a writer, he unceremoniously pointed to a bench and said, “Wait for ‘Sternie.’ ” After an hour, a slight young man in his late teens, walking with a confidence beyond his years, strode toward her with an outstretched hand and introduced himself as Joe Stern.
He showed her to a row of small cubicles he called offices and told her to make herself at home. For the next two days, Frances concentrated on being as inconspicuous as possible while staring at a blank sheet of paper. Reality set in and with it came a surge of self-doubt and consternation over her audacity. Then her practical side took hold and as she pondered her past, she seized on one of the first lessons she learned from Lois Weber: “A good editor can make even a mediocre film seem important.” Perhaps World had some movies that had been shelved as unreleasable that she could somehow doctor, and in desperation, she sought out Sternie.1
He listened sympathetically as she poured out her story of writing to Brady on a whim and their oral agreement for a two-week tryout. Sternie assured her that serendipity had played a role for almost everyone at the studio. He had begun his career repairing sprocket holes and lugging film cans, but when the head of the shipping department was caught taking kickbacks, Sternie was put in charge. He had risen to supervising editing and titles and while he was glad for the job, he was not a fan of the films being produced and was dubious of the possibility of Frances’s salvaging any of the undistributed pictures. “They’re tripe,” he stated authoritatively, but agreed to send the films to the projection room.2
As the last of four films unspooled in the vaultlike room, Frances felt as if she were “interred in her final resting place.” With no idea how to salvage them, she could only wonder why they were made in the first place as Sternie reappeared and pronounced the fifth and final film the worst of the lot.
“How could it be any worse than the others?” Frances asked in despair.
“Because they spent a lot of money on it. Nine thousand dollars. You should have heard the boss.”
Frances quickly realized another, unstated reason William Brady was furious about the film: it starred his daughter, Alice. Money he could lose, but Brady was not going to have his young progeny, an experienced stage actress just out of her teens, embarrassed.3
She laughed out loud as she watched the actors’ melodramatic antics like “a macabre dance in a madhouse,” but as the film unfolded, it occurred to her that if it were turned into a comedy, it might be saved. Dismissing a dream sequence as too predictable, she decided to try a prologue to set the story in an entirely new context.
Frances opened with Alice announcing to her fiancé that she cannot marry him because the novel she has just completed will bring her literary fame and fortune, and the original movie becomes the plot of her opus as she presents it to a group of publishers. Because of the introduction, the audience could laugh at the absurd situations and what had been gross overacting became a farce. She wrote a closing scene showing the inevitable: chastened by the experience, Alice happily dumps the manuscript into the wastebasket and welcomes her fiancé into her waiting arms.
William Brady read Frances’s revisions skeptically, but he knew that the relatively minor cost of shooting new scenes was well worth the investment. She watched from the sidelines as the prologue and epilogue were shot in a matter of hours and within a week, the film sold for distribution at a $9,000 profit. The next day, Frances saw her name in print in the New York papers under the caption “Highest paid scenario writer in America signs with William A. Brady for reputed salary of $200 a week.” She celebrated that night by ordering the most expensive steak on the menu, but Brady still called her “Pete.”4
She called Mary to share the good news and, her income and position assured, Frances moved back to the Algonquin but, not wanting to tempt fate, asked for the smallest available room. As she was whisked into the vortex of activity at the studio, a series of fortunate coincidences changed her life considerably.
She ran into a San Francisco friend who was returning to the West Coast but wanted to find work for her highly valued maid and seamstress, Margaret. If Frances took her for just two hours a day at twenty-five cents an hour, she was sure she could fill the rest of her time working for others. While Frances could now afford to buy fashionable clothes, she enjoyed designing and cutting her own patterns, and she needed someone to sew them so she agreed to the arrangement.
Margaret was a very elegant young black woman and when she saw the size of Frances’s “postage stamp” room, she started to back right out the door. In a proper English accent, Margaret told her it was not half big enough for her, let alone a maid, but Frances assured her she would be at the studio when Margaret was there.
Frances next acquired a car and driver when, on the street one day, she met a man she had known as a chauffeur in San Francisco. He was working as a garage mechanic at night and as they continued talking, he told her he knew of a great bargain on a used car and would be glad to drive her to and from the studio at very reasonable rates. Frances conceded that it was a good idea, primarily because the streetcar and ferry connections out to Fort Lee were unreliable and time-consuming and she realized how much more she could write if she never had to look up.5
She added a secretary to her retinue, who sat on the bed and used the nightstand as a desk to type the scenarios Frances was churning out at the rate of two or three a week in addition to the columns she was authoring as a ghostwriter for Mary Pickford.
Samuel Sidney McClure, known to his friends as S.S., had successfully created the idea of syndication—paying big money to celebrities and selling their stories to a variety of newspapers for simultaneous publication when no single paper could pay such prices individually. Mary Pickford was the perfect choice for a McClure-syndicated author and her column appeared on the women’s page of participating newspapers as “Daily Talks.” Through Frances’s pen, five days a week, Mary dispensed helpful beauty secrets, advice on friendships, and memories of her “happy girlhood.” Mary was paid a thousand dollars a week and Frances made fifty, but she claimed to “love the experience.” Her background in advertising helped her know what people wanted to hear and she knew Mary so well it was easy to find her voice. And it was a great excuse to get together at least once a week to review what had been written and discuss future ideas.6
After completing Madame Butterfly, Mary remade The Foundling with veteran director John B. O’Brien and a new cast. It was released to popular acclaim in January of 1916 and affirmed that her fans loved her playing a little girl.7
There was no writer’s credit on the screen, but that was normal and Frances knew it. Besides, within less than three months of her arrival in New York, she had firmly established herself. She realized the extent of the incredible changes when Merle Maddern called her at the Algonquin after returning from Washington and the phone was answered by the very proper Margaret.
“Miss Mahrion’s apahtment. Her personal maid is speaking.” When Merle asked if Frances was there, Margaret replied, “I think she is out. If you will wait a moment, I’ll ahsk her private secretary.”
Believing in keeping up pretenses at all costs, Margaret waited the appropriate few seconds before saying, “Miss Mahrion’s private secretary tells me that Miss Mahrion has just gone out in her motorcah.”
Merle jumped to the conclusion that Frances had turned to prostitution, as there could be no other explanation for her drastic change in economic status. She ran to her uncle’s office with the news and Harrison Fiske promptly wrote out a check and sent her to save Frances from a life of sin. She arrived to find Frances back in her “Lilliputian room” and the two women laughed until they cried over Merle’s misconceptions and the real story behind Margaret’s slightly stretched descriptions.8
Frances
