Without Lying Down. Cari Beauchamp
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Even when The Los Angeles Times editorialized about the economic benefits of the new business, they acknowledged the problem: “The motion picture people may be something of a pest, but their value to the community as national and international advertisers is inestimable.”10
Robert’s innate sense of respectability made him side with the Conscientious Citizens and Marion would later recall her second husband as being “years older,” even though he was only three years her senior. He spent his days in a conservative business milieu and the “differences in our social instincts” became all the more apparent. He “felt uncomfortable with my artist and writer friends and wanted us to live a formal mid-Victorian existence.”11
What had once looked liberating from the position of the working wife of a poor artist now became confining. Marion was coming to terms with the fact she would never be happy as a society wife and that she worked because she wanted to, yet she managed to postpone most immediate conflicts with Robert because they spent so little time together. He was busy working and traveling and when Marion wasn’t painting or at the theater, she took to studying the history of the region.
One of her favorite weekend haunts was the historic plaza designed 150 years earlier by the original Franciscan Mission settlement for the founding population of thirty-two people. The narrow cobbled streets that led from the plaza were sheltered by pepper trees and oleanders and on Sundays, devout Catholics and tourists mixed with the Mexican families who lived in the nearby adobes.12
One Sunday afternoon in early 1914, Marion looked up from the bench where she sat sketching Mexican children at play to see a tall, hefty woman in a broad-brimmed hat and an unflattering, boldly printed dress walking out of one of the small shops, carrying a bag of popcorn. Marion watched as she tossed the popcorn to the pigeons and listened as the woman conversed with the birds, ordering them not to be so greedy.
Then Marion’s heart gave a little leap as she realized the woman was Marie Dressler. Instinctively, she stood up, but immediately sat back down, sure that the famous actress would not remember “a silly young reporter.” Marion started to make a quick sketch, but Marie headed toward her as she emptied the popcorn bag onto the ground.
“I’m not really off my trolley,” she said, glancing up from under her hat at Marion, the only person sitting nearby. “I like birds. I talk to them. I have an old parrot, a regular . . .”
As Marion stealthily slipped the drawing back into the pad, Marie stopped short. “Say, aren’t you the girl who interviewed me in San Francisco four or five years ago?”
Marion rose again as she said, “Yes, Miss Dressler, but I didn’t dream you’d remember me.”
“I’m not the forgetting type. I’ve often wondered what became of you. Hate to lose track of anybody I take a fancy to.”
Relaxing Marion with her easy charm, Marie reached out her hand and suggested they go into “one of these little Mexican joints and have a tamale.”
Marion’s familiarity with the area gave her the confidence to suggest Señora Martinez’s El Pajaro restaurant around the corner. Four tables filled the small adobe dining room, and Marie was impressed when Marion was welcomed like family by the owner and ordered for both of them in Spanish. The feeling of comfortable informality quickly fell over the two women just as it had that night long ago in San Francisco.13
Marion talked about her work for Morosco and her second husband and Marie said she too had left an early unhappy marriage and spoke of her childhood in Cobourg, Canada. She was born Leila Maria Koerber and by the time she was ten, she was larger than her fifteen-year-old sister and so responsible she considered herself as “born older.” Marie adored her “frail little mother,” who, “gentle as she was, had courage enough to stand between me and my father. He was a tyrannical German musician who worshipped beauty and couldn’t forgive me for being such a mudhen.”14
Marie was in Los Angeles to film Tillie’s Punctured Romance for Mack Sennett at his Keystone studio in Edendale, and her supporting players were Mabel Normand, a girl “with a complexion that makes you think of gardenias,” and a new rising star, Charlie Chaplin. The English comic had just signed with Keystone after being discovered as he toured America with Fred Karno’s burlesque troop.
Marie had first met Mack Sennett when she was an established comedienne and he, working in a Connecticut iron foundry, sought her advice on how to break into show business. With her help he became an actor for David Wark Griffith, and rumor had it that his mentor was now working on a film of epic proportions. Mack was inspired to try something similar and, never forgetting Marie’s early guidance, signed her for the remarkable sum of $2,500 a week to create his first six-reel comedy.15
Marie entranced Marion with tales of making movies, comparing the process to “sitting in the middle of a cement mixer.” She thought a pretty girl had an easier time of it and asked if she had considered “going into the movies?”
“Do they use artists?”
“I mean to play in them. Be an actress. You’ve got the looks.” Marion laughed at the thought, claiming she couldn’t act “even if Svengali hypnotized me,” but admitted she would love to do more portraits of the actors.
“Come on out to the studio anytime and ask for me. I’ll be happy to tote you around.”
The sun was setting over the plaza as they left the restaurant, basking in the warmth of an easy friendship. Marie reminded her of what she had said in San Francisco years before. This time, Marion was secure in the knowledge that the phrase “I’ll see you again” was a fact, not just a hope.
“I’ll be repeating that promise if you come to the studio in about a week; our company will be in full swing by then and I’ll introduce you to Chaplin.”16
But weeks passed before Marion was free to venture out to Edendale. Because painting for Morosco was intermittent, she had arranged to be on call for an advertising firm and they suddenly were in need of several commercial layouts with immediate deadlines. When she finally arrived at the Sennett studio and asked for Miss Dressler, the guard informed her “Punctured is in the can. She left for New York yesterday.”
Until she was turned away, Marion had not realized how much she was looking forward to being on the lot, if only for an afternoon. Just being at the gates of the studio electrified her with excitement. Then, within days of this disappointment, Oliver Morosco told her that because the cost of lithographing had recently tripled, he could not rationalize keeping her on salary.17
At twenty-five, Marion had already developed the philosophy to “take failure with my chin up and success, when it comes, in stride.” She took this news as a minor setback and leased a fourth-floor studio at 315 Broadway, sharing the rent with fellow illustrator Hilda Hasse. Marion turned to working full-time for advertising men, whom she found “deadly serious and content in their narrow world,” and tried to lace her layouts selling bunion removers and pickles with charm and sex appeal. In her boredom, her dissatisfaction with Robert increased, but she refused to entertain the thought of returning to San Francisco; her ambition remained intact and she was confident that Los Angeles was where she belonged.18
Marion spent many of her evenings with the woman who was becoming her best friend in Los Angeles, Adela Rogers. They had first met in San Francisco shortly after the earthquake, when the teenage Adela came to town with her father, one of the country’s most famous defense attorneys.
Adela’s parents separated when she was still a child and with the exception of a few months at the Convent of Notre Dame in Santa Clara and traveling in Europe with her aunt and uncle, Adela had been raised and educated by tutors, her father, and her grandparents. She disdained her mother and worshipped her father, who involved her in his cases and took her with him in his travels. Adela adored San Francisco and would always claim she was from there because “it sounded much more glamorous and literary” than Los Angeles.19
Being Earl Rogers’s daughter was a