The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

  I was a star like her once, I thought. No, no—not like her. None of this had existed in my time. No wind-whipped pools, no streets of plaster, no dressing rooms the size of haciendas. But the magic—the dreams—these were in place from the beginning. These I still recognized—these, and the strange melancholy I’d seen in Garbo’s eyes.

  I had just divorced Bolton. Oh, his story isn’t important—suffice to say that I hated him for what he’d done to me. Once again, I had hoped marriage—my third, you know—might give me the escape I so desperately desired. But it hadn’t. It only made things worse. There was nothing to do after the divorce but reclaim my name—or rather, her name—Florence Lawrence—and come back to the studios.

  People have called Mr. Mayer a tyrant, a miser, a hypocrite, a lech—and maybe it’s true. I’ve heard the stories. But he was good to me, and I was grateful. Without his offer of employment, appearing in the backgrounds of scenes or among the crowds, I would have been living on the street. Or reduced to selling cosmetics from a wagon, the way poor Karl Dane sold hot dogs outside the studio gates.

  “Thanks, Karl,” I said, taking the steaming dog in the slightly stale bun from his hand.

  Once he’d been a popular comic star, the big Swedish blockhead in countless pictures. Now I handed him my dime and he accepted it without ever once making eye contact with me.

  I sat down on the curb and began to eat my lunch. It was maybe my third or fourth day at the studio. I still knew precious few people outside of the other waxworks—my old IMP costar, King Baggott, and Flossie Turner, once the queen of Vitagraph, had also been taken in by Mr. Mayer’s charity.

  But today I ate not in the commissary with them, but alone, out at the curb. I spied a young man sitting not three feet from me. He smiled. I even imagined he might be flirting. He was very handsome, with black hair and blue eyes and a dimple in his chin. He reminded me of Charles—the way he’d looked before he’d gotten mean.

  But this man was so young. He couldn’t be flirting with me. Still, I smiled back, just in case.

  “Say,” he called over to me, “where’d you get that relish?”

  I brightened. “There’s a condiments table over to the side of the wagon,” I told him. “Ask Karl.”

  The young man stood, nodded to me, and went off to find his relish. That might have been the end of it, but I was suddenly charged with the desire not to let him go. “What’s your name?” I asked him when he’d sat back down.

  “Bob Cole,” he said. “And yours.”

  “I’m Flo.”

  “Well, hiya, Flo.” He wiped his hand on his dungarees and edged over closer to me. We shook hands. “Pleased to meet ya. You new here?”

  “Mr. Mayer just hired me.” I tossed my hair back, the way that once delighted Harry so, that made him enthuse about how beautiful I was. “It’s pretty swell getting a salary every week, with times being so tough everywhere else.”

  “I’ll say.” Bob finished his dog in two bites. “Finally I saved up enough to move out of my parents’ house to a place of my own.”

  “Oh, I’d just love to have a place of my own again,” I told him. Just for a second did the images of my old homes pass before me—Charles’s house in the hills, my beloved farm out in New Jersey. “I’m living in a boardinghouse right now.”

  “Well, you’re in luck,” Bob said. “The place I just took, over in West Hollywood, has a cottage and a converted garage. I need somebody to help with the rent. You could have the cottage. It’s actually pretty nice. I wouldn’t mind.”

  “My,” I said, laughing. “You certainly waste no time.”

  “I just believe in going for the moment,” he said. “I can take you over there this afternoon if you’d like to see it.”

  “I’d like that very much.” I smiled prettily. “Maybe we might even have dinner.”

  He blushed, just a little. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “But I’ve got plans—one of the new script girls.” He winked at me. “You understand.”

  I hesitated for just a second, then winked back at him. “Of course,” I said.

  Men. Those creatures with two legs and eight hands. Why did I still bother after all this time? I understood completely.

  “What’s your last name?” Bob asked suddenly.

  “Lawrence,” I told him. “Florence Lawrence.”

  He paused. “I’ve heard of you,” he said. “I’d never forget a name like that.”

  I smiled. “I made movies a long time ago. But you’re too young, Bob. You couldn’t remember that.”

  He nodded, seeming to agree. “Well, both my parents have worked in the films since Colonel Selig first came out here in oh-seven. They were cutters, you know. They knew everyone. I imagine they must have mentioned your name to me. Because I’ll tell you—it sure would be hard to forget a name like Florence Lawrence.”

  No, not so hard.

  “I was the biggest star in the world,” I told Molly. “I got letters from everywhere—from Kansas and Tennessee and Italy and Spain.”

  “Oh, Flo, how exciting that must have been!”

  I took her hand. She made me feel young. That was what was so precious about her. She made me feel like a girl. We were walking down Hollywood Boulevard. The Chinese Theater was just ahead on our right. A Mae West picture was opening tonight and the crowds were beginning to gather. Otto K. Oleson was aiming his crisscrossing spotlights at the purple sky.

  “Exciting,” I said. “Yes, it was exciting. But we had no idea. None!”

  “No idea of what?” Molly asked.

  “Of what we were doing, of what it was all leading up to.” I looked over at her. Molly’s eyes reflected the lights of the sky. They were filled with adoration. How absurd. How deliciously, intoxicatingly absurd. No one had looked at me in that way in a very long time.

  We reached the theater. Curious bystanders gathered to await the limousines that would soon arrive. Some were pointing down at Norma Talmadge’s footsteps in the cement. Molly broke free of my grip and stooped down to place her hand into the imprint of Gloria Swanson’s palm.

  “Look,” she said, beaming up at me. “It fits!”

  “Come on along, Molly,” I said as the crowd filed in around us, “before we can’t get out of here.”

  “But Mr. Griffith, Flo,” she said, trailing along behind me. “He knew. He believed moving pictures had a future, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “He believed.”

  “Might things have been different if you had stayed with him?” she asked.

  “What do you mean, different?”

  “I don’t know, Flo. Just that, well, maybe you might have—”

  “Might haves are silly to think of,” I said, ending the conversation. I wanted to get out of there. Too many people now. The first limousine had arrived. Constance Bennett, I think. The cameras had begun to pop. The mob was starting to shout, to push. One man elbowed me hard in the ribs.

  “Come on, Molly,” I said, grabbing her hand again. “Let’s go.”

  Once we were safely across the street I began breathing easier, the reassuring fragrance of orange blossoms in my lungs.

  Molly had a falling out with the girls in her house. I never knew all the details, didn’t care to, but it was something about the boyfriend of one of them. I imagine Molly slept with him. That was her way. He was an assistant casting director at Metro.

  “Thanks for letting me stay here, Flo,” Molly said.

  I’d set the cottage up as brightly as I could, with yellow polka-dot curtains on the windows, a bright red-and-white-checked tablecloth, and a braided rug on the floor of the living room. I’d turned Bob’s cramped, dark little place into home.

  I looked over at her. She was wearing scarlet lipstick. No other makeup. With her pale face, she looked like one of those dolls you try to win at a carnival.

  “It’ll be a little cramped,” I told her, “but we’ll make do.” I poured two glasses of iced tea. I knew Molly didn’t drink b
eer. The ice cubes popped a little as the tea flowed over them. Molly accepted one and drank gratefully.

  It was a terribly hot day in August. Hot-bug kind of hot, I imagine Molly would have said. The cicadas were singing loudly in the palm trees. Bob was out back pushing his rusty old lawn mower, the tangy odor of cut grass everywhere. He’d taken off his shirt. The sweat ran down his back in shiny rivulets.

  Molly bent over to peer out the small kitchen window. “He sure is swell lookin’,” she said. Her small suitcase was set down at her feet. “What’s his name?”

  “That’s Bob,” I told her.

  She licked her lips. “Sure is sweet,” she said, apparently about the iced tea. “Thanks again, Flo.”

  I smiled. I’d been glad to offer her a room. Otherwise she would have ended up on the street. I knew that feeling. She had been so thankful she’d thrown her thin little arms around my neck and kissed me. Smack dab on the lips. Left a slash of red that took hours to wash off.

  “Well, let me get you set up in here,” I said, picking up her suitcase and carrying it into my little sewing room. I took a pillow out of the closet. “There’s just a cot, but it should be comfortable enough.”

  Molly stood in the doorway looking at the little room. “Oh, it’s wonderful, Flo. Thank you so much.”

  “It’ll be nice to have the company,” I told her.

  “Someday, Flo, when I’m a big star, as big as Jean Harlow, I’ll buy you a grand house on Sunset Boulevard.” She took another sip of her iced tea. “I promise.”

  “I’ll hold you to it,” I said.

  “Flo,” Molly asked, setting her glass down and popping open her suitcase on the cot, “where did the stars live when you were big?”

  A beat. “We were still in New York then,” I told her, not looking up as I arranged the pillow on the cot. “Not many had come out west yet.”

  “I can’t imagine making pictures in New York,” Molly said, lifting out a lacy white slip from her suitcase and hanging it in the closet. “So cold and dreary.”

  “That’s why we came out here.”

  Outside, Bob passed by the window, pushing the mower. Molly bent down to peer out again at him. I folded my arms across my chest. “I’ll introduce you when he’s finished,” I told her.

  “Oh, I’m not interested in dating him or anything like that, Flo,” Molly said. “I just think he’s cute. You said he knows Douglas Shearer?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “Quite well.”

  I wasn’t surprised Molly remembered that little tidbit about Bob. He worked in the recorded-sound division at MGM, where Douglas Shearer was in charge—so he’d met Norma, too, who was Douglas’s sister. He was even on a nodding friendly basis with Mr. Thalberg. Sometimes he’d wangle an invitation to some soiree or another, and he’d come home dazzled, talking of Crawford and Gable and Bob Montgomery and Myrna Loy. “Harlow was there,” he told me breathlessly one night, “in a silver lamé dress so tight they must have sewed her into it.”

  I picked up Molly’s empty glass. There were lipstick stains on the rim. She was looking out the window again, trying to ascertain where Bob had disappeared to.

  “He’s putting the mower away, I imagine,” I said to her.

  She looked up at me, a little embarrassed. “Oh, Flo, I was just looking at the view.” She smiled. “So tell me. What do I need to know? Any house rules?”

  She went back to unpacking her suitcase, lifting each item and carefully shaking out the wrinkles. A silk blouse. A plaid skirt. Another slip, black this time. She hung each carefully in the closet.

  “Well,” I began, “a few.” I heard Bob come through the screen door into the kitchen. I turned and saw him shirtless and sweating, opening the icebox and taking out the pitcher of iced tea. He poured himself a glass and drank it all in several gulps, without pausing for breath. Then he turned to go back outside.

  “First thing,” I said, more to him than Molly. “Make sure you put whatever you take out of the icebox back in.”

  Bob looked back and smiled sheepishly at me. “Sorry, Flo,” he said, replacing the pitcher in the icebox.

  I gestured with my head. “Bob, come on in and meet Molly. She’ll be staying here for a spell.”

  He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. He smelled pungently of grass and sweat. He took a few steps toward me and peered into the little room. He grinned.

  “How do you?” he asked, all flashy white teeth and sinewy, soiled torso.

  They shook hands. I saw the look pass between them. I knew then and there it would be just a matter of days before they slept with each other. I supposed I’d known it from the moment I’d offered Molly a place to stay. They’ll sleep together. She and Bob.

  And what was the harm in it anyway? They were children, I told myself. That’s what children do. Affairs don’t need any pretext; they start with a look and end with breakfast. Or at least a sip of water from a rusty old canteen. That’s what the dark-eyed island boy had offered me so many years before. You see, I was a child once, too, as fueled by the passion of youth as they were. Passion and youth went hand in hand. True, I had never slept with as many men as Molly, but that didn’t mean I was dispossessed of passion. Far from it. Florence Bridgewood had been as passionate as they came.

  In the moments when I was alone with Molly, when we’d laugh like schoolgirls or hold hands in the night, I could imagine I was still as young and as pretty as I had been that day with Linda on that hill in old San Francisco or that I had discovered my soul again in the way I had with my dark-eyed lover. The rest of the time—when I was alone, when I’d sit on the curb smiling ridiculously at strangers—my imagination wasn’t nearly as yielding or as generous.

  “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” Molly said to Bob in return. I saw the subtle puckering of her too red lips.

  “Secondly,” I said sharply, my voice breaking the space between them. “The trash goes out on Tuesday, and the iceman comes on Thursday.”

  Neither paid any attention.

  I turned to leave. Bob was helping Molly place her now empty suitcase on the top shelf in the closet. “Oh, and Molly,” I said, turning back just once, “don’t leave food sitting out. We’ve got a problem with ants.”

  I loved her. I truly did. I’d walk into her room late at night as she slept and just stare down at her, listening to her breathe.

  “Annie Laurie,” I’d whisper in the dark.

  Bonny Annie Laurie …

  Certainly we bore a resemblance to each other. The same height, the same coloring. One time a very attractive young man on the lot asked if we were mother and daughter. “No.” Molly had laughed. “She’s my sister!” She got a big kick out of that.

  I did love her. You need to believe that. Loved her as I might have my own daughter, had I been given the chance. And she loved me. She’d cry in my arms and I’d comfort her when she awoke from the nightmares that tore through her sleep on a near nightly basis. I’d come rushing into her little room and wrap my arms around her shaking form, assuring her that Papa wasn’t going to strike her, that Mama wasn’t really dead, that Mama was only sleeping.

  Sleeping off a long drunk, I imagined.

  “I’ll show them,” she’d say after I’d dried her tears and she had composed herself. “I’ll show all of them back in Red Oak. I’ll become a big, big star and they’ll wish they’d loved me better. Oh, how they’ll wish that!”

  She truly believed it. She truly believed her dreams were attainable. But then, all of those who flocked down on Hollywood like so many simpering doves believed their dreams. Poor little girl. Yes, there were times I’d get angry with her. Found myself at my wit’s end with her innocence—with her beauty, her youth. But I loved her. You must never doubt that I loved her, or you’ll understand nothing of what came later.

  “Flo,” she asked, the red glow of dawn glinting off her eyes, “when you were big, did you get many fan letters?”

  I looked over at her. Her head was cocked to o
ne side as she paused in lacing up her blouse. The sun was just coming up, a reddish glow at the windowsill. We were dressing for an early call at the studio.

  “You silly girl,” I said, turning away, unable to bear looking at her any longer. “Of course I did. They came in big sacks to the studio every day.”

  She slithered her legs into a pair of hose. “Mr. Mayer was one of your fans, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly, repeating the story I’d told her several times before. “Mr. Mayer showed all of my pictures in his nickelodeon back in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He has great affection for all us old-timers. That’s why he’s given us all work.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that Mr. Mayer is so kind,” Molly said. “I hope someday when I’m old, after I’m done with being a big star, somebody will give me work, too.”

  She meant no disrespect. That was the rub: Molly was never discourteous. Not to me, not to anyone. She played no games. She never gossiped about the other girls at the studio. Instead, she complimented them on their hair and clothes. Such a thing was unheard of, you understand. She never tore anyone down to build herself up. There was just no malice to Molly. None. I never saw her be cruel. Cruelty requires an ounce of bitterness, and there was nothing bitter about Molly. Nothing at all, despite everything.

  Yes, that was the rub.

  Because I could be cruel. I’m not proud of the fact, but I could. And Molly sometimes made me angry.

  I’m glad to hear Mr. Mayer is so kind.

  “I don’t accept charity,” I snapped at her. “Never have, never will.” I sucked in my gut, lacing up my girdle as tight as I could make it. “I work for my pay. The only way I’ve ever gotten by is through my own sheer will and determination. I’ve never asked for favors and never given any either.”

  The last was a dig. I’m not sure she got it. “I’m sorry, Flo,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “Well, you did. Now forget it.”

  She stood in front of the full-length mirror. How pretty she was. I could see myself behind her. It was my mother looking back at me: Mother at the end of her time on the stage, hard faced and brown, stubbornly resisting her daughter’s emergence into the spotlight.