By the time dawn broke over Hollywood on Christmas morning, 1928, the house at 6622 Iris Drive in Whitley Heights had already passed into local legend. What had begun as a holiday gathering at the home of actress Lottie Pickford—sister of Mary Pickford and once a familiar name in silent-era cast lists—ended instead as a police blotter bonanza, complete with fistfights, bloodied hands, frantic neighbors, and headlines that blared of Hollywood excess spilling into violence.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
According to contemporary reports, the trouble erupted late Christmas Eve at Pickford’s residence, where a “big Christmas eve party” had drawn a sizable crowd of motion picture people. Neighbors, unnerved by the noise and growing disorder, summoned the police early in the evening. Officers arrived, quieted things down, and left—only to be called back a second time when the situation spun out of control. When they returned, they found the house “in a state of upheaval,” furniture overturned, blood on the front steps and driveway, and guests scattering into the night.
At the center of the chaos were two men: Jack Dougherty, described as a film actor and the former husband of the late Barbara La Marr, and Daniel E. Jaeger, a businessman who, police said, had been staying at Miss Pickford’s home and had given it as his address.
What followed was described bluntly as a “desperate fist battle,” that started in the house. Furniture was tossed about before the fight spilled outside onto the front lawn, blood all over the front steps and on the driveway. Terrified guests claimed it was impossible to stop once it reached its climax. “The fight was ‘to the finish," one report noted, with witnesses fearful the two men could not be separated.
The physical damage was not merely to the house. Jaeger suffered a severely injured hand—variously described as “badly mangled,” with one finger said to have been “partially amputated,” allegedly bitten during the struggle. Officers found him leaning against an expensive sedan, blood pouring from the wound, before he was rushed to the hospital. Dougherty, meanwhile, had vanished by the time police arrived, slipping away amid the confusion as officers were “breaking into the apartment” in response to the second call.
Pickford herself was not spared injury. Reports noted that she was “slightly injured as the result of attempting to stop the battle,” though she declined to elaborate. True to Hollywood form, no one involved was eager to pursue charges. Police said the house was “upset,” the stars were “leaving fast,” and witnesses proved frustratingly uncooperative. As one headline summarized the aftermath: “Goes to Hospital But Won't Prosecute.”
In the cold light of morning, Pickford attempted to minimize the affair. “I don’t know what it’s all about,” she told police. “I didn’t get there until it was about over—but I know the boys have patched up the row and there will be no complaints.” Officials confirmed that no complainant appeared willing to sign the necessary documents, and the City Prosecutor’s office ruled that without a formal accusation, no misdemeanor case could proceed. The episode was dismissed as “just another of those things,” a phrase that newspapers would repeat with thinly veiled irony.
Yet the Christmas Eve riot did not occur in a vacuum. Only weeks earlier, in November 1928, Lottie Pickford and her date—Jack Dougherty—had already appeared in police reports under far grimmer circumstances. As The Hollywoodland Revue has previously documented, the pair were victims of a violent robbery involving four men, an incident that left them shaken and underscored how often Pickford’s name had begun appearing in crime columns rather than studio publicity. That earlier attack made the Christmas Eve headlines feel less like an aberration and more like part of a troubling pattern.
Lottie Pickford's former home, 6622 Iris Drive in Whitley Heights where the Christmas Eve brawl started inside and spilled out onto the front lawn, now hidden by a wall. (Private residence: Do not disturb)
The days following the party brought no relief from scrutiny. Newspapers reveled in the spectacle, connecting the brawl to other Pickford-related police encounters and even dragging in unrelated scandals. One article announced, “Lottie Pickford in Hootch Jam,” reporting that police had found an automobile containing a man and “three quarts of gin,” though Pickford denied any ownership or knowledge, quipping that “as for signing $100,000 worth of notes—don’t be silly.” Another headline read, “Pickford in Squabble Just 'On the Book,’” capturing the sense that Hollywood’s wildest nights were increasingly becoming routine entries in police ledgers.
By official count, the Christmas Eve disturbance marked the third time in six weeks that Miss Pickford’s name had surfaced in police reports. Each time, no formal charges stuck. Each time, the parties involved declined to prosecute. And each time, the stories grew more lurid in print, feeding the public appetite for tales of Hollywood glamour curdling into disorder.
Lottie Pickford and Jack Dougherty
What remains striking, nearly a century later, is how quickly the night was both sensationalized and shrugged off. Blood was spilled, bones were damaged, officers were summoned twice, yet the final verdict was silence—no complaints, no court appearances, no accountability. The stars simply faded out, as one paper put it, “fast as their cars could roll to the door.”
For Lottie Pickford, Christmas Eve 1928 became another chapter in a turbulent final decade, when the shadow of her famous surname collided repeatedly with the realities of a Hollywood that offered little protection once fame dimmed. The riot at 6622 Iris Drive stands today as a vivid Police Blotter tableau: a holiday party gone wrong, a house in shambles, and an industry that preferred to look away—leaving behind only headlines, quotes, and the uneasy sense that this was far more than “just another of those things.”
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