Among early Hollywood’s most renowned filmmakers, Lois Weber was considered one of the era’s “three great minds” alongside D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. Despite her accomplishments, Weber has been marginalized in relation to her contemporaries, who have long been recognized as fathers of American cinema. Drawing on a range of materials untapped by previous historians, Shelley Stamp offers the first comprehensive study of Weber’s remarkable career as director, screenwriter, and actress. Lois Weber in Early Hollywood provides compelling evidence of the extraordinary role that women played in shaping American movie culture. Weber made films on capital punishment, contraception, poverty, and addiction, establishing cinema’s power to engage topical issues for popular audiences. Her work grappled with the profound changes in women’s lives that unsettled Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century, and her later films include sharp critiques of heterosexual marriage and consumer capitalism. Mentor to many women in the industry, Weber demanded a place at the table in early professional guilds, decrying the limited roles available for women on-screen and in the 1920s protesting the growing climate of hostility toward female directors. Stamp demonstrates how female filmmakers who had played a part in early Hollywood’s bid for respectability were in the end written out of that industry’s history. Lois Weber in Early Hollywood is an essential addition to histories of silent cinema, early filmmaking in Los Angeles, and women’s contributions to American culture. "A recommended work of early film scholarship... Lois Weber in Early Hollywood stands as one of the better filmmaker studies in recent years." ― Journal of Film and Video "A brilliant researcher and a masterful historian, Shelley Stamp gives us an always fascinating and incisive portrait of one of the silent era s foremost filmmakers. Much more than a powerful biography of an unjustly marginalized figure, Lois Weber in Early Hollywood asks its readers to thoroughly reimagine American cinema of the 1910s and 1920s. This is an essential work of film history a stunning achievement." Charles Musser, Yale University "A brilliant researcher and a masterful historian, Shelley Stamp gives us an always fascinating and incisive portrait of one of the silent era’s foremost filmmakers. Much more than a powerful biography of an unjustly marginalized figure, Lois Weber in Early Hollywood asks its readers to thoroughly reimagine American cinema of the 1910s and 1920s. This is an essential work of film history―a stunning achievement." ―Charles Musser, Yale University Shelley Stamp is author of Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon; coeditor of American Cinema’s Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices; and founding editor of Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal.   She is Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Lois Weber in Early Hollywood By Shelley Stamp UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Copyright © 2015 The Regents of the University of California All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-520-28446-3 Contents Acknowledgments, vii, Introduction: Portrait of a Filmmaker, 1, 1. Creating a Signature, 9, 2. "Life's Mirror": Progressive Films for a Progressive Era, 67, 3. Women's Labor, Creative Control, and "Independence" in a Changing Industry, 141, 4. "Exit Flapper, Enter Woman"; or, Weber in Jazz Age Hollywood, 216, Conclusion: "Forgotten with a Vengeance", 279, Notes, 287, Filmography with Martin F. Norden, 337, Index, 353, CHAPTER 1 Creating a Signature Weber's 1915 feature Hypocrites, the film that secured her place among the foremost filmmakers of her generation, opens with a still photograph showing her elegantly dressed, posed against a chaise lounge, eyes cast sideways out of frame. A handwritten signature across the corner proclaims, "Yours Sincerely, Lois Weber." Although viewers would have been accustomed to seeing favorite screen personalities introduced in opening vignettes, it was unusual to see a filmmaker so visibly embodied in her own production. A title card has already announced that Hypocrites was "written and produced by Lois Weber." By adding her photograph and the trace of her signature across the screen, Weber asserts full authorial control over Hypocrites. And she does so in a manner that is distinctly feminine and distinctly bourgeois. Certainly this brief prologue tells us just how far Weber had come after a few short years in the motion picture business, evolving from an unknown actress working behind the scenes, writing and directing her productions, to a filmmaker of commanding authority whose personal signature guaranteed quality cinema. But the prologue also tells us a great deal about how Weber negotiated the terrain of feminine propriety, how keenly aware she was of the need