The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

Richard’s driving this time. Rex is up front next to him. Anita and Ben are in the back seat.

  “How was Mom?” Richard asks, lifting an eye to the rearview mirror.

  “I’m sure she’s already called and filled you in on every detail of our visit,” Ben says. Anita’s dozing against his shoulder. He doesn’t know why he agreed to come with them to see this old dame.

  Yes, you know why, Ben, Mom’s voice says in his head. You’re thinking it’s not such a bad idea anymore.

  Rex is still studying Florence Lawrence’s death certificate. “Ben,” he says, over his shoulder, “Richard also dug up an old biographical article on Florence Lawrence. Guess where she lived and went to school as a girl?”

  “You got me.”

  “Buffalo.”

  “Well, you’re a regular Sherlock, aren’t you, Richard?”

  “It wasn’t so hard to find out this stuff,” Richard tells him.

  Anita picked her head up. “Buffalo? You mean Florence Lawrence has a connection to Buffalo and her real last name was Bridgewood? Oh, this is just getting too weird now.”

  Ben looks out the window at the passing trees. Buffalo’s still a long way off. He’s going to have to put up with Richard’s smug sleuthing all the way there.

  “I’ll admit you’re on to something that may turn out to be interesting,” he says. “Beyond that, I’m not certain of anything. What are you going to do anyway? Shove those papers in the old lady’s face and say, ‘Gotcha!’?”

  “I’m just going to ask her about it,” Richard says. “If she still claims no connection, then I’ll ask Sister Jean if I can see her records—”

  “Supposing she doesn’t want to be found out?” Anita asks. “I mean, if she is The Biograph Girl and all that. Or her sister. Or whatever. Supposing she doesn’t want to be reminded of it? I mean, it was an awfully long time ago.”

  No one says a word. The only sound is the steady rush of the road under the Saab’s wheels.

  Ben laughs, breaking the silence. “Well, honey, that’s the press for ya. Always barging right in even when they’re not invited.”

  “Hey, you’re going ahead with that Marge Schott idea even though she said she wouldn’t cooperate with you,” Richard says.

  “I never planned on doing it with her,” Ben tells him. “Actually, I don’t even want her involvement. It’s not even really about her. It’s about race and gender and cultural attitudes.”

  Yet even as he says the words, Ben knows the rush of passion he’d felt just a few days ago has subsided. The thrill in his blood is gone; the fire in his belly is beginning to smolder.

  He hates that. How many times has it happened?

  Why not try Richard’s idea? His mother’s goddamn voice again. Richard thinks it could make a good movie. Maybe Anita and Rex can star in it. You know, Benny, you ought to do something for poor Rex. Who knows how long he’s gonna be around? He might even go before me. Poor Richard. But he’ll meet someone else, I’m sure. Of course he will, a successful, handsome writer like he is. You know, Benny, why don’t you cut your hair short like Richard does? That ponytail just makes you look like a hippy. You’re losing your hair pretty fast, you know. I think faster than Richard.

  Ben rolls down his window for some air.

  “Hey, I’m cold,” Anita says.

  “Ah, shit,” Ben says and rolls the window back up.

  “Hey,” Ben says, stepping out of the car and looking up at St. Mary’s through the trees. “It looks like something out of—”

  “We know,” Richard says. “Dark Shadows.”

  “I was going to say it looks like Manderly.”

  Rex laughs, affecting a mock British accent. “‘Last night, I dreamed I went to Manderly again.…’”

  Richard grins. He watches Ben, who doesn’t crack a smile. They make their way up the walk. It’s getting to be familiar territory for’ Richard now. Again he notices the aquamarine Bel-Air parked among the black sedans.

  Sister Jean meets them at the door this time. She eyes Ben. “Each time, you get a little larger,” she tells the group.

  “I hope it’s okay, Sister,” Richard says. “This is my brother, Ben Sheehan.”

  Sister Jean’s face glows. She reaches out to shake Ben’s hand. “Oh, yes,” she gushes. “The director of One Chance, One World.”

  Richard can see Ben’s face flush, how surprised he is by the recognition. “That’s right,” he says awkwardly.

  “A wonderful, wonderful film,” Sister Jean says. “So inspiring. Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” Ben says, a little embarrassed, but eminently pleased, too, Richard can tell—and he can’t help but be a little moved by his brother’s reaction.

  They head upstairs to Flo’s room. She’s sitting in an armchair next to her bed. She seems asleep, but her eyes open as soon as she hears them enter. Richard spies the poster on the wall: CHARLOTTE LAWRENCE. In the Movie Mirror article, Florence Lawrence’s mother’s name was given as Lotta. Could it be a nickname for Charlotte?

  “Hello, Richard,” Flo says.

  He shakes her hand warmly. Anita offers her another bouquet, this time daisies, which Flo takes and inhales deeply, clasping it to her bosom. Sister Jean then takes the flowers and slips them into a vase near Flo’s bed.

  It’s a hospital bed, Richard notices. There’s some kind of monitor off to one side, and a guardrail in the down position. It reminds him that despite her agility, despite her sharpness, Flo is still a very, very old woman.

  One hundred and six.

  The same age as—

  “This is my boyfriend Ben,” Anita is telling Flo.

  “Oh, you must be the movie director,” Flo says, shaking Ben’s hand.

  He seems pleased again. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I am.”

  Sister Jean is standing behind him, her face lit up like a teenage fan. “What are you working on now?” she asks.

  He hesitates. “Uh—well, it’s still coming together,” he says.

  “Jeannie,” Flo scolds. “You never ask a filmmaker what he’s working on. Trade secrets, you know.”

  Richard smiles. He wonders how many trade secrets Flo is keeping herself.

  “Hello, Sexy Rexy,” Flo calls. “How are you today?”

  “I swear I didn’t tell her to say that,” Ben says, laughing. Richard can tell his brother is already enjoying Flo, that despite his protestations he’s pleased as punch he came.

  Rex bends and kisses Flo’s outstretched hand. “Flo can call me anything she likes—except late for dinner.” She laughs out loud that he remembered her quip.

  Supposing she doesn’t want to be found out? Supposing she doesn’t want to be reminded of all that?

  Richard stiffens. You’re a journalist, he tells himself. You smell a story. You need to pursue it.

  No matter what.

  You know, Nooker, one of these days I’m gonna do something big.

  “And you?” Flo asks Anita. “Any work yet?”

  “A shampoo commercial—that’s all.”

  “It’s a pity,” Flo says, looking at Jean. “Look how pretty she is. But you should be out in California. Isn’t that still the case, that you have to go to Hollywood to make movies?”

  Anita smiles tightly. Richard watches to see if she looks at Ben. She doesn’t. “Yes, Flo,” she says. “That’s still the case.”

  Richard sits down opposite Flo and takes out his tape recorder. “Did you ever work in Hollywood, Flo?”

  She smiles. The rest of them all take seats: Ben and Anita in chairs, Sister Jean on the bed, Rex on the floor.

  “I was there for a spell, yes,” Flo tells them.

  “I thought you were just a stage actress,” Richard says.

  “Why did you think that?” she asks. “These posters?”

  “That’s how you described yourself.”

  She smiles weakly, as if letting down a guard. “Well, the stage was my first love. One never forgets one’s first love, I suppose.”
<
br />   “You obviously haven’t,” Richard says warmly.

  “Is that turned on?” she asks, indicating the tape recorder.

  “Yes,” Richard tells her.

  Flo moves her eyes over to Ben. “Mr. Sheehan,” Flo tells him, “if you’re going to make movies, you have to go west. Colonel Selig did it first, back in oh-seven, I believe. Then along went the Christie brothers and Dave Nestor, although Mr. Griffith didn’t go out for another couple of years. We were dependent on the sun back then, you see. We could work outside all year round in California. Couldn’t do that in New York.”

  “We?” Richard asks.

  Flo smiles. “I made my first moving picture in December of 1906, out in Bronx Park in New York.”

  Richard hesitates. He notices Flo’s eyes are on him, as if challenging him. 1906. That was when Florence Lawrence made her first film, Richard remembers. There had been a filmography attached to one of the articles. Daniel Boone, he thinks—for the Edison company.

  Which had its studio out in the Bronx.

  He slowly reaches into his jacket and pulls out the death certificate. He hands it to Flo. She takes it, looks down at it. “My glasses, Jean,” she says.

  Sister Jean fetches Flo’s eyeglasses from the table beside her bed. They’re thick and old—light blue frames with tiny faux pearls in the corners. Flo puts them on gingerly, then looks down again at the certificate in her hands. She’s quiet. She seems to be fascinated by the document, reading every line.

  “It’s Florence Lawrence’s death certificate,” Richard tells her quietly. “You see, it says Bridgewood was her real name.”

  “Oh, Richard,” Sister Jean says disapprovingly, suddenly clucking over them like an old maid schoolmarm. “Flo, if this disturbs you, you don’t have to—”

  Flo doesn’t look up. She keeps reading. “I see what it is, Richard,” she says, “and, no, it doesn’t disturb me, Jean.” She puts it down and takes off her glasses. “At least, not much.”

  “I’m sorry if I—” Richard begins.

  “No, don’t be,” Flo tells him. She takes a long breath and looks past them. Or through them—at something very far away, something none of them can see. “It’s just strange—that’s all. After all this time. To see what they wrote.”

  There’s a heaviness to the room that feels physical to Richard. As if the force of gravity has suddenly been cranked up a hundred times, and all of them are weighted down under the burden. He watches Flo with unblinking eyes: how she draws her lips together and folds the certificate into threes along its creases. He sees Anita and Ben leaning forward in their chairs, senses Rex and Sister Jean now standing over his shoulder.

  “Flo,” Richard says, breaking the silence, “are you—is that—”

  She looks up at him with astonishingly clear blue eyes.

  “Are you the woman described in that record?”

  “Yes,” she says, very softly.

  “But you said no last time. You told us you weren’t. Why, Flo? And how is it possible that—”

  She smiles, leaning in toward Richard and staring directly into his eyes, making sure she speaks directly over the tape recorder. “Last time,” she tells him, “you asked me, ‘Are you The Biograph Girl?’ That’s exactly how you put it. ‘Are you The Biograph Girl?’ And I told you no—because I’m not. Heaven knows I’m not. I’m not even Florence Lawrence, not anymore. Haven’t been for a long, long time.” She pauses. “But many years ago, in another life, I was.”

  She looks over at the rest of them and then back at Richard. “Once, a long time ago, I was indeed The Biograph Girl.”

  Autumn 1908

  It means “Living Picture.” I always liked that about the name Biograph. Living Picture. For that’s what we made: pictures that lived. Pictures of life. And I was the Living Picture Girl—the Girl of Life.

  The envelope came addressed simply:

  The Biograph Girl, New York

  Just that, nothing else, and still it found me.

  “Here’s another haul,” Harry called, dumping the contents of a burlap sack on the table.

  Letters spilled in front of me. The red smudges of postmarks heralded places even I had never been—towns with names like Black Sequoia and Prince Rupert and East Moscow. I ran my hands through them, marveling over their number.

  They were all for me.

  “Read this one, Flo,” Harry said.

  I took the letter from his hand. “‘Dear Mrs. Jones,’” I read and laughed out loud. “Mrs. Jones” was the name of my character in the Biograph films. How sweet, how innocent were those early days. The public assumed I really was “Mrs. Jones,” that I really was married to John Compson, who played my husband in the films. We weren’t acting out stories to them—we were really living. Living Pictures, after all. It was as if some magic camera had caught us as we went about our days, and the whole world watched what we did. In those fresh, giddy, early days, some people honestly and truly believed that.

  Dear Mrs. Jones,

  You are the most talented actress on the motion picture screen. You speak more with your eyes in one reel of film than Sarah Bernhardt does in an entire play with words.

  Sincerely,

  Mr. Thomas Hearn

  Little Rock, Arkansas

  “Arkansas!” Dorothy West, another actress, exclaimed. “Where haven’t the flickers gone!”

  Such fame as mine had never been known. You need to understand that if you are to understand everything else. In the matter of just a few years, moving pictures had become staggeringly popular. There were nickelodeons everywhere—hundreds in New York City alone. “Electric vaudeville,” they were sometimes called. Enterprising men by the thousands converted dry goods stores into movie theaters, buying their chairs from funeral parlors and their film at five cents per foot. All of the big moguls started that way—Zukor and Fox and Mr. Mayer. Their fame and fortune began with their little nickel theaters—and I was their first star.

  Nothing—nothing—like this had ever existed before. Stage stars were known only to those who could afford to see their plays. Singers were only known by their sheet music and reputation; there were no records yet, no radio. The movies offered amusement to the masses. Thousands of new immigrants were pouring into the country every month, and few could afford legitimate theater prices. Many didn’t speak English. The movies were their only option. We spoke a universal language: no words back then, not even subtitles. Just music and pantomime and the delirium of the collective imagination.

  “Read this one,” Harry told me, and I read it aloud:

  To The Biograph Girl,

  If ever I meet you, I will take you in my arms and carry you away. You will be mine and mine only—forever.

  Signed,

  Mr. Gilbert T. Rook

  Bangor, Maine

  I shivered. Harry just laughed, his big old booming laugh. “Well,” he said, puffing out his chest in that absurd way he had, “Mr. Rook will have to come through me first.”

  Everyone laughed. But I’d had enough reading for one day.

  I’d been with Biograph four months. That was all it took. Four short months. The letters began arriving at the studio on East Fourteenth Street my third week there. Mr. Griffith said nothing, just handed me the letters. First two or three. Then a stack tied with twine. Then the burlap sacks piled up outside the studio doors.

  The trade papers noticed me, too. The Biograph Girl, read one editorial, is the spirit of youth itself. Another, clipped out and pasted into my scrapbook for so many years: There is something about The Biograph Girl that makes everyone love her.

  Oh, yes, those were heady, delirious days.

  I came to Biograph because of Harry. I suppose it’s time I told you about him. Harry’s the only man I ever really truly loved, though I think I came to realize that only later, after the bad times had receded. When Harry and I were alone, out on our farm, he could be so kind. I remember how he’d cut down the Christmas tree and haul it into the h
ouse, huffing and puffing, and how he’d struggle to make it straight in the stand. He’d drop his big bear arm around my shoulders and beam up at his handiwork, his eyes moist. “You’re my greatest gift, Florrie,” he’d say, his voice choked with sincere emotion. “I need nothing more.”

  Except—he did. We all did. It was Harry who brought me to my fame. Harry—with his warm round eyes and shy smile, his soft Southern drawl, his obsessive devotion to me and my career. He couldn’t have known how it all would end, what it would do to me, to him, to us.

  I’d been working at the Vitagraph studios out in Flatbush, sewing costumes and mending canvas in addition to acting. Mr. J. Stuart Blackton paid me fifteen dollars a week. Mother and Ducks found work there, too, but the leading lady was another Florence: Florence Turner, whom everyone called Flossie.

  In those days, spies lurked everywhere. Rivalries among the fledgling studios was fierce. Patent litigation hung like the sword of Damocles over all our heads. It was a rascally business; Thomas Edison threatened to shut us all down for infringement on his patents. In the midst of this, a quiet, aristocratic Southern gentleman named David Wark Griffith had been named artistic director over at Biograph. He wanted to improve the quality of moving pictures, he said, lift them out of the flickers category and make them the equal of the legitimate theater. So he set about assembling a stock company of the best actors he could find.

  Enter Harry Solter into the life of Florence Lawrence.

  I was a girl wise to the world but innocent of love—of love returned, that is. Having not heard from Linda in months, I was lonely and downcast when Harry first appeared in front of me. I felt friendless and alone, and Mother never failed to remind me how disgraceful it was to be working in pictures. “The longer we stay here,” she would say, “the more likely this will remain our lot.”

  “Excuse me, Miss Lawrence?”

  I looked up and I saw him. Dear Harry—standing in front of me on the steps of the Flatbush studio, a bouquet of slightly wilted chrysanthemums in his hand. I was struck by how tall he was, more than six feet, with me barely five two. He wasn’t what one might call handsome, with a craggy face and ungainly ears, but he was sturdy and solid, with enormous shoulders and a prominent jaw, and the deepest, bluest, most intense eyes I’d ever seen.