Florence Lawrence was the first film player whose name was used to promote her films and the studio . It was unsuccessful. She tried a comeback again in 1921; that, too, was unsuccessful. She settled into bit parts and character roles through the 1920s and 1930s. She committed suicide in 1938 after years of unhappiness and illness. She was found in her apartment on Dec. 27, 1938 and died soon afterward in hospital.
Silent-screen actress
Fired from Biograph when she was discovered to be negotiating with Carl Laemmle of Independent Motion Picture Company.
Committed suicide using ant paste.
Entered films with Vitagraph in 1907.
The birth date on her gravestone is 1890, but many sources say 1886.
Credited with inventing the first automobile turn and brake signals. The signals were operated by the driver pressing a button, and an arm on the back of the car indicating the turn direction or a stop. She did not patent the inventions, and they were superseded by more streamlined systems.
She is the subject of the novel "The Biograph Girl" by William J. Mann, who imagines Lawrence didnt die in 1938 from ingesting ant poison and is still alive in the late 1990s.
In the early 1900s, she was officially known as the "Biograph Girl" for the American Mutoscope & Biograph [us].
Lawrence played the lead in The Adventures of Dollie," the first film that Griffith ever directed.
When Florence Lawrence left Biograph for IMP, the former company knowingly reported that she had died. IMPs head, Carl Laemmle countered on March 3, 1910 with the now famous headline "WE NAIL A LIE." When the Patents Company found that a particular theatre was showing an IMP film, it lost its right to show any films produced by the monopolistic Trust.
Her mother, Charlotte "Lotta" Dunn Bridgwood, was an Irish-born vaudevillian who acted professionally under the name "Lotta Lawrence", which was the source of Florences stage name. Lottas company, the Lawrence Dramatic Company, operated in the Hamilton, Ontario area. Florence made her stage debut with the company sometime around her fourth birthday. She was an accomplished whistler who had earned the nickname "Baby Flo, the Child Wonder Whistler" by the time she was six years old.
Fulfilled her lifelong dream of buying a large ranch in New Jersey where she gardened and had a collection of animals.
I used to sit in my dressing room at the studio and wonder just how much,longer could I keep making believe. .
