Without Lying Down. Cari Beauchamp
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college or write a book on athletic training. Somehow, he could combine his skill in athletics with his desire to educate. She shouldn’t worry about him. He was the lucky one. Before and after his brief marriage he’d had beautiful women fawn over him, but Frances was an equal, both intellectually and in terms of accomplishments, and unlike any other woman he had ever known.
Frances would joke that she married Fred because “she couldn’t get him any other way,” but he had showed her a strength of character and a refusal to be cajoled by her that she had never confronted before. They both felt the excitement and potential of being two strong people together.39
She knew how important it was to Fred to be married in a church and she found one that would not only marry them, but meet their esthetic and ethical requirements as well. The Romanesque Judson Memorial Church at Washington Square, designed by Stanford White, had been founded by Edward Judson to do “aggressive missionary work” in Greenwich Village, providing a gymnasium, a library, and a children’s home in a “crazy quilt” neighborhood.40
She had thought it was ludicrous when Lois Weber took several years off her age when signing that first movie contract, but now Frances officially lopped two years from her birth date on the marriage license. She wrote in November 18, 1890, making herself six months younger than Fred instead of the year and half older that she really was.
Frances kept the telegraph wires busy, cabling family and friends, “I wish so much that you might be present at this moment of my greatest happiness,” and Mary and Charlotte Pickford arrived on the morning of November 2 to be witnesses. After a celebratory supper, Fred and Frances went back to the Algonquin, where he was decidedly uncomfortable. Not only was he too likely to be called Mr. Marion, he found the rooms small and the pretentiousness of the guests overwhelming. Yet there was no need to argue over where they would stay because there wasn’t time for it. They planned a European honeymoon, but first Frances had to return to Los Angeles to supervise the final titles for Pollyanna and Fred was anxious to see his family and have them meet his new wife.41
Chapter 9
Clara Thomson had been hearing about Frances since shortly after Fred met her, but she had not let herself believe it was anything serious. Fred had written, very matter-of-factly, about his pride in Frances’s work during the war and Clara knew they had spoken of marriage, but it wasn’t until February 12, 1919, that she realized the truth in the black and white of newsprint.1
On page one, the Los Angeles Herald ran a large studio publicity picture of Frances with an inset of Fred in uniform. The headline read “Engaged, not Wed to Fred Thomson, says Scenario Star.” Datelined New York, the article was in response to false reports in the trades that Frances and Fred had married in Paris and it was the first full coverage of her return to America. She was praised as the “famous” and “prominent scenario writer,” while the lone mention of Fred labeled him the “noted Los Angeles athlete and chaplain.”2
To add to Clara’s indignity, a friend sent her an article from the San Francisco Examiner a month later announcing Frances’s heroic return to her hometown and recounting her war adventures. After listing all of the demands on Frances’s schedule, the very last line of the front-page story read: “And as soon as she finds a moment to spare, she will marry Fred Thompson [sic], America’s champion athlete, who was commander of athletics with A.E.F.” His family and friends were so used to Fred’s being the focus, the handwritten note on the article asked Clara, “I wonder if this is our Fred or if there is another athletic Fred Thomson in America?”
While the picture was of an attractive, sedate Frances in her army uniform, Clara knew that this “government war correspondent, authoress, playwright, and native Californian” was not the demure virgin fit to be the wife of her son. Clara Thomson was not at all pleased. No mere female would ever be worthy of any of her boys. When Fred’s older brother Henry brought home Janet Smart, an attractive college graduate from a well-off and socially established Santa Ana family, Clara let them know of her displeasure then and throughout their marriage, which was to last until Janet’s death fifty years later.3
If a wealthy, educated, and unmarried woman was not good enough for one of her sons, Frances’s sins were beyond pardon. In addition to her marriages and her work for the movies, she was “bought and paid for by William Randolph Hearst.” No one of any principles or stature read a Hearst paper. “He was a Democrat.”4
When Clara and Frances finally met in Los Angeles, she and Fred were already married and he made it clear there was nothing to be discussed. He assured his mother he would find another line of work to share his love of God and would continue to support her financially. Fred would always revere his mother and be deferential in their communications, but she was no longer the number one woman in his life.
Frances spent as little time with her mother-in-law as politely possible. The newlyweds checked into the Hollywood Hotel for a month’s stay and Frances’s mother came from San Francisco for a brief visit. While Fred spent time with his family and friends, Frances finished the titles for Pollyanna and when it premiered at Clune’s Theater on January 19, 1920, Frances’s name was not only listed on the credits, but before and in bigger letters than the director, Paul Powell. While she and Mary thought the film verged on insipid, the public and the critics loved it, praising Pollyanna as “the crowning achievement of her screen career.”5
Frances had successfully seen Mary through her first United Artists production and now made preparations to return to New York to finish her commitments to Hearst and Cosmopolitan, clearing her slate for a long honeymoon. She recommended her old San Francisco reporter friend Waldemar Young to write Mary’s next scenario, returning the favor he had done for her when he told Oliver Morosco about her paintings eight years earlier. Yet there was one more personal crisis to see Mary through as well: Douglas was insisting that she divorce Owen and marry him.
There was no question in Doug’s mind of how much he loved Mary, but, “Oh that family.” What would it be like when they married? Charlotte’s life was so entangled with Mary’s, and then there were Jack and Lottie. Doug saw them as an embarrassment and feared he might be taking on four dependents instead of just one.6
He liked to consider himself of the class with which he associated and it irritated him when Mary joked about being “shanty Irish.” The family’s drinking habits concerned him as well, although Mary would forsake the regular Pickford bourbon for the more refined “Pink Lady” when she was with him.7
Fairbanks himself was a teetotaler as a result of a dramatic family imbroglio. His father had returned to Denver and looked up the twelve-year-old Doug at school. His son urged him to come home and Charles Ulman agreed, but first fortified himself for the meeting with his ex-wife at a local bar to the point that when they finally arrived at the house, Ella took one look at Ulman and ordered him never to return. She immediately took young Doug to the local Temperance Union, where she stood over him as he signed a pledge never to drink. From all accounts, he stayed true to the vow until much later in life.
Doug convinced himself that once Mary was Mrs. Fairbanks, he would be all-important to her. Even his own son would later say, “Dad wanted all of Mary—herself and her talent and her fame and her exclusive devotion. And he longed to be able to display their union to the world like a double trophy.”8
So Doug gave Mary an ultimatum: marry him now or he was leaving her. His divorce from Beth and her remarriage had not caused any discernible effects on his career and he was sure it would be the same for her. They had been in love for three years and he was not waiting any longer.
While Mary was sure she loved him and was miserable living a lie in a marriage with Owen, she was petrified of making a mistake of such magnitude that it would wipe out everything she had worked for. Frances knew that Mary had never reached a major decision without her mother’s approval, except for the disastrous one to marry Owen, and while others painted Charlotte as a puppeteer pulling her daughter’s strings, Frances believed