2013 Essays

Florence Lawrence

Brown, Kelly

Florence Annie Bridgwood, usually known as “Flo” Lawrence, was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on January 2, 1886. Her mother, Charlotte Bridgwood, was a stage actress known professionally as Lotta Lawrence, and was the manager and leading lady of the Lawrence Dramatic Company (Holland 386). Flo’s childhood, consequently, was spent on the touring road and on the theatrical stage. She began her career in the motion picture industry with a role in an Edison Company short, Daniel Boone/Pioneer Days in America (1907), an account of which is given in her autobiography, Growing Up with the Movies, serialized by Photoplay in four parts. Both mother and daughter appeared in Daniel Boone as well as in Vitagraph’s adaptation of Irish playwright Dion Boucicault’s 1874 theatrical melodrama as The Shaughraun, an Irish Romance (1907), but Lotta soon returned to the stage. Flo’s motion picture career, in contrast, had just begun.