Gossipy Kate’s
Unscripted Endings
uncovers the tragic story
of
America’s first movie star.
Florence Lawrence |
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She spent most of her life with a borrowed name but it was that very name that took her where no other silent film actor had been before. She was known first as the “Child Wonder” and then later as the “Biograph Girl”, the “IMP Girl” and the “Girl of a Thousand Faces”. But it was as Florence Lawrence that she made cinema history. Then, as often happened in the early days of film, the same industry that proclaimed her their standard bearer as America’s first full-fledged movie star didn’t keep its promise and, by the time of her tragic death, Florence Lawrence was a name no one remembered at all.
She was born Florence Annie Bridgewood on January 2, 1886 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Her father George was a 56 year-old widower with four children when he married her mother, 19-year-old actress Charlotte “Lotta” Dunne. They had 3 children of their own … George, Norman and Florence who was only 3 years old when the Bridgewoods separated. For the rest of her life Florence never spoke of her father in public. Lotta packed up the children and went on the road with the Lawrence Dramatic Company borrowing their name as her own and giving it to Florence and George as well. Norman elected to keep his father’s name. In no time at all Florence was on the stage with her mother as “Baby Flo, the Child Wonder”. When their father died in 1898, the children were sent to their grandmother in Buffalo, New York to go to school. Florence had already put in five full-time touring seasons.
In 1906 Florence left school for New York City to join her mother and make her very first motion picture. In Vitagraph’s “Daniel Boone” she played Boone’s daughter while her mother played his wife. Florence went on to make 38 films for the Vitagraph Company including “Romeo and Juliet” becoming the silver screen’s first Juliet.
 Biograph studio |
It was at Vitagraph that she met and fell in love with actor Harry Lewis Solter . When Harry left the studio to cast his fortune with the American Biograph Company in the Bronx, he encouraged Florence to join him. D.W.Griffith was looking to engage Florence Turner from Vitagraph to replace leading lady Marion Leonard but Harry offered Lawrence instead. The two were secretly married on August 30th, 1908 with only Griffith and his wife, actress Linda Arvidson, in on the ceremony.
Soon Florence was getting a lot of fan mail from all over the world even though she was known only as “The Biograph Girl”. Performers were only known by studio affiliation and never by name so Florence who had been the “Vitagraph Girl” and was now the “Biograph Girl” was known only by her face. This kept the studios in control without being expected to pay higher salaries for a star’s rising popularity. But by 1909 Griffith’s attention became fixed on Mary Pickford and he began giving her roles once offered to Florence. The Solters were considering a move when Griffith found out and fired them both leaving Pickford as the new “Biograph Girl”. The fans weren’t pleased and the letters poured in protesting the change. Over at Independent Motion Pictures Company where Florence had found a new job, producer Carl Laemmle noticed the furor and made plans. The new IMP Girl was about to make history.
 Carl Laemmle |
On February 19 Florence read her own obituary in a New York newspaper describing her tragic death under the wheels of a speeding motorcar while filming her latest movie. Then a few days later, another newspaper declared it was all a mistake. Of course all the information was coming from Laemmle himself. Soon the name of Florence Lawrence was front-page news. When her arrival at a train station in St. Louis was announced hundreds of people had gathered so enthusiastic they literally tore “buttons from her coat… and the hat from her head.” Laemmle had made Florence Lawrence the first American movie star.
But even though Laemmle made Florence a household name he couldn’t hold on to the elusive Solters. They signed a new contract with Siegmund Lubin in Philadelphia even as a lawsuit was filed against them for breaking their contract. In 1911 the lawsuit was dropped and Florence made her first Lubin picture “His Bogus Uncle”. By 1912 she had made 48 films with Lubin and former IMP co-star Arthur Johnson. But the marriage to Harry was beginning to fray.
 Matt Moore |
Then tragedy struck. She was back with Carl Laemmle at his Universal Studio making “The Pawns of Destiny” when an accident happened during filming. She was supposed to carry her unconscious co-star Matt Moore down a flight of stairs during a staged fire when she fell. Myth surrounds her injuries but most sources found no evidence that she was severely burned. However they all acknowledge that she possibly injured her back so badly that the pain would be a serious problem from the rest of her life.
She made 11 more films in the months to come then disappeared from the screen from November, 1914 until April 1916. There was some indication that she helped with her mother’s company the Bridgewood Manufacturing Company (where Lotta again used her husband’s name) and both won patents for mechanical devices used on cars and trolleys. None of these inventions were ever successfully marketed. There were also rumors of illness and accidents but nothing tangible was ever documented. Her next film “Elusive Isabel” for Laemmle released in April, 1916 was a failure and ended what remained of Florence’s career.
 Everywhere that Florence went, Mary Pickford followed. |
And everywhere Florence went Mary Pickford was close behind. She was the next Vitagraph Girl, Biograph Girl and IMP Girl and in 1916 she made 4 successful pictures for Famous Players-Lasky. Adolph Zukor’s company that would later become Paramount Pictures.
 Harry Solter 1874 - 1920 |
Harry Solter died in March 2, 1920 and even though they had been estranged for years Florence was never the same. She settled in California and took small stage roles while hoping for a screen comeback. She remarried in May, 1921 to Charles Byrne Woodring, a man she scarcely knew and even had her nose “bobbed” surgically to improve her image. It didn’t help at all. Florence Lawrence was now virtually unknown to the movie audiences that adored her only a few years before. When a letter written to Florence came back marked “Addressee unknown”, Frederick James Smith wrote: “Less than three years ago Miss Lawrence ranked beside Mary Pickford and Mary Fuller as one of the premiere favorites of the films. In those days a letter merely bearing her name would have been delivered.”
Florence made another attempt to regain her screen persona in 1926 by taking bit parts but even those offers soon dried up. She was now among the throng of silent stars crushed under the weight of the new push to “talkies” The little cosmetic shop she opened also went bust. In 1929 after her mother died Florence divorced Woodring and gave most of her personal papers and memorabilia to a museum in Los Angeles. A year later she married again to Henry Bolton, another man she hardly knew. Less than 3 months later Bolton savagely beat her in a drunken rage and that was over, too.
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In 1936 MGM set up stock contracts for the silent film old guard paying them $75 a week to work as extras but by mid-1937 Florence was too ill to work. She had developed anemia and myelofibrosis, a disease where bone marrow is destroyed by collagen fibers. Even more debilitating was the depression that had overwhelmed her for years. On Wednesday morning, December 28, 1938 MGM called with a small bit part but Florence declined stating she would not be available at that time. Later the same morning a neighbor heard a piercing scream coming from the bungalow Florence shared with another MGM employee and his sister. She found Florence on the floor writhing in pain. An empty bottle of ant poison, an open bottle of cough syrup and the glass where it had been mixed sat on the nightstand with a farewell note. Despite efforts to save her, Florence Lawrence died at the hospital that afternoon. A poem she wrote before she died was a cry for help that never came..
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Tired of living, I’m weary,
I long to lie down and die.
To find for the sad heart and dreary,
The end of the Pilgrimage nigh.
Weary, so weary of wishing,
For things that were mine by right,
They took them away and gave me
A world of blackness and night.
After a funeral paid for by the Motion Picture Relief Fund, she was buried at Hollywood Memorial Park (now Hollywood Forever). For fifty years her grave was left unmarked and untended a few yards away from a decaying pump house until it was discovered by British actor Roddy McDowall who had a simple bronze marker placed there in 1991 to honor America’s first movie star.
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Most of her contemporaries including Mary Pickford never even mentioned her name in their memoirs. But today there seems to be a new awakening and Florence Lawrence is being celebrated for her talent and treasury of films in books, documentaries and internet tributes…an honor long overdue.
