On Camera and Behind It – The Girls in the Picture by Melanie Benjamin

With its historical perspective, this novel, a fictionalized version of the friendship between silent film star Mary Pickford and the screenwriter/director Frances Marion, offers unique insights into the lives of two women of influence in the early years of the movie business, and presents portraits of some of the other screen personalities, writers, directors and studio owners, some flattering, some far less so.  

Even though the chapters alternate between Pickford and Marion, Marion is really the heart of the story, and to me, as a fellow writer, the more interesting personality. The chapters about her work in Hollywood, her experiences in World War I as a journalist who planning (and later producing) a film about the women who served in the war, and her relationship and marriage to her husband, Fred Thomson, a minister turned screen cowboy, were very compelling. Marion, who wrote over 300 screenplays and won two Oscars, is one of the subjects of the Women Film Pioneers Project at Columbia University, https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-frances-marion/. She also published a number of books, including a memoir, Off With Their Heads!: A Serio-Comic Tale of Hollywood, which was later made into a documentary film. 

Pickford was depicted as very guarded, since her success and reputation was dependent on her screen and public image. I found her difficult to like, and although she supported her mother, sister, brother, and niece financially, she appeared overly attached and childlike in her relationship to her mother. It seemed that she was never really able to leave her past behind and move forward, and was also exceptionally emotionally dependent upon her second husband, Douglas Fairbanks, who eventually divorced her. The other, and very informative, side of Pickford depicted in the book was her business and professional acumen. She was one of the founders of United Artists studios, and of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. 

I originally read this book in hardcover format, but enjoyed it even more as an audio book, read by Broadway actress Kimberley Farr, who has been the reader of many other audio book productions.