Lois Weber

Lois Weber
Weber in 1916
Born
Florence Lois Weber

(1879-06-13)June 13, 1879
Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, U.S.
DiedNovember 13, 1939(1939-11-13) (aged 60)
Hollywood, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)Film director, film producer, screenwriter, actress
Spouses
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(m. 1904; div. 1922)​
Harry Gantz
​
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(m. 1926; div. 1935)​
AwardsHollywood Walk of Fame – Motion Picture
6518 Hollywood Blvd

Florence Lois Weber (June 13, 1879 – November 13, 1939) was an American silent film director, screenwriter, producer and actress. She is identified in some historical references as among "the most important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films".[1][2] Film historian Anthony Slide has also asserted, "Along with D. W. Griffith, 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".[3]

Weber produced a body of work which has been compared to Griffith's in both quantity and quality[4] and brought to the screen her concerns for humanity and social justice in an estimated 200 to 400 films,[1][5] of which as few as twenty have been preserved.[6] [7] She has been credited by IMDb with directing 135 films, writing 114, and acting in 100.[8] Weber was "one of the first directors to come to the attention of the censors in Hollywood's early years".[9]

Weber has been credited with pioneering the use of the split screen technique to show simultaneous action in her 1913 film Suspense.[10] 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.[11] [12] She was also the first American woman to direct a full-length feature film when she and Smalley directed The Merchant of Venice in 1914,[13] and in 1917 the first American woman director to own her own film studio.[14]

During the war years, Weber "achieved tremendous success by combining a canny commercial sense with a rare vision of cinema as a moral tool".[15] 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".[16] 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".[14]

Among Weber's notable films are: the controversial Hypocrites, which featured the first non-pornography full-frontal female nude scene, in 1915; the 1916 film Where Are My Children?, which discussed abortion and birth control and was added to the National Film Registry in 1993; her adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes novel for the very first Tarzan of the Apes film, in 1918; The Blot (1921) is also generally considered one of her finest works.[17]

Weber is credited with discovering, mentoring, or making stars of several women actors, including Mary MacLaren,[18] Mildred Harris, Claire Windsor,[19] Esther Ralston,[20] Billie Dove,[21] Ella Hall, Cleo Ridgely,[22] and Anita Stewart,[23] and with discovering and inspiring screenwriter Frances Marion. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Weber was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960.

  1. ^ a b "Lois Weber (1881–1939)", Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through the Ages (2007), Dictionary of Women Worldwide.
  2. ^ Routt, William D. (March 2001). "Lois Weber, or the exigency of writing". Screening the Past (12): 1. Archived from the original on May 4, 2013. Retrieved April 17, 2022. Lois Weber, writer of cinema
  3. ^ Anthony Slide, The Silent Feminists, pp. 29, 151.
  4. ^ Jennifer Parchesky, "Lois Weber's 'The Blot': Rewriting Melodrama, Reproducing the Middle Class", Cinema Journal 39:1 (Autumn, 1999):23.
  5. ^ Her first husband, Phillips Smalley indicates they collaborated on 350 films. See Terry Ramsaye, ed., "Phillips Smalley", Motion Picture Almanac, Vol. 38 (Quigley Publications, 1929): 56.
  6. ^ Linda Seger, When Women Call the Shots: The Developing Power and Influence of Women in Television and Film (iUniverse, 2003): 8.
  7. ^ One source estimates that fewer than fifty of Weber's films survive. See Annette Kuhn and Susannah Radstone, The Women's Companion to International Film (University of California Press, 1994): 418.
  8. ^ Lois Weber filmography
  9. ^ Aubrey Malone, Censoring Hollywood: Sex and Violence in Film and on the Cutting Room Floor (McFarland, 2011): 7.
  10. ^ Julie Talen, "'24': Split Screen's Big Comeback", Salon.com (May 15, 2002).
  11. ^ Women Behind the Camera: Women as Directors Archived May 14, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ Louella O. Brown, "Pathe, F.B.O., Radio Victor Merge Stirs Movieland", Rochester Evening Journal and the Post Express (December 27, 1928): 22.
  13. ^ Lisa Singh, The Silenced Woman of Silent Films: Why Lois Weber Has Not Been Rediscovered Archived March 27, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, michelebeverly.com; accessed December 19, 2016.
  14. ^ a b Cari Beauchamp, Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood (University of California Press, 1998): 35-36, 41, 112, 149, 193, 282-83, 346.
  15. ^ Richard Koszarski, An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915–1928 (University of California Press, 1994): 223.
  16. ^ Anthony Slide, in Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, "Early Women Filmakers as Social Arbiters", Troping the Body: Gender, Etiquette, and Performance (SIU Press, 2000): 110.
  17. ^ Dargis, Manohla (December 15, 2016). "Lois Weber, Eloquent Filmmaker of the Silent Screen". The New York Times.
  18. ^ Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp, American Cinema's Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices (University of California Press, 2004): 338.
  19. ^ Terry Ramsaye, ed, Motion Picture Almanac, Vol. 38 (Quigley Publications, 1929): 34.
  20. ^ Esther Ralston, "How I Broke into the Movies", St. Joseph Gazette (November 30, 1930):7A.
  21. ^ Vicki Callahan, Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film History (Wayne State University Press, 2010): 131.
  22. ^ Harrison Carroll, "The Film Shop", Tyrone Daily Herald (Tyrone, PA: February 4, 1933): 4.
  23. ^ "Lois Weber, Director of Moving Pictures; Helped Anita Stewart and Other Stars to Win Success", The New York Times (November 14, 1939): 23:2.