day, Frances worked on her own scenario for Mary, entitled The Foundling. She opened the story by establishing that twelve-year-old Mary, the cheerful favorite of all the other children in the orphanage, has been abandoned after her mother died in childbirth and her artist father is unable to face raising the daughter alone. Mary is soon adopted by the proprietor of a boardinghouse, who brusquely informs her, “I didn’t bring you here to mother you, I brought you here to work.” Mary runs away and through a twist of fate, goes to work for her real father as a maid. After more complications, the truth is revealed and the father properly chastises himself: “My poor little girl with the toil worn hands. I’ll make up for all my neglect if you will forgive me.” The camera fades out on Mary’s glowing face, smiling through her tears.28
There were similarities in The Foundling to several of the films Frances had worked on at Bosworth, such as Lois Weber’s False Colors, where a child is forced into adoption under comparable circumstances. But if mistaken identities and rags-to-riches plots were overused, Mary knew that Frances’s scenario gave her a breadth of opportunities to display her comedic and dramatic skills. She passed the script on to Adolph Zukor and when Frances was paid $125 for her script, “I ceased walking on this earth.”29
The Foundling was to be shot in New York, where Famous Players and many of the larger companies were still based. Mary encouraged Frances to join them, but she pled poverty. She had already developed the habit, after paying the rent and sending money home to her mother, of spending the remainder on clothes, friends, and good times. Yet she regretted her decision when she saw Mary, Charlotte, and the crew off at the train station in late June, and promised to get to New York in time for the premiere.
Mary kept her posted on the filming; Allan Dwan was again her director and Frank Mills, Harry Ham, Gertrude Norman, and Donald Crisp rounded out the cast. She assured Frances that the best way to determine how a film was going was to watch the crew, and on The Foundling set, everyone was relaxed and enjoying themselves.30
Frances continued to write short stories and several were published, including “The Fisher Girl,” which Equitable bought for their leading lady, Clara Whipple. It was a nice windfall and when Balboa offered Frances a costarring role in a Monte Blue western, she stashed what she could of the $200 salary and used the rest to buy a train ticket for New York City.
The five days it took to cross the country on the train gave Frances plenty of time for reflection, but she tried not to second-guess what was awaiting her. She arrived at the recently opened Grand Central Station and walked to her destination, a few blocks away. Mary had reserved a room for her at “the only place to stay,” the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street.31
By the fall of 1915, the Algonquin was already known as a home for creative spirits. Frank Case had been running the hotel for over ten years, starting before the completion of what was originally designed as an apartment building. So few chambers were leased that they began renting on a weekly and then daily basis, creating a unique atmosphere. Renowned for his charm and friendliness, Case welcomed writers and actors above all others. He called his love of show people a “progressive disease” first inflicted upon him as a young boy when he had worked at different times as an usher in all three of Buffalo’s theaters.32
As Frances signed the registration book, she was suddenly intimidated and told the clerk that the small bag she was carrying held only her overnight things. The trunks, she assured him, would follow. Yet she was bathed in a feeling of exhilaration and relief to be finally in New York. Instead of coming with Robert to study art, she had made it on her own and just two weeks before, The Foundling had received a rave review in Moving Picture World’s section on upcoming films. The article fawned over Mary, “the world’s foremost motion picture star,” and while not mentioning Frances by name, the reviewer found that “the photoplay absorbingly unfolded, not however until a number of tense dramatic situations and a series of novel incidents have been developed.”33
She called Mary at the studio and learned she would not be home for at least an hour. Brimming with energy and “full of dreams, plans and kindled ambitions,” Frances decided to walk. Map in hand, she turned up Broadway and saw that even after six months of consecutive screenings, a line was beginning to form for the evening showing of The Birth of a Nation. Crowds were growing in front of another theater down the street where large posters portrayed Theda Bara with her hands on an older man in a tuxedo and top hat with the tag line “Kiss me, you fool.” Frances shook her head in bewilderment; her love-hate relationship with the movies was already setting in.
When she arrived at the Pickford apartment on Riverside Drive, Mary opened the door with tears in her eyes and hugged Frances tightly.
“Darling,” Mary said, “I have terrible news for you; the negative of The Foundling was burned in a laboratory fire before any prints were made.”34
A little before seven on the previous Saturday evening, a fire had broken out on the second floor of 213 West 26th Street. The flames quickly spread to the third and fourth floor, where the Famous Players studios, offices, and prop department were housed. The three lone late-working employees escaped through the windows without serious injury, but it wasn’t until Monday that the fire department allowed Adolph Zukor and his laboratory manager Frank Meyer in to assess the damage and open the vaults where the negatives were stored. The entire property department of period furniture and costumes accumulated over the past three years was gone and ten of the eleven finished films being held for distribution were all or partially destroyed.
It was a major setback for the company, but they were recovering quickly. Filming was shuttled to a studio in Yonkers, offices were opened within days at the Columbia Bank Building on Fifth Avenue, and Adolph Zukor hired double shifts of workers to build a new studio on 225th Street.35
For Frances, the loss was devastating. The Foundling negative was burned beyond repair and she had counted on a successful New York premiere to help her obtain a writing contract. Mary assured her The Foundling would be remade eventually, and feeling responsible for her being in New York, offered her a role in her next scheduled film, Madame Butterfly.
There was no doubting Mary’s sincerity, but Frances already felt in debt to Mary for taking a chance on her and was uncomfortable with any further favors. She knew it would be some time before The Foundling was reshot; Allan Dwan had left to work with another studio, so not only would time have to be found in Mary’s schedule but a new director as well. Besides, Frances didn’t want to act, she wanted to write. There was little or no public credit, but she actually found comfort in the anonymity and fulfillment from the accomplishment of telling a story well.
She thanked Mary and promised to think about it, but vowed to herself she would not return to California. She was already captivated by the mix of theater, art, and films that New York radiated; even without a produced film to point to, she would figure out a way to stay.36
Mary may have been her only real friend in New York, but Frances had brought several letters of introduction for insurance. The most promising of her potential contacts were Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Fiske—the editor of the Dramatic Mirror and his actress wife, whom she had met in Arnold Genthe’s studio. Minnie Maddern Fiske was an established star of theater and she would do anything for her favorite photographer, “Ginky.”
When Frances called, their niece Merle invited her to lunch. Mrs. Fiske was in Washington rehearsing a play, but Merle and Harrison Fiske were enthralled by Frances’s stories of Hollywood and the movies. The Dramatic Mirror had been reviewing films since 1907 and Mrs. Fiske had reprised her Broadway role of Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair before the movie cameras for Kleine-Edison. The Fiskes viewed motion pictures as “an art form that has not yet found itself,” but believed that “its possibilities reach
