Cal York

{{Short description|Pseudonym for Photoplay magazine editors}}

File:Photoplay magazine 1928.png

Cal York, an amalgam of California and New York, was a pseudonymous name used in the American film magazine Photoplay that ran from 1911 to 1980. Popular entertainment scholar Anthony Slide considered it one of the most reliable voices in the old Hollywood gossip columns.{{Cite book |last=Slide |first=Anthony |title=Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers |chapter=Gossip, Scandal, and Innuendo |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |year=2010 |location=Jackson, Mississippi |pages=144}} York (presumably the editors) was the "columnist" for "Inside Stuff," and also a contributor to other parts of the magazine, including "Plays and Players."{{Cite book |last=Zimmerman |first=Tom |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2kcwp28 |title=The Queen of Technicolor: Maria Montez in Hollywood |date=2022 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |pages=178 |doi=10.2307/j.ctv2kcwp28.8|jstor=j.ctv2kcwp28 }} Not every film scholar seems aware of the pseudonym, as many quote York without noting the meaning behind the name.{{Cite book |last=Kotowski |first=Mariusz |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vkkpf |title=Pola Negri: Hollywood's First Femme Fatale |date=2014 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=978-0-8131-4488-7 |pages=84|jstor=j.ctt5vkkpf }}{{Cite book |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2tsxkkn |title=Cinemas of Boyhood: Masculinity, Sexuality, Nationality |date=2021 |publisher=Berghahn Books |isbn=978-1-78920-993-8 |edition=1 |pages=156 |doi=10.2307/j.ctv2tsxkkn.11|jstor=j.ctv2tsxkkn }}{{Cite book |last=Griffin |first=Sean |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hj328 |title=What Dreams Were Made Of: Movie Stars of the 1940s |date=2011 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-0-8135-4963-7 |pages=131, 134-135, 139|jstor=j.ctt5hj328 }}{{Cite book |last=Frymus |first=Agata |title=Damsels and Divas: European Stardom in Silent Hollywood |date=2020 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |pages=75 |chapter=Vilma Bánky and Whiteness: ‘The Almost Perfect Anglo-Saxon Type, More English than the English'}}{{Cite book |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1b742g8 |title=Love and Loss in Hollywood: Florence Deshon, Max Eastman, and Charlie Chaplin |date=2020 |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=978-0-253-05292-6 |editor-last=Graham |editor-first=Cooper C. |pages=350 |doi=10.2307/j.ctv1b742g8.11 |jstor=j.ctv1b742g8 |editor-last2=Irmscher |editor-first2=Christoph}}{{Cite book |last=Mahar |first=Karen Ward |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8Y6IMGGiZfoC&dq=%22cal+york%22&pg=PA255 |title=Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood |date=2008-08-25 |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press |isbn=978-0-8018-9084-0 |location=Baltimore, Maryland |pages=248, 250, 252, 254-55, 259, 260, 263, 265}}{{Cite book |last=Williams |first=Michael |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9tL7EAAAQBAJ&dq=%22cal+york%22&pg=PA130 |title=Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film |date=18 December 2023 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-68682-3 |editor-last=Nikoloutsos |editor-first=Konstantinos P. |location=Netherlands |pages=130 |chapter='Hail! The Sign of the Cross': Industrial Campaigns and Commanding Performances in The Sign of the Cross (1932) and Cleopatra (1934)}} Slide notes that the surname York once morphed to Yorke, assuming a typo, but it may also have been an inside joke.{{Cite book |last=Slide |first=Anthony |title=Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers |date=2010 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |pages=50-51, 62-63 |chapter=James R. Quirk and Photoplay}} He adds that toward the end of the magazine's life West Coast editor [https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/actor-austin-pendleton-and-reporters-richard-cuskelly-jim-news-photo/480841407 Richard Cuskelly] wrote as Cal York. By the 1970s Photoplay was still using the old name, but Slide considered it an echo of the past.{{Cite book |last=Slide |first=Anthony |title=Inside the Hollywood Fan Magazine: A History of Star Makers, Fabricators, and Gossip Mongers |date=2010 |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |location=Jackson, Mississippi |pages=218 |chapter=The People Generation}}

There was also a character named Cal York in the 1955 American drama Toughest Man Alive, and it may have been a wink to the long-running character.