Profiles of Jackson County: Landon Laird

Landon Laird with Bob Hope in 1937. Jackson County Historical Society. Landon & Mary Graham Minor-Laird Papers. Unique ID PHL 12020 J-K

With the Academy Awards ceremony scheduled for Sunday, the Jackson County Historical Society remembers Landon Laird, longtime Kansas City Star film critic and columnist – and the newspaper’s Hollywood correspondent. 

During an approximately 50-year career with The Star, Laird pursued one of the most unique and glamorous journalism careers in Kansas City newspaper history. 

Joining the paper in 1914, Laird became its drama and movie critic in 1924. In that post he chronicled the film industry’s golden age, often traveling to California to report on the its many celebrities and also posing for photographs with them – among them comedian Bob Hope, known for his many years of serving as television host for the annual Oscars ceremony. 

Today the Society holds many of Laird’s photographs, featuring him with celebrities such as W.C. Fields, Fred Astaire, Jane Wyman, Edward G. Robinson, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Anna May Wong and others. 

The Society may not hold these images today, however, without the generosity of Laird’s wife, Mary Graham Minor. 

A 1930 graduate of Kansas City’s East High School, Minor spent several years as a dancer in traveling chorus lines. 

She filled scrapbooks with her hotel receipts and newspaper notices, documenting the Depression-Era entertainment industry when downtown movie palaces offered live entertainment along with the feature films. 

In 1935 she became one of the “Tower Adorables,” a dance troupe which entertained audiences at the Tower Theatre in downtown Kansas City. She later became the theater’s dance director, and also served as a choreographer in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. 

In 1947 Minor married Laird, and soon began a separate career as a title examiner for the Chicago Title Insurance Company, from which she retired in 1978. 

In 2002 she donated her scrapbooks, photographs and other materials to the Society. 

“I’ve been wanting to find a home for these things for ever so long,” she told The Star that year. 

“I thought they would all just go to the Dumpster.” 

Instead, her scrapbooks became part of the Society’s Women’s History Collection, which today includes materials from many accomplished women, among them Sue Gentry, longtime reporter and columnist for the Examiner of Independence; Hazelle Hedges Rollins, founder of a marionette manufacturing business which operated in Jackson County from 1934 through 1975, and Barbara Potts, mayor of Independence from 1982 to 1990. 

Landon Laird died in 1970; Mary Graham Minor Laird died in 2009. 

Photographs featuring Landon Laird, as well as Mary, soon will be available through the Society’s new Digital History Database, which will allow virtual visitors to browse and purchase digital copies of the images. 

The Society plans to open the database to the public later this year. 

Brian Burnes – Jackson County Historical Society.