The Spectacular Rise and Fall of America's First Female Director

Chances are you've never heard of her or seen any of her movies, but for a brief time Lois Weber was the highest paid director in Hollywood. At the height of her popularity in 1919, she made $50,000 per movie plus half the profits. In the end, she died penniless and forgotten. This is the story of the rise and fall of the first woman to ever direct a feature film.

Early Years

Lois Weber was born just outside Pittsburgh on June 13, 1881. She showed musical talent early on and ran away from home to New York as a teenager, hoping to pursue a career in music. Her musical career never panned out, and she lived in abject poverty often singing in the streets just for food. Many of her films vividly depict the poverty she endured during this time. She began working in the slums as a social worker and missionary to prisoners. It was during this time that she began acting for the U.S. division of the Gaumont Film Company, the giant French film studio. While employed here she met her husband, Phillips Smalley, a manager for Gaumont. They were married in 1905.

Success

Lois began acting in early one-reelers alongside her husband. She also began writing, producing, and by 1912, directing short films. These films were churned out very quickly, and in a few years she had more than 400 films to her credit. In 1914, she became the first woman to direct a feature film, The Merchant of Venice, and by 1915 she wrote, directed, produced and starred in Hypocrites a hugely successful film. On the strength of this film, Weber became one of the highest paid filmmakers in Hollywood. She signed with Universal Studios making $5,000 a week.

Themes

Most of Weber's films dealt with social issues, understandable given her background. She tackled highly controversial issues such as abortion and birth control in Where Are My Children?, a film that made $3 million - a huge amount for the day. She took on capital punishment in The People vs. John Doe and alcoholism in Hop, the Devil's Brew. Weber had firsthand experience with alcoholism - her husband was an alcoholic. The controversial themes and issues she dealt with made her films quite popular with the public and many of her films were very successful at the box office. Weber, a Christian Scientologist, saw films as a way to preach to the masses, and that's exactly what she did. With topics ranging from abortion to promiscuity, women's rights to birth control, drug abuse, contraception and poverty reform; Lois Weber made films that hammered away at the social issues of the time. Eventually this moral approach would be her undoing.

On Top of the World

Lois Weber had come a long way from the slums of New York. In 1919, she signed a deal with Paramount that made her the highest paid director in Hollywood. She would receive $50,000 per picture plus half of the profits. On the strength of this deal she was able to open her own independent production company, Lois Weber Productions. Life was good for the 38 year old director.

The Price of Independence

As an independent, Lois Weber began to make a string of box office failures. Her first indie, To Please a Woman died at the box office. Her next film, another preachy melodrama entitled What's Worth While?, flopped as well. In 1921 she made her most famous film, The Blot. This film was inventively photographed using innovations that allowed Weber to shoot interiors on location, the film presented a gritty look at poverty with a realism seldom achieved by standard Hollywood productions. The film was billed as a great American drama, but was a bust commercially. As were her next few films. The public's tastes were changing. America was entering the fast-moving Jazz Age and had no desire to be preached to.

The Fall

Weber continued to make social issue melodramas, convinced that the American public wanted more than just escapist entertainment. But popular culture in 1920's wanted nothing to do with morality plays. Weber's fortunes waned with the change in public sentiment. By the mid-20s she had lost her company and her husband. Phillips Smalley had become an abusive, alcoholic, and despite her moral convictions, she divorced him. The trauma of the divorce and her failing company contributed to Weber suffering a nervous breakdown. Although she remarried another man in 1926, that marriage also led to divorce in 1935. By the 1930's she was able to get occasional work as a director (her last film was 1934's White Heat), but for the most part she was forgotten. Lois Weber died penniless and alone in 1939. Her funeral expenses were paid for by Frances Marion, one of the most renowned female screenwriters in film history, who got her start in the film industry working for Weber.

Legacy

Lois Weber's films are seldom seen today. Silent drama, the genre she most often worked, does not hold up as well with contemporary audiences as other silent genres such as comedy. However, as a filmmaker dealing with real-world issues, often told with gritty realism, Weber's films deserve to be seen. She often focused on telling stories from her female characters' points of view and portrayed women with a depth seldom seen in the film industry then and now.