Florence Lawrence(1886-1938)
- Actress
Florence Lawrence was the first film player whose name was used to
promote her films and the studio (Independent Moving Pictures Company
[IMP]) for which she worked. Before her, actors and actresses worked
anonymously, partly out of fear that stage managers would refuse to
hire them if they were found to be working in films and partly because
movie executives didn't want to put much money into the production of
these short, practically disposable films, and didn't want their
players to become well known and start demanding higher salaries.
Lawrence was on the stage from age three, appearing in musicals and
plays, whistling and playing the violin. At 20 she was cast in the
Edison production of
Daniel Boone (1907), and that led to
work at Vitagraph Studios. From there she was hired by Biograph, where
she refined and perfected her craft under the direction of
D.W. Griffith. In 1909 she left
Biograph to seek more recognizable employment at another film company.
As a result she was blacklisted by the Motion Picture Trust, headed by
Thomas A. Edison, to which most
motion-picture producers belonged and which held the patents on most
film production equipment and would not allow any companies that did
not belong to the Trust to use them.
Carl Laemmle started IMP in late 1909, and
refused to join the Motion Picture Trust. The Trust took action--both
legal and otherwise--to discourage Laemmle from producing films on his
own. Lawrence and her husband, director
Harry Solter, signed on as IMP's first
featured players. In 1910 Laemmle, partly out of anger over the Trust's
actions--such as hiring thugs to attack his film crews and wreck his
equipment--decided to advertise the fact that he had Miss Lawrence. She
made the first personal appearance of a film star in St. Louis, MO,
that March, and the resulting publicity made her famous (and also
increased the grosses on her--and Laemmle's--films). Other film
companies soon followed suit, and the names of film actors and
actresses began to appear in all segments of the media. Lawrence worked
for IMP for a year, then spent another year at Lubin before she began
her own production company, Victor, where she worked on and off until
1914. After a stage accident in which she injured her back, she retired
from films, only to be lured back in 1916 for her first feature,
Elusive Isabel (1916). It was
unsuccessful. She tried a comeback again in 1921; that, too, was
unsuccessful. She settled into bit parts and character roles through
the 1920s and 1930s. She died of suicide in 1938 after years of
unhappiness and illness. She was found in her apartment on Dec. 27,
1938 and died soon afterward in hospital.
