The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin

  “It wasn’t your fault, Mama. It was mine; I was swept away, too young to know any better. This Frances—she said she was married young, too. Now she’s getting divorced.”

  “And you’re Catholic.” Mama tugged a little too hard on a curl.

  “Well, anyway, we’re going back to New York City for the next picture, but Owen is staying out here.” And Mary hoped, for the thousandth time, that she could simply wish her marriage away; spending as much time apart as they did aided in this fantasy. Yet she also felt a pang of guilt; wouldn’t a good wife—a proper wife—be living with her husband instead of her mother? Had she ever given Owen a chance? She’d forced him to keep the marriage a secret at first; she knew it was a mistake, being married by a judge on the sly, such a mistake that she couldn’t bring herself to tell Mama and Lottie and Jack, knowing it would break their hearts. So they kept it a secret for months, and when they did break the news—and, oh, what a scene it was! Griffith should have seen her then, as hysterical and simpering as he could have wished for the camera—Mama finally turned to Owen and said, “Mary shares a room with me. Where will you sleep?”

  And it went downhill from there. Mary knew Owen fooled around with other women; she saw the ingénues lining up outside his dressing room, the pitying looks these girls gave her, even though she was the much bigger star.

  The biggest star of them all. The one who couldn’t keep her husband satisfied. But the one whom the camera loved the most. And it turned out, so far, the adoring eye of the camera was enough for her. Even as she knew it wasn’t for her husband.

  Mary kissed her mother good night and crept into bed. It was still strange, going to sleep so early; she was used to the stage, where you didn’t dream of retiring until after midnight, so keyed-up after the evening performance that it took hours to settle down. But the movies were different, more disciplined, and that was one reason why Mary loved them. She had to go to bed by nine, in order to look fresh for the merciless—sensitive, adoring, eager—camera at eight in the morning.

  But before she shut her eyes—she still sometimes slept with her arms straight up over her head, from her touring days when the three of them, Lottie, Jack, and her, had to squeeze into one seat on the train—she remembered the sympathetic, understanding gaze of Frances Marion. Frances had looked at Mary as if she knew all about Owen, which, of course, she couldn’t.

  But she seemed to be able to imagine she did, all the same.

  As Mary’s buzzing thoughts kept her awake—they always would, if she let them—she longed to tell them to someone. She longed to unburden herself to someone her own age. Someone who might make her feel her own age, because honestly, she never had. She’d always felt like Mama’s contemporary, responsible for everything: food on the table, a roof over their heads, the success of each and every picture, the happiness of these new movie “fans,” as they were called. And maybe her sister could have been her friend, like Dorothy and Lillian Gish were friends, but Lottie had turned out to be a bad apple, and Mary blamed herself for that; she’d always taken care of her, indulged her, so of course Lottie had no discipline, no work ethic, no matter how many roles Mary secured for her. She was never, ever grateful!

  But Frances Marion—something about her unexpectedly pierced Mary’s armor, an armor thickening with every pay raise, every interview, every photo of herself in the newspaper. Every letter from adoring fans not only in the United States, but sometimes now from foreign countries. It was heady, but worrying, this newfound fame, even as she sensed it was only a tremor and that something else, either astonishing or tragic, she had no idea which, would follow.

  Some movie promoter had just christened her America’s Sweetheart. Toronto-born Gladys Smith—Mary Pickford—America’s Sweetheart. It was all so dizzying, so confusing. If only they knew, she snorted into her pillow. That America’s Sweetheart had no sweetheart, even if she was married. That the marriage bed could be the loneliest place in the world, when the man you’d married was a stranger whose only attribute was that he had been the first boy to put his arms around you on the very worst day of your life.

  If only America knew about the decisions you had to make when you found yourself caught up in a profession, an industry, whose very existence you were helping to shape; decisions that other married women didn’t have to make. Decisions that numbed your soul, the same soul you were so eager to bare to the camera, the one thing constant, the one thing nourishing, in your life.

  But Frances Marion—she might know. Mary very much suspected that she did. And with that comforting thought, Mary finally went to sleep. But not before whispering into her pillow,

  Mama, I made a friend.

  “I don’t know what to do with the extras.” Lois dropped her arm that held the megaphone and studied the scene before us, a party scene with lots of gaily—if shabbily—dressed crowd extras. “The audience is getting too sophisticated. We’re getting letters now saying they can read lips, and so they know what the extras are saying. And most of it isn’t fit for decent company.”

  “Can’t you—can’t somebody—tell them what to say? Write some lines for them?”

  “I don’t have a spare moment.” For the first time since I’d known her, Lois Weber looked less than bandbox fresh. Her kohled eyes—she was always made up to look as elegant as any of her actors—drooped in exhaustion.

  Then those same eyes were staring at me, widening with an idea.

  “You can do it, Frances, can’t you? I know you said you didn’t want to be on camera, but this is different—you’ll be helping me. While I’m setting up, go over there and scribble something down and get made up, then while we’re shooting, move among the extras with your back to the camera, telling them what to say. I don’t really care what it is—just write some dialogue that works for this scene.”

  “Me? Write dialogue?” My own eyes widened; what on earth did she mean?

  I was on set—me, Frances Marion, actually on set. I knew the language now, the language of moviemaking. And despite my protests, I’d been on camera once before, doubling for an actress who couldn’t ride a horse, but that didn’t really count, as it was a long shot and I’d kept my face turned away from the camera.

  I could also claim job experience as a cleaning woman, sweeping sawdust into corners. And as a seamstress, mending torn costumes. And as a painter—putting my highly touted artistic talent to use by slathering cheap paint on flats. I’d learned to cut and splice film and had the scars on my fingers to prove it; I’d written actor biographies (both fake and real, but mainly fake) and press releases. I’d put my hand to work making fifty cucumber sandwiches for a party scene, and when they ran out of fruit, had grabbed my hat and scurried around the corner to a grocer to buy more.

  And I loved every single minute of it. I couldn’t wait to come to work each morning; no longer did I sleepwalk through my days.

  Adela was responsible for giving me my big break; I’d phoned her, after that first meeting with Mary Pickford, begging her to help me find a way, any way, that I might be able to work in this industry. Adela had thought for a minute—I could hear her snapping gum from the other end of the phone—then replied, “Lois Weber’s always looking for protégées—her little starlets, she calls them. She’s at the Bosworth studio, along with her husband. And you know, she saw you once; we were having lunch at the Alexandria Hotel and you were leaving. ‘Who’s that beautiful girl?’ Lois asked me, and I told her, but that was before you got bitten by the bug. So remind her of that, when you meet her.”

  I did remind her, and Lois remembered the incident with genuine warmth, although she was stunned when I declared that I didn’t want to be an actress.

  “Then why are you here?” Like everyone I met, Lois seemed unable to grasp the fact that a pretty young woman with connections didn’t aspire to be an actress. Not when the trains deposited hundreds of would-be movie stars every single day; not when the studios had taken to hanging signs on their gates declaring Go Home
to Mother! We Have Enough Actors.

  “I want to create something—something permanent. I want to learn everything there is, and be around the kind of people who want to, as well. I want to have a career, I want to go home at night and feel satisfied with a job well done—I want to be able to tell people I do something. Something important, something real, of my own!”

  “Oh, my dear!” And Lois Weber had laughed, even as her eyes were full of sympathy; she was a tall, elegant woman with a full bosom but such a tiny waist that she made me feel like a scarecrow. “You’re so young, so eager! You remind me of myself. I love my husband, but I didn’t want to stay home keeping house for him, either. But of course, Frances, you can’t say that kind of thing. Except for here!” And Lois gestured about her office, but I understood that she meant the studio. Or maybe even Los Angeles, in general, the city that was reinventing itself every time the sun rose.

  “Is it fun, working with your husband?” I doubted it could be—Lord, I would have killed Robert if we’d worked side by side—but for some reason, I yearned for Lois to answer in the affirmative. She and her husband, Phillips Smalley—Phillips wrote, Lois directed—were such a dynamic couple; the kind of couple that made a two-time divorcée entertain the thought of marrying again, if to the right man. A man who would respect me, be my equal in every way and not be intimidated by me; a man with whom I could create something lasting.

  A man, I realized with a wry snort, who didn’t really exist—except in the movies.

  “It’s stimulating” was all Lois said, with an arched eyebrow, and I laughed. We shook hands, and I signed a contract for twenty dollars a week with my new name, subtracting two years from my real age. “Everyone in this industry does,” Lois assured me. “You’ll thank me later.”

  She also wrote, beneath my signature, “refined type.” When she saw the question in my eyes, she laughed again. “For when you decide you really do want to be an actress, after all.”

  So far, except for the horse chase, I’d resisted. But now I found myself in a chair before a smeared and cracked mirror dimly illuminated by old lightbulbs, watching the other actresses as they applied that thick pancake, layer after layer. Finally I picked up a tube of the stuff—I sniffed it, recoiling; it reeked of menthol and sweat—and began to make short streaks all across my face, imitating the others. Then I picked up the least filthy sponge I could find and began to smear the lines together, trying not to think of all the actresses who had used the same makeup and sponge before me. Goodness knows, I was no stranger to a little discreet makeup—another new habit I’d adopted, along with smoking; habits that would have caused any number of San Franciscan matrons to faint, but then I wasn’t in San Francisco anymore, was I? I was free—I was Frances—and on my own in Los Angeles, embarking upon an adventure of my own choosing, and even though I had now thoroughly obliterated my features with this disgusting makeup and was in the process of weighing down my eyelids with gummy kohl, still I giggled. Grotesquely made up or not, wasn’t I having the time of my life?

  After I chose a stained party dress from the meager costume cupboard—extras were supposed to provide their own clothes, but of course I hadn’t known I’d be on camera when I’d dressed this morning—I picked my way among the cables and crates surrounding the set. Lois came gliding over to me; her nose was freshly powdered and she’d applied a little scent, I couldn’t help but notice. It was as if, being the only female director in the company, Lois felt she had to emphasize her femininity in order to placate the men she was paid to order about—always with a smile, of course.

  “Do you know what you want the extras to say?”

  “Yes, I’ve thought up a few conversations. Just light party talk—‘oh, I love your dress,’ ‘what a pretty hat,’ that sort of thing. But it should satisfy the lip readers.”

  “Wonderful. You look lovely, by the way. I can’t wait for you to see the rushes!”

  I shook my head. Perhaps I did look lovely—my black hair would photograph very nicely, done up in an elegant twist, and my naturally dark eyebrows would also show up well on film. But I knew I wasn’t cut out for acting.

  And when, later that day after everyone trooped into the darkened projector room—it was a small company and Lois and Phillips made no distinctions between the lackeys like me and the stars like Claire Windsor—and I saw the day’s rushes, I was proven absolutely right.

  “Oh, God,” I groaned, covering my eyes with my fingers, then peeking out, then covering them again as I forced myself to look at the screen. “Oh, I’m awful!” And I was. The way I moved—so stiffly, as if someone was prodding me with invisible wires. My arms looked like sticks compared to all the other actresses, and my blue eyes registered too light. They gave me a wolfish look on-screen.

  “I think you look swell,” one of the cameramen, George Hill, said softly. I flashed him a grateful smile, which made his handsome face—he had a very dashing mustache and soulful eyes—light up. George followed me around like a puppy dog, but he was a baby, only eighteen or nineteen. And I had no intention of leaping into yet another relationship; my divorce wasn’t even final.

  “What are you talking about?” Lois laughed, squeezing my shoulder. “You look marvelous!”

  “No, no—never again!”

  Lois nodded. “Well, I appreciate you making the effort anyway. And how did you like writing dialogue?”

  “I liked it enormously!” How fun—how freeing—it had been to put myself in other people’s shoes! To imagine their lives, their relationships, what they might say, even if it was merely party chatter. I wasn’t acting only one role, I was acting several—all of them—all intoxicatingly different.

  Yet at the end of the day, sitting here with all my chums, I was still myself; still Frances. The camera took nothing from me but my words. My soul remained my own.

  After that day, I continued to do every odd job—including writing occasional dialogue—asked of me, learning, absorbing, happy to be of use, to spend my days among people just like me; talented misfits with no direction until they’d stumbled upon the movies, or the movies had stumbled upon them. The Bosworth studio was in Laguna Beach, quite a trip from my boardinghouse but worth the long trolley ride for the scenery alone, the stunning cliffs and plunging drops to the ocean and the view of Catalina, sometimes vivid, sometimes only a ghost in the mist. I got a kick out of meeting the various stage actors who showed up, some uninvited, all as if bestowing unheard-of favors, to try their hands in “the movies.” No longer did the word define the people but rather, what they—we—were creating.

  One morning I looked up from the reception desk where I was filling in; who was standing before me but my old friend Laurette Taylor, from the Morosco Company?

  “I see you’re slumming it, Miss Taylor. Or should I put your name down as ‘Teddy Roosevelt’?” I couldn’t help myself. Miss Taylor glared at me as she swept past on her way to meet Lois.

  For some reason, I wasn’t at all brokenhearted when Miss Taylor didn’t prove to be very good on-screen.

  One day Owen Moore showed up, as handsome and full of himself as ever—his thick, dark hair glistened; his even white teeth glowed even brighter. He was to costar with another one of Lois’s finds, a girl named Elsie Janis. I liked Elsie; she was enchanting, always bouncing around and doing handstands and joking with the crew, mimicking everyone in sight. Apparently she was very famous on the stage, especially in England, where she sang and performed little sketches showcasing her mimicry of everyone from Nellie Melba to Lord Kitchener.

  “C’mon, Fran,” Elsie coaxed one day after she’d been made up and costumed as a cavewoman for her latest, ’Twas Ever Thus. “We need more cavegirls! Put some mud on your face! Wrap yourself up in some of these animal skins, and ride out with us to the set!”

  “Oh, Elsie, no!” Actually, I had plans to stay in while the company was on location, and work on a scenario with one of my new friends. Bess Meredyth was a laughing young actress who, like m
e, didn’t particularly enjoy performing despite her good looks. Bess had her mind set on writing, too, and had written a few screenplays. Now she was teaching me how to flesh out an idea into a working scenario that a director could shoot. “Everyone has ideas, and ideas sell; you can make a little money that way, you know,” Bess told me. “But turning an idea into a shooting script is an entirely different thing.” And it was; but it was also exhilarating, trying to put myself inside the camera lens, seeing the actors, framing the shots, describing the motivations, learning how to convey emotion not through words but movement—but not silly movement. Not movement for movement’s sake, but realistic, controlled.

  Putting myself into each character’s mind, too, then crawling back out of the dense psychological forest I had created at the end of the day, shedding the weight of these fictional people’s troubles and woes and emerging lighter than air—miraculously lighter, gayer, than I’d ever been. Ready to dance and drink and love and laugh and enjoy life as I’d never known it could be enjoyed before.

  “Oh, Fran, you can stay inside any old time,” Elsie said, pouting. “But you won’t have me around forever! I’m heading back to England after this, to cheer up the troops there—this horrid war, you know! I can’t believe it’s still going on.”

  “Neither can I.” Europe had exploded into flames this past July; it was November 1914 now and still the conflagration burned. From the unexpectedly serious set to her mouth, I could tell Elsie wasn’t happy being away from her adopted home in its time of need. Particularly to make a cavewoman movie—and I couldn’t blame her one bit.

  “All right,” I finally agreed, because Elsie was so much fun, and it was a lovely day. Besides, my face would be covered in mud, so who would know it was me?

  My face was covered in mud—I told myself it would do my complexion wonders, just like any mud mask I might get at a beauty parlor—and two hours later my hands were scraped and my knees nicked from scrambling about a hill full of jagged rocks and cacti.