Florence_Lawrence

Florence Lawrence

Florence Lawrence (January 2, 1890 – December 28, 1938) was a Canadian inventor and silent film actress, who is often referred to as "The First Movie Star". She was also known as "The Biograph Girl", "The Imp Girl" and "The Girl of a Thousand Faces". During her lifetime, Lawrence appeared in more than 270 films for various motion picture companies.

Early life

Born Florence Annie Bridgwood in Hamilton, Ontario, she was the child of Charlotte A. Bridgwood, a vaudeville actress who went by the name Lotta Lawrence, was the leading lady and director of the Lawrence Dramatic Company. Nothing is known of her father. Florence's surname was changed at age four to her mother's stage name. While she was still a small child, Florence, her mother and two older brothers moved from Hamilton, Ontario to Buffalo, New York. She attended local schools and developed her athletic skills, in particular horseback riding and ice-skating.

After graduating from school, Lawrence joined her mother's dramatic company. However, the company soon disbanded after a series of disputes had made it impossible for the members to continue working together. Lawrence and her mother moved to New York City around 1906.

Early Career: Film and Broadway

She was one of several Canadian pioneers in the film industry who were attracted by the rapid growth of the fledgling motion picture business. In 1906, at twenty years of age, she made her first motion picture. The next year, she appeared in 38 movies for the Vitagraph film company.

During the spring and summer of 1906, Lawrence auditioned for a number of Broadway productions, with no success. However, on 27 December 1906, she was hired by the Edison Manufacturing Company to play Daniel Boone's daughter in Daniel Boone; or, Pioneer days in America. She got the part when she was able to answer 'yes' when asked if she could ride a horse. Both she and her mother received parts, and were paid five dollars a day for two weeks of outdoor filming in freezing weather.

In 1907 she went to work for the Vitagraph Company in Brooklyn, New York acting as Moya, an Irish peasant girl in a one-reel version of Dion Boucicault's The Shaughraun.

She returned briefly to stage acting, playing the leading role in a road show production of Melville B. Raymond's Seminary Girls. Her mother played her last role in this production. After touring with the road show for a year, Lawrence resolved that she would 'never again lead that gypsy life.'

In the spring of 1908 she returned to Vitagraph where she played the lead role in The Dispatch Beare. Largely as a result of her equestrian skills, she received parts in eleven films in the next five months.

Film career

Biograph Studios

Also at Vitagraph was a young actor, Harry Solter, who was looking for 'a young, beautiful equestrian girl' to star in a film to be produced by the Biograph Studios under the direction of D.W. Griffith. Griffith, the head of Biograph Studios, had noticed the beautiful blonde-haired woman in one of Vitagraph's films. Because the film's actors received no mention, Griffith had to make discreet enquiries to learn she was Florence Lawrence and to arrange a meeting.

Griffith had intended to give the part to Biograph's leading lady, Florence Turner, but Lawrence managed to convince Solter and Griffith that she was the best suited for the starring role in The Girl and the Outlaw. With the Vitagraph Company, she had been earning $20 a week, working also as a costume seamstress over and above acting. Griffith offered her a job, acting only, for $25 a week. Lawrence jumped at it.

After her success in this role, she appeared as a society belle in Betrayed by a Handprint and as an Indian in The Red Girl. In total, she had parts in most of the 60 films directed by Griffith in 1908. Toward the end of 1908 Lawrence married Harry Solter.

Lawrence quickly gained much popularity, but because her name was never publicized, fans began writing the studio asking for it. Even when her face had gained wide recognition, particularly after starring in the highly successful Resurrection, Biograph Studios simply labeled her as "The Biograph Girl". During cinema's formative years, silent screen actors were not named, because studio owners feared that fame might lead to demands for higher wages.

She continued to work for Biograph in 1909. Her demand to be paid by the week rather than daily was met, and she received double the normal rate. She achieved great popularity in the Jones series, film's first comedy series. She played Mrs. Jones in about twelve films. Even more popular than the Jones series were the dramatic love stories in which she co-starred with Arthur Johnson. The two played husband and wife in The Ingrate, and the adulterous lovers in Resurrection.

Lawrence and Solter began to look elsewhere for work, writing to the Essanay Company to offer their services as leading lady and director. Rather than accepting this offer, however, Essanay reported the offer to Biograph's head office, and they were promptly fired.

Independent Motion Picture Company (IMP)

Finding themselves 'at liberty,' Lawrence and Solter in 1910 were able to join the Independent Motion Picture Company of America (IMP). The company, founded by Carl Laemmle, the owner of a film exchange (who later founded Universal Pictures, started his own motion picture company), was looking for experienced filmmakers and actors. Needing a star, he lured Lawrence away from Biograph by promising to give her a marquee, making her the first performer to be identified by name on screen and in film advertising. First though, Carl Laemmle organized a publicity stunt by starting a rumor that Lawrence had been killed by a street car in New York City.

Then, after gaining much media attention, he placed ads in the newspapers that announced, "We nail a lie," and included a photo of Lawrence. The ad declared she is alive and well and making The Broken Oath, a new movie for his IMP Film Company to be directed by Harry Solter.

Laemmle then had Lawrence make a personal appearance in St. Louis, Missouri with her leading man to show her fans that she was very much alive. Partially as a result of Laemmle's ingenuity, the "star system" was born and before long, Florence Lawrence became a household name. However, her fame was such that the studio executives who had concerns over wage demands soon had their fears proved correct.

Laemmle managed to lure William Ranous (William H. Ranous), one of Vitagraph's best directors, over to IMP. Ranous introduced Laemmle to Lawrence and Solter, and they began to work together. Lawrence and Solter worked for IMP for eleven months, making fifty films. After this, they went on vacation in Europe. When they returned to the United States, they joined a film company headed by Siegmund Lubin (Siegmund "Pop" Lubin), described as the 'wisest and most democratic film producer in history.' Lawrence was once again teamed with Arthur Johnson, and the pair made 48 films together under Lubin's direction.

At the time, the film industry was controlled by a powerful Patent Group, which had the sole legal authority to make and distribute films. IMP, whose trademark was a little red devil, was not a member of the Patent Group, and hence operated outside the law. Cinemas found showing IMP films lost the right to screen Patent Group films. IMP, therefore, had powerful enemies in the film industry. It managed to survive, however, largely because of the popularity of Lawrence. She appeared in a film called Love's Stratagem. IMP tried to revive the Jones series, starring Lawrence and John Compson (instead of Arthur Johnson).

Lubin Studios

By late 1910, Lawrence left IMP to work for Lubin Studios, advising her fellow young Canadian, the 16-year-old Mary Pickford, to take her place as IMP's star.

Victor Film Company

In 1912, Lawrence and Solter made a deal with Carl Laemmle, forming their own company. Laemmle gave them complete artistic freedom in the company, called Victor Film Company, and paid Lawrence five hundred dollars a week as the leading lady, and Solter two hundred dollars a week as director. They established a film studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey and made a number of films starring Lawrence and Owen Moore before selling out to the new Universal Pictures in 1913. With this new prosperity, Florence was able to realize a 'lifelong dream,' buying a fifty acre estate in River Vale, New Jersey. There she was able to garden and grow roses, 'her greatest joy.' In August 1912, she had a fight with her husband, in which he 'made cruel remarks about his mother-in-law.' He left and went to Europe. However, he wrote 'sad' letters to her everyday, telling her of his plans to commit suicide. His letters 'softened her feelings' and they were re-united in November 1912. Lawrence announced her intention to retire.

However, she was induced to return to work in 1915 for her company (Victor Film Company), which was later acquired by Universal Studios. During one of the films, Pawns of Destiny, a staged fire got out of control. Lawrence was burned, her hair singed, and she suffered a serious fall. She went into shock for months. She returned to work, but collapsed after its completion. Blaming Solter for making her do the stunt in which she was injured, the two were divorced. To add to her problems, Universal refused to pay her medical expenses. Lawrence felt betrayed.

Injury, crash of '29, and suicide

In 1915, she was badly burned in a studio fire while attempting to rescue someone else from the flames. Although only 29 years old, she never regained her stature as a leading film star after taking time off to recover from her injuries. In 1920, her husband died. The following year she married automobile salesman Charles Byrne Woodring, but he died in 1930. In 1933 she married for the third time to Henry Bolton. Bolton turned out to be abusive and beat Lawrence severely. The union lasted only five months.

In the spring of 1916, she returned to work for Universal and completed her first long feature film. However, the strain of working took its toll on her and she suffered a serious relapse. She was completely paralyzed for four months. By the time she returned to the screen in 1921, few people remembered her.

In 1921 she traveled to Hollywood to attempt a comeback. However, she had little success, and received only small parts, mostly from sympathetic directors who remembered her early films. During the 1920s she began to manufacture a line of cosmetics, but the venture soon failed.

When Lawrence's mother died in 1929, she had an expensive bust sculpted for her mother's tomb. By then, in her mid-forties, demand for her in films had long since disappeared and the stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression saw Lawrence's fortune decline.

Lawrence returned to the screen in 1936, when MGM began giving small parts to old stars for seventy-five dollars a week.

Alone, discouraged, and suffering with chronic pain from myelofibrosis, a rare bone marrow disease, she was found unconscious in bed in her West Hollywood apartment on 27 December 1938 after she had attempted suicide by eating ant paste. She was rushed to a hospital but died a few hours later.

Just nine years after she had paid for an expensive memorial for her mother, Lawrence was interred in an unmarked grave not far from her mother in the Hollywood Cemetery, which is now Hollywood Forever Cemetery, in Hollywood, California.

She remained forgotten until 1991, when actor Roddy McDowall, serving on the National Film Preservation Board, paid for a memorial marker that reads: "The Biograph Girl/The First Movie Star."

In William J. Mann's novel The Biograph Girl (2000), Mann asks the question "What if Lawrence didn't die in 1939 from eating ant poison, but is 106 and living in a nursing home in Buffalo, New York?". The novel faithfully covers Lawrence's life up to 1939 and takes it beyond, after her "supposed" suicide.

A biography by Kelly R. Brown, Florence Lawrence, the Biograph Girl: America's First Movie Star, was published in 1999.

Inventions

Lawrence invented the first turn signal, a device attached to a motor vehicle's rear fender. Dubbed as the "auto signaling arm", when a driver pressed a button, an arm raised or lowered, with a sign attached indicating the direction of the intended turn. Following this, she developed a brake signal based on the same concept where an arm with a sign reading "STOP" was raised whenever the driver stepped on the brake pedal. However, Lawrence's inventions were not patented, and others in the rapidly expanding auto industry developed their own versions.

Personal life

She was married three times. First to Harry Solter (1908–1913), then to Charles Woodring (May 12, 1921–1931), and lastly to Henry Bolton, whom she married in 1932 and divorced five months later.

Partial filmography

An Awful Moment
Mr. Jones at the Ball
The Helping Hand
One Touch of Nature
The Honor of Thieves
The Sacrifice
Mr. Jones Has a Card Party
The Fascinating Mrs. Francis
The Girls and Daddy
A Wreath in Time
The Politician's Love Story
The Golden Louis
His Wife's Mother
The Roue's Heart
The Lure of the Gown
The Deception
And a Little Child Shall Lead Them
The Medicine Bottle
Jones and His New Neighbors
The Road to the Heart
Confidence
Lady Helen's Escapade
The Drive for Life

The Note in the Shoe
Resurrection
Jones and the Lady Book Agent
Two Memories
Eloping with Auntie
Eradicating Auntie
The Necklace
The Lonely Villa
The Curtain Pole
The Country Doctor
The Cardinal's Conspiracy
The Slave
Mrs. Jones' Lover
The Hessian Renegades
Those Awful Hats
The Awakening
The Broken Oath
The Forest Ranger's Daughter
The Angel of the Studio
Her Two Sons
A Good Turn
Flo's Discipline
After Many Years
Macbeth

References

Brown, Kelly R., Florence Lawrence, the Biograph Girl: America's First Movie Star (1991). ISBN 0-7864-0627-5.
Dictionary of Hamilton Biography (Vol III, 1925-1939): Thomas Melville Bailey (W.L. Griffin Ltd), 1992; Pg 106-108