In 1910, Carl Laemmle (later founder of Universal Studios) published a story in the St Louis Post-Despatch. It concerned a motion picture actress, known only to this point as ‘The Biograph Girl’ because of her notoriety in the early studio Biograph’s nickelodeon motion pictures, and stated that she had been killed in a tragic streetcar accident. The public mourned her loss.
The following day, Laemmle posted an ad in the same paper decrying the previous story as lies, and reassuring the public that, not only was Ms. Florence Lawrence alive and well, but that she was newly signed to his fledgling IMP film company.
This Barnum-esque publicity stunt marked the founding of the movie star system. It was the first time a star’s name was known and the first time it appeared on an advertisment. It was also the first time the motion picture industry had manipulated the image of their star as such commodity.
Lawrence went on to have a prosperous career for some time, appearing in many of IMPs successes and for other studios.
She was badly burned in a studio fire in 1915 and, though she continued acting, never regained her popularity, and ended up a charity case of MGM, who instituted a policy in the ’30s of giving roles to aging stars for a vastly diminished salary. A string of failed marriages and creeping disease led to her suicide in 1939 by eating ant poison.
