Without Lying Down. Cari Beauchamp

as well. They had both married for the first time a few months short of their eighteenth birthday, and while Mary had seen more than most people twice her age, she had lived a very sheltered and disciplined life; nothing had prepared her for the first time Owen Moore put his arm around her. The physical sensations she felt were entirely new to her and she was swept off her feet. Moore was seven years older, known as a man about town and, perhaps most offensive of all to her mother, Charlotte, “a five-dollar-a-day actor.” Yet when he threatened to leave her if she didn’t marry him, they secretly wed in January 1911 and hid the fact from her mother for several months.²⁸

      When their relationship was written about in the press, it was all romance, sweetness, and fluff. Reality was a very different picture. Owen and Mary had their own apartment for a while, but Mary had no experience in relationships and, growing up on trains and in boardinghouses, knew even less about domestic skills. And her mother was always there; in their home, at the studio, and even traveling with them. Charlotte would check in to the suite, point to one bedroom, and announce with authority, “You take that room Owen. Mary and I will sleep in here.”

      Mary’s star was rising and Owen’s, if not descending, was standing still and his drinking did not help matters. All these factors, combined with different shooting schedules, gave the marriage little chance at all.²⁹

      In the fall of 1913, Mary was hospitalized with what some biographers claim were internal injuries incurred when, following the script, she carried a much larger girl from a burning schoolhouse. Mary herself would later refer to her condition as a ruptured appendix and the November issue of Photoplay reported that she was “convalescing rapidly” from “a serious attack of appendicitis.” But others ascertained that Mary was suffering from the afteraffects of an abortion performed in a New York hospital. Whatever the actual cause for her hospitalization, Mary was never able to have children.³⁰

      By January of 1914, Mary was well enough to travel to California and resume filming. The press reported that “poor ‘Little Mary’ still looks awfully tiny and thin,” but by the next month they were “wishing that ‘Little Mary’s’ health will continue to improve and that no more horrid operations will have to be performed or horrid medicines taken,” a stiletto jab if she had had an abortion.³¹

      She looked wonderful to Marion when they first met only a few months later and she was relieved that Mary was not at all concerned that she had been unable to bring her portfolio. After over an hour of comfortable conversation, Mary assured her there would be plenty of time for portrait painting when she returned from New York in the fall. As Marion left the studio, the young man at the gate commented on his amazement that “Miss Pickford spent so much time” with her and she felt exhilarated.

      In a short few months, Marion had seen Marie Dressler again, been to Inceville, and met Mary Pickford. She was convinced fate was playing a hand and was more determined than ever to find work in “the movies.” Marie had offered to help, but she was in New York and Marion’s mind raced to think of who else would have suggestions. Adela Rogers would know.

      Only the week before she had seen Adela at the Alexandria Hotel lunching with Lois Weber. While there were a good dozen women directors working in Los Angeles, Lois Weber at the age of thirty-two was the best known, most respected, and highest paid; it had just been announced that she had signed a $50,000-a-year contract. As Marion left the hotel, she noticed Adela waving, but not wanting to interrupt, she smiled and walked out the door.³²

      The next day, Adela told her Lois Weber had wanted to meet her. “She’s always on the look out for new faces and you’re the refined type that appeals to her.” Marion laughed out loud at the thought, but what days before had seemed like a ludicrous idea now struck her as a logical possibility, and she asked Adela to set up an appointment with the director.³³

      Lois Weber had a reputation for supporting other women, and encouraged actresses such as Gene Gauntier, Cleo Madison, and Dorothy Davenport to direct. Lois also had a sense of purpose that went beyond the creative spirit that drew others to the business.

      As a child in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, she studied music and toured as a concert pianist until a piano key broke during a recital and she lost all nerve to play in front of an audience. Working as a Church Home Missionary in the poorer sections of Pittsburgh, she was frustrated by the seeming futility of one-on-one conversions and her uncle advised her to take up acting.

      “As I was convinced the theatrical profession needed a missionary, he suggested that the best way to reach them was to become one of them so I went on the stage filled with a great desire to convert my fellowman.”³⁴

      Joining a Chicago stock company, she soon married their star actor and stage manager Phillips Smalley, the good-looking grandson of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Lois’s acting was praised for “radiating domesticity” and critics claimed she was “at her best playing the young matron,” but when she left the company to keep house for Phillips, she soon tired of not working and found a job with the Gaumont film company, where she was encouraged to write, act, and try her hand at directing. Her husband soon joined her and they quickly established themselves as codirectors, with Lois writing all the stories and acting in many of them.³⁵

      They moved between a series of studios before signing with Universal in Los Angeles, where Lois became known for her sophisticated camera angles and split-screen techniques. Universal supported the Smalleys with budgets that allowed for such luxuries as paying $1,200 for a small island that they then blew up for cinematic effect, yet they felt constrained by the demand for two two-reel films a month and the perceived “envious eyes” of their coworkers. Phillips particularly courted the attention of the press and Jean Darnell’s “Studio Chat” column in Photoplay barely let a month go by without mentioning the couple.³⁶

      In April of 1914 Lois and Phillips spent a month filming in Laguna Beach, where they met Hobart Bosworth, a respected Broadway actor whose tuberculosis had driven him to seek California’s recuperative climate. He had reluctantly become a motion picture actor five years earlier when offered $125 to star in The Power of the Sultan for Selig, filmed at a Chinese laundry because the backdrops could be hung on the clotheslines. He moved on to producing his own films and, an ardent Jack London fan, he wrote, directed, and starred in The Sea Wolf, a seven-reel film made for $9,000. With the $4 million in profits it brought in, he created his own studio.³⁷

      Bosworth’s conversations with Lois and Phillips turned to their desire to make films of whatever length and subject they chose and he invited them to work with him. Wide distribution of their films would be assured as he was in the process of joining forces with Famous Players and Jesse Lasky to form Paramount Pictures.³⁸

      By early summer of 1914, the Smalleys were at the Bosworth studios and Lois was directing her first film. When Marion arrived for her appointment, she was ushered past actors re-creating the French Revolution and into an office to be introduced to “a tall woman, with classical features. She seemed to glide rather than walk, her head held high and tilted slightly backward, her ample breasts preceding her well-corseted body.” Marion thought she most closely resembled a figurehead on a sailing ship.³⁹

      As Lois sat behind a large desk and looked through Marion’s portfolio of drawings, she began the conversation by telling Marion how much she enjoyed finding new talent. Marion “told her how much I wanted to design costumes and sets in a movie studio” and their shared love of filmmaking permeated their discussion. Yet when Lois asked, “Would you like to come under my wing as one of my little starlets?” Marion was not sure she understood. She reiterated that her experience was as an artist and a writer; she was interested in working “on the dark side of the camera.”⁴⁰

      Lois assured her that at most studios, and at Bosworth in particular, everyone did a little of everything. She was offering her a position as her assistant and protégée where she would work in every stage of production, including in front of the camera. When the director said, “I’m sure we can match whatever salary you are making now” and then asked, “How soon can you start?” Marion knew she had found a new home.

      Lois was cognizant that