Lois Weber

Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!

Even according to Wikipedia, J.W. Griffith “seems to have been the first to understand how certain film techniques could be used to create an expressive language”. Griffith is credited to have been “the first” to invent such innovations as intercutting, or even, absurdly, the close-up. However, he did not. There were many filmmakers before him to use such innovations, and during the span of his career, there were many others using these techniques to great, or better, effect. It is often difficult, seeing how much early film is lost, to determine who was “the first” to do anything. But it is certain that many early filmmakers used such techniques to “create an expressive language” before Griffith’s career was made by the massive, though controversial, success of his racist, excessive tour de force in 1915.

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When Mary Pickford and Frances Marion met in 1914, Marion may well have believed that fate was playing a hand in her favour. Not long before she had met and befriended Marie Dressler, the famous vaudevillian. Marion was then a cub reporter for William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper. The interview was probably a joke at Marion’s expense: Dressler despised Hearst and everything connected to him. Marion, however, pleaded with Dressler, “I will lose my job!”, she insisted. “Is that what those bastards told you?!” replied Dressler, and granted Marion the interview. Marion would never forget the kindness, the women became lifelong friends, and much later she would return the favour. And now she had an opportunity to meet a rising star, whose quality films already stood out for Marion, Mary Pickford.

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