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131 Lois Weber, Star Maker Historians often lament the fact that Lois Weber, the silent era’s premiere female filmmaker, did not leave a memoir or autobiography for us to study, especially when so many of her contemporaries wrote memorably of their time in early Hollywood. alice Guy-Blaché, Nell Shipman, Frances Marion , Mary Pickford, and anita Loos, among a host of others, all published memoirs now actively mined by scholars.1 our curiosity is stoked further by anthony Slide’s report that a manuscript of Weber’s memoirs, titled “End of the Circle,” was stolen from her sister, Ethel Howland, in 1970, after Howland had tried for years to get the work published.2 If such a manuscript did exist (or does in fact still exist somewhere), it suggests that at the time of her death in 1939, Weber, by then relegated to Hollywood’s margins, nursed a genuine investment in making her mark on film history. In lieu of such a memoir, however, we are left to chart her legacy through the traces others left behind and to imagine, as historians, how she might have written herself into history. Weber’s obituaries, insofar as they represent early attempts to sketch her place in cinema’s chronology, stress one singular aspect of her career— her role as “star maker” for the young female performers whose talents she helped to foster, best exemplified in the headline, “Lois Weber, MovieStar Maker.”3 Indeed, several actresses became celebrated performers under Weber’s tutelage in the late 1910s and early 1920s, among them Mary MacLaren, Mildred Harris, Claire Windsor, and Billie dove. Her “discovery ” of these stars became established facets of their own publicity bios and eventually their obituaries as well.4 What are we to make of the fact that Weber, among the most-respected and highest-paid director-screenwriters 02 Chapters_4_7.indd 131 1/13/10 11:56 AM 132 S H E L L E Y S T a M P in early Hollywood, a filmmaker whose name was frequently mentioned alongside d. W. Griffith and Cecil B. deMille as those at the forefront of the industry, was remembered upon her death chiefly for making other, younger women famous celebrities? Though it became a key focus of her obituaries, Weber’s reputation as a star maker was initially cultivated during her years of active filmmaking, first when she worked under contract at universal Pictures in the mid1910s , then later when she left the studio to form her own company, Lois Weber Productions, in 1917. By 1921 profiles regularly touted this aspect of her renown, with Moving Picture World declaring that Weber had “been a star maker for years.”5 The filmmaker had “one hobby,” noted another observer, “finding new photoplay stars.”6 Weber, fans were told, was “gifted with an acumen or instinct which enables her to fairly ‘sense’ talent and screen ability.”7 one profile simply cast her as a “film astronomer,” so accurate were her celestial predictions.8 Weber’s reputation for discovering and nurturing young talent thus colored her association with many actresses over more than a decade. Marshaled at different junctures in her career, the potent star-maker mythos often became a means of accounting for her stature within the industry. Though Weber’s status as “Hollywood’s most powerful woman director” remains a constant theme of her publicity during these years, it is almost always linked to her reputation as a star maker. Weber’s first notable “discovery” was the actress Mary MacLaren, whom she reportedly first encountered on the universal lot during the period of her greatest renown at the studio. “There’s the girl for me,” Weber was said to remark. “I’ll make a star of her.”9 after a small part in Where Are My Children? the actress starred in five films with Weber released in 1916 and 1917: Shoes, Wanted: A Home, Saving the Family Name, Idle Wives, and The Mysterious Mrs. M. “Her talents so quickly developed under the tuition of Lois Weber that her future was assured,” trumpeted universal publicity .10 Weber, who had formerly served as mayor of universal City, was at that point the studio’s highest-paid director, and MacLaren remembered the tremendous respect Weber commanded on the lot.11 after a string of successful films for universal, the filmmaker renewed her contract with the studio under terms that made her the best-compensated director in the industry.12 Early the next year, she was...

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