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Book Reviewed by:From the New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue and The Aviator's Wife, a fascinating novel of the friendship and creative partnership between two of Hollywood's earliest female legends - screenwriter Frances Marion and superstar Mary Pickford.
It is 1914, and twenty-five-year-old Frances Marion has left her (second) husband and her Northern California home for the lure of Los Angeles, where she is determined to live independently as an artist. But the word on everyone's lips these days is "flickers" - the silent moving pictures enthralling theatergoers. Turn any corner in this burgeoning town and you'll find made-up actors running around, as a movie camera captures it all.
In this fledgling industry, Frances finds her true calling: writing stories for this wondrous new medium. She also makes the acquaintance of actress Mary Pickford, whose signature golden curls and lively spirit have earned her the title "America's Sweetheart." The two ambitious young women hit it off instantly, their kinship fomented by their mutual fever to create, to move audiences to a frenzy, to start a revolution.
But their ambitions are challenged by both the men around them and the limitations imposed on their gender - and their astronomical success could come at a price. As Mary, the world's highest paid and most beloved actress, struggles to live her life under the spotlight, she also wonders if it is possible to find love, even with the dashing actor Douglas Fairbanks. Frances, too, longs to share her life with someone. As in any good Hollywood story, dramas will play out, personalities will clash, and even the deepest friendships might be shattered.
With cameos from such notables as Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Rudolph Valentino, and Lillian Gish, The Girls in the Picture is, at its heart, a story of friendship and forgiveness. Melanie Benjamin perfectly captures the dawn of a glittering new era - its myths and icons, its possibilities and potential, and its seduction and heartbreak.
Benjamin tells this story in alternating points of view. Fran's first person account is full of her; her personal thoughts and feelings leap off the page. Hers is a rich, full life told with all the color and sensibility of a talented writer. Mary's universal point of view passages keep the real woman at arm's length. We're getting only a bird's eye view of the beloved actress. Others have criticized Benjamin for this divergence. I think it plays magnificently into the way each woman looks at life and, most importantly, at their relationship. It is as intentional as it is provocative...continued
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(Reviewed by Donna Chavez).
Although the main characters in Melanie Benjamin's historical novel The Girls in the Picture are just breaking into the nascent film industry in the early 1900s, actual moving pictures had been around for decades. It all began in the United States, shortly after the American Civil War.
In the early 1870s, British born Eadweard Muybridge – a.k.a. Eadweard "Helios," Ted Muggeridge, Muygridge or E.J. Muggridge – then living in the States, was busy experimenting with the fascinating new art of photography. Described as solitary, peripatetic, unpredictable and nervous, Muybridge attracted the attention of staid, shrewd and ruthless California businessman Leland Stanford. The former California governor and founder of Stanford ...
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Allison Pataki, York Times bestselling author of Where the Light Falls and Sisi
With elegant prose and delicious historical detail, Benjamin delivers a timely tale of female friendship - and the powerful duo who dared to dream beyond the narrow roles into which they'd been cast.
