Toward the end of his studies, he joined the Paris art studio of Robert MacCameron where his work in oils greatly improved.

In 1906, he moved to Santa Barbara, California, when Jessie, who was suffering from tuberculosis, could no longer endure the harsh Michigan winters.

The semi-autobiographical two-reel film produced by Selig Studios explored the bohemian lifestyle of a Los Angeles artist and his two young sons.

In this period, Wagner taught for a number of years at the Manual Arts High School, where his students included Frank Capra, Jimmy Doolittle[1] and Leland Curtis.

[2] In 1914, Wagner married Kansas City newspaperwoman Florence Welch, who told her new husband that he could make a better living writing about the motion picture industry than working as an artist.

The creation of the program eventually led to the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital retirement facility in Woodland Hills.

Other members included Harold Lloyd, William S. Hart, Jesse L. Lasky, Rupert Hughes, Irving Thalberg and Mae Murray among others.

The Wagners founded Script in February 1929 and enlisted noted writers and film people to contribute articles without pay.

By 1914, he helped establish with Job Harriman the Llano del Rio cooperative colony in California's Antelope Valley.

During this period he served as associate editor for Los Angeles-based Western Comrade magazine, which offered a mix of socialist dogma, labor-related film news, advocacy on the women's suffrage movement, and profiles on artists and writers.

[4] Shortly before the Liberty Bond tour began some of Wagner's friends informed on him to the US Bureau of Investigation that he supported Germany during the war and expressed his strong opposition to America's entry into the conflict.

Undercover operatives conducted around-the-clock surveillance of Wagner as the Chaplin party swung through the Southern states during the tour.

Agents also hired a young woman to seduce Wagner to gain access to his personal diaries while the Chaplin party stayed at a New Orleans hotel, but the plan was never carried out.

[5] In November and December 1919, he was summoned before a Los Angeles County Grand Jury on charges of sedition for his vocal opposition to America's entry into the European war, his association with the radical International Workers of the World (IWW) and his sympathies for Germany.

Chaplin often participated in roundtable political and moral discussions of the war, which was sponsored by the Severance Club that consisted of writers and film people, including Wagner.

And its wartime domestic coverage took on unpopular causes such as defending the rights of Mexican-Americans during the Los Angeles Zoot Suit riots, the postwar resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan[6] and questioning the wisdom of interning Japanese-Americans.

Wagner had written extensively for Socialist publications in the first decades of the 20th century and his liberal views were reflected in his columns and interviews with leftists Upton Sinclair, Max Eastman and William C. deMille.

[8] Politi, the magazine's art director, often used the illustrations of his Mexican child characters, Pancho and Rosa, to advocate pacifist and anti-fascist arguments.

Keeping a low profile, Wagner also worked on Sinclair's EPIC (End Poverty in California) campaign writing the text for pamphlets and designing the organization's logo.

It took up populist causes and critiqued local media, often criticizing as fascist Hearst newspaper coverage and editorials on Constitutional issues and the civil rights of Mexican- and Japanese-Americans.

In March 1947, she sold the magazine to Robert Smith, the general manager of the original Los Angeles Daily News.