Redheaded Reviews: The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin

Benjamin wrote The Aviator's Wife a fictionalized account of Anne Morrow Lindberg, the wife of Charles Lindberg, the famous pilot who was a famous author and pilot on her own. In this book, she does the same thing with a fictionalized treatment of the friendship between famous women silent screen star Mary Pickford and screenwriter Frances Marion.

Mary Pickford, Gladys Smith, nee, of Toronto, was pushed on stage by her mother at a young age to support the family, including her younger brother and sister, when her father died. She traveled around the country until she got a gig on Broadway that led to her chance to become the Biograph Girl in the "flickers". When they finally put her name on the pictures after a letter campaign demanding that they do so she became famous, especially for her golden curls. Then she signed on with Famous Players Lansky which was run by Adolph Zukor. She married Owen Moore, an alcoholic who slept around on her and hit her. But he didn't rule her any more than Zukor did whom she had the best contract with. Control over the script, who was in it, making sure that her movies sold to theatres on conditions that other lesser movies also be sold where the theatres lost money on them didn't happen, and a percentage of profits.

In 1914 she met Francis Marion who had just moved to Los Angles and was looking for something to do in the movies, but not act, which is what made their friendship possible. Mary could never be friends with another actor--someone she would have to compete with for parts. But Francis was an artist and could write some. She began by acting as an extra in some movies and by doing artwork on the scenery. Then she moved up and wrote a screenplay, "Rags" for Mary Pickford. She and Mary and a guy named Mickey worked together on that film and many others, including "Poor Little Rich Girl" where Mary plays a child. Francis wanted to give Mary back her childhood that she never had and allow her to play. But when they showed the film to the movie men at Famous Players they hated it and demanded that Mary make up for this "disaster" by working a film with Cecile B. DeMille who was a hard taskmaster and someone she hated working with and avoided doing. He chased his leading ladies and had a whip he cracked. But when the two women went undercover to see the movie, the crowd adored it and they barely escaped the theater mob who wanted a piece of Mary. And Mary never let Zukor forget it.

Mary would help Francis get access to go overseas to go to war to film women at war. But before she left she would introduce her to Fred Thomson a famous athlete who was a widowed minister who when he married Francis, who was twice divorced, could not return to the ministry because of her is a natural in front of the camera and she pushes him into the film industry where he becomes a famous cowboy film star right after Tom Mix. Mary, meanwhile, has fallen in love and is secretly seeing Douglas Fairbanks, the famous actor, but doesn't feel that her audience will accept her getting a divorce and marrying Douglas. Douglas, however, desperately wants to marry her and goes ahead and gets divorced from his wife and child, but after a while, he gives her an ultimatum that he will not wait forever for her. So, she decides to get divorced and marry him and the world falls in love with Mary and Doug.

This affects Mary and Francis's friendship. Mary changes and becomes Queen of Hollywood and obsessed with Douglas and making him happy so their friendship suffers and they stop making movies together as Francis goes off and makes movies with others as Mary continues to make the movies with her as a little girl. At the same time she, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplain, and D.W. Griffin starts the movie production company United Artists which is still around today.

Mary and Francis were two highly unusual women in that they were strong women in a time when men ruled Hollywood. Which, if I'm honest, men still rule Hollywood. But back then to demand the kind of things she did in her contracts and to start a production company was highly unusual for a woman and Francis was the highest paid and best screenwriter of her time for years--up until the 1930s when she retired. She wrote Dinner At Eight, Anna Christie, and The Champ. She also directed movies. This book is accurate in that the dialogue feels like something out of the silent era and the jazz age. Mary seems to have the power in the friendship and Francis feels as though she owes her which makes for a lopsided friendship, but the two went through so much together that only the two of them shared which also makes for special kind of friendship. This book truly examines the time of the silent film era and the friendship of two women who lived through it. I really loved this novel and I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

I talk to myself all the time; I consider it one of the perquistites of old age.

-Melanie Benjamin (The Girls in the Picture xii)

We’re not supposed to do that are we? We women. We’re not supposed to love something more than we’re capable of loving a man.

-Melanie Benjamin (The Girls in the Picture p 82)

Men can be in love and it doesn’t affect anything else they do; it gives them even more cachet. It adds something to them. But for women, love doesn’t add, it subtracts. Why do I feel as if falling in love means I have to give something up?

-Melanie Benjamin (The Girls in the Picture p 83)

It’s only when you have no idea what you’re going to do tomorrow that sleep is elusive.

-Melanie Benjamin (The Girls in the Picture p 133)

We’ll never let a man get between us, will we, Fran? How many times had mary told me this? I had to laugh at myself, my naivete. It was ridiculous to think this could be true, completely. We were women, after all. Women, not schoolgirls. And women, even in this new, modern age, could never be completely independent of men. They would always shape us. I realized as I gave my horse an irritated little kick. For good or for bad. It was up to us to deicide which.

-Melanie Benjamin (The Girls in the Picture p 144)