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Florence Lawrence was America's first big movie star--but no one knew her name. During the first decade of the twentieth century, movie companies did not publicize their actors' names in order to keep their salaries down. Florence Lawrence made dozens of films for D.W. Griffith's Biograph Company and became the studio's most noteworthy star. Nevertheless she remained anonymous. Known to her fans only as 'the Biograph girl,' she was earning just $25 per week. When she left Biograph in 1910 to join the newly formed IMP company, her new studio started a false rumor that she had been killed in a streetcar accident in St. Louis. It then announced that 'the Biograph girl' was Florence Lawrence. She was alive and well and about to star in a new film for IMP. This was likely the first Hollywood publicity stunt.
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Florence
Lawrence
Biograph
girl
Added: 4th March 2008
Views: 378
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Posted By: Lava1964 |
 
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On the evening of August 2, 1923, Warren G. Harding, the 29th president of the United States, died suddenly in a room at the Palace Hotel in San Francsico. He was 57 years old. Harding was in the midst of a west coast trip, but he had taken ill as his train rolled through Seattle. Almost immediately, the rumors surrounding his passing began. There was no official cause of Harding's death. Some sources claim it was a fatal case of food poisoning; others claim it was a heart attack or a stroke. Despite his wife and his nurses being frequently in and out of the room, the time of Harding's death could not be pinned down any more specifically than between 7 and 7:30 p.m. Florence Harding had her husband's body embalmed and ready for a funeral train back to Washington within an hour of the president's death, thus no autopsy could be performed. (California had no mandatory autopsy laws at the time.) Although Harding was a perfect candidate for poor health--he was a heavy smoker and drinker, plagued by stress, who rarely exercised--there are those who think Mrs. Harding had something to do with her husband's demise. According to the conspiracy theorists, Mrs. Harding either wanted to spare Warrren G. the shame of the scandals about his administration that were soon to surface--or she took revenge over her hubby's numerous extra-marital trysts. Those who don't think anything was amiss point to Harding's declining health at the hands of a quack homeopathic physician and Harding's generally poor living habits. Maybe Harding himself sensed the end was near: Before leaving for the west coast, Harding had written a new will. He had also curiously sold the Marion (OH) Star, his hometown newspaper, which he had bought with the intent of running it after he retired from politics.
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Warren
Harding
death
scandal
Added: 25th January 2009
Views: 228
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Posted By: Lava1964 |
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On September 9, 1954, Canadian teenager Marilyn Bell became the first person to swim across Lake Ontario. Some 300,000 onlookers witnessed her arrival near the Canadian National Exhibition grounds in Toronto 20 hours and 59 minutes after Bell began her swim in Youngstown, NY. Bell's feat was actually made in defiance of CNE organizers who had offered a $10,000 prize solely to American marathon swimmer Florence Chadwick. (Chadwick abandoned her effort after becoming ill. The CNE did award Bell the cash.) The straight-line distance of the swim was about 32 miles. Bell, who was a month shy of her seventeenth birthday, swam an estimated 40 miles while battling fifteen-foot waves and lamprey eels. Bell later swam both the English Channel and the Strait of Juan de Fuca before retiring from marathon swimming in 1958.
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Marilyn
Bell
Lake
Ontario
swimmer
Added: 6th September 2009
Views: 330
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Posted By: Lava1964 |
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