Читать книгу Without Lying Down - Cari Beauchamp - Страница 9

Chapter 2

When Robert and Marion moved into their new home at 2600 Wilshire Boulevard in January of 1912, she stayed busy organizing the house while he opened C. W. Pike’s Los Angeles office. The demands of building his father’s business kept Robert downtown all day and into the night, and Marion failed to find domestic life particularly satisfying. It had been difficult enough to play the role of society matron in San Francisco where at least there was a society. This Los Angeles was another situation entirely.

Los Angeles in 1912 was a sprawling flatland stretching between the ocean and the mountains. Within a thirty-five-mile radius, there were forty incorporated towns, and it was close to impossible to know where one ended and another began. While the southern California land boom of the 1880s had not brought the number of people who swarmed northern California in the Gold Rush, it had induced a variety of characters to seek out the sun and a new life. Families determined to create their own little utopias bought several hundred or thousands of acres at a time, primarily from the Spanish land grants that still dominated the area, infusing the new communities with their Midwestern values.

Pueblos, acres of orange groves, a few hotels, schools, churches, homes, and clusters of businesses were indiscriminately interspersed with lean-to refineries and thousands of wells, the result of the discovery of oil twenty years earlier. The region was tied together by a combination of paved and dirt roads and the Pacific Electric Company’s Red Car line, with tracks running from San Fernando down to Newport Beach and from Riverside out to the Pacific Ocean. To fill her hours and satisfy her natural curiosity, Marion rode the Red Car, sitting alongside the tourists, workers, and cargo that depended on it as the only reasonable form of transportation.¹

A new and steady outlet for Marion’s creativity was provided by the Los Angeles–based producer and theater owner Oliver Morosco. He had gone north to “raid his enemy’s territory” in search of actors, costume designers, and artists, and Marion had been recommended by her friend Waldemar Young, a reporter and grandson of Brigham Young who wrote the “Bits of Color Around the Town” column for the San Francisco Chronicle.²

Morosco looked up Marion upon his return and scanned her portraits of Jack London, boxers Joe Gans and “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, Nob Hill debutantes, and local poets.

“This is the kind of stuff I’m looking for,” he told her. “They catch the personalities.” He offered her the position of personal poster artist for his theater and promised that while “The job may not keep you busy all the time, I’ll help you find plenty of work. We’ve got a booming city if those damned movie outfits seeping in there don’t ruin it.”

When she gave him a questioning look, he explained there were “gangs” all over town “making what we used to call flickers,” adding that the more respectable citizens wanted to run them out of town.³

Los Angeles had first been introduced to the “screen machine” in 1896 when the lights were dimmed at the Orpheum and the image of a life-sized Anna Belle Sun danced for a few precious moments, projected onto a large white sheet. Since then, the technology had advanced considerably. Marion had been to the nickelodeons in San Francisco and watched the ten- to fifteen-minute “one reelers” shown between vaudeville acts. She found “the moving pictures” simple and awkward compared to live theater, yet she enjoyed the antics of a little blond girl known as “Goldilocks” and saw nothing at all offensive.⁴

Anything different was intriguing to Marion and when she went in search of a new home closer to Robert’s office and the Morosco Theater on South Broadway, she quickly came face-to-face with what she considered shocking provinciality. There were plenty of vacancy signs, but the small print often read “No dogs or actors allowed” or “No jews, actors or dogs.” The bigotry appalled her and her resentment was compounded as she faced a barrage of questions at each door: “Do you live alone? Can you pay a month in advance? Are you in the flicks?”

“No, I am an artist,” stated Marion proudly, but the distinction was not so clear to the inquiring proprietors. After several defeats, Marion rented a furnished home by telling the landlord her husband was a businessman and she was a seamstress; the easel she was moving in was to stretch and measure material.⁵

Yet if she found her new fellow townsfolk boorish, she was immediately comfortable at the theater. Oliver Morosco described his stock company as “one big happy family,” and she quickly became friends with fellow San Franciscans Lewis Stone and Bert Lytell and a sweet, husky boy who looked more like a college football tackle than a rising star, Robert Z. Leonard. She adored the tall comedienne Charlotte Greenwood brought out to star in So Long Letty but Marion was a bit taken aback by the regal reserve of Morosco’s newest star, Laurette Taylor.

Other members of the company were deferential to Morosco, but after reading the play, Marion walked right up to him and said earnestly, “Surely you aren’t going to put on an old wheeze like Peg o’ My Heart. Not after doing Shaw and Ibsen. It’s ‘Cinderella right out of the Dog Pound.’ ”

Morosco warned Marion that it was a big success in New York and added, “Don’t you dare make any criticism about it to Miss Taylor. The play was written by her new husband.” Laurette Taylor took the role of the young ingenue to heart and Marion’s job was to paint the essence of the character and, she reminded herself, not the lines of age that were already showing on the still beautiful actress who posed in front of her.⁶

Peg o’ My Heart was a smash, playing for a over a year, and with his profits, Morosco expanded his empire by importing the New York actress Kitty Gordon, nationally proclaimed as having “the most beautiful back in America.”

Marion’s painting conspicuously featured Kitty’s famous asset, posing her glancing over her dazzling shoulders and down her bare back in a gown ending in a V at the waist. Morosco loved it, but when the lithographs went up, they were almost instantly vandalized. Letters protesting the poster poured into the newspapers and flyers were distributed in front of the theater.

We must protect our innocent little children from seeing such obscene pictures of half-nude women. And we must keep them away from the evil influence of the nickelodeons and these lawless people who have forced themselves upon our beautiful city to make what they call movies. Only if we all unite can we drive them out.

It was signed “Conscientious Citizens.”⁷

The leaflets piqued Marion’s curiosity and she goaded a Morosco actor, Jimmy Gleason, into attending a “Conscientious Citizens” meeting with her. They were greeted by a “bilious little man” announcing they were already a third of the way to their goal of 10,000 signatures on petitions “to rid our city of these hoodlums.” He introduced “the groups that are working the hardest to bring about this emancipation,” and hotel owners and restauranteurs rose to promise not to allow anyone connected with the movies into their premises.

A clubwoman explained why “legitimate” actors from the theater were different from these new hordes that cursed the city: “Stage folks keep their actions hidden behind closed doors, while those ‘flicker people,’ with their painted faces, perform shamelessly right out in the open.”⁸

Marion and Jimmy were so offended by the small-mindedness of the gathering, they dubbed them “The Constipated Citizens,” yet they too had seen cameras, men with megaphones, and costumed actors all over town. Fires or police chases of any kind were fair game to be used as backdrops, as were horse races, sporting events, and parades. The participants were referred to as “movies” and Agnes de Mille remembered, “They were really outcasts. The Keystone cops would take over a street and do what they had to do before the real police arrived. It was fun, but it was socially unacceptable. I knew what racial discrimination was because I was a ‘movie.’ ”⁹

Even when The Los Angeles Times editorialized about the economic benefits of the new business, they acknowledged the problem: “The motion picture people may be something of a pest, but their value to the community as national and international advertisers is inestimable.”¹⁰

Robert’s innate sense of respectability made him side with the Conscientious Citizens and Marion would later recall her second husband as being “years older,” even though he was only three years her senior. He spent his days in a conservative business milieu and the “differences in our social instincts” became all the more apparent. He “felt uncomfortable with my artist and writer friends and wanted us to live a formal mid-Victorian existence.”¹¹

What had once looked liberating from the position of the working wife of a poor artist now became confining. Marion was coming to terms with the fact she would never be happy as a society wife and that she worked because she wanted to, yet she managed to postpone most immediate conflicts with Robert because they spent so little time together. He was busy working and traveling and when Marion wasn’t painting or at the theater, she took to studying the history of the region.

One of her favorite weekend haunts was the historic plaza designed 150 years earlier by the original Franciscan Mission settlement for the founding population of thirty-two people. The narrow cobbled streets that led from the plaza were sheltered by pepper trees and oleanders and on Sundays, devout Catholics and tourists mixed with the Mexican families who lived in the nearby adobes.¹²

One Sunday afternoon in early 1914, Marion looked up from the bench where she sat sketching Mexican children at play to see a tall, hefty woman in a broad-brimmed hat and an unflattering, boldly printed dress walking out of one of the small shops, carrying a bag of popcorn. Marion watched as she tossed the popcorn to the pigeons and listened as the woman conversed with the birds, ordering them not to be so greedy.

Then Marion’s heart gave a little leap as she realized the woman was Marie Dressler. Instinctively, she stood up, but immediately sat back down, sure that the famous actress would not remember “a silly young reporter.” Marion started to make a quick sketch, but Marie headed toward her as she emptied the popcorn bag onto the ground.

“I’m not really off my trolley,” she said, glancing up from under her hat at Marion, the only person sitting nearby. “I like birds. I talk to them. I have an old parrot, a regular . . .”

As Marion stealthily slipped the drawing back into the pad, Marie stopped short. “Say, aren’t you the girl who interviewed me in San Francisco four or five years ago?”

Marion rose again as she said, “Yes, Miss Dressler, but I didn’t dream you’d remember me.”

“I’m not the forgetting type. I’ve often wondered what became of you. Hate to lose track of anybody I take a fancy to.”

Relaxing Marion with her easy charm, Marie reached out her hand and suggested they go into “one of these little Mexican joints and have a tamale.”

Marion’s familiarity with the area gave her the confidence to suggest Señora Martinez’s El Pajaro restaurant around the corner. Four tables filled the small adobe dining room, and Marie was impressed when Marion was welcomed like family by the owner and ordered for both of them in Spanish. The feeling of comfortable informality quickly fell over the two women just as it had that night long ago in San Francisco.¹³

Marion talked about her work for Morosco and her second husband and Marie said she too had left an early unhappy marriage and spoke of her childhood in Cobourg, Canada. She was born Leila Maria Koerber and by the time she was ten, she was larger than her fifteen-year-old sister and so responsible she considered herself as “born older.” Marie adored her “frail little mother,” who, “gentle as she was, had courage enough to stand between me and my father. He was a tyrannical German musician who worshipped beauty and couldn’t forgive me for being such a mudhen.”¹⁴

Marie was in Los Angeles to film Tillie’s Punctured Romance for Mack Sennett at his Keystone studio in Edendale, and her supporting players were Mabel Normand, a girl “with a complexion that makes you think of gardenias,” and a new rising star, Charlie Chaplin. The English comic had just signed with Keystone after being discovered as he toured America with Fred Karno’s burlesque troop.

Marie had first met Mack Sennett when she was an established comedienne and he, working in a Connecticut iron foundry, sought her advice on how to break into show business. With her help he became an actor for David Wark Griffith, and rumor had it that his mentor was now working on a film of epic proportions. Mack was inspired to try something similar and, never forgetting Marie’s early guidance, signed her for the remarkable sum of $2,500 a week to create his first six-reel comedy.¹⁵

Marie entranced Marion with tales of making movies, comparing the process to “sitting in the middle of a cement mixer.” She thought a pretty girl had an easier time of it and asked if she had considered “going into the movies?”

“Do they use artists?”

“I mean to play in them. Be an actress. You’ve got the looks.” Marion laughed at the thought, claiming she couldn’t act “even if Svengali hypnotized me,” but admitted she would love to do more portraits of the actors.

“Come on out to the studio anytime and ask for me. I’ll be happy to tote you around.”

The sun was setting over the plaza as they left the restaurant, basking in the warmth of an easy friendship. Marie reminded her of what she had said in San Francisco years before. This time, Marion was secure in the knowledge that the phrase “I’ll see you again” was a fact, not just a hope.

“I’ll be repeating that promise if you come to the studio in about a week; our company will be in full swing by then and I’ll introduce you to Chaplin.”¹⁶

But weeks passed before Marion was free to venture out to Edendale. Because painting for Morosco was intermittent, she had arranged to be on call for an advertising firm and they suddenly were in need of several commercial layouts with immediate deadlines. When she finally arrived at the Sennett studio and asked for Miss Dressler, the guard informed her “Punctured is in the can. She left for New York yesterday.”

Until she was turned away, Marion had not realized how much she was looking forward to being on the lot, if only for an afternoon. Just being at the gates of the studio electrified her with excitement. Then, within days of this disappointment, Oliver Morosco told her that because the cost of lithographing had recently tripled, he could not rationalize keeping her on salary.¹⁷

At twenty-five, Marion had already developed the philosophy to “take failure with my chin up and success, when it comes, in stride.” She took this news as a minor setback and leased a fourth-floor studio at 315 Broadway, sharing the rent with fellow illustrator Hilda Hasse. Marion turned to working full-time for advertising men, whom she found “deadly serious and content in their narrow world,” and tried to lace her layouts selling bunion removers and pickles with charm and sex appeal. In her boredom, her dissatisfaction with Robert increased, but she refused to entertain the thought of returning to San Francisco; her ambition remained intact and she was confident that Los Angeles was where she belonged.¹⁸

Marion spent many of her evenings with the woman who was becoming her best friend in Los Angeles, Adela Rogers. They had first met in San Francisco shortly after the earthquake, when the teenage Adela came to town with her father, one of the country’s most famous defense attorneys.

Adela’s parents separated when she was still a child and with the exception of a few months at the Convent of Notre Dame in Santa Clara and traveling in Europe with her aunt and uncle, Adela had been raised and educated by tutors, her father, and her grandparents. She disdained her mother and worshipped her father, who involved her in his cases and took her with him in his travels. Adela adored San Francisco and would always claim she was from there because “it sounded much more glamorous and literary” than Los Angeles.¹⁹

Being Earl Rogers’s daughter was a role Adela took seriously. In fact, she always assumed she would be a lawyer, but a brief foray into acting led her astray as far as Earl was concerned and he introduced her to William Randolph Hearst. The publisher hired her at the age of eighteen as a cub reporter for his Los Angeles Herald Examiner, where she thrived, using her natural curiosity as well as the investigative techniques and storytelling abilities she had learned at her father’s knee.

Marion had been raised to think independently and to be relatively self-sufficient, but she paled in comparison to Adela. Marion was several years older and she knew Adela well enough to see her insecurities, but Adela conducted herself with such an aura of sureness that she was always the one in charge. With opinions on absolutely everything, she was a close friend and an authority figure at the same time. Yet she put Marion on a bit of a pedestal as well. She had been impressed and just a little threatened when Earl Rogers pronounced upon meeting Marion for the first time, “That girl has genius. She’ll do something.”²⁰

The two women were occasionally joined by the stars Adela met through reporting and the Keystone comedienne Mabel Normand became a favorite companion. They ventured out to the Vernon Country Club, the closest thing to the Barbary Coast south of the Tahatchapis, where Adela would drink crème de menthe, Marion a weak scotch, and Mabel whiskey “with apricot brandy added to kill the taste.” They danced until all hours and then crawled back into town, sometimes going straight to work or catching a quick nap at Mabel’s apartment at Seventh and Figueroa.²¹

Adela was also spending time with the Herald Examiner’s tall, good-looking copy editor Ike St. Johns, but many nights she, Marion, and an eclectic group of friends gathered at Ivy’s, Al Levy’s at Third and Main, or the Ship Café down on the Venice pier. The regulars included Eric von Stroheim, a young man who claimed to have his fortune tied up in Europe so “he lived meagerly off what he could borrow from the rest of us.” Marion tolerated him because he was a friend of Adela’s and found “his stories amusing, his lies preposterous and he entertained us, even though we didn’t think he had a chance to succeed.”

They also enjoyed the company of Sessue Hayakawa and Tsuru Aoki, whom Marion had known and liked at St. Margaret’s Hall. The couple were engaged to be married and determined to be successful actors, so when Tsuru was cast in The Geisha along with their friend Frank Borzage, one of the few actors they knew who worked regularly, Adela convinced him to put in a word for Sessue with the director Thomas Ince.²²

Marion and Adela went together to watch The Geisha being filmed one afternoon at “Inceville,” the massive strip of land off Sunset bordering on the Pacific Ocean where film could be shot on the beach and in the mountains on the same day. Adela was “a walkie-talkie encyclopedia of intellectual and casual information” on the people and the techniques they were using, and Marion soaked it all in.

She stayed in touch with her friends from the Morosco Theater, missing the regular contact with the personalities, the gossip, and the warring factions, all in equal measure. Few of the actors, excepting Charlotte Greenwood and Bob Leonard, who had just “deserted” to act and direct at Universal, expressed any desire or even willingness to perform in front of the camera. Enticing as the money was, flickers were still looked down on by everyone who considered themselves serious actors. Jimmy Gleason avoided the temptation by writing a play that was to be produced in New York, and a farewell gathering was quickly arranged.

Among the familiar faces at Jimmy’s party were several “movies” and Marion was introduced to Owen Moore. She knew he and his older brothers, Matt and Tom, had been acting since their teens and that Owen was married to Mary Pickford, known as the “girl with the golden curls.”

Variety had started reporting on motion pictures as early as 1907 and newspapers created sections for reviews soon after. But the boom in moviegoing had resulted in new magazines such as Moving Picture World and Photoplay, a lavishly colored monthly selling for fifteen cents a copy. With features like “Who’s Who in the Photoplays,” word quickly spread that the favorite known as “Goldilocks” or “Little Mary” had a full name; it was Mary Pickford and Frances had already noticed “the quality of her films were above the rest.”²³

A slight man about five feet ten inches, with deep blue eyes and dark hair slicked straight back, Owen struck Marion as almost too handsome. “He overworked the affected charm and mannerism of the professional Irishman, but in a gush of enthusiasm I told him how clever I thought Miss Pickford was.”

“Mary has an expressive little talent,” Owen responded. “Hardly what one could call cerebral.”

Star or butcher, Marion could not abide any husband’s talking about his wife that way. Controlling herself, she smiled and walked away, but Owen gave her a moment to cool down and followed her to the punch bowl.

“Can’t you women learn to fortify yourselves against the truth, or do we always have to lie to you? Would I have seemed more gallant had I endowed Mary with a greater talent than Sarah Bernhardt?”

As Marion was debating whether to turn away again, he asked her if she would like him to arrange a meeting with Mary. Her anger changed to interest, particularly when he added, “Charlotte Greenwood tells me you do fine portraits. Take some of your work along and maybe you can do one of Mary.”

The party was breaking up and Marion said her good-byes. She was excited at the possibility of meeting Mary Pickford and thought Owen Moore “was a very attractive Lothario, if only he hadn’t made that snide remark about his wife’s talent.”²⁴

Although three years younger than Marion, Mary Pickford was old beyond her years. She had been the family breadwinner since the age of eight, playing in stage roles with stock companies that took her away from her native Toronto and her widowed mother; sister Lottie, and brother Jack for months at a time. She was all of fifteen in the summer of 1907 when she determined to make a career in New York. Sleeping on a friend’s chair and paying the “rent” by shopping and cleaning, she saved every penny she could to send home. Blindly ambitious, she bombarded the preeminent producer David Belasco with letters and photographs of herself and won the role of young Betty in his production of The Warrens of Virginia, written by William de Mille and costarring his younger brother, Cecil.²⁵

It was Belasco who decided that Gladys Smith needed a new stage name and together they reviewed her family tree for one with marquee value. They stopped at her maternal grandfather, Jack Pickford Hennessey, and she proudly wired her mother, “Gladys Smith now Mary Pickford engaged by David Belasco to appear on Broadway this fall.” She never looked back and she was never a child again. As if to underscore their dedication to her future, the rest of the family adopted the name Pickford as well.²⁶

Mary had done little but work since then, and with her mother’s constant guidance, negotiated increases in pay with each new studio and contract. Insulated in her family and films, Mary had little time for friends, excepting the fatherless Gish sisters, with whom the family shared rooms in New York during the off season. But that spring of 1914 when Owen mentioned a woman who was an excellent portrait painter and someone he thought she would like, Mary was willing to make the time. Still, it had to be at the studio so she could cut the interview short if she wanted.

Marion was not about to repeat the mistake she had made when she missed Marie Dressler. As soon as she was summoned, she dropped everything and prepared for her audience, but that morning the Santa Ana winds were blowing hard, making it impossible to carry her portfolio. If she was to be on time, she had to leave her pictures at home.

A young man met Marion at the studio entrance and walked her through the dirt lot until he knocked at the door of a wooden building. A voice called out for them to enter and there in a darkened room stood Mary Pickford editing film with the cutter. She greeted Marion with a smile and a firm handshake and took her into a side room to talk.

Marion’s first reaction to Mary was to sense “a strange watchfulness behind her steadfast gaze.” She was surprised at the vulnerability from someone she had put on a pedestal and she instantly developed a fiercely protective attitude toward Mary that was to be a hallmark of their friendship.²⁷

Their shared sense of ambition united them immediately and although Mary was initially more reticent than Marion, they quickly established a shared sense of failure in their respective marriages as well. They had both married for the first time a few months short of their eighteenth birthday, and while Mary had seen more than most people twice her age, she had lived a very sheltered and disciplined life; nothing had prepared her for the first time Owen Moore put his arm around her. The physical sensations she felt were entirely new to her and she was swept off her feet. Moore was seven years older, known as a man about town and, perhaps most offensive of all to her mother, Charlotte, “a five-dollar-a-day actor.” Yet when he threatened to leave her if she didn’t marry him, they secretly wed in January 1911 and hid the fact from her mother for several months.²⁸

When their relationship was written about in the press, it was all romance, sweetness, and fluff. Reality was a very different picture. Owen and Mary had their own apartment for a while, but Mary had no experience in relationships and, growing up on trains and in boardinghouses, knew even less about domestic skills. And her mother was always there; in their home, at the studio, and even traveling with them. Charlotte would check in to the suite, point to one bedroom, and announce with authority, “You take that room Owen. Mary and I will sleep in here.”

Mary’s star was rising and Owen’s, if not descending, was standing still and his drinking did not help matters. All these factors, combined with different shooting schedules, gave the marriage little chance at all.²⁹

In the fall of 1913, Mary was hospitalized with what some biographers claim were internal injuries incurred when, following the script, she carried a much larger girl from a burning schoolhouse. Mary herself would later refer to her condition as a ruptured appendix and the November issue of Photoplay reported that she was “convalescing rapidly” from “a serious attack of appendicitis.” But others ascertained that Mary was suffering from the afteraffects of an abortion performed in a New York hospital. Whatever the actual cause for her hospitalization, Mary was never able to have children.³⁰

By January of 1914, Mary was well enough to travel to California and resume filming. The press reported that “poor ‘Little Mary’ still looks awfully tiny and thin,” but by the next month they were “wishing that ‘Little Mary’s’ health will continue to improve and that no more horrid operations will have to be performed or horrid medicines taken,” a stiletto jab if she had had an abortion.³¹

She looked wonderful to Marion when they first met only a few months later and she was relieved that Mary was not at all concerned that she had been unable to bring her portfolio. After over an hour of comfortable conversation, Mary assured her there would be plenty of time for portrait painting when she returned from New York in the fall. As Marion left the studio, the young man at the gate commented on his amazement that “Miss Pickford spent so much time” with her and she felt exhilarated.

In a short few months, Marion had seen Marie Dressler again, been to Inceville, and met Mary Pickford. She was convinced fate was playing a hand and was more determined than ever to find work in “the movies.” Marie had offered to help, but she was in New York and Marion’s mind raced to think of who else would have suggestions. Adela Rogers would know.

Only the week before she had seen Adela at the Alexandria Hotel lunching with Lois Weber. While there were a good dozen women directors working in Los Angeles, Lois Weber at the age of thirty-two was the best known, most respected, and highest paid; it had just been announced that she had signed a $50,000-a-year contract. As Marion left the hotel, she noticed Adela waving, but not wanting to interrupt, she smiled and walked out the door.³²

The next day, Adela told her Lois Weber had wanted to meet her. “She’s always on the look out for new faces and you’re the refined type that appeals to her.” Marion laughed out loud at the thought, but what days before had seemed like a ludicrous idea now struck her as a logical possibility, and she asked Adela to set up an appointment with the director.³³

Lois Weber had a reputation for supporting other women, and encouraged actresses such as Gene Gauntier, Cleo Madison, and Dorothy Davenport to direct. Lois also had a sense of purpose that went beyond the creative spirit that drew others to the business.

As a child in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, she studied music and toured as a concert pianist until a piano key broke during a recital and she lost all nerve to play in front of an audience. Working as a Church Home Missionary in the poorer sections of Pittsburgh, she was frustrated by the seeming futility of one-on-one conversions and her uncle advised her to take up acting.

“As I was convinced the theatrical profession needed a missionary, he suggested that the best way to reach them was to become one of them so I went on the stage filled with a great desire to convert my fellowman.”³⁴

Joining a Chicago stock company, she soon married their star actor and stage manager Phillips Smalley, the good-looking grandson of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Lois’s acting was praised for “radiating domesticity” and critics claimed she was “at her best playing the young matron,” but when she left the company to keep house for Phillips, she soon tired of not working and found a job with the Gaumont film company, where she was encouraged to write, act, and try her hand at directing. Her husband soon joined her and they quickly established themselves as codirectors, with Lois writing all the stories and acting in many of them.³⁵

They moved between a series of studios before signing with Universal in Los Angeles, where Lois became known for her sophisticated camera angles and split-screen techniques. Universal supported the Smalleys with budgets that allowed for such luxuries as paying $1,200 for a small island that they then blew up for cinematic effect, yet they felt constrained by the demand for two two-reel films a month and the perceived “envious eyes” of their coworkers. Phillips particularly courted the attention of the press and Jean Darnell’s “Studio Chat” column in Photoplay barely let a month go by without mentioning the couple.³⁶

In April of 1914 Lois and Phillips spent a month filming in Laguna Beach, where they met Hobart Bosworth, a respected Broadway actor whose tuberculosis had driven him to seek California’s recuperative climate. He had reluctantly become a motion picture actor five years earlier when offered $125 to star in The Power of the Sultan for Selig, filmed at a Chinese laundry because the backdrops could be hung on the clotheslines. He moved on to producing his own films and, an ardent Jack London fan, he wrote, directed, and starred in The Sea Wolf, a seven-reel film made for $9,000. With the $4 million in profits it brought in, he created his own studio.³⁷

Bosworth’s conversations with Lois and Phillips turned to their desire to make films of whatever length and subject they chose and he invited them to work with him. Wide distribution of their films would be assured as he was in the process of joining forces with Famous Players and Jesse Lasky to form Paramount Pictures.³⁸

By early summer of 1914, the Smalleys were at the Bosworth studios and Lois was directing her first film. When Marion arrived for her appointment, she was ushered past actors re-creating the French Revolution and into an office to be introduced to “a tall woman, with classical features. She seemed to glide rather than walk, her head held high and tilted slightly backward, her ample breasts preceding her well-corseted body.” Marion thought she most closely resembled a figurehead on a sailing ship.³⁹

As Lois sat behind a large desk and looked through Marion’s portfolio of drawings, she began the conversation by telling Marion how much she enjoyed finding new talent. Marion “told her how much I wanted to design costumes and sets in a movie studio” and their shared love of filmmaking permeated their discussion. Yet when Lois asked, “Would you like to come under my wing as one of my little starlets?” Marion was not sure she understood. She reiterated that her experience was as an artist and a writer; she was interested in working “on the dark side of the camera.”⁴⁰

Lois assured her that at most studios, and at Bosworth in particular, everyone did a little of everything. She was offering her a position as her assistant and protégée where she would work in every stage of production, including in front of the camera. When the director said, “I’m sure we can match whatever salary you are making now” and then asked, “How soon can you start?” Marion knew she had found a new home.

Lois was cognizant that she was hiring more than a bright and talented young woman; she was also ensuring a connection with a close friend of Adela Rogers, the rising star reporter of the Los Angeles Herald. And while this was a greater entrée into the world of filmmaking than Marion had dreamed possible, there were compromises to be made. She was to be listed on the studio books as an actress and with a new name.

A few months short of her twenty-sixth birthday, Marion Benson Owens de Lappe Pike signed her contract with Bosworth Inc. as “Frances Marion, Actress, Refined type, age 19.”⁴¹