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4 Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks
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In the beginning there were no stars. Of course, from time to time stars from other fields of endeavor, such as the sports arena or the stage, were featured, but there were no film stars perse. Possibly the first film actor to be recognized by the trade press was Ben Turpin of Essanay. An article, "Life of a Moving Picture Comedian," appeared under his name in the April 3, 1909 issue of The Moving Picture World, in which Turpin commented, "This is a great life. I have been in the moving picture biz working for The Essanay for two years, and I must say I had many a good fall, and many . . . a good bump, and I think I have broken about twenty barrels of dishes, upset stores, and also broken up many sets of beautiful furniture, had my eyes blackened, both ankles sprained and many bruises, and I am still on the go. This is a great business." As this obviously studiowritten article illustrates, the cinema was very much in its infancy in terms of writing for its "fans." Before 1910 the movies had discovered that stars sold cinema tickets; the earliest stars were former stage actors like comic John Bunny or Bronco Biliy Anderson, billed in 1912 as "The World's Greatest Photoplay Star".
But the greatest stars of Hollywood's formative years were Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. From 1914 they, with Charlie Chaplin, achieved a celebrity quite unlike anything ever seen before them. More than the scale of their popularity, what made stardom a new phenomenon was that it detached fame from achievement in the strenuous life of work or battle.
Before entering films, many players had appeared in the illustrated song slides, popular in the pre-teens, for which they received no recognition whatsoever. Audiences seeing such slides in nickelodeons or vaudeville houses were totally unaware that the young girl proclaiming "I'd Rather Be on Broadway with You" was Alice Joyce, or that it was Mabel Normand asking "Is There Anything Else That I Can Do for You?" Francis X. Bushman received no billing as "Sailor Boy" or as the young man beseeching "Take Me Out to the End of the Pier." The fame of such performers in song slides, who also included Priscilla Dean, Ethel Grandin, Helene Chadwick, Florence La Badie, Anna Q. Nilsson and Anita Stewart, was assured by their acceptance of steady work in the motion picture industry.
Readers of the fan magazines that began to appear in 1912 became as familiar with their idols' off-screen lives as with their movie appearances. Chaplin's "little tramp" first appeared in 1914, and was an immediate success with audiences. But Charles Chaplin the actor behaved quite differently from Charlie the clown.
Pickford and Fairbanks projected the same image on screen and off, and between them they offered their audiences new role models. Fairbanks' comedies ridiculed Victorian restrictions on fun. In newspaper columns and books such as Laugh and Live and Make Life Worth-while, he advocated sport as a means of regenerating the urban masses.
By 1915, these one-time stock company players had reached dizzy heights. Some--Helen Gardner, Florence Lawrence and Marion Leonard, for example--created their own producing companies. Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin were demanding--and getting--astronomical salaries. Many had become overbearingly pompous. Variety ( May 21, 1915) reported that film stars were refusing to take lower billing than stage stars, and cited this reason for Francis X. Bushman severing his contract with Essanay. Lottie Briscoe canceled her contract with Lubin because "Lubin called upon Miss Briscoe to assume a role which would have been the 'third party' of the film play. Resting upon her prerogative as a picture star, the girl declined to submit to the assignment, upon the ground it would be ill-fitting her position in the picture world to play secondary or thirdly to anyone of her sex."
It is worthwhile examining the attitude of the Biograph Company, the one producer which steadfastly refused to reveal the identities of its players--or so we are led to believe. There was no secrecy involved when the company signed an actor. In The Moving Picture World of February 25, 1911, there is a lengthy article concerning the Biograph actresses, Dorothy Bernard and Florence Barker. Dorothy Bernard is described as "one of the most talked-about actresses in the world." How could this be if the names of the Biograph players were unknown? When Mae Marsh resigned from the Kalem Company and rejoined the Biograph, her return was noted in The Moving Picture World of September 21, 1912. If not in life, at least in death, certainly, Biograph players received their rewards. When Vernon Clarges, a member of the Biograph's stock company, died on August 11, 1911, The Moving Picture World published an obituary notice which included the titles of several of his films.
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