Quendrith Johnson

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

Most publications have obits written in advance, especially for high-risk stars like Lindsay Lohan who are firmly in the "dead pool," yet the fault is not in our Stars but in the Hollywood Star paradigm itself, where girls and women are concerned.

Consider the first movie star, Canadian Florence Lawrence (1886-1938) who reigned on screen from about 1906 to 1912. 

The zenith to the nadir of Florence Lawrence (whose real last name was Bridgewood) set the standard for future tragic female Hollywood Stars.

From Mabel Normand (1894-1930) and Clara Bow (1905-1965) to Frances Farmer (1913-1970) and Veronica Lake (1919-1973) to Judy Garland (1922-1969) and Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) a familiar pattern emerges. Bamboozled by the footlights, none of these intelligent women knew how to come down off the Sweetheart high and accept the aftermath of fame.

Natalie Wood (1939-1982) could be added to this list, but the current generation of stars from Lindsay Lohan to Jennifer Lawrence to Shailene Woodley, should take note of the women who came before them, dying to be famous, and plan their post-show-biz careers accordingly. 

In other words, Florence Lawrence once had it all too; and then she had 'nothing' as the light dimmed on her stardom, when the emotional price-tag of withdrawal from the spotlight came due.

Remarkably, Lawrence would star in anywhere from 270 to 300 films (now most of them disintegrated). A former child actor in Vaudeville who had a talent for whistling as a toddler, she went through the inaugural cycle of Stardom-to-Scandal-to-Suicide that is recognized today as a common trajectory. 

Since early studios did not want to pay for marquee names, this first screen idol was dubbed "The Vitagraph Girl," followed by "The Biograph Girl" under D. W. Griffith, then poached as "The IMP Girl" under Carl Laemmle. IMP stands for Independent Motion Pictures company, and somewhere between Biograph and IMP, Florence Lawrence broke through as a household name due to popular appeal following a publicity hoax credited to Laemmle, who leaked a story that she had been killed. The publicity machine for stars was created in tandem with Hollywood Stardom, naturally.

When the 1910 film The Broken Oath was release by Laemmle's company, press agents hailed her miraculous return from the grave. 

Salary-wise Lawrence went from $25 a week in her early career to the proto A-List, pulling down $500 a week by 1912. Ironically, a 1915 accident during the production of "The Pawns of Destiny" - where Lawrence sustained injuries in a set fire - did eventually lead to her death. Another first, this muti-talented performer underwent plastic surgery, in 1920, to retain her 'fading looks.' By 1938, broke and thrice divorced, she committed suicide at home in Beverly Hills by ingesting a lethal cocktail of cough syrup laced with ant-killer pesticide. 

The reason Florence Lawrence has been forgotten is that Hollywood replaced her in the history books with fellow Canadian Mary Pickford. Pickford herself, who is said to be the inspiration for Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, didn't have an easy ride either. But she was a happier version of Sweetheart-break in Hollywood (read: she didn't off herself or accidentally overdose).

Marilyn Monroe aptly noted that in Hollywood they pay thousands for "a kiss... but 50 cents for your soul." Her other off-handed insight is telling: "I knew I belonged to the public and to the world, not because I was talented or even beautiful, but because I had never belonged to anything or anyone else." 

Perhaps the notion of belonging to someone, a patriarchal sense of outside ownership still in vogue today, is what dooms female movie stars? 

Or is it the isolation of the Queen Bee myth? 

Never alone, Leonardo DiCaprio has had his "posse" since his earliest child-actor beginnings in show biz; whereas that concept is rare with today's upcoming girl stars. Maybe it's time for the Girl Posse to become a standard fixture for rising female stars.

Either way, let's hope Jennifer Lawrence, who recently revealed her hospitalization for a 'fulcer' (a fake ulcer) and panic attacks, fares better than Florence Lawrence.

*Roddy McDowall, also a child actor turned star in adulthood, paid for a gravesite marker for Florence Lawrence in Hollywood Forever Cemetery to reclaim her place in history; the marker reads: "The Biograph Girl, the first movie star." (Her birthdate is often mis-credited as 1890.)

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