Who was the world’s first movie star?
Imagine what it would’ve been like to witness the development of cinema in real time.
The idea that you can capture a moving image, forever immortalising a real life event on celluloid, still baffles many to this day. So you can hardly fathom what people were thinking when cinema emerged as a new art form in the 1800s, just a few decades after the first ever photograph was taken. It must have felt like magic.
Technology was beginning to move very fast. While many thought that cinema would become a new gimmick, a short-lived but ultimately unsustainable phenomenon, others had more faith in the potential for moving images to provide a revolutionary new source of entertainment. To be fair, when these early moving images did emerge, they were typically rather uninteresting snapshots into daily life – little more than photographs with a bit of movement.
The first ever film, Roundhay Garden Scene (it’s hard to believe that of all the places in the world, it was Leeds that produced such a groundbreaking moment in history) was just a few seconds of grainy figures standing outside, shot in 1888. However, it wouldn’t be until 1896 that pioneer Alice Guy-Blaché would release the first narrative feature, The Cabbage Fairy.
From here, cinema began to tread new ground. What was popular in the theatre could be expanded on via the medium of film, and techniques such as double exposure allowed experimentation to take hold. While the early days of cinema might not have given people colour or sound, it did manufacture the concept of the movie star almost instantaneously.
Like Guy-Blaché, a female pioneer who has often been overlooked in favour of figures like the Lumière Brothers or Georges Méliès, the first movie star was a long-forgotten woman who tragically experienced fame in all of its many facets, succumbing to depression and illness when she was just 52.
So, who was the world’s first movie star?
Florence Lawrence was born in 1886, just two years before the first ever film, and she soon began to perform alongside her mother. She grew up enamoured by the theatre, but with cinema increasingly taking hold as a new medium, Lawrence graduated to the silver screen, with her first performance coming in The Automobile Thieves from 1906.
However, the incendiary years of cinema were rife with competitiveness, including a rivalry between Thomas Edison, who formed the Edison Manufacturing Company, and Carl Laemmle, founder of Independent Moving Pictures Company, which would eventually become Universal Pictures.
This competitiveness eventually came to benefit Lawrence, with Laemmle figuring out a way to get a one-up on Edison. Until this point, actors were not billed by their names, and the concept of the film star didn’t exist. He was going to change that. Offering Lawrence – a recognisable actor who had been working with Edison – the chance to work with him instead, he sealed the deal by offering her the opportunity to have her name billed. Thus, Lawrence became well-known among cinema-goers, who were coming to recognise her as a celebrity.
To create even more interest regarding the star, Laemmle shockingly spread a fake rumour that Lawrence had died so that people would be more inclined to watch her films. It worked, with Laemmle successfully blaming the hoax on Edison and tricking people into watching IMP’s movies.
And there you have it, the first proper film star was born. Unfortunately, most of Lawrence’s films are now considered lost media, and her career didn’t endure in the same way as many of her contemporaries, like Mary Pickford. Lawrence took her own life in 1938, and now she resides in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where many iconic film stars have since accompanied her.
