The Girls in the Picture

by Melanie Benjamin

  “This is one time I’m glad I’m not writing dialogue,” I huffed to Elsie after the director called “cut” to set up a new shot. “Oogga booogga is about all I can think of to say.”

  “It ain’t Shakespeare, that’s for sure.” Elsie yawned and stretched out on a flat boulder, looking exactly like a lizard sunning itself as she raised her little face—the only one not smeared with mud, since she was the star—to the cloudless sky.

  “Watch out for rattlesnakes,” I warned her. During the previous take, one of the girls almost stepped on one; the director had pulled out a pistol and shot it.

  “I checked.” Elsie yawned again. “You know, Fran, sometimes I can’t see how these crazy movies are going to last—my name is actually Lithesome, in this. ‘Oh, fearless women of the Stone Age who fought and died alongside their men’—that’s one of the title cards, if you can believe it!”

  “Well, I can write better than that.” I stomped my feet, in an attempt to frighten away any rattlers that might be lurking about. Then I looked down at my mangy costume, my mud-splattered legs, my scrapes and cuts; overhead the sun was beating down upon all of us on the rocks while behind the camera sat the director and scenarist, the continuity girl and the rest, mercifully protected by umbrellas. “This is the most insane business. Why does anyone want to be in front of the camera?”

  “Frances Marion! I thought you weren’t going to be an actress!” A petite figure, framed by a lacy parasol, was cupping her hands and yelling up at me; I shaded my eyes and beheld Mary Pickford’s sparkling, mischievous gaze.

  “Mary!” I couldn’t help it; I clapped my hands, showering myself with mud. “Oh, you’re back! I’m so glad!” I didn’t care about the next shot; I had to scramble down the rocks, even if the director wasn’t yet finished with me. “When did you return?”

  “Yesterday. I came out to visit Owen on the set, but I don’t see him.” Mary frowned. Her golden curls were pinned up on top of her head in a grown-up fashion, and she was wearing an exquisite white linen dress with a blue silk sash. She looked fresh and cool, as if she’d just come from a garden party; I itched to change out of my ridiculous costume and take a long bath. How absurd and embarrassed I felt, covered in mud and fur!

  “I don’t know where Owen is,” I lied. Because I knew perfectly well that Owen was behind the rocks, cuddling with one of the other “fearless women of the Stone Age.”

  “So you couldn’t resist being an actress, after all?” Mary teased as she took in my outfit, but I detected disappointment, perhaps resentment, in her gaze.

  “Oh, no—it’s only a favor to Elsie, I’m still no actress! Actually, I’ve been learning a lot here at Bosworth, doing a little bit of everything. I’ve been thinking I might want to learn how to write. Scenarios.” I felt bashful, confessing my ambitions to Mary; after all, I hadn’t seen her in months, and we’d only really just met. But she smiled warmly, and put her gloved hand on my dirty arm, not seeming to care that it would soil.

  “I think that’s marvelous! I knew you’d find a way into this business.”

  “I have, but the studio is about to shut down—Bosworth is getting out, he thinks he’s too old, that it’s a young people’s business—and Lois and her husband are going to Universal.” I’d only just heard the news, and hadn’t had a chance to decide if I wanted to tag along with Lois to Universal or not. There were plenty of new studios popping up. Perhaps at a smaller one, I’d be able to work my way up to writing. As much as I loved Lois, and was grateful to her, I suspected that I’d remain her right-hand girl, only doing odd jobs, if I went with her.

  “Work for me!” Mary blurted it out—much to her obvious surprise, for she then clapped her hand over her mouth, her eyebrows raised in astonishment. I held my breath, waiting. But she didn’t rescind her offer.

  “What?”

  “Come work for me, Frances! Really, I mean it! You say you don’t want to act, but unfortunately that’s the only thing I can hire you for—my contract specifies that I can cast my own films. But mainly, I want you to help shape some of the scenarios I’m set to film. We’ll have such fun!”

  “Are you serious? You’re not—I’m not—that is, I’m still learning!”

  “We all are! That’s the exciting part, isn’t it? We’re making this up as we go along and there’s no one to tell us we’re doing it wrong!” And Mary gave me that penetrating gaze again; the one that was so at odds with her demure, virginal appearance.

  “I’d—I’d love to! Where do I sign?” My hand was already tracing the air with my signature; I couldn’t wait for something as ordinary as mere paper. She might change her mind!

  Mary laughed. “I don’t carry contracts with me, you silly; you’ll have to come over and meet Mama, and we’ll take care of business then.”

  “Oh, of course, of course. All right, Mary.” In lieu of an actual contract, I reached out and grabbed her hand, shaking it firmly. “I’m honored and humbled.”

  “Don’t be humbled. I’m no charity; I hire people who I think have talent. I also hire people I like to spend time with.”

  “Hey, cavewoman, get your ass back up on your rock!” The director turned his megaphone toward me; I shrugged and scrambled back up the hill. But when I reached the top, I turned and waved at Mary, who waved back.

  “Fran, are you coming out tonight with everyone?” Elsie stood up, and resumed her “lithesome” pose. “We’re going down to the Ship Café.”

  Normally, I would love to. I’d fallen in with a ragtag, eclectic group of movie people; actors like Mabel Normand and Sessue Hayakawa and Erich von Stroheim; my fellow lackeys at Bosworth, Sidney Franklin and George Hill. Adela, of course, as well as Bess and another scenarist, Anita Loos, who couldn’t have been more than seventeen but somehow had talked her parents into letting her live and work in Los Angeles. It was a fun group, and we usually met at the Ship Café—an actual ship, a replica of a Spanish galleon—on the Venice Pier for beer and sandwiches and gossip and dancing on deck after the sun set. We were all young, we were all hungry for fun as well as fame, and we were all in love with our work—and so, naturally, in love with one another. It was intoxicating, being part of such a gang. We said hello with warm hugs and kisses, laughter was the drug of choice (for most of us, anyway; I wasn’t sure about Mabel), and we all helped one another; egos were left outside the door. If Adela was stuck on a story idea, we pitched in and worked on the plot. If Lois wasn’t sure about a camera setup, everybody had an idea. And some of the gang—von Stroheim, for instance—were so poor, we all reached into our pockets to pay their way, simply because they were so amusing, so full of self-importance—and ambition. The other thing we all shared.

  “Not tonight, Elsie. I have an appointment. With Mary. Mary Pickford.” I couldn’t believe my own ears.

  “Mary? She’s back?” Elsie turned her gaze back down to the camera area, where Mary was now talking with Owen; even from this distance, it didn’t look as if it were a happy conversation. Mary had folded her arms across her chest, allowing her parasol to droop behind her back; Owen was waving his arms wildly.

  “Guess my time with Owen’s over, for now.” Elsie laughed. “I love Mary, but when the cat’s away…”

  “Elsie! You, too?” I couldn’t help it, even though I knew I sounded like a prude. But I was shocked; Elsie was so sweet, so gay. A tomboy, really. But, yes, there was something predatory about her, too—as if the entire world was hers for the taking. And I couldn’t help but wonder if that was one of the unsavory by-products of success.

  “Me and every other cavewoman around here. Except you, apparently. Oh, Fran, don’t look so shocked! That marriage is a sham. They know it, we know it, everybody knows it. Except for the fan magazines, of course. Mary’s a real cool cucumber, so serious all the time. And Owen, well—he’s not. And c’mon, you’re no saint.”

  My face burned. No, I was not. I enjoyed the company of men, and on some of those nights that began at the Ship Café I ended
up in someone else’s bed. But never a married man—never. I would never do that.

  “But you’re Mary’s friend, Elsie.”

  “Not really. Mary doesn’t have friends. She has acquaintances.”

  “Even if that’s true, that doesn’t make it right.”

  “Oh, lighten up! I’ll leave Owen alone now. I have no wish to really hurt Mary—I wouldn’t parade it around in front of her. And I’m going back to England anyway, where there’s a war on, if you haven’t forgotten. I imagine that will sober me up right quick.”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten there’s a war on,” I retorted, although, quite frankly, I had. No one in the States was really talking much about the conflict in Europe. Other than worrying about how it might affect overseas profits; the movie industry was just waking up to the idea that there was an international market for American films.

  The director roared “Places, cavewomen!” through the megaphone. “And…roll!” I scampered about, waving at the other women, miming toil or exhaustion as the director called out his whims, doing my best to keep my face turned away from the camera.

  Mother didn’t yet know about my new career; no one back in San Francisco did. Although there was scant chance of any of them happening into a movie theater to see, still, I didn’t want to expose myself. I was the lone cavewoman not mugging for the camera, not silently begging for its favor.

  “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” Elsie cried at one point as she picked up a rock and held it above her head, looking as fierce and determined as any cavewoman. Her voice quavered, and in that moment, I didn’t think she was acting.

  But under that relentless, pale sun, surrounded by colorful flowers, a blue sky unclouded by smoke or the haze of a battlefield; in that moment of birds soaring overhead and an ocean of opportunities miraculously in front of me, it was impossible to believe it.

  Especially after the director yelled “Cut!”

  There was a war on. A war, up on the screen.

  Mary sat next to me in a crowded theater, her hair pushed up into a voluminous velvet hat so that she couldn’t be recognized, which was starting to happen more and more. Thank God I never had to worry about that, and if I proceeded down the path I hoped, I never would. I wanted to be known, yes—with every ounce of ambition I possessed—but not recognized. I could change my hair, decide to throw on an old dress if I needed to run to the store for butter, or wear an evening gown slashed down to my sternum if I wanted.

  All things that Mary was beginning to realize that she could not do without repercussions, and I knew she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that. On the one hand, recognition assured her stardom—and fame meant everything to Mary, for reasons I was only beginning to understand.

  On the other hand, these new movie fans were different from any fans I’d ever seen; they weren’t always satisfied with simply staring, or politely asking for an autograph. No, movie fans were prone to tears, or sometimes even faint screams, and they sometimes reached out to touch Mary, finger her dress or even her curls, as if they had a right. As if they felt ownership of her, from head to toe, the entire package paid for by their movie tickets and their devotion, their laughter, their tears.

  Tonight, Mary had so far escaped notice. The tickets had cost two dollars each, so this was a more jaded crowd. I couldn’t wrap my head around it; two dollars for a movie ticket! Only a few years ago, I’d paid a nickel and for most movies it was still only ten or fifteen cents. But for D. W. Griffith’s newest—promised to be a spectacle unlike anything the public had ever seen—we willingly paid it and now the entire audience was abuzz, more interested in what we were going to see on-screen than who was in the seats. Word had already leaked out from the first showings that what Griffith had done was astonishing. Unprecedented.

  The Clansman—or The Birth of a Nation, the movie was titled.

  From the moment the orchestra down in front—a real orchestra, not just a pianist—began to play original music, composed specifically for the movie—again, unheard of—I don’t believe I took a single breath. For three full hours, I knew nothing but what was unfolding on the screen. The images and the stirring music assaulted my brain, punching it like a heavyweight, so that at times I couldn’t quite fathom what I was seeing. I could only let it wash over me and hope to make sense of it later.

  Ten reels, the movie was. Ten! What would this mean from now on? Ten reels allowed for so much more story—epic storytelling, not the sweet little missives we were all used to making. Studios were certain that an audience could really only be expected to sit through two reels, five at the most.

  But Griffith didn’t care about what had been expected, and the result was electrifying. My mind reeled, both enjoying the movie and struggling to understand the astounding technical wizardry as one innovation after another unfolded on the screen. Not content with linear storytelling, Griffith employed exciting cuts and inserts—how on earth had he thought to do this? How had he known that the audience could make the connection, keep it all straight? It was brilliant, intense, and utterly thrilling; my every muscle was so rigid that by the time the film was over, my entire body ached.

  The battle scenes were miraculously staged and lit, like a Brady daguerreotype come to life. The stunning use of the camera iris to zero in or fade out of a scene—I’d never seen such a thing before, but it gave the audience a chance to catch its breath and steel itself for what might come next. The titles were ornate, like beautiful calling cards instead of the plain sentences, in plain type, that everyone else used.

  Of course, the story was epic: the Civil War and Reconstruction, played out as background behind the familiar story of two families, one from the north and one from the south. It was Griffith’s genius to concentrate on the intimacy of these families, their personal relationships; the spectacle was breathtaking, but it was the fate of the ordinary people that I cared so deeply about.

  All through the film, Mary’s hand gripped my arm. She was as feverish as I was, her fingernails digging deeper and deeper until, when at last she let go, I had four distinct red marks in my flesh. But I didn’t mind. The two of us were one—one living, breathing, stupefied being, wholly and entirely transfixed. Just like everyone else in the audience caught up in this sweeping, emotional vortex that sucked us all in and wouldn’t let go until the very end, when the hero and the heroine were together at last, and the image faded to the ultimate title:

  Liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever!

  The orchestra held the final chord, and there was silence, awed silence, as if in church. I heard the thumping first; I looked around and only slowly realized that it was feet pounding, stomping the floor until the whole building vibrated. Then came the thunderous applause, the cheers and then a roar, a heartfelt, deafening cry.

  I was on my feet, clapping and yelling until my throat was raw; I felt something rolling down my cheeks and realized it was tears. Next to me, Mary was standing on her seat, cheering, tears rolling down her face, too. Her hat was hanging halfway down her back, her curls on full display, but nobody was looking at her; everyone was still swept up in what had just transpired on the screen.

  “Oh, Fran! Oh, Fran! Did you ever? Aren’t you proud?”

  My throat tightened up, and I thought—Yes! This is it, this is what I was looking for, waiting for, all those years. This flowering, this opening of hearts and eyes and minds, great vistas, all through the creation of people like me—people whose imaginations were too big for real life, so we had to build another. Build it out of trial and error and sweat and tears and luck and pluck and heart. I was proud of this movie—of this industry. My industry.

  None of us in the stifling hot theater—one of the new “palaces” springing from the earth like the Great Pyramids, but monuments to movies, not kings—wanted to leave; like stunned cattle we remained staring at the screen, blank now, as if we could still conjure up our favorite moments.

  “I want to do that to people.” I tu
rned to Mary, seizing her arm; her face was still pink, her eyes still shining with emotion. “I want to make them not want to leave; I want to sweep them away with my stories, my ideas! I want to make art, not merely entertainment!”

  “You will. I will. If Griffith could do it—I mean, Fran, I worked for him at Biograph! I knew he was talented but oh, so arrogant! He never wanted to collaborate. I had so many ideas but he rarely listened. Yet that’s what made this brilliant, isn’t it? He didn’t listen to all those who told him he couldn’t make a ten-reel movie. He didn’t listen to anyone who told him you can’t cut back and forth like he did—oh, Fran, that chase, at the end! No one’s ever done that before!” You wouldn’t know, to look at Mary, that she wasn’t simply a movie fan herself. And I knew that really, she was. She loved movies as devoutly as the most feverish of her fans. Perhaps that was why they adored her: in her, they recognized themselves.

  “Do you regret leaving Biograph for Famous Players now?”

  “No! God, no! I’m so happy for Lillian—wasn’t she stunning? And Mae Marsh—of course, she had an affair with Griffith, which I wouldn’t, which is one reason why he was so tough on me.” Mary grinned slyly, and I tried not to look as shocked as I felt. For some reason, I never could think of Mary as a sexual person, even though, of course, she was married.

  “Griffith? He wanted to—to—” I looked about, in case anyone was eavesdropping, then I bent down and whispered into her ear, “He wanted to make love to you?”

  “Yes, of course.” Mary laughed as gaily as if I’d just suggested we go get ice cream, and for the first time, I felt the less worldly one of our pair. But then I realized I shouldn’t be surprised; Mary, after all, was an actress. And I was already learning that actresses had a different—murkier—path to success than women like Bess and Adela and me. I’d seen the way men in power treated actresses; it wasn’t an equal relationship at all, and if you were an ambitious actress, well…There were many unsavory choices you would have to make. Actresses who wanted bigger roles were fair game, at least for some directors and producers; it was an open secret.