This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: June 26, 2008 - St. Louis has provided the movie world with many of its first movie stars. In his recent blog entitled "Factory Girl," Robert Hunt suggests Florence Lawrence was the world's first movie star and that the popular story of Carl Laemmle's premiere publicity stunt for his movie "The Broken Oath" (1910), "proving" the self-fabricated story of Lawrence's death was actually a "vicious American-Biograph lie," is what did the trick. In the bargain, Hunt then asserts what followed was stardom for her male lead, St. Louisan King Baggot. Well, that may be the most colorful story on star making, but Broncho Billy Anderson was a movie star years before that. And he lived in St. Louis, too, from the age of 8 until 18.
There's a stranger hole in Robert's story that I would like to fall into in a bit, but right now Broncho Billy deserves his due. As G.M. Anderson (who actually started life as Max Aronson), he played three distinct roles in the movie that initiated the Western genre itself, Edwin S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" (1903), but he did that as a hard-working actor, not as a star. For those who have seen the movie, you may remember the well-dressed dude who had to dance to the tune of shooting pistols at the country hoedown. Or the passenger who so dramatically died as he was shot trying to run away from the long lineup of all those being robbed. Or perhaps the one bad guy who was shot and fell off his horse during the exciting getaway gunfight. Yes, they were all G.M. Anderson.
Of course, he soon capitalized on not only his ability to fall off a horse (you have to be a good rider to fall off on cue and not get hurt) but also the bragging rights to having played all those roles in what was to become the first American blockbuster movie of all time. He took on the name of an early cowboy character in a 1907 film ("Western Justice") - marketing himself as Broncho Billy - and soon established his own movie studio (which eventually had an exclusive contract with Charlie Chaplin), writing, directing and acting his way through a stardom that all preceded Ms. Lawrence's "historic" live appearance at St. Louis Union Station. Having starred in more than 350 movies, he was also a far more enduring star than either Lawrence or Baggott.
Verification of Billy's active stardom long before Laemmle's publicity stunt can be had by a quick glance at IMDb.com , but it should also be noted that Florence Lawrence was a star long before March 1912, as Hunt claims. She actively promoted herself while still under contract with American-Biograph. In fact, Laemmle's stunt in St. Louis was actually executed in March 1910, two years before. Still, Billy precedes her by a full three years.
But the strangest aspect of the "Factory Girl" post is the link to the historical "We Nail a Lie" movie ad. The ad references a film entitled "The Broken Bath" - not "The Broken Oath." Let's stop and think about that for a minute. A broken bath? Can you visualize such a thing? What would a broken bath look like? I see a tub with a big hole in it.
I have always been fascinated with that ad, whose image I suspect Wikipedia ripped off from David Cook's exhaustive study, "A History of Narrative Film," a text I used to teach film history for many years. Was the ad somehow changed over the decades to announce a broken bath over a broken oath or was it a typo in the original? I have no idea!
I also wonder what Hunt means by Lawrence being "the first movie star." If we discount the term "the girl with the curls" as a star name, then Mary Pickford would have to concede initial stardom to Lawrence. However, most of the nickelodeon public knew full well who Pickford was and followed her blindly, not knowing her real name but recognizing her as "the girl with the curls" long before they recognized her friend in the business, Gertrude. I can just see enterprising marquees of the day advertising the latest American-Biograph offering as starring "the girl with the curls" and doing much better business because of it. Still, I guess when it comes to using actual names (pseudonyms or not) Lawrence might be considered the first woman to be a movie star.
The distinction of first international movie star would go to the French Pathe comedian Max Linder, who originally inspired the persona and consistent character-naming tradition of Charlie Chaplin. Even as an international movie star, he preceded Lawrence by three years. He was promoted as a star in 1907, just weeks after Broncho Billy's company did the same.