The Biograph Girl

by William J. Mann

  “Well, I was starting to get worried.”

  He looks up. There, in a chair with her hair dolled up on her head, is his mother.

  “Mom?”

  “I’m starving,” she tells him. “And don’t tell me about any fancy place that serves sprouts and sun-dried tomatoes. Is there a place we can maybe get some good sweet-and-sour chicken?”

  “Mom,” he says, standing in place, shaking his head in disbelief, “how did you get here …?”

  “I brought her.”

  Ben turns. Richard comes out of the bathroom. He looks at Ben with an expression that’s one part apprehension and two parts puckish mischief.

  “I hope it’s okay,” Richard continues, approaching Ben and extending his hand. “The clerk let us in when I said she was your mother. All she’s been able to talk about for weeks is Benny’s film this, Benny’s film that. I thought she might like to see the premiere.”

  Ben meets his brother’s eyes. After a few seconds’ hesitation, he shakes his hand.

  “Of course it’s all right,” he says finally, turning to his mother. “Mom, if you had asked, I’d have been happy to bring you out.”

  She smiles tightly. “Oh, you know how I hate to be a bother.”

  Ben approaches her, looking at her oddly. “Mom, you love to be a bother.”

  “Well, you’re always saying I don’t get out of the house much.”

  Richard joins them. “That’s right. She doesn’t. So what does she do yesterday? She gets on a plane to Utah. Just a short little trip down the block.”

  She shrugs. “It’s not every day your son has a hit movie.”

  “It’s not a hit yet, Mom,” he tells her. “It’s just getting great advance press.”

  “We traveled first-class, you know,” she tells him. “I wouldn’t have fit so good in those little coach seats.”

  “Thank God for credit cards,” Richard says, smiling at Ben. “Guess I’ve just accepted that God made them for a reason.”

  “For first-class, I didn’t think the food was any good,” Mom says, scrunching up her face. “Those little cucumber-and-sprout sandwiches. I’m still hungry.”

  Ben smiles. “I’ll take you out for a great lunch, Mom. And I’ll have Carla get you both tickets for tonight.”

  “She’s good, huh, that agent?” Mom asks. “Better than that last one. She’s getting you some good things. I saw you on Rosie yesterday. You looked very handsome, Benny. I like that blue tie.”

  “What did you think of the film clip they showed, Ma?”

  “Well, it was just that old woman talking.” She pauses. “But it was good, Benny. I liked what she said. About appreciating what you’ve got.”

  “She was a very wise lady,” Ben says.

  “Now how about lunch?” she asks, attempting to stand. Her sons help her. “Let me go freshen up and you two think of a good place. Nothing fancy-shmancy. Are there any Big Boys around here?”

  “I’ll check with the concierge,” Ben says, laughing.

  She waddles off slowly toward the bathroom. The brothers watch her until she’s closed the door behind her. For several seconds they remain quiet, until Ben turns to Richard and says, his voice husky, “Thanks for bringing her.”

  “Hey,” Richard tells him. “She wanted to come. I’m serious. All she’s been talking about is you.”

  Ben sits down. He feels a little light-headed.

  “It sounds as if it’s a pretty terrific film,” Richard says. “That was a pretty gutsy move on your part, Ben. Backing out of the deal with Glick to do this instead. How’d you manage to get financing?”

  He shrugs. “Carla helped. It wasn’t easy, but we found enough people who believed in the message.”

  “Which is?”

  “Everything that Flo was always telling us. That life is worth living, I guess, is the bottom line.”

  Richard nods. “I can’t wait to see it.”

  They smile at each other.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Ben tells him. “About Mom and Dad and us.”

  Richard waits for him to continue.

  “And, well, I don’t claim to understand, but I do know we’ve been at each other for so long, and it sure would be nice to let all that go. Maybe we could … I don’t know … maybe we could try to change things … somehow.”

  Richard smiles. “I think we’ve just started.”

  They laugh awkwardly. For a second, both thinks a hug might be coming, but instead they just laugh some more.

  “So,” Ben asks, “how’s Sexy Rexy?”

  “He’s terrific. He just sold the film rights to his Barrymore show. Looks as if he’ll be able to pay off the rest of our renovations himself. He’s ecstatic. He walks around in his Lionel Barrymore makeup all day, snorting and snarling like old Mr. Potter.”

  Ben can see him—white haired, wrinkled.

  But that’s odd, he thinks. He’s never seen Rex do his show.

  There’s a knock at the door. Ben walks across the room to answer it. It’s a bellhop with a large vase of daisies and sunflowers.

  “Who are they from?” Richard asks.

  “I don’t know,” Ben says, setting the flowers down on the side table. They’re beautiful: fresh and filled with sunlight, a burst of spring on a winter’s day. He removes the card and reads it.

  Thanks for restoring my faith that the heart is never wrong.

  Jean

  Ben stares down at the signature. He can’t lift his eyes to look at his brother. He can’t even yet put his lips around the word to say her name. Even when the phone rings he doesn’t look up.

  “Ah,” Richard says. “The timing is impeccable.”

  Ben finally raises his eyes. “What?” he asks.

  Richard answers the phone. “Yes, yes, he’s here,” he says, a broad grin stretching across his face. He looks over at his brother. “It’s for you.”

  “What’s going on?” Ben asks. Then, all at once: “You knew about the flowers, didn’t you? You set this up.”

  “Just take the phone,” Richard tells him.

  “It’s Jean, isn’t it?” he asks. His heart is suddenly up in his throat and flapping like a bird in his ears.

  Richard thrusts the phone at him.

  “Jean?” Ben asks into the receiver.

  But the laugh isn’t Jean’s.

  “Oh, Ben, it’s just as beautiful as ever,” a woman tells him.

  “Who is this …?”

  “Of course, there are more tourists now. But we’ve found a nice little pension where we have a lovely view of the caldera.”

  Ben feels his body go numb from the neck down. His cheeks flush hot. He looks over at Richard, who’s grinning.

  “We even took a ride up to the Temple of Dionysus. That hasn’t changed much.”

  “This can’t be real,” Ben breathes, barely audible.

  Richard levels his eyes at him. “That’s what you kept saying that day on the bridge,” he says. “You were right.”

  “Ben,” comes the voice over the telephone, “are you there?”

  “Flo?”

  She laughs. “Last night, our guide took us out on a boat to the warm black waters of the volcano. I didn’t swim—I guess there are a few concessions I have to make to age—but I did manage to put my feet in.” She pauses. Ben can tell she’s inhaling on her cigarette. “Just as wonderful as I remembered.”

  “How …?” Ben stammers. “How did you … do it?”

  “I just took my shoes off and lifted my leg over the boat.”

  “No, no,” Ben says, breathless now. “How did you pull it off? How did you get everyone to think you had … killed yourself?”

  He hears her chuckle. “Oh, that’s an old question, isn’t it, Ben? Haven’t I had tons of practice?”

  He looks over at Richard. “You knew,” he says. “You were part of it.”

  He shrugs. “She asked me to help her. Hey, if Lester could do what he did, I had to at least try.”
/>
  “But how?” Ben demands. “How?”

  “It was pretty simple, really,” Flo tells him. “I just got out of my chair and Rex helped me into his van.”

  “His van! The old man! The one with the crazy eyebrows! I knew I recognized him! It was Rex!”

  “As Lionel Barrymore,” Richard says.

  “Then Anita began screaming,” Flo says. “What an actress, don’t you think?”

  “She was acting,” Ben says, thunderstruck. “Anita was acting.”

  “And pretty damn well, too,” Richard says. “She convinced you, didn’t she, Ben? The best part is that being all over the news like that got the soap to hire her back, as her character’s evil twin sister. Now she’s getting offers left and right.”

  “But the others,” Ben asks. “How could the others say they saw you fall?”

  Flo laughs. “Richard’s very shrewd. He was right on the money that people will say and do anything to get their faces on camera these days. Once Anita and Rex said I’d jumped, there were any number of other folks only too willing to corroborate their story if it meant appearing on the evening news.”

  “We counted on their reaction,” Richard tells him. “And we were right.”

  “And no one saw you? No one saw you get in the van?”

  “Apparently not. It was all quite swift. I don’t think Anita went into her act until I was safely inside. Jeannie was waiting for me in the back, and Rex whisked us off to the Oakland airport once the traffic got moving again. Before you knew it, we were back in New York in just enough time for Jeannie to pack a couple of bags.”

  “But the airline clerks,” Ben says, almost desperate to punch a hole in the story to prove this must be a gag. “Surely they must have recognized you … and your passport—”

  “Says Florence Bridgewood. Luckily it didn’t set off any bells. Because that’s not how people knew me. It never was. They knew me as Florence Lawrence, with the jewels and the wigs and the subtle pink lipstick. They didn’t know Flo Bridgewood in her paisley caftan and scarlet red nails.”

  “You went back to being you,” Ben says quietly.

  “And it’s been delightful,” she tells him. “You should see us now, Ben, sitting here on the terrace. The sun’s going down; the sky’s a brilliant wash of color. Reds and blues and golds.”

  He feels his eyes well with moisture picturing it. “The most beautiful place in the world,” he says to her.

  “Don’t you ever doubt it.” She’s quiet a minute. “Never thought I’d see it again. But here I am. Who’d have known? Life keeps surprising me.”

  She laughs. “The volcano still hasn’t exploded,” she whispers almost conspiratorially to Ben. “But I figure this time I can stick around and wait. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  All the time in the world.

  “Ben?”

  Jean’s taken the phone.

  “Jean,” he says.

  “Did you get my flowers?”

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “Good.” She pauses. “I’m sorry about our last encounter.”

  “No, Jean. Don’t be. I’m the one who should be.”

  “It’s a good film, Ben. I know it. Richard described it for me. It sounds even better than One Chance.”

  “I dedicated it to you,” he tells her.

  She’s quiet. Touched. “Thank you,” she says softly. “You’re an artist, Ben. Simply and truly.”

  He can’t speak.

  “You’ll keep our secret?” she asks.

  “Of course.” He swallows. “Jean?”

  “Yes?”

  “When will you—I mean—how long …?”

  “I’m here with Flo for the duration. Ruth and Naomi, remember? She’s my family. I won’t leave her. Not until she leaves me first.”

  Ben manages a laugh. “Which could be years,” he says.

  “Decades!” She laughs in return. “She’s getting ready to welcome in her third century!”

  There’s a pause.

  “Good-bye, Jean,” Ben finally has the courage to say.

  “Good-bye, Ben,” she says in return.

  “She’s alive,” Ben breathes after hanging up the phone.

  “Yep,” Richard says. “Yet again.”

  Ben just shakes his head. “She’s never going to die, is she?”

  “I don’t think it’s likely.”

  Ben runs his hands over his face. “I just can’t believe you pulled it off.”

  Richard nods, seeming to understand his brother’s incredulity. It’s as if, despite having played his part, there’s a part of him that can’t quite fully accept it either.

  “I’ve come to understand that you have to suspend your disbelief when it comes to Hollywood’s stories,” Richard says. “That’s the only way any of them make sense—the only way we can grasp their truth. These people—they don’t operate according to the same rules of logic we do. Things just happen. Wonderful coincidences and amazing leaps of faith.” He shrugs. “It has something to do with wisps of light and smoke—and magic.”

  Ben nods. He thinks he understands. “Life just has that way of coming back around,” he says, and Richard smiles in agreement.

  Mom has come out of the bathroom. “Who was on the phone?” she asks.

  “Just another fan of Ben’s, Mom,” Richard tells her.

  “You know, you’ve got to watch out for them, Benny. I’ve read the stories. They can go a little loco on you.”

  He puts his arm around her. “I’ll be careful, Mom.”

  He looks up and meets his brother’s gaze. “You’d better be,” Richard’s telling him. “You never know who’ll be watching you.”

  They smile at each other. For the first time, Ben can see something of himself in his twin brother. Maybe it’s the little twitch of the eyebrow or the curl of the smile. Maybe it’s the shape of their ears or maybe—just maybe—it’s something in their eyes.

  He turns to look down at his mother.

  “What about some General Tsou, Mom?” he asks. “Isn’t that your favorite?”

  “I believe it is,” Richard agrees.

  “I saw a little Chinese place a few blocks from downtown,” Ben says.

  “Nothing fancy,” she reminds him.

  “Nothing fancy,” he assures her.

  Both brothers put their arms around their mother, their hands meeting behind her back, and head out into the rest of the day.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Florence Lawrence was a real person, flesh and blood. I didn’t make her up. She really was the world’s first movie star, entering films in 1906, becoming the world-famous Biograph Girl by 1908, and finally being identified by name by Carl Laemmle in 1910 after faking her death in a publicity stunt. I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible in recreating her life and times; most of the details presented here are real. She was born Florence Bridgewood in Hamilton, Ontario. She began in vaudeville as Baby Flo, the Child Wonder Whistler. On her first day shooting a film in the Bronx, she found a man hanging from a tree. She caused a riot in St. Louis in 1910, the first in a long line of movie-star riots. She blamed the end of her career on a fire that was never reported in the press. She married three times; details of those unions were gleaned from her divorce records. Along with other forgotten stars, she played extras and bits at MGM in the 1930s. And in 1938, she killed herself by drinking ant poison.

  I’ve had to take some liberties, of course, in recreating her. I’ve stuck as close as possible to the actual details of that tragic day in 1938, imagining around them rather than rewriting them. The suicide note, the newspaper accounts, the hospital report are all accurate. What becomes my author’s flight of fancy are the relationships with Bob, Marian, and Lester (all shades of real people), and of course, Molly, a fictional character. I’ve also imagined the early friendship with Linda Arvidson. That Florence Lawrence may have been pregnant in 1915-16 has been speculated about by her biographer, Kelly Brown.

  Despite the
fiction, I hope I’ve done justice to a truly fascinating and complex woman. The personality of Flo in these pages developed after I read dozens of interviews with her, as well as letters between she, her mother, and her husband Harry Solter, archived at the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles. While there were many places where I had to fill in the gaps, the portrait of a fiercely independent, ambitious, free-thinking, modern woman is authentic. Reading her stories, I was struck by how much like a phoenix she was: triumphing over odds, the faked death in 1910, recreating herself over and over. Even though that ant poison did its job all too well in 1938, I hope I’ve enabled the phoenix to rise once more.

  As ever, I thank my agent, Malaga Baldi; my enthusiastic editor John Scognamiglio; my friends Victor, John B., Brendan, Michael, Susan, Wendy, Cherie, Laura, John U., Nereida, Surina, Suzanne, Jack, John E, Tom, John H., and Matthew; my sister Kathie and niece Dayna; my parents; and my partner, Tim Huber, my first and best critic and forever my inspiration.

  About the Author

  William J. Mann is best known for his studies of Hollywood and the American film industry, especially Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, named a Notable Book of 2006 by the New York Times, and Hello Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand, published in 2012. He is also the author of Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, for which he won the Lambda Literary Award, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, Edge of Midnight: The Life of John Schlesinger, and How to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood, which Publishers Weekly described as “like gorging on a chocolate sundae.” He is also the author of six novels.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.