Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer

Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer (born Cambria Station, Chester County, Pennsylvania, October 5, 1868; died December 8, 1936, Philadelphia, age 68) was an American biographer, historical writer, and advocate for censorship.

Biography He was the son of John Oberholtzer, a former schoolteacher who during Ellis' lifetime ran Willowdale Mills (now The Mill at Anselma in Chester Springs, Pennsylvania) and later became a successful grain merchant. Ellis' mother, Sara Louisa Vickers Oberholtzer, was a respected poet and social activist known for her work in abolition, post-Civil War social reform, and equal rights. Ellis had one brother named Vickers Oberholtzer.

Ellis was educated at the University of Pennsylvania (Ph. D., 1893), at German universities (Berlin and Heidelberg), and in Paris. He was on the editorial staff of the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph (1889–96), editor of The Manufacturer (1896–1900), and literary and dramatic editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger (1902–08). He edited the American Crisis Biographies (20 volumes) and in 1908 and 1912 directed historical pageants at Philadelphia. His wife, Winona McBride Oberholtzer, was the sister of publisher Robert M. McBride.

He was head of the Pennsylvania Board of Censors and was among the most restrictive movie censors, writing that movies of the early 1920s were "an abysmal morass of fornication, adultery, pandering, and prostitution." He wrote a book, The Morals of the Movie, on this topic.

He died in 1936 and was interred at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.

Works The Referendum in America (1893; new edition, 1900; 3rd ed., 1908; revised, 1911) Die Beziehungen zwischen dem Staat und der Zeitungspresse im deutschen Reich (1895) The New Man (1897) Robert Morris, Patriot and Financier (1903) Abraham Lincoln (1904) The Literary History of Philadelphia (1906)

Henry Clay (1909), with T. H. Clay Philadelphia: A History of the City and its People (four volumes, 1912). A History of the United States since the Civil War (1917). The Morals of the Movie (1922).