British postcard in the Novelty Series, no. D6-5. Photo: Trans-Atlantic Films.

American actress Mary Fuller (1988-1973) started her film career at Vitagraph and had her breakthrough at Edison. At Universal, Fuller became a major early film star who rivaled Mary Pickford in popularity. In 1917, she left the film industry and ended her life in a mental hospital.

Mary Claire Fuller was born in 1888 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. Her parents were Nora Swing and attorney Miles Fuller. Mary spent her childhood on a farm. As a child, she was interested in music, writing and art. Her father died in 1902, and by 1906, she was working in the theatre under the name Claire Fuller. She worked briefly with the Lyceum Stock Company in Toledo, Ohio. Fuller's entrance into the cinema was quite accidental. In 1908, her theatrical troupe was on its way to tour the South when, during a short stopover in New York City, the company broke up. Stranded, Mary made her way to the Vitagraph film studio in Brooklyn, NY, looking for a job. With her experience and attractiveness, she was put to work in action and comedy one-reelers. She also made a one-reel adaptation of Elektra (1910) and appeared in Jean the Match-Maker (Laurence Trimble, 1910) starring Jean, the Vitagraph Dog and the Vitagraph Girl Florence Turner. In 1910, Fuller joined the Edison Film Company in the Bronx, where she appeared in the first film version of Frankenstein (J. Searle Dawley, 1910), based on the Mary Shelley novel. The unbilled cast included Augustus Phillips as Dr. Frankenstein, Charles Ogle as Frankenstein's monster, and Mary Fuller as the doctor's fiancée. The production was deliberately designed to de-emphasize the horrific aspects of the story and focus on the story's mystical and psychological elements. In 1912, Fuller was the star of the first serial, What Happened to Mary (Charles Brabin, 1912). The forerunner of all serials, What Happened to Mary was a series of twelve monthly one reel episodes, each a complete entity in itself, revolving its immediate dramatic and melodramatic problems within the framework of a single episode and designed more for story and suspense situations than action. The scripts were written by Horace G. Plympton. What Happened to Mary was performed as a stage play and published as a single-volume print novel. Therefore, it is an early example of a multiple-media marketing campaign. She also appeared in the sequel, the action serial Who Will Marry Mary? (1913). Fuller also authored a number of screenplays, eight of which were made into films between 1913 and 1915.

By 1914 Mary Fuller was noticed by Universal Pictures, and she headed west. Fuller became a major early film star who rivaled Mary Pickford in popularity. She appeared in a wide variety of roles, and starred in such melodramas as the serial Dolly of the Dailies (1914), and Under Southern Skies (Lucius Henderson, 1915), her first feature-length production. However, two years later Mary Fuller just packed up and walked away from Hollywood. She made the films The Long Trail (Howell Hansel, 1917) with Lou Tellegen, and Public Be Damned (Stanner E.V. Taylor, 1917), and then disappeared. A magazine writer found her in 1924, living in Washington, DC, with her mother. She said that she had tired of the hard work involved in making pictures, that she had invested her money and was living comfortably. She mentioned that she was thinking of going back to making films, but soon after the interview was published, she disappeared again. Nothing was ever heard from her until 1973, when it was discovered that she had died, of natural causes, in a Washington, DC, mental hospital. IMDb and Wikipedia write that Fuller suffered a nervous breakdown due to a broken heart after a failed affair with a married opera singer. The death of her mother in 1946 brought a second nervous breakdown. After being cared for by her sister, Fuller was admitted in 1947 to Washington's St. Elizabeths Hospital, where she remained for 26 years. The hospital was unable to locate any relatives, and she was buried in an unmarked grave in Congressional Cemetery. In the 2010s, a memorial bench was installed on the site of her grave, bearing a "Hollywood Star of Fame" and the inscription "A Personality of Eloquent Silence."

Sources: Find A Grave, Wikipedia and IMDb.

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British postcard in the Novelty Series, no. D6-7. Photo: Selig.

Kathlyn Williams (born Kathleen Mabel Williams, May 31, 1879 – September 23, 1960) was an American actress, known for her blonde beauty and daring antics, who performed on stage as well as in early silent film, in particular at the company Selig Polyscope in the early 1910s.

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British postcard in the Novelty Series, no. D6-8. Photo: Selig Films.

Edith Johnson (1894-1969) was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in 66 films between 1913 and 1924, mostly serials, action films, and Westerns. She and husband William Duncan were "the king and queen of the serial".

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British postcard in the Novelty Series, no. D6-6. Photo: Essanay Films.

American actor, writer, film director, and film producer Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson (1880-1971) was the first star of the Western. Anderson played three roles in the first Western, The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, 1903). He directed and starred in almost 400 Broncho Billy films over a seven year period.

Broncho Billy was born Maxwell Henry Aaronson in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, in 1880. he was the sixth child of Henry and Esther (Ash) Aronson. His family was Jewish, his father's parents having emigrated to the United States from Prussia, and his mother's from the Russian Empire. He lived in Pine Bluff, Arkansas until he was 8, when he moved with his family to St. Louis, Missouri. When he was 18, he moved to New York City and appeared in vaudeville and the theatre, supplementing his income as a photographer's model and newspaper vendor. In 1903, he met Edwin S. Porter, a former Edison Studios cameraman. He worked as a model in Edwin S. Porter's one-reeler, Messenger Boy's Mistake (1902) for Edison Studios. Next, Anderson played three roles in Porter's early short film The Great Train Robbery (1903), as a bandit, as a tenderfoot dancer and as the train passenger shot by bandits as he tries to escape. Though a Western, the outdoor scenes were filmed in Milltown, New Jersey. Wikipedia: "At ten minutes long, The Great Train Robbery is considered a milestone in film making, expanding on Porter's previous work Life of an American Fireman (1903). The film used a number of unconventional techniques including composite editing, on-location shooting, and frequent camera movement. The film is one of the earliest to use the technique of cross cutting, in which two scenes are shown to be occuring simultaneously but in different locations." Film historians now largely consider The Great Train Robbery to be the first American action film and the first Western. It became the first blockbuster and was one of the most popular films of the silent era until the release of The Birth of a Nation in 1915. Seeing the film for the first time at a vaudeville theatre and being overwhelmed by the audience's reaction, Anderson decided to work in the film industry exclusively. He then began playing a variety of roles until he joined Vitagraph several months later where he began directing as well as acting in one-reelers including the hit Raffles, The American Cracksman (1905). Robert S. Birchard in The Encyclopedia of Early Cinema: "Raffles (...) was well received, but he had strong ideas about the pictures he wanted to make and decided to become his own producer." In 1907, Anderson and George K. Spoor founded Essanay Studios ('S and A' for Spoor and Anderson), one of the major early film studios. They began in Chicago, but eventually opened studios in California where they produced a series of short comedies featuring Ben Turpin. During the same year, Anderson played Bronco Billy for the first time in The Bandit Makes Good. The film was a great success and Anderson became the first film cowboy star, 'Broncho Billy.' He acted in over 300 short films and played a wide variety of characters, but he gained his enormous popularity from a series of 148 silent Western shorts. Spoor stayed in Chicago running the company like a factory, while Anderson traveled the western United States by train with a film crew shooting movies. Many of these were shot in Niles, a small town in Alameda County, California, south-east of San Francisco, where the nearby Western Pacific Railroad route through Niles Canyon proved to be a very suitable location for the filming of Westerns.

From 1911 on, Gilbert M. Anderson also appeared in the 'Snakeville Comedy' series and beginning in 1912, he also found time to direct a series of Alkali Ike comedy Westerns starring Augustus Carney. By the following year, Anderson began attempting to produce more costly, higher quality films. Among the illustrious stars that worked for Essanay was Charlie Chaplin who, during his one year with Essanay, was able to perfect his Little Tramp character, imbuing him with more pathos than he was able to do at his previous studio, Keystone. Chaplin left Essanay in 1916. That year, Anderson sold his ownership in Essanay and retired from acting. He returned to New York, bought the Longacre Theatre and produced plays, but without permanent success. He then made a brief comeback as a producer with a series of shorts with Stan Laurel, including his first work with Oliver Hardy in A Lucky Dog (Jess Robbins; filmed in 1919, released in 1921). Conflicts with the studio, Metro, led him to retire again after 1920. Anderson sued Paramount Pictures for naming a character 'Bronco Billy' in Star Spangled Rhythm (George Marshall, 1943) and for depicting the character as a "washed-up and broken-down actor," which he felt reflected badly on him. He asked for $900,000, but the outcome of the suit is unknown. Anderson resumed producing movies, as owner of Progressive Pictures, into the 1950s, then retired again. Like many early figures of cinema, Gilbert Anderson slowly faded into obscurity. In 1957 he was presented with an honorary Oscar as a "motion picture pioneer, for his contributions to the development of motion pictures as entertainment." At age 85, Anderson came out of retirement for a cameo role in The Bounty Killer (Spencer G. Bennet, 1965), starring Dan Duryea. For the last years of his life, he lived at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. At the age of 90, Gilbert M. Anderson died at a sanitarium in South Pasadena, California, in 1971. Since 1910, he had been married to Mollie Louise Schabbleman. They had one daughter, Maxine.

Sources: Robert S. Birchard (The Encyclopedia of Early Cinema), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Jim Beaver (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

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British postcard. Novelty Series, D6-9. Vitagraph Films.

Maurice George Costello (February 22, 1877 – October 29, 1950) was a prominent American vaudeville actor of the late 1890s and early 1900s, who later became a prominent matinee idol and director at The Vitagraph Co. of America.

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