Biograph Girl was a phrase associated with two early-20th-century actresses, Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford, who made black-and-white silent films with the Biograph Company. At that time, all studios refused to give actors on-screen film credit; they did not want them to gain public celebrity status and command higher salaries. This had already happened with stage actors, and the studios did not want to repeat the trend on film. [1]
Because the actors were mainly anonymous, the public and news media began to call the popular actress Florence Lawrence the "Biograph girl". In 1910, Lawrence was lured away from Biograph by Carl Laemmle when he started his new Independent Motion Picture Company, known as IMP (he later founded Universal Studios in 1913). Laemmle wanted Lawrence to be his star attraction so he offered her more money ($250 a week) and marquee billing—something Biograph did not allow at the time. [2] She signed on with him; Laemmle had rumors of her death circulated in the press and later took out advertisements criticizing the same rumors. This publicity, timed with the release of her first IMP film The Broken Oath (1910), made her a household name. She quickly became the first film star with celebrity status, and the first person to receive billing on the credits of her film. From then on, other actors slowly began to receive billing credit on film.
After Lawrence left Biograph, Mary Pickford began gaining in popularity with the studio and was soon nicknamed the new "Biograph Girl" until she, too, received billing credits in her films.
Coincidentally, both Lawrence and Pickford were both originally from Ontario, Canada; Pickford was from Toronto, and Lawrence from Hamilton. As well, both were raised by their mothers, as their fathers died within a week of each other (in unrelated accidents) in February 1898.
Gladys Louise Smith, known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American film actress, producer, screenwriter and film studio founder. A pioneer in the American film industry with a Hollywood career that spanned five decades, Pickford was one of the most popular actresses of the silent film era. Beginning her film career in 1909, by 1916 Pickford became Hollywood's first millionaire, and at the height of her career had complete creative control of her films and was one of the most recognizable women in the world. Due to her popularity, unprecedented international fame, and success as an actress and businesswoman, she was known as the "Queen of the Movies". She was a significant figure in the development of film acting and is credited with having defined the ingénue type in cinema, a persona that also earned her the nickname "America's Sweetheart".
Florence Lawrence was a Canadian-American stage performer and film actress. She is often referred to as the "first movie star", and was long thought to be the first film actor to be named publicly until evidence published in 2019 indicated that the first named film star was French actor Max Linder. At the height of her fame in the 1910s, she was known as the "Biograph Girl" for work as one of the leading ladies in silent films from the Biograph Company. She appeared in almost 300 films for various motion picture companies throughout her career.
Motion pictures have been a part of the culture of Canada since the industry began.
Jack Pickford, was a Canadian-American actor, film director and producer. He was the younger brother of actresses Mary and Lottie Pickford.
A movie star is an actor who is famous for their starring, or leading, roles in movies. The term is used for performers who are marketable stars as they become popular household names and whose names are used to promote movies, for example in trailers and posters. The most prominent movie stars are known in the industry as bankable stars.
Owen Moore was an Irish-born American actor, appearing in more than 279 movies spanning from 1908 to 1937.
Florence Turner was an American actress who became known as the "Vitagraph Girl" in early silent films.
Biograph Studios was an early film studio and laboratory complex, built in 1912 by the Biograph Company at 807 East 175th Street, in The Bronx, New York City, New York, which was preceded by two locations in Manhattan.
Billing is a performing arts term used in referring to the order and other aspects of how credits are presented for plays, films, television, or other creative works. Information given in billing usually consists of the companies, actors, directors, producers, and other crew members.
The star system was the method of creating, promoting and exploiting stars in Hollywood films from the 1920s until the 1960s. Movie studios had selected promising young actors and glamorise and create personas for them, often inventing new names and even new backgrounds. Examples of stars who went through the star system include Cary Grant, Joan Crawford, and Rock Hudson.
The Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP) was a motion picture studio and production company founded in 1909 by Carl Laemmle. The company was based in New York City, with production facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In 1912, IMP merged with several other production companies to form Universal Film Manufacturing Company, later renamed Universal Pictures Company with Laemmle as president.
Marion Leonard was an American stage actress who became one of the first motion picture celebrities in the early years of the silent film era.
Arthur Vaughan Johnson was a pioneer actor and director of the early American silent film era, and uncle of Olympic wrestler and film actor Nat Pendleton.
Henry Lewis Solter was an American silent film actor and director.
Charlotte Smith, known professionally as Lottie Pickford, was a Canadian-American silent film actress and socialite. She was the younger sister of fellow actress Mary Pickford and elder sister of actor Jack Pickford.
Linda Arvidson was an American stage and film actress. She became one of America's early motion picture stars while working at Biograph Studios in New York, where none of the company's actors, until 1913, were credited on screen. Along with Florence Lawrence, Marion Leonard, and other female performers there, she was often referred to by theatergoers and in trade publications as simply one of the "Biograph girls". Arvidson began working in the new, rapidly expanding film industry after meeting her future husband D. W. Griffith, who impressed her as an innovative screen director. Their marriage was kept secret for reasons of professional discretion.
Mary Pickford (1892–1979) was a Canadian-American motion picture actress, producer, and writer. During the silent film era she became one of the first great celebrities of the cinema and a popular icon known to the public as "America's Sweetheart".
Gladys Egan was an early 20th-century American child actress, who between 1907 and 1914 performed professionally in theatre productions as well as in scores of silent films. She began her brief entertainment career appearing on the New York stage as well as in plays presented across the country by traveling companies. By 1908 she also started working in the film industry, where for six years she acted almost exclusively in motion pictures for the Biograph Company of New York. The vast majority of her screen roles during that period were in shorts directed by D. W. Griffith, who cast her in over 90 of his releases. While most of Egan's films were produced by Biograph, she did work for other motion-picture companies between 1911 and 1914, such as the Reliance Film Company and Independent Moving Pictures. By 1916, Egan's acting career appears to have ended, and she no longer was being mentioned in major trade journals or included in published studio personnel directories as a regularly employed actor. Although she may have performed as an extra or in some bit parts after 1914, no available filmographies or entertainment publications from the period cite Egan in any screen or stage role after that year.
Mr. and Mrs. Jones is a series of popular short comedy films produced in 1908-1909 by American Biograph starring John R. Cumpson and Florence Lawrence in the title roles, Eddie and Emma Jones, which helped to turn the latter into one of the first movie stars. The series arose out of Biograph's attempts to come up with a more polite, less vulgar form of slapstick comedy. Having been known as "The Biograph Girl," the "Mrs. Jones" name quickly became attached to Lawrence, as actors at the time were almost never credited. The series ended when Lawrence was fired from Biograph over a pay dispute. She was quickly hired by Carl Laemmle's Independent Moving Picture Company (IMP). Selig Polyscope Company released the unrelated Mrs. Jones' Birthday on 30 August 1909.
Jones and His New Neighbors is a 1909 American silent comedy film written by Frank E. Woods and directed by D. W. Griffith. Produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in New York City, the short stars John R. Cumpson, Florence Lawrence, and Anita Hendrie. It is one film in a series of 1908 and 1909 Biograph pictures in which Cumpson and Lawrence performed together as the married couple Mr. and Mrs. Jones. When this comedy was released in March 1909, it was distributed to theaters on a "split reel", which was a single projection reel that accommodated more than one motion picture. It shared its reel with another Biograph short directed by Griffith, the dramatic "thriller" The Medicine Bottle.