The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

  Everywhere I felt the magic of the island. On Santorini, where rocks float and crumble in your hand when grasped, I came to believe in magic.

  “We are built of air,” our guide explained to me. “Air and water and fire.”

  Elemental things. Magical things. The same, really.

  I took long walks outside the village. Here, no one knew me. Here, there were no cinemas, no cameras, no reporters.

  It was a warm, glorious day when I hitched a ride on a cart up the rocky headland of Mesa Vouna to see the ruins of ancient Thira. The driver was a boy, probably not much older than eighteen, a black-eyed, black-haired youth with olive skin and dirty fingernails.

  “Do you go to see the temple?” he asked.

  I was surprised he spoke English, even haltingly.

  “Our priest, he teach me,” the boy said. “We have visitors like you who speak only the English and I bring them to the temple.”

  “What temple?” I asked.

  “Dionysus,” he told me. “The god of wine.”

  Later, I’d read all I could find on Dionysus. Yes, he was the god of wine, but also of the fertility of nature. In his honor, countless orgies had been celebrated in the ancient world. Bacchanalias, they were called, since Dionysus was also known as Bacchus.

  “What is your name?” I asked the boy as he pulled on the reins to direct his mule up the crumbling hills of pumice.

  “Demetrius,” he told me. “Demi.”

  His eyes were so black. So black that I could see nothing, not even myself, reflected there. His hair was a tangle of ebony curls, his back a taut outline of sharp bone and sinew. He was shirtless and smelled of boy sweat and sweet wine. He turned to me and smiled, a dazzling flash of white against his dark skin.

  “Your name? And your name?”

  “Florence,” I told him. After a moment, I added, “Florence Bridgewood.”

  “It is an honor, Florence Bridgewood.” He smiled.

  I felt my face flush. I was suddenly filled with energy. “Demi,” I asked, “may I take the reins? May I drive the cart?”

  He looked at me quizzically. “But you do not know …?”

  “You can direct us, but let me drive the horses. I can do it. Trust me.” I looked at him eagerly.

  I don’t know what possessed me or why it suddenly mattered so, but I wanted so much to take that wagon up the hill to the temple. Something in my eyes must have convinced Demi, for he slid over on his seat and handed the reins to me.

  “Take this road,” he said, pointing. “It takes us to the top.”

  It was dry, dusty, scratchy terrain. We spoke little on the way. After about forty minutes of rattling over pumice, we reached the ruins of the temple. Demi pointed without speaking, and I climbed down from the cart to wander among the ancient marble. He watched me; I could feel his eyes as I stepped over the broken columns, the cracked altars. He seemed intrigued by me, by this woman who drove her own cart.

  I sensed his intrigue, but was too overcome by the place to dwell upon it. I sat down on a mosaic of tiny green and blue tiles, sensing the energy, still vibrating, of those who had worshiped here two millennia before.

  I sat in silence for a long time, listening to the wind whistle among the old stone. I wasn’t even aware at first that I had begun to cry. I made no sound, just shed tears that felt warm on my face. Tears for Ducks. For Harry. For Florence Bridgewood and the dreams she’d once had. Tears for how imprisoned I now felt, how empty.

  But there was more to my tears. In retrospect, I can see that. I cried for passion’s sake, for the yearning I felt deep down inside. I cried for what I had yet to discover, and feared I never would. I could not have articulated that then, the meaning of my tears, but I can see it now quite plainly. I was twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four. I felt terribly old. As if I had seen and done all I was meant to see and do in this life.

  The boy’s shadow suddenly fell across me. I looked up, and there he was: this young Greek godlet, this black-eyed fisherboy who knew nothing of my world but a few snippets of phrases, who had never been inside a cinema or read Photoplay or penned a heartsick letter to Mary Pickford. His lips were full and red, like a woman’s, like mine, and I don’t honestly know who kissed who first after he stooped down to look into my eyes. But kiss we did, deep and wet and passionate, there in the Temple of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility and nature, under the sharp blue of the Aegean sky. I felt his strong small hands on my face, my breasts, and I let my own hands explore his body as well—something I’d never considered doing with Harry or any other man. I felt the tautness of his chest, the indentations of his ribs, the hardness of his back, and the roundness of his buttocks.

  He made love to me. Rather, we made love together—the first time in my life that was true. It was an awakening, all right. Finally I understood in some place deep within me that this—this—was what it was meant to be. This was what it was all about. We made love twice, then three times, as the sun rose higher and higher and then began to set. As darkness began to fall, we made love yet again.

  “Demi,” I breathed.

  It had gotten chilly. He lifted his mouth from my neck, where he was busy planting a thousand tiny kisses. Our eyes found each other in the last of the sunlight.

  “You should go back?” he asked.

  “No, no, I never want to go back,” I told him.

  He smiled. He stood, unblushingly naked, his plump little uncircumsized member bouncing as he walked back to his wagon. He returned with a blanket, a canteen of water, and some grapes.

  “For you,” he said.

  He draped the blanket over me, unscrewed the cap on the canteen. “To drink?” he asked.

  I accepted his offer. The water tasted cool, sweet, refreshing. He touched my face tenderly as I handed the canteen back to him. He set it down, then tucked the blanket more securely around my bare feet.

  I have found passion with other men in my life. I have come to know what sex is, understand its power and its depth. But Demi was the first. Had he not handed me the reins when I asked, I doubt any of what came after would have happened.

  “Do you believe in this god?” I asked him, his head next to mine. “Dionysus?”

  “I believe in all gods,” he told me.

  So did I, suddenly. I’d never much thought of God before then. Mother had insisted we were Catholics—appeasing my old Irish grandmother, I imagined—but I never thought much about religion. Yet that night, finding a glint of moonlight reflected off Demi’s eyes in the dark, I knew I was seeing the divine.

  Am I getting too maudlin? Stop me if I am. But I imagine most women, the first time they are really made love to, tend to go on a bit. You’ll have to indulge me. There aren’t many such unblemished episodes in my life.

  In the morning, we ate the last of the grapes and kissed one last time in the ruins.

  “I can’t go back,” I said to him as he returned the blanket and canteen to the wagon. “I can’t go back—to all that.”

  He didn’t understand. He had no idea about my life. About things like cameras and arc lamps and publicity men.

  “It is all too difficult,” I told him as best as I could. “Too hard.”

  He offered me a small smile. He took my hands in his. “Perhaps you go back to get through it,” he said. “Perhaps that is why you came here. Perhaps you go through it and you find there is another side.”

  He smiled innocently. “My English,” he said. “Does it make sensible?”

  I just smiled. Finally I sighed and let him help me up into the wagon.

  I turned for one last look at the Temple of Dionysus. I have never forgotten it. The way the rising sun reflected against the tipped and cracked old marble, the pinkish glow it cast and the purple shadows it brought into relief. The sight of the temple on the top of the hill as we descended, getting smaller and smaller until it was obliterated by the glare of the sun.

  When we returned to Fira, Demi helped me down off the wagon and kiss
ed my hand. The tenderness in his eyes was so awful that I couldn’t speak. I just took his dark little hand and pressed it to my lips.

  Then he rattled off in his wagon into the startlingly yellow day.

  I never saw him after that day.

  Tenderness is greater proof of love than the most passionate of vows or exquisite of jewels. Demi taught me that. Even in the most fleeting of encounters.

  A letter awaited at the pension from Harry, sent from aboard the steamer Wilhelm and mailed from the vessel’s first stop in Athens.

  Florence, my darling,

  I swear my love is eternal, and each day until the end I will write you of my love.

  “What does he mean, the end?” Mother asked. I had passed over the letter to her once I had finished with it.

  “Read on,” I told her.

  I don’t want to cause you any pain, and I will spare you all the harrowing details. Everything will appear accidental. No one need ever know, so fear not that it will interfere with your career.

  “He’s planning to kill himself,” Mother said, supremely indifferent. She was lying beside me on the terrace of our pension. Our chaises were positioned to watch the setting sun. “Do you think he means it?”

  “We’ll have to keep reading what he sends, I suppose.”

  The next letter came from Rome:

  Dear heart,

  The sea is so calm and looks so peaceful. I began work upon the railing today. I have a bottle of mureatic and nitric acid, which will gently but surely eat away at the rail. Soon I shall lean upon that rail. But I promised to spare you all the details, and my words to you must only be of love.

  Love. Poor, deluded Harry. I passed on this latest letter to Mother as well.

  She looked up from behind her dark glasses. “Should you write back to him?” she asked. “Perhaps have a cable waiting for him when the ship docks at Gibraltar?”

  “I think not,” I said after considering it. What would be the point? I was confident the volcano would have erupted by then. It would all be moot.

  A week later, another missive:

  Oh, darling,

  All the cruel things I ever spoke were all lies. I would overturn hell itself if those thoughts were put into my brain by the devil himself. And those mean, nasty things I said about your mother—when she is part of you, your own flesh and blood. If it had not been for her, I would never have met my Florence.

  Once again, I handed over this latest installment to Mother. “Well, is he going to do it or not?” she asked, sending the letter fluttering in the air when she was done.

  Finally, this one, from Gibraltar, just as the ship set out for the long voyage across the Atlantic to New York:

  Oh, sweet Florence,

  I want to live and live by your side. This morning I threw away the bottle of acid, and when I went upon the deck the sun was smiling and the world looked so beautiful. Darling Florence, come to me. We will build a home together on some beautiful lake. We will have music—we will have flowers—we will have laughter—and each day we will grow younger and younger. We shall be young lovers dancing in the sun for all time to come.

  The volcano never exploded, and it wasn’t going to, at least not this time.

  For several days, as I came to this realization, I didn’t speak. I just got up in the morning and walked for miles. I’d sit in the ashy soil that slopes away from the cliffs. I found a grapevine one day, picked a dozen grapes idly and ate them, watching the sun reach midday overhead and then begin its slow descent toward the horizon. When I returned at dusk, I looked once more into the caldera, at the craggy peaks of the burned isles.

  I can’t go back.

  Perhaps you go back to get through it. Perhaps that is why you came here.

  Mother was waiting for me on the terrace when I returned to the pension.

  “Let’s go home,” I said quietly to her.

  She just nodded.

  The innkeeper brought us a letter from Harry. He wrote that he’d broken with Pop Lubin, gone back to Mr. Laemmle, promising him we’d never leave again. He’d secured me my own production company under Mr. Laemmle’s new firm, Universal. “The public is clamoring for you, Florence,” he wrote. “You mustn’t let them forget you.”

  Perhaps you go through it and you find there is another side.

  My English. Does it make sensible?

  “Yes, it makes sensible,” I answered him from the deck of the ferry, watching as Santorini disappeared from view. From the ferry, we switched to a barge and finally to a great ocean liner at Gibraltar. Mother insisted I have my hair dressed in pearls and arranged for me to pose for photographs with a group of British tourists.

  When the ship steamed into New York harbor, a cheering crowd greeted us at the pier, courtesy of Mr. Laemmle.

  I expected nothing less.

  The Present

  “Oh, my Gawd, I am so excited today,” says Rosie O’Donnell, talking to her musical director, but keeping her eyes on the camera. “Do you know who’s here?”

  “Yes, I do,” he tells her.

  “Flahrence Lahrence,” she says in her thick Long Island accent. “Don’t you just love that name? Flahrence Lahrence. I could just say it all day. Flahrence Lahrence. Just kinda rolls off your tongue, ya know?”

  The audience titters.

  “It’s just so amazing, isn’t it, John?” The musical director starts to respond, but Rosie talks over him. “She was the very first star of them all. Before anybody. And she’s still with us! Everybody thought she was dead, but she wasn’t. She had them fooled. I admit that I, like most people, hadn’t heard of her, but she was big in her day, John.”

  “I know,” he replies.

  “Big like Madonna kind of big.” She mock shivers. “I cannot even stand it. The Biograph Girl herself is here with us today—her first public appearance in nearly seventy years!”

  The audience applauds.

  “If it’s her,” John interjects quickly.

  “Oh, come on, John. If it’s her. I met her backstage. This is one sharp lady. What she says goes.”

  The audience cheers.

  “Also today,” Rosie says, looking out into the crowd, “we have Dennis Rodman, just as bad as he wants to be, and—John, hold on to your seat—the Spice Girls, and they’ll be wigglin’ through a number just for us!” Rosie sings, “If you wanta be mah lovah.…”

  Hoots, hollers from the audience.

  “We’ll be right back with The Biograph Girl!” Rosie shouts.

  The music picks up as the show cuts for a commercial.

  Ben clears his throat nervously. He’s sitting in the front row of the audience next to Jameson Collins, the film historian. On Collins’s other side is Anita; Xerxes and Sister Jean are behind them.

  “This whole thing is just too surreal,” Collins whispers to Ben.

  Ben knows what he means. The preshow announcement had blared: “Coming up on Rosie today—The Spice Girls, Dennis Rodman, and … Florence Lawrence!”

  “The mind boggles,” Collins says.

  “Flo can hold her own with all of them,” Anita pipes in.

  Ben watches Collins smile over at her. His small eyes glow behind his thick glasses. “She certainly is fascinating, isn’t she?” he gushes.

  After meeting with her backstage, the historian had been convinced Flo was telling the truth. Meeting Ben first, he’d admitted to some skepticism, but came away a believer. “There’s no way she could know all of what she does,” he pronounced to Rosie’s producers. “She’s the real McCoy.” He promised he’d reaffirm that conviction on camera from the audience later in the show.

  “What’s especially significant,” he added to Ben, “is the fact that all of her contemporaries are gone. We’ve finally gotten to a point where all the silent stars had passed on: Pickford, Swanson, Gish. And now she turns up alive. It’s terribly ironic that the first star is turning out to be the last, as well.”

  What a couple of days it had been. Flo had
been giddy about the thought of seeing the world from which she’d been absent for so long. She hadn’t left St. Mary’s since she’d moved there fifteen years ago, and she hadn’t been out of Buffalo in nearly two decades. Xerxes hired a special van to pick her up to make the trip into the city easier. An electric ramp moved down to allow her to walk on board, and plush, comfortable seats gave her plenty of room inside. Ben and Sister Jean accompanied her, with a chauffeur driving them into New York.

  Traffic had snarled on the Palisades Parkway as they approached the George Washington Bridge. “So many motor cars,” Flo said in amazement, peering out the tinted windows of the van. “I used to love to drive. But it was so easy then. Just hop in your auto and fly down the road, with the wind in your hair.”

  She said very little as they entered Manhattan, her eyes growing wide as she looked out—and up—at a city she hadn’t seen in decades.

  “Still the same grimy old place, eh, Flo?” Ben asked her.

  “No,” she said, seeming a little cowed. “No, not the same at all.”

  At the Helmsley Park Plaza, she found a royal reception. The hotel clerks and bellhops had all been instructed by Xerxes to treat her like a star. “Welcome, Miss Lawrence,” they gushed, holding open doors for her. “Right this way, Miss Lawrence.”

  In the lobby they passed a tourist couple. The man wore sweatpants and sported a New York Yankees baseball cap on his head. Around his neck dangled a 35-millimeter camera. His wife wore a sweatshirt and very tight blue jeans, despite a very large butt.