announced a film entitled Jess of the Storm Country.
Frances reached for different eras, countries, and backdrops and wrote about the Balkans in The Gilded Cage, a Wyoming ranch in All Man, the European war in On Dangerous Ground, and Wall Street in Friday the Thirteenth. Poor motherless girls, rich young men, objecting families, lovers breaking up because of what others think or some loftier purpose, reuniting in the end, often with one of the romantic leads dying, were the grist for most of the plots. Occasionally there were hints of social relevance, such as preaching tolerance of illegitimacy in The Hidden Scar and exposing the price of marrying only for money in Bought and Paid For, but as a rule, the stories were the boilerplate—five-reel melodramas of love lost and found again that World spewed out at the rate of at least two a month.26
At that level of production, World became Frances’s workshop to study how far characters could be pushed, what eccentricities could be developed and how actions, pantomimes, or even glances could tell a story by themselves. She tried to add quirks to her characters that would give them complexities and a depth that would distinguish them. She also was learning the fine art of studio politics, working well with most of the cast and crew and avoiding confrontations with her bosses whenever possible.
Lewis Selznick’s title was vice president and general manager of World, but he was often on the road, promoting the studio and encouraging the sales force. William Brady stayed active on Broadway, but the fact that he and Selznick were seldom on the same lot at the same time did not prevent outbursts when they were together. Frances was usually amused when fights erupted between the ex–jewelry salesman and the Broadway producer, but not when she was caught in the middle.
William Brady handed her Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de Bohème to adapt, cautioning her to stay clear of Puccini’s opera to protect him from potential lawsuits and, as usual, to “cook up some of your own stuff.” With Albert Capellani directing Frances’s script, two assistant directors, and Ben Carré as the art director, Brady carefully supervised every foot of film and liberally reshot scenes when they did not meet his high standards.
Selznick was convinced the film was destined to lose money at the box office and saw all that talent on one project as a drain on the studio’s resources. He insisted on a title change, and Mimi, The Bohemians, Bohemians Must Pay, The Undying Heart, and The Price of Pleasure were all suggested. “Calling it ‘La Vie de Boheme’ alone will keep them out of the theaters,” railed Selznick. “And titles are what we depend on to get them in.”27
Frances decided that “no one can spew his contempt with better aim than an irate Irishman” and Selznick bore the brunt of it. And when La Vie de Boheme, released under its original title, was a financial success, Brady once again let Selznick know what he thought of his judgments in graphic terms.
David Selznick would later say that, for a time, he thought his father “cared greatly” about the movies he was producing, but Lewis Selznick was first and foremost a salesman and “he was too concerned with empire building” to have time for the art form itself. With his love of the stage, the money was an affirmation of success to Brady, but theater was the motivation. Two very different outlooks, backgrounds, and experiences, exemplifying the variety of people the business was attracting. For the time being at least, there was room for both of them in the industry, if not at the same studio.28
Selznick left World and formed Lewis J. Selznick Productions, Inc., taking Clara Kimball Young, with whom he was rumored to be having an affair, with him. Frances was sorry to see them go, in part because she enjoyed the presence at the studio of his two young sons—David, then in his mid-teens, and his older brother, Myron. They were personable and well mannered and seemed to soak in the politics of studio life, as well as the technical skills.29
William Brady assumed active control of all of the studio’s producing units and after working at World for only six months, Frances, now twenty-seven, was promoted to head the scenario department. In the middle of March 1916 she had six separate scenarios at various stages of completion. Brady gave her a three-week vacation for a trip to the Caribbean and that too turned into work. The Feast of Life was filmed on location in Cuba and she wrote several new stories during the journey for World’s latest star, Gail Kane.30
Frances continued to write the “Mary Pickford’s Daily Talks” and occasionally found time to go to parties with Alice Brady and other friends. She fed her love of music by visiting the apartment of pianist and composer Felix Arndt and his opera singer wife, Nola, who introduced her to new friends like Adolphe Menjou and Lillian Russell. Frances was reunited with Enrico Caruso, whom she had first met through her mother in San Francisco, and she also became friends with a woman who would influence her and promote her in the years ahead, Mary Roberts Rinehart.31
To all outward appearances, Mary Roberts Rinehart was a classic Victorian woman, a doctor’s wife and the mother of three sons. But she was also a spectacularly successful and prolific author of more than one hundred magazine articles, a dozen books, and several plays, and had just returned from covering the European war for the Saturday Evening Post.
Living in Pennsylvania, Rinehart had spent a fair amount of time in New York since becoming friends with the theater agent Beatrice de Mille, the widow of the playwright Henry C. de Mille and the mother of Cecil and William. Beatrice connected Mary with producers to back her plays and sold several of her magazine stories to the studios. The novel that had brought Mary to fame, The Circular Staircase, was being made into a film by Selig Polyscope and the amount of money the movie companies were willing to pay astounded her. Still, she had no interest in moving her family to California or working full-time for a studio.32
Frances was drawn to the older woman, who covered political conventions, marched in suffrage parades, and wrote while caring for her husband, sons, and invalid mother. Only gradually did she come to know the pressures Rinehart put on herself living as she did, rising before dawn and working late into the night in what she would call “that frantic search . . . for silence and freedom, not only from interruption, but from the fear of interruption.” In Mary Roberts Rinehart, Frances found a new friend and mentor, a complex woman of substance who lived life on many levels.33
Chapter 5
Frances had been working nonstop for almost a year. As head of the scenario department, she reviewed all World’s scripts as well as writing her own. She helped cast the films, supervised screen tests for new talent, and often directed scenes. At night she watched films, both hers and those from other studios, and still she churned out five “Daily Talks” columns a week for Mary Pickford.
Actors and directors started and then wrapped films, but Frances’s work had no natural breaks. She still could not believe her good fortune and compulsively pushed herself, but even she could not keep up the pace. She was approaching her twenty-eighth birthday and had been supporting herself, with or without husbands, for over a decade. She still made heads turn, but the strain was showing on her face and she was losing weight. Under the best of circumstances it was an impossible schedule, and tragic news from home sent her over the edge.
In the early evening of Friday, September 1, 1916, Frances’s sister Maude sent her seven-year-old daughter, Caroline, to play at the Moales’ house next door on Miles Street in Oakland. Maude called her husband at his office in San Francisco and suggested he have dinner in town because she had nothing prepared. She then bolted the front door, went to the back bedroom, put a .22-caliber revolver to her head, and shot herself.
Caroline came home at seven and found the door locked; when her mother didn’t answer her calls, she returned to the neighbors’.
