The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

  “Hey,” he said, shrugging. “We’re used to that.”

  I looked at him, hurt.

  “Go on,” he insisted. “Get out of the car.”

  “No,” I told him.

  I didn’t see him strike me, just felt the sharp sting of the back of his hand across my face. I was more startled than hurt. I stared at him in silence.

  “No woman says no when I give an order,” he told me. “I won’t tolerate that. I paid for all of this—this car, that corsage you’re wearing, that goddamn mink stole. I’m going to get my money’s worth, Florence.”

  “Please, Charles,” I said, beginning to cry.

  He grabbed my wrist. “Open the door, Florence. Get out of the car.”

  His eyes were yellow in the dark. My face still stung and now he was hurting my wrist. I knew then there was no escape. That Florence Lawrence wasn’t strong enough to fight him off. I was stunned by how quickly—and how completely—I’d become her again.

  I did as I was told. I stepped out into an ugly silence, marred only by the short crash of flashbulbs popping. I smiled up at them as best I could.

  Adela was there. “Darling,” she said quietly as I passed. “Your face.”

  I placed my hand over my cheek where Charles had struck me. “It’s nothing,” I assured her.

  “Keep yourself turned to the left for the photographers.” She smiled sadly. “You have a lovely profile.”

  My name was up on the marquee, the last time it was ever there.

  FLORENCE LAWRENCE

  STARRING IN

  THE UNFOLDMENT

  I looked up at it for a moment. Charles took me by the arm. “Come on,” he hissed into my ear. “You don’t want to be late for your own show.”

  Mr. Kerns and my costars greeted me in the lobby. Barbara Bedford was unable to make it; she’d started a new film with Douglas Fairbanks and was too busy. I posed in profile with Charles for a picture taken by a Photoplay photographer. It never made it into print.

  Inside the cavernous theater, thirty—maybe forty—people sat staring at a magnificent red velvet curtain. An usher announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, Florence Lawrence,” and the people turned in their seats to look at me. A scattering of applause. Oh, I’m sure it was enthusiastic. Adela later wrote that it was. But in that enormous, echoing space, it seemed impassive and uninterested. I took my seat down near the front. I wasn’t even aware of the picture as it unfolded.

  The Unfoldment. What an unfortunate name. What a dreadful film. What a horrible memory. The picture went nowhere. It didn’t even get panned. It was just ignored. It was as if I’d never even made it—as if I’d never come back. I don’t imagine it still exists. Surely long ago it deteriorated back into its original nitrate stock, crumbling into dust and blowing away with the breeze. I hear the cries of film preservationists today and I laugh.

  I’m glad that film is gone.

  Two days after its premiere, I married Charles Woodring. Of course I did. It was just what Florence Lawrence would do. She needed someone to fight her battles, to keep her going. Charles promised to restart my career, to triumph over the disaster of The Unfoldment. He could do it, he insisted. And maybe he could at that, I tried to reason to myself. He had the money to invest, after all, and the ambition to succeed—both qualities I was lacking at that point.

  So I married him. At least I could pay the bills that were threatening to send Mother and me to the almshouse.

  But I was no longer strong enough to force my husband to sleep on the couch as I had with Harry. For the next decade, the image of Charles’s yellow eyes in the dark was a nightmare that was all too real.

  The Present

  “I was married to Charles for nearly ten years,” Flo tells Ben, her eyes off in that place she goes whenever she tells stories of the past. “We separated after eight, however, when I found him with another woman in our bed.”

  “That must have been hard for you,” Ben suggests.

  She sighs. “Oh, I can’t say it was easy. But it wasn’t a surprise—let me put it that way.”

  “He’d been unfaithful before?”

  “It was a difficult marriage. Charles expected to have his way. In everything.” Her lips tighten and she folds her hands in her lap before she continues. “He used to tell me that Hollywood was no place for a woman to find a husband—particularly her own.”

  Ben’s not sure if he’s meant to smile at that. He doesn’t want to appear disrespectful. But then Flo laughs, and it’s clear she’s made a joke. Ben smiles in return.

  “You see,” she continues, “when I went back to being Florence Lawrence, I took what I could get. Florence Lawrence couldn’t be expected to manage her own affairs. There had always been Mother or Harry. And I suppose, for all his shortcomings, Charles did help me out financially. He always insisted on living the high life. ‘There are only two classes,’ he’d insist. ‘First class and no class.’ He set me up in a business of my own after movie offers faded away. A cosmetics company: Florence Lawrence’s Hollywood Cosmetics. My face was on every tin of talcum powder and rouge. But the crash of ’29 wiped us out. Charles lost a fortune.”

  She lets out a long sigh and says nothing further. Ben’s got the videocam positioned in front of her. It’s been rolling for nearly two hours as Flo has talked, taking Ben back with her to San Francisco in 1904, before the great earthquake—and then to Los Angeles in 1921, the time of her failed comeback. In none of their sessions—almost fifty hours of interviews so far—has she spoken in a precise chronology. It’s been a rambling daisy chain of consciousness—a slow, wandering stroll through her long, long life. Occasionally she’s mentioned a name Ben has jotted down, meaning to ask her about later. Sometimes she gets around to explaining who they are—or were. And sometimes she doesn’t.

  Ben looks down at his list. Bolton. Doris. Marian. Winnie Pichel. Annie Laurie. Names she’s dropped in passing, but details of whom he still has no clue.

  This session, however, she’s done a pretty good job filling him in on Charles Woodring and Adela Rogers St. Johns. He wants to press on, to take advantage of the fact that for once Sister Jean isn’t here. He’s free to push Flo toward topics she’s been reluctant to explain in any detail: the fire, the death of her first husband, and most of all, just what happened with “that girl” who was misidentified as her at the hospital.

  But now she’s wound to a halt, it seems—as if her batteries were wearing down.

  “Are you getting tired, Flo?” Ben asks.

  She blinks. “Oh, a little.” She looks over at him. “I guess because I was up so early this morning.”

  Ben nods. He’d gotten up with her, at three-thirty A.M., to make a seven o’clock appearance on the Today show. Both Katie Couric and Matt Lauer had interviewed her, confirming Flo’s sudden megastar status. Ever since the Rosie show, Flo had been in hot demand. “She’s sassy, saucy, and just what everyone hopes to be—if they live that long,” Xerxes has said. Like Clara Peller—the “Where’s the Beef?” crone of the 80s—and Mother Jefferson from the old Jeffersons TV show, Flo engaged people because she defied their notions of what “old” meant. Offers had come pouring into Xerxes’s office for Flo to appear on television and in print interviews.

  Xerxes and Ben, with input from Sister Jean, had determined the Today show to be the best follow-up to the Rosie appearance. Both Katie and Matt had been extremely gracious, allowing Flo to reminisce about the early days of moviemaking without pushing her too hard on the mystery of her supposed death. But Flo, while getting off a few one liners, had seemed a little groggy, considerably less sharp and witty than she had been on Rosie. Maybe it was the early hour—but Flo was often up that early. Maybe it was the one reference Katie made to the hospital mystery: how the erroneous identification had been made in the first place. Flo had just shrugged. “Maybe she just looked like me,” she said.

  But as Flo’s fame grew, the questions came faster and harder. An article in the Los Angeles Times
this week had reported on the exhumation of the grave marked as Florence Lawrence’s in Hollywood Memorial Cemetery. No conclusions had yet been drawn by the coroner’s office, but the Times raised some intriguing questions about Flo’s story. It explored in some detail the accounts of the poisoning as described in the newspapers of the day. As Ben knew, Flo was reported then as having banged on the doors of neighbors, telling them she’d poisoned herself, asking them to call for help. She had even left a note, which the Times published:

  Good-bye, my darlings. This is the only way. You’ve all been swell guys. Everything is yours.

  Lovingly,

  Florence

  If Flo was to be believed today, she never left that note, and if someone had gone banging on her neighbors’ doors, it wasn’t she.

  But how could that be possible? The Times concluded that it was not:

  Miss Bridgewood’s story is shot through with holes. She may truly be The Biograph Girl, as film experts are convinced. But she’s not telling the full account of what happened that day in 1938—nor, possibly, about various other episodes in her long and eventful life.

  Ben was the only person allowed full access to Flo. Outside of the controlled public appearances he and Xerxes were orchestrating, only he had the chance to ask the questions and get the answers. He wanted so desperately to just ask her forthrightly to tell the truth. Quit this ruse, he wanted to snap. Just quit it right now and—

  Fine one you are to be talking about a ruse, Ben Sheehan.

  Whose voice? Mom’s? Anita’s?

  Pretending to Flo and Sister Jean that you care only about their welfare, that you’re only in this for the sake of posterity. Oh, Ben Sheehan, don’t you go giving lectures about being truthful. If you’ve got to be a liar, don’t add on hypocrite, too.

  It might be Mom. But it sure sounded like Anita, too.

  Anita had been sleeping on the couch for the past week. Ben didn’t even try to persuade her against it. She just started doing it one night. There had been no fight, no harsh words. Just a tension that hung over them like the hot, damp mugginess of August in New York, even though the first snowfall of the winter had come last night, a dusting like confectionery sugar that melted as the sun rose.

  But no such thaw occurred for Ben and Anita. They spoke very little, except to ask if the coffee was brewing or if one or the other of them was finished in the shower. Partly it was because both were so busy, Ben told himself: he with Flo and Anita rushing off to tape the soap opera. Her role had been extended for another three weeks, and if she wasn’t caught up learning the script, she was dashing off for rehearsals. Ben overheard her running lines sometimes late at night; she was pretty atrocious, he thought, and couldn’t imagine how she’d landed the part. Still, he had promised to take her to dinner to celebrate her good fortune, but their plans had not yet materialized.

  If I’d taken her, he scolds himself, maybe she wouldn’t be on the couch. Maybe this tension might have evaporated.

  But Anita was as much to blame, he thought to himself. She rarely asked how things were going with the interviews or if Xerxes had sold the film rights yet. She would just say, “I hope you’re being straight with Flo.”

  “Of course,” he’d tell her. “What do you think I am?”

  A liar, for one.

  And a hypocrite, too, Ben Sheehan?

  Ah, jeez. Go ahead and call me names then. But Ben knows he’ll have no film unless he resolves these nagging questions—unless Flo responds to them in her own words. Already Xerxes has gotten major interest from both Universal and DreamWorks for a film—or films—based on Flo’s life. He was promising them “the true, inside, completely revealed untold story”—straight from Flo’s lips.

  But with Sister Jean always lurking in the background …

  “Flo,” Ben says, “maybe we can talk about just one more thing before we call it a day.”

  She looks at him. “All right, Ben. What is it?”

  “What about that girl? The one whose body was just—”

  “Exhumed?” It’s Sister Jean, coming into the hotel room behind him.

  Ben jumps. Shit. What perfect fucking timing. “Jean, I didn’t hear you come in.”

  She’s carrying three shopping bags loaded with boxes. “Apparently,” she says. “I thought we agreed that subject was off limits, Ben.”

  He sighs. “Look. We can’t avoid it anymore. It’s just that, with the exhumation, I thought—well, people are asking questions. You heard Katie Couric. We need to get a story that we can all stick to.”

  Jean sets the bags down. From one, she withdraws a box, crinkling the paper as she does so. She hands it to Flo. “Go ahead,” she says. “Open it.”

  Ben keeps filming. This is good stuff. Flo’s face brightens with excitement, like a teenage girl on her birthday. Delicately, her old fingers lift the lid of the white cardboard box. She pushes aside the paper and gazes down. She makes a little sound of delight, then lifts a rainbow-striped scarf out of the box.

  “Oh, Jeannie,” she says, wrapping it around her neck. “Whatever for?”

  “For all your television appearances,” Jean tells her. “A little dash of color.”

  “Oh, thank you, dear,” the old woman says. Jean moves in for a quick kiss.

  “You look fabulous, Flo,” Ben tells her.

  “Okay,” Jean says, looking back at him. “Now shut that thing off.”

  “But—”

  “I am getting tired, Ben,” Flo admits.

  He reluctantly complies. Jean helps Flo up from her chair and walks with her into the bedroom. Ben watches them go. Jean’s wearing Capri pants and sneakers. She’s got a pretty good shape on her, he thinks—before scolding himself and shaking his head. Keep it in your pants, Sheehan. She’s a nun. You can’t have this one. He pops out the video from the camera, labels it with the date, and files it away with all the rest of them.

  Jean barely manages to get Flo’s shoes off before the old woman is sprawled back on her pillows and snoring. A nap will do her good, Jean thinks, as she quietly closes the door to her room.

  All these appearances. This was exactly what the board at St. Mary’s had been worried about. “She’ll be exhausted,” chided Sister William. “Is this really wise?’” intoned Father Horrigan.

  Jean had told them it was Flo’s choice. “You know her as well as I do. She can make her own decisions, after all. When does one cease being an adult? Eighty? Ninety?”

  Flo’s words. She was doing this because Flo had wanted to, because she wanted to respect her friend’s wishes.

  Yet Jean has to admit she’s enjoying it herself. She can’t deny that the freedom from the bureaucracy of St. Mary’s has been exhilarating. To walk once again along city streets, to escape from the stultifying grandeur of marble staircases and heavy oaken doors …

  “Hey,” Ben’s asking her, his voice low, conscious of Flo being asleep. “What else did you buy?”

  Jean smiles. “Oh, I went a little crazy on Canal Street.”

  She lifts a box out of one bag. She holds it against her chest, blushing. “Do you know I haven’t bought myself any new clothes in years?”

  “Show me,” Ben says.

  She laughs.

  “Come on,” he urges, a great smile taking over his face.

  “Oh, all right.” She opens the box. It’s a black-and-white-striped cotton tank top. “It’s a little stretchy,” she admits.

  “You mean, like spandex?”

  She can feel her face burn. “Oh, God,” she says, laughing. “Where am I ever going to wear this?” She holds it up in front of her. “I just bought it. A complete whim.”

  “I think it’ll look great on you,” Ben tells her.

  “Oh, I don’t know what I was thinking. I bought this and a pair of jeans and a couple of sweatshirts.”

  “Well, you need more than the old plaid skirt nun uniform,” Ben says, grinning.

  “I imagine once I’m back at St. Mary’s I’ll donate th
em all to Goodwill.” Jean holds up the striped tank top in front of her again, looking at herself in the mirror.

  “It’s perfect for L.A.,” Ben says, coming up behind her, looking at her through the mirror. “Make sure you bring it when we head out there next week.”

  Their eyes hold in the mirror. “You know, I’d forgotten what it was like to be called ‘ma’am’ by store clerks,” Jean tells him. “At St. Mary’s, it’s always ‘Sister.’ When I was at St. Vincent’s, I could escape for a while. You know, head into town and go shopping or stop for lunch. I’d be just another woman, maybe somebody’s wife or mother.” She smiles. “Or a high-powered, kick-ass corporate exec.”

  They both laugh.

  Ben looks at her, growing serious. He places his hands on her shoulders. The warmth of his hands sends a shiver down her back.

  “Jean,” he asks, “aren’t you happy in religious life?”

  She smiles. She’s come to trust Ben. She feels she can admit certain things to him. “Oh, there’s no question I feel a calling to do God’s work,” she says. “Always have, and that’s never changed.” She pauses, letting her hands with her new purchase fall to her side. “But sometimes I wonder just what that work is, what form it’s supposed to take.”

  “And running St. Mary’s seems a little … too cushy perhaps?”

  Jean turns around to face him. They’re standing awfully close, but she doesn’t back away. “How’d you figure that out, Ben Sheehan?”

  He shrugs. “Well, you talk with such passion about your years at St. Vincent’s, working with the poor, with drug addicts, all of that. But St. Mary’s seems to be—well, maybe a little too bourgeois for you.”

  He’s been listening, Jean thinks. He pays attention.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she tells him. “I love the residents there. Many of them have taught me a good deal. Especially Flo. But I can’t deny that I’m grateful the board granted me this leave. Maybe it’s just what I needed.”

  Ben smiles down at her. They’re standing so close that suddenly there’s a moment of awkwardness. Jean laughs, backing away. She drops the tank top to the floor. Both she and Ben stoop down to pick it up, their hands touching as they grasp its silky material.