodger President Walter O’Malley, impressed by Griffith’s thoughtful letter to the editor, wrote her a letter the next day appreciating the “nice things you said about the Dodgers” and “We are proud to count you among our friends.” 

Griffith would go on to write more than 11 books, including two best-sellers – “Papa’s Delicate Condition” (made into a movie) and “My Life with the Redskins” about her marriage to Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall, which ended in a divorce in 1958, the same year she wrote the letter to the editor about the Dodgers.