Lois Weber
Encyclopedia
Lois Weber was an American
silent film
actress, screenwriter
, producer
, and director
, who is considered "the most important female director the American film industry has known", and "one of the most important and important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films". Film historian Anthony Slide
asserts that: "Along with D.W. Griffith, Lois Weber was the American cinema’s first genuine auteur, a filmmaker involved in all aspects of production and one who utilized the motion picture to put across her own ideas and philosophies."
Weber produced an oeuvre comparable to Griffith in both quantity and quality, and brought to the screen her concerns for humanity and social justice in an estimated 200 to 400 films, of which as few as twenty have been preserved, and has been credited with directing 135 films, writing 114 films, and acting in 100 films. Weber has been credited as pioneering the use of the split screen technique to show simultaneous action in her 1913 film Suspense
. In collaboration with her first husband, Phillips Smalley
, in 1913 Weber was "one of the first directors to experiment with sound", making the first sound films in the United States, and was also the first American woman to direct a full-length feature film when she directed The Merchant of Venice in 1914
, and in 1917 the first woman director to own her own film studio. During the war years
, Weber "achieved tremendous success by combining a canny commercial sense with a rare vision of cinema as a moral tool". At her zenith, "few men, before or since, have retained such absolute control over the films they have directed - and certainly no women directors have achieved the all-embracing, powerful status once held by Lois Weber." By 1920, Weber was considered the "premier woman director of the screen and author and producer of the biggest money making features in the history of the film business".
Among Weber's notable films are: the 1916 film Where Are My Children?
, which was added to the National Film Registry
in 1993; the controversial Hypocrites
, which featured the first full-frontal female nude in 1915; her adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes
novel for the first ever Tarzan of the Apes film
in 1918; and what is often considered her masterpiece, The Blot
in 1921. Weber is credited with discovering, mentoring, or making stars of several women actors, including Mary MacLaren
, Mildred Harris
, Claire Windsor
, Esther Ralston
, Billie Dove
, Ella Hall
, Cleo Ridgely
, and Anita Stewart
, and discovered and inspired screenwriter Frances Marion
. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, on February 8, 1960, Weber was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
at 6518 Hollywood Blvd.
(since 1907 Pittsburgh
's Northside
neighborhood), the second of three children of Mary Matilda "Tillie" Snaman (born March 1854 in Pennsylvania; died 1935 in Florida) and George Weber (born June 1855; died about 1910), an upholster and decorator, who had spent several years in missionary street work, and the younger sister of Elizabeth "Bessie" Snaman Weber Jay (born March 1877) and older sister of Ethel Weber Howland (born July 1887), who later appeared in two of Florence's films in 1916. The Webers were a devout middle class Christian family of Pennsylvania Dutch
ancestry.
Weber was considered a child prodigy
, and considered an excellent pianist
. and toured the United States as a concert pianist from the age of 16 until her final performance in Charleston, South Carolina
at the age of 17. Weber left home and lived in poverty, while working as a street-corner evangelist
and social activist for two years with the evangelical Church Army Workers, an organization similar to the Salvation Army
, preaching and singing hymns on street-corners and singing and playing the organ in rescue missions in red-light district
s in Pittsburgh and New York, until the Church Army Workers disbanded in 1900.
By 1903 Weber was performing again as a soprano singer and pianist.
Frustrated by the futility of one-on-one conversions, and following the advice of an uncle in Chicago, Weber decided to take up acting about 1904, and moved to New York City
, where she took some singing lessons. Weber later explained her motivation: "As I was convinced the theatrical profession needed a missionary, he suggested that the best way to reach them was to become one of them so I went on the stage filled with a great desire to convert my fellowman".
For five years Weber was a repertory and stock actress
. Weber toured with the Chicago-based Zig Zag stage company, and in 1904 Weber appeared in the road company of "Why Girls Leave Home", where she received "promising reviews". The troupe's leading man and manager was Wendell Phillips Smalley
(August 7, 1865 in Brooklyn, New York - May 2, 1939 in Los Angeles, California
), a grandson of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the son of New York Tribune war and foreign correspondent George Washburn Smalley and Phoebe Garnaut Phillips, the adopted daughter of abolitionist Wendell Phillips
. Smalley, who had attended Balliol College, Oxford
and was a graduate of Harvard University
and had been a lawyer in New York for seven years, had been a stage actor since at least 1901 in productions of Harrison Grey Fiske
and Mrs Fiske, and Raymond Hitchcock
. After a brief acquaintance, just before her 25th birthday, Weber and Smalley, aged 38, married on April 29, 1904 in Chicago, Illinois.
After initially touring separately from her husband, and then accompanying him on his tours, about 1906 Weber left her career in the theater and was became a homemaker in New York. During this period Weber wrote freelance moving picture scenarios.
, initially as a singer who recorded songs for use on the chronophone. Both Herbert Blaché
and his wife, Alice Guy, later claimed to have given Weber her start in the movie industry.
At the end of the 1908 theatrical season, Smalley joined Weber at Gaumont. Soon Weber wrote scripts and in 1908 Weber began directing English language phonoscènes at the Gaumont Studio in Flushing, New York. About 1908 Weber starred in a role in a film she had written called Hypocrites, which was directed by Blaché.
In 1910 Weber and Smalley decided to pursue a career in the infant motion picture industry. For the next five years, they worked and were credited as The Smalleys (but where typically Weber received sole writing credit) on dozens of shorts and features for small production companies like Gaumont, the New York Motion Picture Co., Reliance Studio, the Rex Motion Picture Company, and Bosworth
, where Weber wrote scenarios
and subtitles, acted, directed, designed sets and costumes
, edited films, and even developed negatives
. Weber took two years off her birth date when she signed her first movie contract.
. At the time of Rex's merger with five other studios to form the Universal Film Manufacturing Company
on April 30, 1912, Weber and Smalley, were the "prima facie heads of Rex".
Rex continued as a subsidiary of Universal, with Weber and Smally running it. Carl Laemmle startled the film industry for his use of and advocacy for women directors and producers, including Weber, Ida May Park
and Cleo Madison
. In the autumn of 1913, shortly after the incorporation of Universal City
, Weber was elected its first mayor in a close contest that required a recount. At the time Universal's publicity department claimed Universal City was "the only municipality in the world that possesses an entire outfit of women officials".
In March 1913, Weber starred in the first English language version of Oscar Wilde
's, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, that was produced for the New York Motional Picture Co., directed by Smalley, from an adaptation by Weber, and starred Wallace Reid
as Dorian Gray.
In 1913 Weber and Smalley collaborated in directing a ten minute thriller Suspense
, based on the play "Au Telephone" by André de Lordewhich adapted by Weber that uses multiple images and mirror shots to tell of a woman (Weber) threatened by a burglar (Douglas Gerrard
. Weber has been credited as pioneering the use of the split screen technique to show simultaneous action in this film.According to Tom Gunning: "No film made before WWI shows a stronger command of film style than Suspense [which] outdoes even Griffith for emotionally involved filmmaking". Suspense was released on July 16, 1913.
Another 1913 film was The Jews' Christmas, which was released on December 18, starred Smalley and Webber and Ella Hall
and portrayed how a family's love overcomes Antisemitism.
In January 1914 Weber became the first American woman to direct a feature-length motion picture when Universal released the Rex silent film of William Shakespeare
's The Merchant of Venice
, which was adapted by Weber, and was also produced, directed and starred Weber as Portia and Smalley as Shylock.
One film that illustrates the paradox nature of Weber's role and films was her 1914 film The Spider and Her Web, where she advocates both modernity and maternalism. In this film, Weber plays "The Spider", a vamp
living the "ultra-modern high life" who seduces and ruins intellectual men until frightened into adopting an orphan baby, which results in the salvation of the lead character through motherhood.
, the first woman general manager of a film studio, to take over the production duties from Hobart Bosworth on a $50,000 a year contract, making her "the best known, most respected and highest-paid" of the dozen or so women directors in Hollywood at that time. In 1914 Bertha Smith estimated Weber's audience at five to six million a week. In fact, by 1915 Weber was as famous as D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. de Mille. While at Bosworth, Weber and Smalley made six features and one short, The Traitor.
From early in her career Weber saw movies as "a vehicle for evangelism", and "an opportunity to preach to the masses", and to encourage her audience to be involved in progressive causes
. In a 1914 interview Weber declared: "In moving pictures I have found my life's work. I find at once an outlet for my emotions and my ideals. I can preach to my heart's content, and with the opportunity to write the play, act the leading role, and direct the entire production, if my message fails to reach someone, I can blame only myself." As many of Weber's films focused on a moral topic, she "was often mistaken as a Christian fundamentalist, but she was more of a libertarian
, opposing censorship and the death penalty and championing birth control. The need for a strong, loving and nurturing home was clearly promoted as well and if there was a single maxim that underlay each film it was that selfishness and egocentricity erode the individual and community". Although not a practicing Christian Scientist
, Weber attended the Christian Science church regularly, according to Adela Rogers St. Johns
, and in at least two of her films Jewel (1915) and its remake, A Chapter in Her Life
(1923), Christian Science plays a prominent role. Weber's impeccable reputation and "impressive middle-class credentials" allowed her considerable artistic freedom in her presentation of controversial issues.
During 1914 Weber made a controversial version of Hypocrites
, a four-reel allegorical drama shot at Universal City that she wrote, directed, produced -- and starred in, that was "a bold indictment of political corruption, the church, and the business world" by addressing social themes and moral lessons considered daring for the time. Hypocrites included for the first time in a film full-frontal female nudity, with truth portrayed in the ghostly figure of the Naked Truth, literally shown by a nude woman (Margaret Edwards) who revealed hypocritical desires for money, sex, and power. Although the nudity was tastefully done (it was passed by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures
), it was still banned in Ohio, caused riots in New York, and the mayor of Boston demanded that every frame displaying the naked figure of Truth be hand-painted to clothe the then unidentified actress. Hypocrites was released finally by Bosworth on January 15, 1915. In a 1917 interview, Weber denied the film was indecent and defended the film: "Hypocrites is not a slap at any church or creed - it is a slap at hypocrites, and its effectiveness is shown by the outcry amongst those it hits hardest, to have the film stopped". Despite the controversy, "the film was also praised for its use of multiple exposures and complex film editing".
left the company due to his ill health. After being promised they could make feature length films by Carl Laemmle
, they returned to Universal Pictures
. Weber's first movie for Universal was Scandal, in which both Weber and Smalley starred, that featured the consequences of gossip-mongering.
In 1916 Weber directed 10 feature-length films for release by Universal, nine of which she also wrote, and she also became Universal Studios
' highest-paid director, earning $5,000 a week, and "enjoyed complete freedom in overseeing most stages of the film-making process - choice of stories and actors, writing of scripts (which she invariably did herself), as well as direction". In 1916 Weber explained her philosophy of directing films: "I’ll never be convinced that the general public does not want serious entertainment rather than frivolous", and "A real director should be absolute. He (or she in this case) alone knows the effects he wants to produce, and he alone should have authority in the arrangement, cutting, titling or anything else that may seem necessary to do to the finished product. What other artist has his work interfered with by someone else?... We ought to realize that the work of a picture director, worthy of a name, is creative".
's 1828 opera La muette de Portici
, Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova's only screen appearance, which was directed to Pavlova's satisfaction by Weber. The film also starred Rupert Julian
as Masaniello
. Released to popular acclaim, it premiered on April 3, 1916 at the Globe Theatre
in Manhattan.
Hoping to "become the editorial page of the studio", and to "provoke a middle-class sense of responsibility for those less fortunate than themselves, and to stimulate moral reforms", Weber specialized in making films that stressed both high quality and moral rectitude, including films of the "burning social and moral issues of the day", including films that included such controversial themes as abortion
, eugenics
, and birth control
in Where Are My Children?
(1916), influenced by the trial of Charles Stielow, an innocent man who was almost executed, opposition to capital punishment
based on circumstantial evidence
in The People vs. John Doe; and alcoholism
and opium addiction in Hop, the Devil's Brew, which were all successful at the box office
, but, while embraced by reformers in the film industry, "drew the ire of the conservatives". Despite the predominance of strong women in her films, in 1916 Weber refused to have any association with the women's suffrage movement, possibly because of fears of a backlash from industry leaders.
In Where Are My Children?
, released on April 16, 1916, Weber advocates social purity, birth control
, and eugenics
to prevent the "deterioration of the race" and the "proliferation of the lower classes", and makes "an indirect case for birth control or perhaps even for legalized, and safe, abortion
s". The film starred Tyrone Power, Sr.
and his then wife Helen Riaume, and future star Mary MacLaren
made her debut. It also makes use of several trick photography scenes, with an emphasis on multiple exposure
s to convey information or emotions visually. As a recurring motif
, every time a character becomes pregnant, a child's face is double exposed over their shoulder. Controversy, the threat of censorship, and the banning of Where Are My Children? in some locations, helped fuel the box office success of the film, estimated to be a gross in excess of $3 million, in an era where ticket prices were less than 50c each, and "rocketed Weber's name to larger audiences, bigger box-office returns, and an even higher annual income". The film spread Weber's fame internationally. For example, Kevin Brownlow indicates that this film attracted 30,000 in Preston, Lancashire; 40,000 in Bradford, Yorkshire; and 100,000 in two weeks in Sydney, Australia.
Shoes, a "sociological" film released in June 1916 that Weber directed for the Bluebird Photoplays
, was based on the 1912 novel "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil" by noted social reformer Jane Addams
and depicts the struggles of working class women for consumer goods and upward mobility and their dubious sexual activities, including prostitution. Starring Mary Maclaren as Eva Meyer, a poverty-stricken shopgirl who supports her family of five, who needs to replace her only pair of shoes that are deteriorating, and is so desperate that she sells her virginity for a new pair of shoes, it proved to be the most booked Bluebird production of 1916. Restored digitally from three extant fragments by EYE Film Institute Netherlands
, the restored version of Shoes made its debut in North America in July 2011.
After another significant censorship battle, and a vigorous publicity campaign by Universal, on May 13, 1917, Universal released The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, "one of the most forceful films ever made in support of legalizing birth control", a follow-up to the previous year's top money-maker for Universal, Where Are My Children? Directed by Weber and Smalley based on an original script by them, it starred Smalley and Weber, in her last screen appearance, as a doctor’s wife arrested and imprisoned for illegally disseminating family planning information. Influenced by the recent trial and imprisonment of pioneer birth control advocate Margaret Sanger
, the film drew explicitly on her headline-generating activism.
The film was released only weeks after Sanger's own film Birth Control
was banned under a 1915 ruling of the United States Supreme Court that films "did not constitute free speech", and the ruling of the New York Court of Appeals that a film on family planning may be censored "in the interest of morality, decency, and public safety and welfare". Sensitive to the opinions of local communities, and hoping to avoid powerful censorship boards in the northeast and Midwest, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was distributed primarily in the southern and western regions of the United States, with the result that it did not attain the record-breaking attendance set by Where Are My Children? the previous year. When The Hand That Rocks the Cradle opened at Clune’s Auditorium
in Los Angeles in June 1917, Weber appeared on stage, bitterly denouncing attempts to alter or suppress her film. While The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is now lost, the surviving script and accompanying marketing materials make it clear that Weber mounted an unstinting argument in favor of "voluntary motherhood".
when she formed her own production company, Lois Weber Productions, with the financial assistance of Universal. Smalley was made studio manager, and the Smalleys had their home on the studio lot at 1550 N. Sierra Bonita Avenue. By this time Weber's "idealized collaborative marriage" with Smalley began to show signs of deterioration, which was accelerated by the increased focus by critics and journalists on Weber as as the dominant filmmaker at the expense of Smalley after 1916, and Weber increasingly take credit for her contributions after 1917. However, as early as 1913, some saw Weber as the "fertile brain" in the partnership, with Smalley seen as an indolent womanizer "who chased every woman on the lot", which resulted in aguments and shouting matches.
Karen Ward Mahar attributes the success of Weber's films of the 1910s to their representation of "the generational conflict of the era", which was between the traditional view of women and that of the freedoms of the emerging "New Woman
and the emergent consumer culture". Mahar argues that "Weber's life was an expression of this generational divide: she was a stage performer and a Church Army Worker, a filmaker and a middle-class matron, a childless advocate of birth control who 'radiates domesticity'". While Weber was clearly a New Woman by virtue of her career, she was also publicly identified as the wife and collaborator of her first husband, Phillips Smalley. Shelley Stamp argues that Weber's "image was instrumental in defining both her particular place in film-making practices, and women's roles within early Hollywood generally", and that her "wifely, bourgeois persona, relatively conservative and staid, mirrored the film industry's idealized conception of its new customers: white, married, middle-class women perceived to be arbiters of taste in their communities". While Weber's beliefs reflected modern values, as did her involvement in a career as a filmmaker that was atypical for women of her era, she had "internalized much of what the Victorians
deemed proper behavior for women", there are "strong elements of the Victorian code of womanhood in her films". The Smalleys exemplified and promoted the Victorian ideal of marriage as companionship and a partnership.
In 1917 Weber was the only woman granted membership in the Motion Picture Directors Association
, and from 1917 Weber was active in supporting the newly established Hollywood Studio Club
, a residence for struggling would-be starlets.
After the United States entered World War I, Weber served on the board of the Motion Picture War Service Association headed by DW Griffith, and which also included Mack Sennett
, Charlie Chaplin
, Mary Pickford
, Douglas Fairbanks
, William S. Hart
, Cecil B. DeMille
, and William Desmond Taylor
. The Association raised funds for the construction of a thousand-bed hospital.
In September 1918 Weber broke her left arm in two places when she fell in Barker Brothers, a downtown Los Angeles store, forcing her to be hospitalized in the California Hospital. Weber's arm was still causing her trouble seven months later.
, Weber found it difficult to pay the bills and to find the capital to finance her own productions. By December 1918 Weber had left Universal, and signed a contract with Louis B. Mayer
to direct Anita Stewart
for $3,500 a week. Weber made two films with Stewart as the lead: A Midnight Romance and Mary Regan, both released in 1919 to mixed reviews.
to direct five films to be distributed through Paramount-Artcraft
for $50,000 each, plus one-third of the profits, and a guaranteed first-run bookings in Paramount theaters. By January 1920 Smalley and Weber purchased a two-level home at 1917 N. Ivar Avenue, Hollywood, later the home of Preston Sturges
in the 1940s. In October 1920, Weber purchased the studio facilities at 4634 Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles near Sunset Boulevard she had been leasing for the previous three years.
By February 1921 Weber was at the zenith of her career, and regarded "as fearless in the production of her pictures as she once was in her struggle for a living, and her indubitable position is that of one of the best directors of the screen", and one newspaper writing: "Lois Weber is not only the foremost woman director-she's the whole works", and attributed her success to having "a feminine touch lacking in most man-made films". In an effort to protect the American film industry, by 1921 Weber advocated the prohibition of the importation of all European films into the United States. In May 1921 Weber anticipated the possibility of both color and "three-dimensional films".
Following "the cinematic rumination on modern marriage begun by Cecil B. DeMille", and like other post-war filmakers, Weber turned her attention toward marriage and domestic life to honor her deal with Famous Players-Lasky with such melodramas as To Please One Woman, What's Worth While? Too Wise Wives, and What Do Men Want? However, as the United States entered the Jazz Age
in the 1920s, Weber, came to be seen as passé, in part because of her "propensity for didacticism", but also because her "values became increasingly archaic; her moralising, propagandistic tone was unsuited to the era of the 'flapper' girl
and a hedonism
that seemed all the more urgent". Additionally, by this time her "morally upright films bored modern audiences", her crusading was unwanted, and her views were considered "quaint". Her fall from favor was also due to her inability or unwillingness to adapt to changing audience tastes, and "her refusal to feature big-name stars or to glamorize consumerist excess in her films."
After an advance screening in February 1921, Paramount executives decided not to distribute the fourth film in their arrangement with Weber, What Do Men Want? a domestic melodrama
about a philandering husband and a faithful wife (Claire Windsor), and to cancel their arrangement with Weber to distribute her films.
After making 13 films, by April 1921, Lois Weber Productions collapsed, and Weber was forced to release all her contracted staff, with the exception of two novice actors. While she would direct a few other movies, effectively her career as a Hollywood director was over.
and May Tully (born 1884 in Nanaimo, British Columbia
; died March 9, 1924 in New York City) later in 1921, released Weber's The Blot
starring Claire Windsor
and Louis Calhern
. The Blot, probably Weber's best-known film today, and her masterpiece was her most successful film from this period. In this film, which "rejects the values of capitalist America that measures the value of people in wealth and property" by depicting the compromises and choices impoverished women are forced to make to achieve social mobility and financial security. It "condemns capitalistic materialism and linked consumerism with sexual exploitation", and addresses class, money, and ethnicity, "Weber's basically Christian ethos
shines clearly through this plot: the text disapproves of both the new consumerist immigrant class, and the old aristocratic one". Despite xenophobic assumptions, Weber advocates learning, asceticism
, and service to the needy. According to film historian Kevin Brownlow
, in The Blot "Weber's technique is reminiscent of William deMille's
with its quietness, in its use of detail, and its emphasis on naturalism. Weber used the same method of direction, too, filming in continuity." However, the film was not well-received critically and did little box office, and vanished after its run. However, after The Blot, Weber's films did not make money at the box office. The Blot was rediscovered by the American Film Institute
in 1975, and was reconstituted by Bob Gitt from an incomplete negative and an incomplete print.
As part of the deal to distribute The Blot, F.B. Warren released What Do Men Want? After the film's premiere at Manhattan's Lyric Theatre
on November 13, 1921, The New York Times
, while praising Weber for her casting and the technical aspects of the film, and also the performance of Claire Windsor, dismissed the film as a "simplified sermon" that provided "pat answers" which ignored "the real facts of life", which it considers "incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial".
Soon after the New York city premiere of The Blot, and in an attempt to salvage their troubled marriage, Weber and Smalley sailed for Europe, on the RMS Aquitania
on September 13, 1921, intending to tour Europe and Egypt, They ultimately traveled for six months through Europe, Egypt, China, and India, returning to the United States on April 7, 1922. On June 24, 1922, Weber obtained a divorce secretly from Smalley, who was described as both alcoholic and abusive, but kept him as a friend and companion. Their divorce was made public on January 12, 1923 by the Los Angeles Examiner.
was out of favor, D. W. Griffith was gradually more marginalized, and Rex Ingram
, like von Stroheim, could not adapt to production changes demanded by the consolidated studios." As Shelley Stamp explains: "In an age of studio conglomeration and vertical integration
, few independents could survive, a reality that hit women particularly hard: both Alice Guy Blaché and Nell Shipman
closed their production companies during this period as well. Will Hays, newly installed at the MPPDA, was also beginning to assert greater control over studio releases."
In November 1922 Weber signed to return to Universal, where she directed A Chapter in Her Life
, based on the 1903 novel "Jewel: A Chapter in her Life" by Clara Louise Burnham, and a remake of a 1915 film called Jewel she had directed previously with Smalley. A Chapter in Her Life was part of "a slate of literary adaptations Universal released that year, headlined by Lon Chaney
's appearance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame
and marketed under the tag line "Great Pictures made from Great Books with Great Exploitation Tieups." The film starring Claude Gillingwater
was released on September 17, 1923. However, according to Stamp: "Without a chain of theaters under its control, like emerging studio giants MGM and Paramount, Universal now occupied a significantly different market position than it had during the height of Weber’s career there in the mid- 1910s. With the bulk of urban, first-run theaters closed to Universal, the studio now relied on independent theaters mainly located in small towns and rural areas. Nor was the studio home to the female directing talent it had once been—Weber was now on her own." Consequently, Universal's trade ads made a clear pitch to small-town exhibitors, offering them "quality" pictures at reasonable prices, providing access to first-run pictures many studios reserved for their large urban venues.
” themes." Weber subsequently left Universal, vowing not to produce any films for a while, intending to write plays and a novel instead. She traveled to Europe again and spent time at the Colorado summer home of her friend, novelist Margaretta Tuttle, who had written the novel "Feet of Clay" that was later made into a 1924 film by Cecil B. deMille
, saying she would remain on vacation until the censors “came to their senses".
At the time Weber complained of both the control executed by consolidated studios, as well as the ever more strenuous censorship exerted both within the industry by the Hays Code: "I have received many offers, but in each case I’m hampered with too many conditions. ... The producers select the stories, select the cast, tell you how much you can pay for a picture and how long you can have to make it in. All this could be borne. But when they tell you that they also will cut your picture, that is too much."
The trade journal Film Mercury declared that "it would be interesting to know why [Weber] has made no films in the past year or so," noting that "it is almost a crime for such wonderful director material to be lying idle while third-raters flood the screen with junk." After suffering a nervous collapse in 1923, Weber made no movies until 1925. During this period, when Weber ostensibly "retired from public life", it was rumored that Weber had attempted suicide and had entered a mental facility to treat her mental depression.
By the end of January 1925 Weber announced her engagement to Captain Harry Gantz (born in Deadwood, South Dakota
on September 4, 1888; died August 10, 1949 in Australia), a retired army officer who had been an aviator in World War I
and was also a wealthy orange rancher and the owner of the 140 acre El Dorado Ranch, in Fullerton, California
. Gantz is credited with bringing Weber "out of a retirement which was more nearly a despondent withdrawal from public life".
Universal released one major big budget film each year, including The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
(1923) and The Phantom of the Opera
(1925), both starring Lon Chaney, Sr.
. After two unsuccessful previews, in 1925 Weber and Maurice Pivar
were assigned to edit The Phantom of the Opera before its ultimate release in September 1925. Another of the novels Universal decided to film was Harriet Beecher Stowe
's "Uncle Tom's Cabin
", for which Weber completed an adaptation for a film to be directed in 1926 by Harry A. Pollard
, who had starred as Uncle Tom in a 1913 version, and was by 1923 Universals's leading director with nine consecutive hits.
In 1926 Weber signed a new distribution deal with Universal, making her "one of the highest paid women in the business". One of her first "comeback" movies was The Marriage Clause, which brought contract player Billie Dove
to international prominence.
By June 1926, Weber was signed to direct Sensation Seekers, a romantic drama that also starred Billie Dove. However, just before her wedding, Weber replaced Pollard as director of Uncle Tom's Cabin
, as he had been hospitalized in Manhattan with blood poisoning and a shattered jaw caused by the "maltreatment' of a tooth infection by a New York dentist.
Weber was willing to cease work on Sensation Seekers and to interrupt her honeymoon to travel to Louisiana
to direct the location scenes for Uncle Tom's Cabin.
On June 30, 1926, a justice of the peace married Weber and Gantz in a ceremony at Enchanted Hill, the home of screenwriter Frances Marion
in Santa Ana, California
. At their wedding, Weber reduced her age by nine years to 38 to match her new husband. Gantz had previously been married to Beatrice Wooster Miller on September, 1915. Soon after Smalley married Phyllis Lorraine Ephlin.
After five months when his life was in serious jeopardy, and six jaw operations, Pollard emerged from hospital, "disfigured for life, but undaunted, ready once more to resume his megaphone", Weber was no longer required for Uncle Tom's Cabin. Weber returned to direct Sensation Seekers, which was released on March 20, 1927.
to direct a comedy film called Topsy and Eva based on a popular play of that name written by Catherine Chisholm Cushing and featuring the Duncan Sisters
in blackface
. Weber, who had adapted from the novel
of Harriet Beecher Stowe
when she was attached to the Universal version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, attempted to make another serious adaptation, but the studio decided that it should be a comedy rather than a drama. After some scenes were shot by Weber, she thought some of the scenes to be shot were insulting to African American
s, including such "racist humor as a stork dropping a black baby into a trash can". Topsy and Eva was re-assigned to Del Lord
to direct, with some additional scenes by D.W. Griffith.
By 1927 Weber advised young women to avoid filmmaking careers.
In 1927 De Mille Pictures signed Weber to direct her final silent movie, The Angel of Broadway, which featured Leatrice Joy
, and released on October 3, 1927. However, the advent of sound technology and the demise of silent movies, coupled with some negative reviews and poor box office receipts ended her comeback in 1927. For example, Variety
believed The Angel of Broadway its sentimentality would appeal to the masses, but not to sophisticated urban audiences: "For New York this title is a dud, but in the hinterland it may well be esteemed box office. Pathe has, in fact, a very good commercial property for the territory west of Hoboken
."
By 1930 Weber was separated from Gantz and was living with her mother and nephew in Los Angeles. By 1932 Weber was still separated from Gantz and was managing an apartment building in Fullerton, California
.
as a script doctor
, to work on the script of Cynara with Frances Marion. In February 1933 Universal signed Weber to scout for new talent and to direct screen tests. Within weeks Weber had interviewed 250 girls and young women from dramatic schools.
In 1933 Universal offered Weber another directing contract, and she was assigned to direct Edna Ferber
's Glamour
, but was removed from the project abruptly and it was transferred to a reluctant William Wyler
.
Weber and Gantz spent five weeks on location in Kauai, Hawaii from August 24, 1933, as she had been hired by the Seven Seas Corporation to direct Virginia Cherrill
, then the fiancé of Cary Grant
, and Mona Maris
in Cane Fire, a tale of racial prejudice and miscegenation
on an Hawaiian sugar plantation. Made on a low budget for the Pinnacle Production Company, it was the first film shot on the island of Kauai, and was released as White Heat on June 15, 1934, it achieved limited "commercial and critical success", with Weber quoted as saying at the time that the film "was not a hit but will not lose any money". White Heat proved to be her final film, and her only talkie
.
Almost six months after the death of Smalley on May 2, 1939, Weber was admitted to Good Samaritan Hospital
in November 1939 suffering from a stomach ailment that had afflicted her for years. Two weeks later, Webber died penniless on November 13, 1939, of a bleeding ulcer, with her younger sister Ethel Howland and friend Frances Marion at her bedside. Her death was largely overlooked, with her Variety
obituary only two brief paragraphs long, and a brief mention in the Los Angeles Examiner.
Weber's funeral was paid for by screenwriter Frances Marion
, whom Weber had given her first break in films in 1914, and who had been her matron of honor at her wedding to Gantz. Weber wrote a memoir, The End of the Circle, which was to have been published shortly before her death, but ultimately was not published despite the efforts of her sister, Ethel Howland, and was later stolen in the 1970s.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, on February 8, 1960, Weber was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
at 6518 Hollywood Blvd.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
actress, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
, and director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, who is considered "the most important female director the American film industry has known", and "one of the most important and important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films". Film historian Anthony Slide
Anthony Slide
Anthony Slide is a writer who has produced more than seventy books and edited a further 150 on the history of popular entertainment. He wrote a "letter from Hollywood" for the British Film Review from 1979 to 1994, and he wrote a monthly book review column for Classic Images from 1989 to 2001...
asserts that: "Along with D.W. Griffith, Lois Weber was the American cinema’s first genuine auteur, a filmmaker involved in all aspects of production and one who utilized the motion picture to put across her own ideas and philosophies."
Weber produced an oeuvre comparable to Griffith in both quantity and quality, and brought to the screen her concerns for humanity and social justice in an estimated 200 to 400 films, of which as few as twenty have been preserved, and has been credited with directing 135 films, writing 114 films, and acting in 100 films. Weber has been credited as pioneering the use of the split screen technique to show simultaneous action in her 1913 film Suspense
Suspense (1913 film)
Suspense is a 1913 silent drama film directed by Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber. The Internet Movie Database lists Lon Chaney, Sr. as appearing in the film in an uncredited role, however this is disputed...
. In collaboration with her first husband, Phillips Smalley
Phillips Smalley
Wendell Phillips Smalley was a prolific American silent film director and actor.Born in Brooklyn, New York, Smalley began his career in vaudeville and acted in more than 200 films between 1910 until his death in 1939...
, in 1913 Weber was "one of the first directors to experiment with sound", making the first sound films in the United States, and was also the first American woman to direct a full-length feature film when she directed The Merchant of Venice in 1914
1914 in film
The year 1914 in film involved some significant events, including the debut of Cecil B. DeMille as a director.-Events:*The 3,300-seat Mark Strand Theatre opens in New York City....
, and in 1917 the first woman director to own her own film studio. During the war years
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Weber "achieved tremendous success by combining a canny commercial sense with a rare vision of cinema as a moral tool". At her zenith, "few men, before or since, have retained such absolute control over the films they have directed - and certainly no women directors have achieved the all-embracing, powerful status once held by Lois Weber." By 1920, Weber was considered the "premier woman director of the screen and author and producer of the biggest money making features in the history of the film business".
Among Weber's notable films are: the 1916 film Where Are My Children?
Where Are My Children?
Where Are My Children? is a 1916 film in which a district attorney, while prosecuting a doctor for illegal abortions, finds out that society people, including his wife, used the doctor's services. It stars Tyrone Power, Sr., Juan de la Cruz, Helen Riaume, William Haben and C...
, which was added to the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
in 1993; the controversial Hypocrites
Hypocrites (film)
Hypocrites is a 1915 silent drama film directed by Lois Weber .The film contained several full nude scenes of an uncredited Margaret Edwards as Naked Truth, including a sequence with her posing nude as a statue...
, which featured the first full-frontal female nude in 1915; her adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes
Tarzan of the Apes
Tarzan of the Apes is a novel written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first in a series of books about the title character Tarzan. It was first published in the pulp magazine All-Story Magazine in October, 1912; the first book edition was published in 1914. The character was so popular that Burroughs...
novel for the first ever Tarzan of the Apes film
Tarzan of the Apes (film)
Tarzan of the Apes is a 1918 American action/adventure silent film directed by Scott Sidney starring Elmo Lincoln, Enid Markey, George B. French and Gordon Griffith. The movie was the first Tarzan movie ever made, and is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' original novel Tarzan of the Apes...
in 1918; and what is often considered her masterpiece, The Blot
The Blot
The Blot is an American silent drama film directed by Lois Weber with her husband Phillips Smalley in 1921. The film tackles the social problem of genteel poverty, focusing on a starving family. It stars Claire Windsor, Louis Calhern and Marie Walcamp....
in 1921. Weber is credited with discovering, mentoring, or making stars of several women actors, including Mary MacLaren
Mary MacLaren
Mary MacLaren was an American film actress. She appeared in 136 films between 1916 and 1949.Born Mary MacDonald in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she received her education at Greensburgh , Pennsylvania...
, Mildred Harris
Mildred Harris
Mildred Harris was an American film actress. Harris began her career in the film industry as a popular child actress at age eleven. At the age of fifteen, she was cast as a harem girl in D. W. Griffith's Intolerance . She appeared as a leading lady through the 1920s but her career slowed with...
, Claire Windsor
Claire Windsor
Claire Windsor was a notable American film actress of the silent screen era.-Early life:Windsor was born Clara Viola Cronk in 1892 to George Edwin and Rosella R. Fearing Cronk in Marvin, Phillips County, Kansas of Scandinavian heritage. Her parents later moved to Cawker City, Kansas when she was...
, Esther Ralston
Esther Ralston
Esther Ralston was an American movie actress whose greatest popularity came during the silent era.-Early life and career:...
, Billie Dove
Billie Dove
Billie Dove was an American actress.-Early life and career:She was born as Bertha Bohny in New York City to Charles and Bertha Bohny who were Swiss immigrants. As a teen, she worked as a model to help support her family and was hired at the age of 15 by Florenz Ziegfeld to appear in his Ziegfeld...
, Ella Hall
Ella Hall
Ella Hall was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in 87 films between 1912 and 1933. She was the mother of B-movie actress Ellen Hall....
, Cleo Ridgely
Cleo Ridgely
Cleo Ridgely was a star of silent and sound motion pictures, whose career began early in the silent film era, in 1911. Her acting career continued for forty years. She retired in the 1930s but returned to make more movies. Her final film was Hollywood Story , in which she had a bit part...
, and Anita Stewart
Anita Stewart
Anita Stewart was an American actress and film producer of the early silent film era.-Early life and career:...
, and discovered and inspired screenwriter Frances Marion
Frances Marion
Frances Marion was an American journalist, author, and screenwriter often cited as the most renowned female screenwriter of the twentieth century alongside June Mathis and Anita Loos.-Career:...
. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, on February 8, 1960, Weber was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
at 6518 Hollywood Blvd.
Early life
Florence Lois Weber was born on June 13, 1879 in Allegheny City, PennsylvaniaAllegheny, Pennsylvania
Allegheny City was a Pennsylvania municipality located on the north side of the junction of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers, across from downtown Pittsburgh. It was annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907...
(since 1907 Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
's Northside
Northside (Pittsburgh)
North Side refers to the region of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, located to the north of the Allegheny River and the Ohio River...
neighborhood), the second of three children of Mary Matilda "Tillie" Snaman (born March 1854 in Pennsylvania; died 1935 in Florida) and George Weber (born June 1855; died about 1910), an upholster and decorator, who had spent several years in missionary street work, and the younger sister of Elizabeth "Bessie" Snaman Weber Jay (born March 1877) and older sister of Ethel Weber Howland (born July 1887), who later appeared in two of Florence's films in 1916. The Webers were a devout middle class Christian family of Pennsylvania Dutch
Pennsylvania Dutch
Pennsylvania Dutch refers to immigrants and their descendants from southwestern Germany and Switzerland who settled in Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries...
ancestry.
Weber was considered a child prodigy
Child prodigy
A child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
, and considered an excellent pianist
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
. and toured the United States as a concert pianist from the age of 16 until her final performance in Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
at the age of 17. Weber left home and lived in poverty, while working as a street-corner evangelist
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
and social activist for two years with the evangelical Church Army Workers, an organization similar to the Salvation Army
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....
, preaching and singing hymns on street-corners and singing and playing the organ in rescue missions in red-light district
Red-light district
A red-light district is a part of an urban area where there is a concentration of prostitution and sex-oriented businesses, such as sex shops, strip clubs, adult theaters, etc...
s in Pittsburgh and New York, until the Church Army Workers disbanded in 1900.
By 1903 Weber was performing again as a soprano singer and pianist.
Frustrated by the futility of one-on-one conversions, and following the advice of an uncle in Chicago, Weber decided to take up acting about 1904, and moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where she took some singing lessons. Weber later explained her motivation: "As I was convinced the theatrical profession needed a missionary, he suggested that the best way to reach them was to become one of them so I went on the stage filled with a great desire to convert my fellowman".
For five years Weber was a repertory and stock actress
Repertory
Repertory or rep, also called stock in the United States, is a term used in Western theatre and opera.A repertory theatre can be a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation...
. Weber toured with the Chicago-based Zig Zag stage company, and in 1904 Weber appeared in the road company of "Why Girls Leave Home", where she received "promising reviews". The troupe's leading man and manager was Wendell Phillips Smalley
Phillips Smalley
Wendell Phillips Smalley was a prolific American silent film director and actor.Born in Brooklyn, New York, Smalley began his career in vaudeville and acted in more than 200 films between 1910 until his death in 1939...
(August 7, 1865 in Brooklyn, New York - May 2, 1939 in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
), a grandson of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the son of New York Tribune war and foreign correspondent George Washburn Smalley and Phoebe Garnaut Phillips, the adopted daughter of abolitionist Wendell Phillips
Wendell Phillips
Wendell Phillips was an American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, and orator. He was an exceptional orator and agitator, advocate and lawyer, writer and debater.-Education:...
. Smalley, who had attended Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
and was a graduate of Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and had been a lawyer in New York for seven years, had been a stage actor since at least 1901 in productions of Harrison Grey Fiske
Harrison Grey Fiske
Harrison Grey Fiske was an American journalist, playwright and Broadway producer who fought against the "Theatrical Syndicate" that formed around the turn of the twentieth century.-Early Life:...
and Mrs Fiske, and Raymond Hitchcock
Raymond Hitchcock (actor)
Raymond Hitchcock was a silent film actor, stage actor, and stage producer, who appeared in or produced 30 plays on Broadway from 1898 to 1928, and who became famous in silent films of the 1920s.-Biography:...
. After a brief acquaintance, just before her 25th birthday, Weber and Smalley, aged 38, married on April 29, 1904 in Chicago, Illinois.
After initially touring separately from her husband, and then accompanying him on his tours, about 1906 Weber left her career in the theater and was became a homemaker in New York. During this period Weber wrote freelance moving picture scenarios.
Career
In 1908 Weber was hired to work for American Gaumont Chronophones, which produced phonoscènesSound-on-disc
The term Sound-on-disc refers to a class of sound film processes using a phonograph or other disc to record or playback sound in sync with a motion picture...
, initially as a singer who recorded songs for use on the chronophone. Both Herbert Blaché
Herbert Blaché
Herbert Blaché was a British-born American film director, producer and screenwriter. He directed 56 films between 1912 and 1929.Along with his wife, filmmaking pioneer Alice Guy-Blaché, he founded Solax Studios in 1910....
and his wife, Alice Guy, later claimed to have given Weber her start in the movie industry.
At the end of the 1908 theatrical season, Smalley joined Weber at Gaumont. Soon Weber wrote scripts and in 1908 Weber began directing English language phonoscènes at the Gaumont Studio in Flushing, New York. About 1908 Weber starred in a role in a film she had written called Hypocrites, which was directed by Blaché.
In 1910 Weber and Smalley decided to pursue a career in the infant motion picture industry. For the next five years, they worked and were credited as The Smalleys (but where typically Weber received sole writing credit) on dozens of shorts and features for small production companies like Gaumont, the New York Motion Picture Co., Reliance Studio, the Rex Motion Picture Company, and Bosworth
Hobart Bosworth
Hobart Bosworth was an American film actor, director, writer, and producer.-Early life:Born Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth, he was a direct descendant of Miles Standish and John and Priscilla Alden on his father's side and of New York's Van Zandt family, the first Dutch settlers to land in the New...
, where Weber wrote scenarios
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
and subtitles, acted, directed, designed sets and costumes
Costume design
Costume design is the fabrication of apparel for the overall appearance of a character or performer. This usually involves researching, designing and building the actual items from conception. Costumes may be for a theater or cinema performance but may not be limited to such...
, edited films, and even developed negatives
Photographic film
Photographic film is a sheet of plastic coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive silver halide salts with variable crystal sizes that determine the sensitivity, contrast and resolution of the film...
. Weber took two years off her birth date when she signed her first movie contract.
Rex Motion Picture Company
By 1911 Weber and Smalley were working for William Swanson's Rex Motion Picture Company, which was based at 573-579 11th Avenue, New York city. While at Rex, Weber achieved her reputation as "a serious social uplifter and as the leading partner in the Weber-Smalley unit." In 1911 Weber acted in and directed her first silent short film A Heroine of '76, sharing the directorial duties with Smalley and Edwin S. PorterEdwin S. Porter
Edwin Stanton Porter was an American early film pioneer, most famous as a director with Thomas Edison's company...
. At the time of Rex's merger with five other studios to form the Universal Film Manufacturing Company
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
on April 30, 1912, Weber and Smalley, were the "prima facie heads of Rex".
Rex continued as a subsidiary of Universal, with Weber and Smally running it. Carl Laemmle startled the film industry for his use of and advocacy for women directors and producers, including Weber, Ida May Park
Ida May Park
Ida May Park was an American screenwriter and film director of the silent era. She wrote for 50 films between 1914 and 1930. She also directed 14 films between 1917 and 1920....
and Cleo Madison
Cleo Madison
Cleo Madison was a theatrical and silent film actress from Bloomington, Illinois. Madison attended what is now Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. Her family moved to California after she left school....
. In the autumn of 1913, shortly after the incorporation of Universal City
Universal City, California
Universal City is a community in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles County, California, that encompasses the 415 acre property of Universal Studios...
, Weber was elected its first mayor in a close contest that required a recount. At the time Universal's publicity department claimed Universal City was "the only municipality in the world that possesses an entire outfit of women officials".
In March 1913, Weber starred in the first English language version of Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
's, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, that was produced for the New York Motional Picture Co., directed by Smalley, from an adaptation by Weber, and starred Wallace Reid
Wallace Reid
Wallace Reid was an actor in silent film referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover".-Early life:Born William Wallace Reid in St...
as Dorian Gray.
In 1913 Weber and Smalley collaborated in directing a ten minute thriller Suspense
Suspense (1913 film)
Suspense is a 1913 silent drama film directed by Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber. The Internet Movie Database lists Lon Chaney, Sr. as appearing in the film in an uncredited role, however this is disputed...
, based on the play "Au Telephone" by André de Lordewhich adapted by Weber that uses multiple images and mirror shots to tell of a woman (Weber) threatened by a burglar (Douglas Gerrard
Douglas Gerrard
Douglas Gerrard was an Irish actor and film director of the silent and early sound era. He appeared in 116 films between 1913 and 1949. He also directed 23 films between 1916 and 1920....
. Weber has been credited as pioneering the use of the split screen technique to show simultaneous action in this film.According to Tom Gunning: "No film made before WWI shows a stronger command of film style than Suspense [which] outdoes even Griffith for emotionally involved filmmaking". Suspense was released on July 16, 1913.
Another 1913 film was The Jews' Christmas, which was released on December 18, starred Smalley and Webber and Ella Hall
Ella Hall
Ella Hall was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in 87 films between 1912 and 1933. She was the mother of B-movie actress Ellen Hall....
and portrayed how a family's love overcomes Antisemitism.
In January 1914 Weber became the first American woman to direct a feature-length motion picture when Universal released the Rex silent film of William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
, which was adapted by Weber, and was also produced, directed and starred Weber as Portia and Smalley as Shylock.
One film that illustrates the paradox nature of Weber's role and films was her 1914 film The Spider and Her Web, where she advocates both modernity and maternalism. In this film, Weber plays "The Spider", a vamp
Femme fatale
A femme fatale is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetype of literature and art...
living the "ultra-modern high life" who seduces and ruins intellectual men until frightened into adopting an orphan baby, which results in the salvation of the lead character through motherhood.
Bosworth
In the summer of 1914 Weber was persuaded to move to the Bosworth company by Julia Crawford IversJulia Crawford Ivers
Julia Crawford Ivers was an American motion picture pioneer. Born in Los Angeles when it was no more than an exotic outpost, Ivers watched the film industry come into existence and establish itself in southern California. She participated in several facets of filmmaking i.e. writer, producer and...
, the first woman general manager of a film studio, to take over the production duties from Hobart Bosworth on a $50,000 a year contract, making her "the best known, most respected and highest-paid" of the dozen or so women directors in Hollywood at that time. In 1914 Bertha Smith estimated Weber's audience at five to six million a week. In fact, by 1915 Weber was as famous as D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. de Mille. While at Bosworth, Weber and Smalley made six features and one short, The Traitor.
From early in her career Weber saw movies as "a vehicle for evangelism", and "an opportunity to preach to the masses", and to encourage her audience to be involved in progressive causes
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
. In a 1914 interview Weber declared: "In moving pictures I have found my life's work. I find at once an outlet for my emotions and my ideals. I can preach to my heart's content, and with the opportunity to write the play, act the leading role, and direct the entire production, if my message fails to reach someone, I can blame only myself." As many of Weber's films focused on a moral topic, she "was often mistaken as a Christian fundamentalist, but she was more of a libertarian
Libertarian
Libertarian may refer to:*A proponent of libertarianism, a political philosophy that upholds individual liberty, especially freedom of expression and action*A member of a libertarian political party; including:**Libertarian Party...
, opposing censorship and the death penalty and championing birth control. The need for a strong, loving and nurturing home was clearly promoted as well and if there was a single maxim that underlay each film it was that selfishness and egocentricity erode the individual and community". Although not a practicing Christian Scientist
Christian Science
Christian Science is a system of thought and practice derived from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and the Bible. It is practiced by members of The First Church of Christ, Scientist as well as some others who are nonmembers. Its central texts are the Bible and the Christian Science textbook,...
, Weber attended the Christian Science church regularly, according to Adela Rogers St. Johns
Adela Rogers St. Johns
Adela Rogers St. Johns was an American journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. She wrote a number of screenplays for silent movies and, late in life, appeared with other early twentieth-century figures as one of the 'witnesses' in Warren Beatty's Reds, but she is best remembered for her...
, and in at least two of her films Jewel (1915) and its remake, A Chapter in Her Life
A Chapter in Her Life
A Chapter in Her Life is a 1923 American film based on the novel Jewel: A Chapter in Her Life by Clara Louise Burnham. The film was directed by Lois Weber. She had previously adapted the same novel as the 1915 film Jewel, which she co-directed with her then-husband and collaborator Phillips Smalley...
(1923), Christian Science plays a prominent role. Weber's impeccable reputation and "impressive middle-class credentials" allowed her considerable artistic freedom in her presentation of controversial issues.
During 1914 Weber made a controversial version of Hypocrites
Hypocrites (film)
Hypocrites is a 1915 silent drama film directed by Lois Weber .The film contained several full nude scenes of an uncredited Margaret Edwards as Naked Truth, including a sequence with her posing nude as a statue...
, a four-reel allegorical drama shot at Universal City that she wrote, directed, produced -- and starred in, that was "a bold indictment of political corruption, the church, and the business world" by addressing social themes and moral lessons considered daring for the time. Hypocrites included for the first time in a film full-frontal female nudity, with truth portrayed in the ghostly figure of the Naked Truth, literally shown by a nude woman (Margaret Edwards) who revealed hypocritical desires for money, sex, and power. Although the nudity was tastefully done (it was passed by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures
National Board of Review of Motion Pictures
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures was founded in 1909 in New York City, just 13 years after the birth of cinema, to protest New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr.'s revocation of moving-picture exhibition licenses on Christmas Eve 1908. The mayor believed that the new medium...
), it was still banned in Ohio, caused riots in New York, and the mayor of Boston demanded that every frame displaying the naked figure of Truth be hand-painted to clothe the then unidentified actress. Hypocrites was released finally by Bosworth on January 15, 1915. In a 1917 interview, Weber denied the film was indecent and defended the film: "Hypocrites is not a slap at any church or creed - it is a slap at hypocrites, and its effectiveness is shown by the outcry amongst those it hits hardest, to have the film stopped". Despite the controversy, "the film was also praised for its use of multiple exposures and complex film editing".
Universal
In April 1915 Weber and Smalley left Bosworth when the founderHobart Bosworth
Hobart Bosworth was an American film actor, director, writer, and producer.-Early life:Born Hobart Van Zandt Bosworth, he was a direct descendant of Miles Standish and John and Priscilla Alden on his father's side and of New York's Van Zandt family, the first Dutch settlers to land in the New...
left the company due to his ill health. After being promised they could make feature length films by Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle
Carl Laemmle , born in Laupheim, Württemberg, Germany, was a pioneer in American film making and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood movie studios - Universal...
, they returned to Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
. Weber's first movie for Universal was Scandal, in which both Weber and Smalley starred, that featured the consequences of gossip-mongering.
In 1916 Weber directed 10 feature-length films for release by Universal, nine of which she also wrote, and she also became Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
' highest-paid director, earning $5,000 a week, and "enjoyed complete freedom in overseeing most stages of the film-making process - choice of stories and actors, writing of scripts (which she invariably did herself), as well as direction". In 1916 Weber explained her philosophy of directing films: "I’ll never be convinced that the general public does not want serious entertainment rather than frivolous", and "A real director should be absolute. He (or she in this case) alone knows the effects he wants to produce, and he alone should have authority in the arrangement, cutting, titling or anything else that may seem necessary to do to the finished product. What other artist has his work interfered with by someone else?... We ought to realize that the work of a picture director, worthy of a name, is creative".
Bluebird Photoplays
In February 1916 Weber and Smalley were transfered to Universal's Bluebird Photoplays brand, where they made a dozen features, including The Dumb Girl of Portici (also known as Pavlowa), adapted by Weber from Daniel AuberDaniel Auber
Daniel François Esprit Auber was a French composer.-Biography:The son of a Paris print-seller, Auber was born in Caen in Normandy. Though his father expected him to continue in the print-selling business, he also allowed his son to learn how to play several musical instruments...
's 1828 opera La muette de Portici
La muette de Portici
La muette de Portici originally called Masaniello, ou La muette de Portici, is an opera in five acts by Daniel Auber, with a libretto by Germain Delavigne, revised by Eugène Scribe...
, Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova's only screen appearance, which was directed to Pavlova's satisfaction by Weber. The film also starred Rupert Julian
Rupert Julian
Rupert Julian was the first New Zealand cinema actor, director, writer and producer.Born Thomas Percival Hayes in Whangaroa, New Zealand, Son of John Daly Hayes and Eliza Harriet Hayes...
as Masaniello
Masaniello
Masaniello was a Neapolitan fisherman, who became leader of the revolt against Spanish Habsburg rule in Naples in 1647.-Name and place of birth:...
. Released to popular acclaim, it premiered on April 3, 1916 at the Globe Theatre
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
The Lunt-Fontanne Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 205 West 46th Street in midtown-Manhattan.Designed by the architectural firm of Carrere and Hastings, it was built by producer Charles Dillingham and opened as the Globe Theatre, in honor of London's Shakespearean playhouse, on...
in Manhattan.
Hoping to "become the editorial page of the studio", and to "provoke a middle-class sense of responsibility for those less fortunate than themselves, and to stimulate moral reforms", Weber specialized in making films that stressed both high quality and moral rectitude, including films of the "burning social and moral issues of the day", including films that included such controversial themes as abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
, eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
, and birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
in Where Are My Children?
Where Are My Children?
Where Are My Children? is a 1916 film in which a district attorney, while prosecuting a doctor for illegal abortions, finds out that society people, including his wife, used the doctor's services. It stars Tyrone Power, Sr., Juan de la Cruz, Helen Riaume, William Haben and C...
(1916), influenced by the trial of Charles Stielow, an innocent man who was almost executed, opposition to capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
based on circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence
Circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact, like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime...
in The People vs. John Doe; and alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
and opium addiction in Hop, the Devil's Brew, which were all successful at the box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
, but, while embraced by reformers in the film industry, "drew the ire of the conservatives". Despite the predominance of strong women in her films, in 1916 Weber refused to have any association with the women's suffrage movement, possibly because of fears of a backlash from industry leaders.
In Where Are My Children?
Where Are My Children?
Where Are My Children? is a 1916 film in which a district attorney, while prosecuting a doctor for illegal abortions, finds out that society people, including his wife, used the doctor's services. It stars Tyrone Power, Sr., Juan de la Cruz, Helen Riaume, William Haben and C...
, released on April 16, 1916, Weber advocates social purity, birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
, and eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
to prevent the "deterioration of the race" and the "proliferation of the lower classes", and makes "an indirect case for birth control or perhaps even for legalized, and safe, abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
s". The film starred Tyrone Power, Sr.
Tyrone Power, Sr.
Frederick Tyrone Edmond Power was an English-born American stage and screen actor, who acted under the name Tyrone Power.-Early life:Power was born in London in 1869, the son of Harold Littledale Power and Ethel Lavenu...
and his then wife Helen Riaume, and future star Mary MacLaren
Mary MacLaren
Mary MacLaren was an American film actress. She appeared in 136 films between 1916 and 1949.Born Mary MacDonald in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she received her education at Greensburgh , Pennsylvania...
made her debut. It also makes use of several trick photography scenes, with an emphasis on multiple exposure
Multiple exposure
In photography, a multiple exposure is the superimposition of two or more individual exposures to create a single photograph. The exposure values may or may not be identical to each other.-Overview:...
s to convey information or emotions visually. As a recurring motif
Motif
Motif may refer to the following:In creative work:* Motif , a perceivable or salient recurring fragment or succession of notes* Motif , any recurring element in a story that has symbolic significance...
, every time a character becomes pregnant, a child's face is double exposed over their shoulder. Controversy, the threat of censorship, and the banning of Where Are My Children? in some locations, helped fuel the box office success of the film, estimated to be a gross in excess of $3 million, in an era where ticket prices were less than 50c each, and "rocketed Weber's name to larger audiences, bigger box-office returns, and an even higher annual income". The film spread Weber's fame internationally. For example, Kevin Brownlow indicates that this film attracted 30,000 in Preston, Lancashire; 40,000 in Bradford, Yorkshire; and 100,000 in two weeks in Sydney, Australia.
Shoes, a "sociological" film released in June 1916 that Weber directed for the Bluebird Photoplays
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
, was based on the 1912 novel "A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil" by noted social reformer Jane Addams
Jane Addams
Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace...
and depicts the struggles of working class women for consumer goods and upward mobility and their dubious sexual activities, including prostitution. Starring Mary Maclaren as Eva Meyer, a poverty-stricken shopgirl who supports her family of five, who needs to replace her only pair of shoes that are deteriorating, and is so desperate that she sells her virginity for a new pair of shoes, it proved to be the most booked Bluebird production of 1916. Restored digitally from three extant fragments by EYE Film Institute Netherlands
Eye Film Institute Netherlands
The Eye Film Institute Netherlands is a film archive in the Netherlands....
, the restored version of Shoes made its debut in North America in July 2011.
After another significant censorship battle, and a vigorous publicity campaign by Universal, on May 13, 1917, Universal released The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, "one of the most forceful films ever made in support of legalizing birth control", a follow-up to the previous year's top money-maker for Universal, Where Are My Children? Directed by Weber and Smalley based on an original script by them, it starred Smalley and Weber, in her last screen appearance, as a doctor’s wife arrested and imprisoned for illegally disseminating family planning information. Influenced by the recent trial and imprisonment of pioneer birth control advocate Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American sex educator, nurse, and birth control activist. Sanger coined the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood...
, the film drew explicitly on her headline-generating activism.
The film was released only weeks after Sanger's own film Birth Control
Birth Control (film)
Birth Control is a 1917 film produced by and starring Margaret Sanger and describing her family planning work...
was banned under a 1915 ruling of the United States Supreme Court that films "did not constitute free speech", and the ruling of the New York Court of Appeals that a film on family planning may be censored "in the interest of morality, decency, and public safety and welfare". Sensitive to the opinions of local communities, and hoping to avoid powerful censorship boards in the northeast and Midwest, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle was distributed primarily in the southern and western regions of the United States, with the result that it did not attain the record-breaking attendance set by Where Are My Children? the previous year. When The Hand That Rocks the Cradle opened at Clune’s Auditorium
Hazard's Pavilion
Hazard's Pavilion was a large auditorium in Los Angeles, California, located at the intersection of Fifth and Olive Streets. Showman George "Roundhouse" Lehman had planned to construct a large theatre center on the land he purchased at this location, but he went broke and the property was sold to...
in Los Angeles in June 1917, Weber appeared on stage, bitterly denouncing attempts to alter or suppress her film. While The Hand That Rocks the Cradle is now lost, the surviving script and accompanying marketing materials make it clear that Weber mounted an unstinting argument in favor of "voluntary motherhood".
Lois Weber Productions
In June 1917 Weber became the first woman director to establish and run her own movie studioMovie studio
A movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
when she formed her own production company, Lois Weber Productions, with the financial assistance of Universal. Smalley was made studio manager, and the Smalleys had their home on the studio lot at 1550 N. Sierra Bonita Avenue. By this time Weber's "idealized collaborative marriage" with Smalley began to show signs of deterioration, which was accelerated by the increased focus by critics and journalists on Weber as as the dominant filmmaker at the expense of Smalley after 1916, and Weber increasingly take credit for her contributions after 1917. However, as early as 1913, some saw Weber as the "fertile brain" in the partnership, with Smalley seen as an indolent womanizer "who chased every woman on the lot", which resulted in aguments and shouting matches.
Karen Ward Mahar attributes the success of Weber's films of the 1910s to their representation of "the generational conflict of the era", which was between the traditional view of women and that of the freedoms of the emerging "New Woman
New Woman
The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century. The New Woman pushed the limits set by male-dominated society, especially as modeled in the plays of Norwegian Henrik Ibsen . "The New Woman sprang fully armed from Ibsen's brain," according to a joke by Max Beerbohm...
and the emergent consumer culture". Mahar argues that "Weber's life was an expression of this generational divide: she was a stage performer and a Church Army Worker, a filmaker and a middle-class matron, a childless advocate of birth control who 'radiates domesticity'". While Weber was clearly a New Woman by virtue of her career, she was also publicly identified as the wife and collaborator of her first husband, Phillips Smalley. Shelley Stamp argues that Weber's "image was instrumental in defining both her particular place in film-making practices, and women's roles within early Hollywood generally", and that her "wifely, bourgeois persona, relatively conservative and staid, mirrored the film industry's idealized conception of its new customers: white, married, middle-class women perceived to be arbiters of taste in their communities". While Weber's beliefs reflected modern values, as did her involvement in a career as a filmmaker that was atypical for women of her era, she had "internalized much of what the Victorians
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
deemed proper behavior for women", there are "strong elements of the Victorian code of womanhood in her films". The Smalleys exemplified and promoted the Victorian ideal of marriage as companionship and a partnership.
In 1917 Weber was the only woman granted membership in the Motion Picture Directors Association
Motion Picture Directors Association
The Motion Picture Directors Association was an American non-profit fraternal organization formed by twenty-six film directors on June 18, 1915 in Los Angeles, California.Its articles of incorporation stated as that the organization existed to:...
, and from 1917 Weber was active in supporting the newly established Hollywood Studio Club
Hollywood Studio Club
The Hollywood Studio Club was a chaperoned dormitory, sometimes referred to as a sorority, for young women involved in the motion picture business from 1916 to 1975. Located in the heart of Hollywood, California, the Studio Club was run by the YWCA and housed some 10,000 women during its 59-year...
, a residence for struggling would-be starlets.
After the United States entered World War I, Weber served on the board of the Motion Picture War Service Association headed by DW Griffith, and which also included Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy"...
, Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
, Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro....
, William S. Hart
William S. Hart
William Surrey Hart was an American silent film actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is remembered for having "imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity."-Biography:...
, Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
, and William Desmond Taylor
William Desmond Taylor
William Desmond Taylor was an Irish-born American actor, successful film director of silent movies and a popular figure in the growing Hollywood film colony of the 1910s and early 1920s...
. The Association raised funds for the construction of a thousand-bed hospital.
In September 1918 Weber broke her left arm in two places when she fell in Barker Brothers, a downtown Los Angeles store, forcing her to be hospitalized in the California Hospital. Weber's arm was still causing her trouble seven months later.
Anita Stewart Productions
Despite continuing to work at Universal, and renting out her studio to other independent producers, including Marshall NeilanMarshall Neilan
Marshall Ambrose Neilan was an American motion picture actor, screenwriter, film director, and producer.-Early life:...
, Weber found it difficult to pay the bills and to find the capital to finance her own productions. By December 1918 Weber had left Universal, and signed a contract with Louis B. Mayer
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer born Lazar Meir was an American film producer. He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its golden years. Known always as Louis B...
to direct Anita Stewart
Anita Stewart
Anita Stewart was an American actress and film producer of the early silent film era.-Early life and career:...
for $3,500 a week. Weber made two films with Stewart as the lead: A Midnight Romance and Mary Regan, both released in 1919 to mixed reviews.
Famous Players-Lasky
Needing finances, in July 1919 Weber signed a contract with Famous Players-LaskyFamous Players-Lasky
Famous Players-Lasky Corporation was an American motion picture and distribution company created on July 19, 1916 from the merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company -- originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays -- and Jesse L...
to direct five films to be distributed through Paramount-Artcraft
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
for $50,000 each, plus one-third of the profits, and a guaranteed first-run bookings in Paramount theaters. By January 1920 Smalley and Weber purchased a two-level home at 1917 N. Ivar Avenue, Hollywood, later the home of Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges , originally Edmund Preston Biden, was a celebrated playwright, screenwriter and film director born in Chicago, Illinois...
in the 1940s. In October 1920, Weber purchased the studio facilities at 4634 Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles near Sunset Boulevard she had been leasing for the previous three years.
By February 1921 Weber was at the zenith of her career, and regarded "as fearless in the production of her pictures as she once was in her struggle for a living, and her indubitable position is that of one of the best directors of the screen", and one newspaper writing: "Lois Weber is not only the foremost woman director-she's the whole works", and attributed her success to having "a feminine touch lacking in most man-made films". In an effort to protect the American film industry, by 1921 Weber advocated the prohibition of the importation of all European films into the United States. In May 1921 Weber anticipated the possibility of both color and "three-dimensional films".
Following "the cinematic rumination on modern marriage begun by Cecil B. DeMille", and like other post-war filmakers, Weber turned her attention toward marriage and domestic life to honor her deal with Famous Players-Lasky with such melodramas as To Please One Woman, What's Worth While? Too Wise Wives, and What Do Men Want? However, as the United States entered the Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
in the 1920s, Weber, came to be seen as passé, in part because of her "propensity for didacticism", but also because her "values became increasingly archaic; her moralising, propagandistic tone was unsuited to the era of the 'flapper' girl
Flapper
Flapper in the 1920s was a term applied to a "new breed" of young Western women who wore short skirts, bobbed their hair, listened to jazz, and flaunted their disdain for what was then considered acceptable behavior...
and a hedonism
Hedonism
Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....
that seemed all the more urgent". Additionally, by this time her "morally upright films bored modern audiences", her crusading was unwanted, and her views were considered "quaint". Her fall from favor was also due to her inability or unwillingness to adapt to changing audience tastes, and "her refusal to feature big-name stars or to glamorize consumerist excess in her films."
After an advance screening in February 1921, Paramount executives decided not to distribute the fourth film in their arrangement with Weber, What Do Men Want? a domestic melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
about a philandering husband and a faithful wife (Claire Windsor), and to cancel their arrangement with Weber to distribute her films.
After making 13 films, by April 1921, Lois Weber Productions collapsed, and Weber was forced to release all her contracted staff, with the exception of two novice actors. While she would direct a few other movies, effectively her career as a Hollywood director was over.
F.B. Warren Corporation
Due to the collapse of her distribution deal with Paramount, on September 4, 1921 the F.B. Warren Corporation, a newly formed small independent distribution company that would also distribute a film each by Canadian women producers Nell ShipmanNell Shipman
Nell Shipman was a Canadian actress, author and screenwriter, producer, director, and animal trainer. She was a Canadian pioneer in early Hollywood. She is best known for her work in James Oliver Curwood stories and for portraying strong, adventurous women...
and May Tully (born 1884 in Nanaimo, British Columbia
Nanaimo, British Columbia
Nanaimo is a city on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. It has been dubbed the "Bathtub Racing Capital of the World" and "Harbour City". Nanaimo is also sometimes referred to as the "Hub City" because of its central location on Vancouver Island and due to the layout of the downtown...
; died March 9, 1924 in New York City) later in 1921, released Weber's The Blot
The Blot
The Blot is an American silent drama film directed by Lois Weber with her husband Phillips Smalley in 1921. The film tackles the social problem of genteel poverty, focusing on a starving family. It stars Claire Windsor, Louis Calhern and Marie Walcamp....
starring Claire Windsor
Claire Windsor
Claire Windsor was a notable American film actress of the silent screen era.-Early life:Windsor was born Clara Viola Cronk in 1892 to George Edwin and Rosella R. Fearing Cronk in Marvin, Phillips County, Kansas of Scandinavian heritage. Her parents later moved to Cawker City, Kansas when she was...
and Louis Calhern
Louis Calhern
Louis Calhern was an American stage and screen actor.- Early life :Louis Calhern was born Carl Henry Vogt on February 19, 1895 in Brooklyn, New York. His family left New York City while he was still a child and moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he grew up...
. The Blot, probably Weber's best-known film today, and her masterpiece was her most successful film from this period. In this film, which "rejects the values of capitalist America that measures the value of people in wealth and property" by depicting the compromises and choices impoverished women are forced to make to achieve social mobility and financial security. It "condemns capitalistic materialism and linked consumerism with sexual exploitation", and addresses class, money, and ethnicity, "Weber's basically Christian ethos
Ethos
Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of...
shines clearly through this plot: the text disapproves of both the new consumerist immigrant class, and the old aristocratic one". Despite xenophobic assumptions, Weber advocates learning, asceticism
Asceticism
Asceticism describes a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various sorts of worldly pleasures often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals...
, and service to the needy. According to film historian Kevin Brownlow
Kevin Brownlow
Kevin Brownlow is a filmmaker, film historian, television documentary-maker, author, and Academy Award recipient. Brownlow is best known for his work documenting the history of the silent era. Brownlow became interested in silent film at the age of eleven. This interest grew into a career spent...
, in The Blot "Weber's technique is reminiscent of William deMille's
William C. DeMille
Willam C. deMille was an American screenwriter and film director from the silent movie era through the early 1930s. He was also a noted playwright prior to moving into film. Once he was established in film he specialized in adapting Broadway plays into silent films...
with its quietness, in its use of detail, and its emphasis on naturalism. Weber used the same method of direction, too, filming in continuity." However, the film was not well-received critically and did little box office, and vanished after its run. However, after The Blot, Weber's films did not make money at the box office. The Blot was rediscovered by the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
in 1975, and was reconstituted by Bob Gitt from an incomplete negative and an incomplete print.
As part of the deal to distribute The Blot, F.B. Warren released What Do Men Want? After the film's premiere at Manhattan's Lyric Theatre
Lyric Theatre (New York)
The Lyric Theatre was a prominent Broadway theatre built in 1903 in Manhattan, New York City in the 42nd Street Theatre District. It had two entrances, one at 213 West 42nd Street and another at 214-26 West 43rd Street and was one of the few New York houses that had two formal entrances. In 1934,...
on November 13, 1921, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, while praising Weber for her casting and the technical aspects of the film, and also the performance of Claire Windsor, dismissed the film as a "simplified sermon" that provided "pat answers" which ignored "the real facts of life", which it considers "incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial".
Soon after the New York city premiere of The Blot, and in an attempt to salvage their troubled marriage, Weber and Smalley sailed for Europe, on the RMS Aquitania
RMS Aquitania
RMS Aquitania was a Cunard Line ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland. She was launched on 21 April 1913 and sailed on her maiden voyage to New York on 30 May 1914...
on September 13, 1921, intending to tour Europe and Egypt, They ultimately traveled for six months through Europe, Egypt, China, and India, returning to the United States on April 7, 1922. On June 24, 1922, Weber obtained a divorce secretly from Smalley, who was described as both alcoholic and abusive, but kept him as a friend and companion. Their divorce was made public on January 12, 1923 by the Los Angeles Examiner.
Universal
Upon her return to Hollywood, Weber found an "'industry in transition', evident in the fact that Erich von StroheimErich von Stroheim
Erich von Stroheim was an Austrian-born film star of the silent era, subsequently noted as an auteur for his directorial work.-Background:...
was out of favor, D. W. Griffith was gradually more marginalized, and Rex Ingram
Rex Ingram
Rex Ingram may refer to:* Rex Ingram , Irish film director, producer, writer and actor* Rex Ingram , African American film and stage actor...
, like von Stroheim, could not adapt to production changes demanded by the consolidated studios." As Shelley Stamp explains: "In an age of studio conglomeration and vertical integration
Vertical integration
In microeconomics and management, the term vertical integration describes a style of management control. Vertically integrated companies in a supply chain are united through a common owner. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or service, and the products combine to...
, few independents could survive, a reality that hit women particularly hard: both Alice Guy Blaché and Nell Shipman
Nell Shipman
Nell Shipman was a Canadian actress, author and screenwriter, producer, director, and animal trainer. She was a Canadian pioneer in early Hollywood. She is best known for her work in James Oliver Curwood stories and for portraying strong, adventurous women...
closed their production companies during this period as well. Will Hays, newly installed at the MPPDA, was also beginning to assert greater control over studio releases."
In November 1922 Weber signed to return to Universal, where she directed A Chapter in Her Life
A Chapter in Her Life
A Chapter in Her Life is a 1923 American film based on the novel Jewel: A Chapter in Her Life by Clara Louise Burnham. The film was directed by Lois Weber. She had previously adapted the same novel as the 1915 film Jewel, which she co-directed with her then-husband and collaborator Phillips Smalley...
, based on the 1903 novel "Jewel: A Chapter in her Life" by Clara Louise Burnham, and a remake of a 1915 film called Jewel she had directed previously with Smalley. A Chapter in Her Life was part of "a slate of literary adaptations Universal released that year, headlined by Lon Chaney
Lon Chaney
Chaney is an American surname of French origin, and may refer to:* Charles "Bubba" Chaney , Louisiana politician* Chris Chaney, US musician* Darrel Chaney, US baseball player* Don Chaney, US basketballer* Esty Chaney , US baseballer...
's appearance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923 film)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1923 American film directed by Wallace Worsley and produced by Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg. It stars Lon Chaney, Sr., Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Nigel de Brulier, Brandon Hurst. The film is the second most famous adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel,...
and marketed under the tag line "Great Pictures made from Great Books with Great Exploitation Tieups." The film starring Claude Gillingwater
Claude Gillingwater
Claude Benton Gillingwater was an American stage and screen actor. He first appeared on the stage then in 92 films between 1918 and 1939....
was released on September 17, 1923. However, according to Stamp: "Without a chain of theaters under its control, like emerging studio giants MGM and Paramount, Universal now occupied a significantly different market position than it had during the height of Weber’s career there in the mid- 1910s. With the bulk of urban, first-run theaters closed to Universal, the studio now relied on independent theaters mainly located in small towns and rural areas. Nor was the studio home to the female directing talent it had once been—Weber was now on her own." Consequently, Universal's trade ads made a clear pitch to small-town exhibitors, offering them "quality" pictures at reasonable prices, providing access to first-run pictures many studios reserved for their large urban venues.
Hiatus
While Weber was praised for her direction in A Chapter in Her Life, "critics felt the film’s subject matter—a young girl whose love and faith transform the troubled adults in her life — was ultimately out of step with the times. Film Daily dubbed the material “old fashioned,” with other critics objecting to the film’s “PollyannaPollyanna
Pollyanna is a best-selling 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter that is now considered a classic of children's literature, with the title character's name becoming a popular term for someone with the same optimistic outlook. The book was such a success, that Porter soon produced a sequel, Pollyanna...
” themes." Weber subsequently left Universal, vowing not to produce any films for a while, intending to write plays and a novel instead. She traveled to Europe again and spent time at the Colorado summer home of her friend, novelist Margaretta Tuttle, who had written the novel "Feet of Clay" that was later made into a 1924 film by Cecil B. deMille
Feet of Clay (film)
Feet of Clay is a drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Vera Reynolds and Rod La Rocque, and with set design by Norman Bel Geddes. The film is now considered to be a lost film.-Cast:* Vera Reynolds - Amy Loring...
, saying she would remain on vacation until the censors “came to their senses".
At the time Weber complained of both the control executed by consolidated studios, as well as the ever more strenuous censorship exerted both within the industry by the Hays Code: "I have received many offers, but in each case I’m hampered with too many conditions. ... The producers select the stories, select the cast, tell you how much you can pay for a picture and how long you can have to make it in. All this could be borne. But when they tell you that they also will cut your picture, that is too much."
The trade journal Film Mercury declared that "it would be interesting to know why [Weber] has made no films in the past year or so," noting that "it is almost a crime for such wonderful director material to be lying idle while third-raters flood the screen with junk." After suffering a nervous collapse in 1923, Weber made no movies until 1925. During this period, when Weber ostensibly "retired from public life", it was rumored that Weber had attempted suicide and had entered a mental facility to treat her mental depression.
By the end of January 1925 Weber announced her engagement to Captain Harry Gantz (born in Deadwood, South Dakota
Deadwood, South Dakota
Deadwood is a city in South Dakota, United States, and the county seat of Lawrence County. It is named for the dead trees found in its gulch. The population was 1,270 according to a 2010 census...
on September 4, 1888; died August 10, 1949 in Australia), a retired army officer who had been an aviator in World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and was also a wealthy orange rancher and the owner of the 140 acre El Dorado Ranch, in Fullerton, California
Fullerton, California
Fullerton is a city located in northern Orange County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 135,161.It was founded in 1887 by George and Edward Amerige and named for George H. Fullerton, who secured the land on behalf of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway...
. Gantz is credited with bringing Weber "out of a retirement which was more nearly a despondent withdrawal from public life".
Universal
In January 1925, Weber returned once again to Universal, hired by Carl Laemmle to take charge of all story development for a $5 million production initiative based around the adaptation of popular novels.Universal released one major big budget film each year, including The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923 film)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1923 American film directed by Wallace Worsley and produced by Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg. It stars Lon Chaney, Sr., Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Nigel de Brulier, Brandon Hurst. The film is the second most famous adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel,...
(1923) and The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera (1925 film)
The Phantom of the Opera is a 1925 American silent horror film adaptation of the Gaston Leroux novel of the same title directed by Rupert Julian. The film featured Lon Chaney in the title role as the deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House, causing murder and mayhem in an attempt to force...
(1925), both starring Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney, Sr.
Lon Chaney , nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Faces," was an American actor during the age of silent films. He was one of the most versatile and powerful actors of early cinema...
. After two unsuccessful previews, in 1925 Weber and Maurice Pivar
Maurice Pivar
Maurice Pivar was an English-American film editor, producer and writer. He edited 21 films, oversaw editing of 59 films, produced 4 films and wrote the dialogue discript to the film The Cohens and the Kellys in Africa between years 1921 and 1936...
were assigned to edit The Phantom of the Opera before its ultimate release in September 1925. Another of the novels Universal decided to film was Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...
's "Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....
", for which Weber completed an adaptation for a film to be directed in 1926 by Harry A. Pollard
Harry A. Pollard
Harry A. Pollard was an American silent film actor, director, and screenwriter who in total was involved in over 300 film productions...
, who had starred as Uncle Tom in a 1913 version, and was by 1923 Universals's leading director with nine consecutive hits.
In 1926 Weber signed a new distribution deal with Universal, making her "one of the highest paid women in the business". One of her first "comeback" movies was The Marriage Clause, which brought contract player Billie Dove
Billie Dove
Billie Dove was an American actress.-Early life and career:She was born as Bertha Bohny in New York City to Charles and Bertha Bohny who were Swiss immigrants. As a teen, she worked as a model to help support her family and was hired at the age of 15 by Florenz Ziegfeld to appear in his Ziegfeld...
to international prominence.
By June 1926, Weber was signed to direct Sensation Seekers, a romantic drama that also starred Billie Dove. However, just before her wedding, Weber replaced Pollard as director of Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927 film)
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a silent film directed by Harry A. Pollard and released by Universal Pictures. The film is based on the eponymous novel written by Harriett Beecher Stowe and was the last silent film version....
, as he had been hospitalized in Manhattan with blood poisoning and a shattered jaw caused by the "maltreatment' of a tooth infection by a New York dentist.
Weber was willing to cease work on Sensation Seekers and to interrupt her honeymoon to travel to Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
to direct the location scenes for Uncle Tom's Cabin.
On June 30, 1926, a justice of the peace married Weber and Gantz in a ceremony at Enchanted Hill, the home of screenwriter Frances Marion
Frances Marion
Frances Marion was an American journalist, author, and screenwriter often cited as the most renowned female screenwriter of the twentieth century alongside June Mathis and Anita Loos.-Career:...
in Santa Ana, California
Santa Ana, California
Santa Ana is the county seat and second most populous city in Orange County, California, and with a population of 324,528 at the 2010 census, Santa Ana is the 57th-most populous city in the United States....
. At their wedding, Weber reduced her age by nine years to 38 to match her new husband. Gantz had previously been married to Beatrice Wooster Miller on September, 1915. Soon after Smalley married Phyllis Lorraine Ephlin.
After five months when his life was in serious jeopardy, and six jaw operations, Pollard emerged from hospital, "disfigured for life, but undaunted, ready once more to resume his megaphone", Weber was no longer required for Uncle Tom's Cabin. Weber returned to direct Sensation Seekers, which was released on March 20, 1927.
United Artists
In November 1926 Weber joined United ArtistsUnited Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
to direct a comedy film called Topsy and Eva based on a popular play of that name written by Catherine Chisholm Cushing and featuring the Duncan Sisters
Duncan Sisters
The Duncan Sisters were a vaudeville duo who became popular in the 1920s with their act Topsy and Eva.-Early career:Rosetta and Vivian Duncan were born in Los Angeles, California, the daughters of a violinist turned salesman...
in blackface
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...
. Weber, who had adapted from the novel
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....
of Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...
when she was attached to the Universal version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, attempted to make another serious adaptation, but the studio decided that it should be a comedy rather than a drama. After some scenes were shot by Weber, she thought some of the scenes to be shot were insulting to African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s, including such "racist humor as a stork dropping a black baby into a trash can". Topsy and Eva was re-assigned to Del Lord
Del Lord
Del Lord was a Canadian film director and actor best known as a director of Three Stooges films.-Career:Delmer Lord was born in the small town of Grimsby, Ontario, Canada...
to direct, with some additional scenes by D.W. Griffith.
By 1927 Weber advised young women to avoid filmmaking careers.
In 1927 De Mille Pictures signed Weber to direct her final silent movie, The Angel of Broadway, which featured Leatrice Joy
Leatrice Joy
Leatrice Joy was an American actress most prolific during the early silent film era.-Early life and career:...
, and released on October 3, 1927. However, the advent of sound technology and the demise of silent movies, coupled with some negative reviews and poor box office receipts ended her comeback in 1927. For example, Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
believed The Angel of Broadway its sentimentality would appeal to the masses, but not to sophisticated urban audiences: "For New York this title is a dud, but in the hinterland it may well be esteemed box office. Pathe has, in fact, a very good commercial property for the territory west of Hoboken
Hoboken
Hoboken may refer to:*Hoboken, New Jersey, United States*Hoboken, Antwerp, a district of Antwerp, Belgium*Hoboken, Georgia, United States*Hoboken, Alabama, United States*"Hoboken", a song on Operation Ivy's 1988 album Hectic-See also:...
."
Nadir
When Weber was asked in April 1928 when she might direct again, she replied: "When I find a producer who thinks I have intelligence enough to be let alone and go ahead with my own unit." It would be five years before Weber would direct again.By 1930 Weber was separated from Gantz and was living with her mother and nephew in Los Angeles. By 1932 Weber was still separated from Gantz and was managing an apartment building in Fullerton, California
Fullerton, California
Fullerton is a city located in northern Orange County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 135,161.It was founded in 1887 by George and Edward Amerige and named for George H. Fullerton, who secured the land on behalf of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway...
.
Final comeback
Through the intervention of Frances Marion, by early June 1932 Weber was hired by United ArtistsUnited Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
as a script doctor
Script doctor
A script doctor, also called script consultant, is a highly-skilled screenwriter, hired by a film or television production, to rewrite or polish specific aspects of an existing screenplay, including structure, characterization, dialogue, pacing, theme, and other elements...
, to work on the script of Cynara with Frances Marion. In February 1933 Universal signed Weber to scout for new talent and to direct screen tests. Within weeks Weber had interviewed 250 girls and young women from dramatic schools.
In 1933 Universal offered Weber another directing contract, and she was assigned to direct Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...
's Glamour
Glamour (1934 film)
Glamour is a 1934 American drama film directed by William Wyler and starring Paul Lukas, Constance Cummings and Phillip Reed. An ambitious chorus girl marries an up-and-coming composer.-Cast:* Paul Lukas ... Victor Banki...
, but was removed from the project abruptly and it was transferred to a reluctant William Wyler
William Wyler
William Wyler was a leading American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.Notable works included Ben-Hur , The Best Years of Our Lives , and Mrs. Miniver , all of which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture...
.
Weber and Gantz spent five weeks on location in Kauai, Hawaii from August 24, 1933, as she had been hired by the Seven Seas Corporation to direct Virginia Cherrill
Virginia Cherrill
Virginia Cherrill was an American actress best known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights...
, then the fiancé of Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
, and Mona Maris
Mona Maris
Mona Maris was an Argentine film actress who was born in Buenos Aires.-Ancestry and education:Her given name was Mona Maria Emita Cap de Vielle. Her mother was a Spanish Basque and her father a French Basque...
in Cane Fire, a tale of racial prejudice and miscegenation
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
on an Hawaiian sugar plantation. Made on a low budget for the Pinnacle Production Company, it was the first film shot on the island of Kauai, and was released as White Heat on June 15, 1934, it achieved limited "commercial and critical success", with Weber quoted as saying at the time that the film "was not a hit but will not lose any money". White Heat proved to be her final film, and her only talkie
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
.
Later years and death
Weber and Gantz were divorced, probably in 1935.Almost six months after the death of Smalley on May 2, 1939, Weber was admitted to Good Samaritan Hospital
Good Samaritan Hospital (Los Angeles)
Good Samaritan Hospital is a hospital in Los Angeles, California, United States. The hospital has 408 beds.-History:Good Samaritan Hospital was founded in 1885, although the current hospital was built in 1976...
in November 1939 suffering from a stomach ailment that had afflicted her for years. Two weeks later, Webber died penniless on November 13, 1939, of a bleeding ulcer, with her younger sister Ethel Howland and friend Frances Marion at her bedside. Her death was largely overlooked, with her Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
obituary only two brief paragraphs long, and a brief mention in the Los Angeles Examiner.
Weber's funeral was paid for by screenwriter Frances Marion
Frances Marion
Frances Marion was an American journalist, author, and screenwriter often cited as the most renowned female screenwriter of the twentieth century alongside June Mathis and Anita Loos.-Career:...
, whom Weber had given her first break in films in 1914, and who had been her matron of honor at her wedding to Gantz. Weber wrote a memoir, The End of the Circle, which was to have been published shortly before her death, but ultimately was not published despite the efforts of her sister, Ethel Howland, and was later stolen in the 1970s.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, on February 8, 1960, Weber was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
at 6518 Hollywood Blvd.
Filmography
- A Heroine of '76 (1911)
- The Heiress (1911) [Act]
- The Realization (1911)
- On the Brink (1911) [Act]
- Fate (1911)
- A Breach of Faith (1911)
- The Martyr (1911)
- Angels Unaware (1912)
- Fine Feathers (1912)
- The Bargain (1912)
- The Final Pardon (1912)
- Eyes That See Not (1912)
- The Price of Peace (1912)
- The Power of Thought (1912)
- The Greater Love (1912)
- The Troubadour's Triumph (1912) [Dir]
- The Greater Christian (1912)
- An Old Fashioned Girl (1912)
- A Japanese Idyll (1912) [Act] [Dir]
- Faraway Fields (1912)
- Fine Feathers (1912) [Act] [Dir]
- Leaves in the Storm (1912)
- The Jew's Christmas (1913) [Act] [Co-Dir. with Phillips Smalley] [Scr]
- SuspenseSuspense (1913 film)Suspense is a 1913 silent drama film directed by Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber. The Internet Movie Database lists Lon Chaney, Sr. as appearing in the film in an uncredited role, however this is disputed...
(1913) - The Eyes of God (1913)
- His Brand (1913)
- The Female of the Species (1913) [Act] [Dir]
- How Men Propose (1913) [Dir] [Prod]
- The Merchant of Venice (1914) [Act. as Portia] [Co-Dir. with Phillips Smalley] [Scr]
- A Fool and His Money (1914) [Act] [Dir]
- Behind the Veil (1914) [Act] [Co-Dir. with Phillips Smalley] [Scr]
- False Colors (1914) [Act] [Co-Dir. with Phillips Smalley] [Scr]
- Traitor (1914)
- Like Most Wives (1914)
- The Leper's Coat (1914)
- The Career of Waterloo Peterson (1914)
- Sunshine Molly (1915) [Act] [Co-Dir. with Phillips Smalley] [Scr]
- Scandal (1915) [Act] [Co-Dir. with Phillips Smalley] [Scr]
- It's No Laughing Matter (1915) [Dir] [Scr]
- HypocritesHypocrites (film)Hypocrites is a 1915 silent drama film directed by Lois Weber .The film contained several full nude scenes of an uncredited Margaret Edwards as Naked Truth, including a sequence with her posing nude as a statue...
(1915) [Dir] [Scr] - A Cigarette, That's All (1915) [Scr]
- Jewel (1915)
- Where Are My Children?Where Are My Children?Where Are My Children? is a 1916 film in which a district attorney, while prosecuting a doctor for illegal abortions, finds out that society people, including his wife, used the doctor's services. It stars Tyrone Power, Sr., Juan de la Cruz, Helen Riaume, William Haben and C...
(1916) [Co-Dir. with Phillips Smalley] [Scr] - Wanted: A Home (1916) [Dir]
- Shoes (1916) [Dir] [Scr]
- Saving the Family Name (1916) [Act] [Dir]
- The People Vs. John Doe (1916) [Act] [Dir]
- John Needham's Double (1916) [Dir]
- Idle Wives (1916) [Dir] [Scr]
- Hop - The Devil's Brew (1916) [Act] [Co-Dir. with Phillips Smalley] [Scr]
- The Flirt (1916) [Co-Dir. with Phillips Smalley]
- The Eye of God (1916) [Act] [Dir]
- The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916) [Co-Dir. with Phillips Smalley]
- Discontent (1916) [Dir] [Prod]
- The French Downstairs (1916)
- Alone in the World (1916)
- The Rock of Riches (1916)
- The Price of a Good Time (1917) [Dir]
- The Mysterious Mrs. Musslewhite (aka The Mysterious Mrs. M. , 1917) [Act] [Dir]
- Hand That Rocks the CradleHand that Rocks the CradleHand That Rocks the Cradle is an American silent film released in 1917. It was written, produced and directed by the husband and wife team Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber, who also play the lead roles...
(1917) [Act] [Dir] [Prod] - For Husbands Only (1917) [Dir] [Prod]
- Even As You and I (1917) [Dir]
- The Man Who Dared God (1917)
- There's No Place Like Home (1917)
- Tarzan of the ApesTarzan of the Apes (film)Tarzan of the Apes is a 1918 American action/adventure silent film directed by Scott Sidney starring Elmo Lincoln, Enid Markey, George B. French and Gordon Griffith. The movie was the first Tarzan movie ever made, and is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' original novel Tarzan of the Apes...
(1918) [Scr] - Scandal Mongers (1918) [Act] [Dir]
- The Forbidden Box (1918) [Dir]
- The Doctor and the Woman (1918) [Dir]
- Borrowed Clothes (1918) [Dir]
- When a Girl Loves (1919) [Dir]
- A Midnight Romance (1919) [Dir] [Scr]
- Mary Regan (1919) [Dir]
- Home (1919) [Dir]
- To Please One Woman (1920) [Dir] [Scr] [Co-Story]
- Forbidden (1920) [Dir]
- What's Worth While? (1921) [Dir] [Prod]
- What Do Men Want? (1921) [Dir] [Scr] [Prod]
- Too Wise Wives (1921) [Dir] [Writer] [Story] [Prod]
- The BlotThe BlotThe Blot is an American silent drama film directed by Lois Weber with her husband Phillips Smalley in 1921. The film tackles the social problem of genteel poverty, focusing on a starving family. It stars Claire Windsor, Louis Calhern and Marie Walcamp....
(1921) [Dir] [Scr] [Prod] - A Chapter in Her LifeA Chapter in Her LifeA Chapter in Her Life is a 1923 American film based on the novel Jewel: A Chapter in Her Life by Clara Louise Burnham. The film was directed by Lois Weber. She had previously adapted the same novel as the 1915 film Jewel, which she co-directed with her then-husband and collaborator Phillips Smalley...
(1923) [Dir] [Scr] - The Marriage Clause (1926) [Dir] [Scr]
- Sensation Seekers (1927) [Dir] [Scr]
- The Angel of Broadway (1927) [Dir]
- White Heat (1934) [Dir]
Further reading
- Acker, Ally. Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema 1896-Present. New York, 1991.
- Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. Women Film Directors: An International Bio-critical Dictionary. Westport, CT; London, 1995.
- Koszarski, Richard. Hollywood Directors: 1914-1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
- Lowe, Denise. An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American films, 1895-1930. Routledge, 2005.
- Pendergast, Tom and Sara Pendergast, eds. International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Vol. 2: Directors. Detroit, MI: 2000.
- Stamp, Shelley. "'Exit Flapper, Enter Woman,' or Lois Weber in Jazz Age Hollywood". Framework (Fall 2010).
- Tibbetts, John C. and James M. Welsh. The Encyclopedia of Filmmakers. Vol. Two. New York, NY: 2002.
- Unterburger, Amy L., ed. Women Filmmakers & Their Films. Detroit, MI; New York; and London, 1998.