Without Lying Down. Cari Beauchamp
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as Earl was concerned and he introduced her to William Randolph Hearst. The publisher hired her at the age of eighteen as a cub reporter for his Los Angeles Herald Examiner, where she thrived, using her natural curiosity as well as the investigative techniques and storytelling abilities she had learned at her father’s knee.
Marion had been raised to think independently and to be relatively self-sufficient, but she paled in comparison to Adela. Marion was several years older and she knew Adela well enough to see her insecurities, but Adela conducted herself with such an aura of sureness that she was always the one in charge. With opinions on absolutely everything, she was a close friend and an authority figure at the same time. Yet she put Marion on a bit of a pedestal as well. She had been impressed and just a little threatened when Earl Rogers pronounced upon meeting Marion for the first time, “That girl has genius. She’ll do something.”20
The two women were occasionally joined by the stars Adela met through reporting and the Keystone comedienne Mabel Normand became a favorite companion. They ventured out to the Vernon Country Club, the closest thing to the Barbary Coast south of the Tahatchapis, where Adela would drink crème de menthe, Marion a weak scotch, and Mabel whiskey “with apricot brandy added to kill the taste.” They danced until all hours and then crawled back into town, sometimes going straight to work or catching a quick nap at Mabel’s apartment at Seventh and Figueroa.21
Adela was also spending time with the Herald Examiner’s tall, good-looking copy editor Ike St. Johns, but many nights she, Marion, and an eclectic group of friends gathered at Ivy’s, Al Levy’s at Third and Main, or the Ship Café down on the Venice pier. The regulars included Eric von Stroheim, a young man who claimed to have his fortune tied up in Europe so “he lived meagerly off what he could borrow from the rest of us.” Marion tolerated him because he was a friend of Adela’s and found “his stories amusing, his lies preposterous and he entertained us, even though we didn’t think he had a chance to succeed.”
They also enjoyed the company of Sessue Hayakawa and Tsuru Aoki, whom Marion had known and liked at St. Margaret’s Hall. The couple were engaged to be married and determined to be successful actors, so when Tsuru was cast in The Geisha along with their friend Frank Borzage, one of the few actors they knew who worked regularly, Adela convinced him to put in a word for Sessue with the director Thomas Ince.22
Marion and Adela went together to watch The Geisha being filmed one afternoon at “Inceville,” the massive strip of land off Sunset bordering on the Pacific Ocean where film could be shot on the beach and in the mountains on the same day. Adela was “a walkie-talkie encyclopedia of intellectual and casual information” on the people and the techniques they were using, and Marion soaked it all in.
She stayed in touch with her friends from the Morosco Theater, missing the regular contact with the personalities, the gossip, and the warring factions, all in equal measure. Few of the actors, excepting Charlotte Greenwood and Bob Leonard, who had just “deserted” to act and direct at Universal, expressed any desire or even willingness to perform in front of the camera. Enticing as the money was, flickers were still looked down on by everyone who considered themselves serious actors. Jimmy Gleason avoided the temptation by writing a play that was to be produced in New York, and a farewell gathering was quickly arranged.
Among the familiar faces at Jimmy’s party were several “movies” and Marion was introduced to Owen Moore. She knew he and his older brothers, Matt and Tom, had been acting since their teens and that Owen was married to Mary Pickford, known as the “girl with the golden curls.”
Variety had started reporting on motion pictures as early as 1907 and newspapers created sections for reviews soon after. But the boom in moviegoing had resulted in new magazines such as Moving Picture World and Photoplay, a lavishly colored monthly selling for fifteen cents a copy. With features like “Who’s Who in the Photoplays,” word quickly spread that the favorite known as “Goldilocks” or “Little Mary” had a full name; it was Mary Pickford and Frances had already noticed “the quality of her films were above the rest.”23
A slight man about five feet ten inches, with deep blue eyes and dark hair slicked straight back, Owen struck Marion as almost too handsome. “He overworked the affected charm and mannerism of the professional Irishman, but in a gush of enthusiasm I told him how clever I thought Miss Pickford was.”
“Mary has an expressive little talent,” Owen responded. “Hardly what one could call cerebral.”
Star or butcher, Marion could not abide any husband’s talking about his wife that way. Controlling herself, she smiled and walked away, but Owen gave her a moment to cool down and followed her to the punch bowl.
“Can’t you women learn to fortify yourselves against the truth, or do we always have to lie to you? Would I have seemed more gallant had I endowed Mary with a greater talent than Sarah Bernhardt?”
As Marion was debating whether to turn away again, he asked her if she would like him to arrange a meeting with Mary. Her anger changed to interest, particularly when he added, “Charlotte Greenwood tells me you do fine portraits. Take some of your work along and maybe you can do one of Mary.”
The party was breaking up and Marion said her good-byes. She was excited at the possibility of meeting Mary Pickford and thought Owen Moore “was a very attractive Lothario, if only he hadn’t made that snide remark about his wife’s talent.”24
Although three years younger than Marion, Mary Pickford was old beyond her years. She had been the family breadwinner since the age of eight, playing in stage roles with stock companies that took her away from her native Toronto and her widowed mother; sister Lottie, and brother Jack for months at a time. She was all of fifteen in the summer of 1907 when she determined to make a career in New York. Sleeping on a friend’s chair and paying the “rent” by shopping and cleaning, she saved every penny she could to send home. Blindly ambitious, she bombarded the preeminent producer David Belasco with letters and photographs of herself and won the role of young Betty in his production of The Warrens of Virginia, written by William de Mille and costarring his younger brother, Cecil.25
It was Belasco who decided that Gladys Smith needed a new stage name and together they reviewed her family tree for one with marquee value. They stopped at her maternal grandfather, Jack Pickford Hennessey, and she proudly wired her mother, “Gladys Smith now Mary Pickford engaged by David Belasco to appear on Broadway this fall.” She never looked back and she was never a child again. As if to underscore their dedication to her future, the rest of the family adopted the name Pickford as well.26
Mary had done little but work since then, and with her mother’s constant guidance, negotiated increases in pay with each new studio and contract. Insulated in her family and films, Mary had little time for friends, excepting the fatherless Gish sisters, with whom the family shared rooms in New York during the off season. But that spring of 1914 when Owen mentioned a woman who was an excellent portrait painter and someone he thought she would like, Mary was willing to make the time. Still, it had to be at the studio so she could cut the interview short if she wanted.
Marion was not about to repeat the mistake she had made when she missed Marie Dressler. As soon as she was summoned, she dropped everything and prepared for her audience, but that morning the Santa Ana winds were blowing hard, making it impossible to carry her portfolio. If she was to be on time, she had to leave her pictures at home.
A young man met Marion at the studio entrance and walked her through the dirt lot until he knocked at the door of a wooden building. A voice called out for them to enter and there in a darkened room stood Mary Pickford editing film with the cutter. She greeted Marion with a smile and a firm handshake and took her into a side room to talk.
Marion’s first reaction to Mary was to sense “a strange watchfulness behind her steadfast gaze.” She was surprised at the vulnerability from someone she had put on a pedestal and she instantly developed a fiercely protective attitude toward Mary that was to be a hallmark of their friendship.27
Their shared sense of ambition united them immediately and although Mary