European Film Star Postcards: Mary Fuller

31 January 2021

Mary Fuller

Next week, we start a new series at EFSP: Before Hollywood. Each Sunday, we will post about the early American cinema, its stars, and studios. One of the first major stars of American cinema was Mary Fuller (1988-1973). The American actress started her film career at Vitagraph and had her breakthrough at Edison. At Universal, Fuller became a major early film star who rivaled Mary Pickford in popularity. In 1917, she left the film industry and ended her life in a mental hospital.

American postcard by Kline Poster Co. Inc., Phila. Image: Universal.

American postcard. Photo: Edison.

The forerunner of all serials

Mary Claire Fuller was born in 1888 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. Her parents were Nora Swing and attorney Miles Fuller.

Mary spent her childhood on a farm. As a child, she was interested in music, writing, and art. Her father died in 1902, and by 1906, she was working in the theatre under the name Claire Fuller.

She worked briefly with the Lyceum Stock Company in Toledo, Ohio. Fuller's entrance into the cinema was quite accidental. In 1908, her theatrical troupe was on its way to tour the South when, during a short stopover in New York City, the company broke up. Stranded, Mary made her way to the Vitagraph film studio in Brooklyn, NY, looking for a job.

With her experience and attractiveness, she was put to work in action and comedy one-reelers. She also made a one-reel adaptation of Elektra (1910) and appeared in Jean the Match-Maker (Laurence Trimble, 1910) starring Jean, the Vitagraph Dog, and the Vitagraph Girl Florence Turner.

In 1910, Fuller joined the Edison Film Company in the Bronx, where she appeared in the first film version of Frankenstein (J. Searle Dawley, 1910), based on the Mary Shelley novel. The unbilled cast included Augustus Phillips as Dr. Frankenstein, Charles Ogle as Frankenstein's monster, and Mary Fuller as the doctor's fiancée. The production was deliberately designed to de-emphasize the horrific aspects of the story and focus on the story's mystical and psychological elements.

In 1912, Fuller was the star of the first serial, What Happened to Mary (Charles Brabin, 1912). The forerunner of all serials, What Happened to Mary was a series of twelve monthly one-reel episodes, each a complete entity in itself, revolving its immediate dramatic and melodramatic problems within the framework of a single episode and designed more for story and suspense situations than action. The scripts were written by Horace G. Plympton.

What Happened to Mary was performed as a stage play and published as a single-volume print novel. Therefore, it is an early example of a multiple-media marketing campaign. Fuller also appeared in the sequel, the action serial Who Will Marry Mary? (1913). Fuller also authored a number of screenplays, eight of which were made into films between 1913 and 1915.

British postcard. Photo: The Trans-Atlantic Film Co. Ltd., 1915.

British postcard. The Trans-Atlantic Film Co. Ltd.

A nervous breakdown due to a broken heart

By 1914 Mary Fuller was noticed by Universal Pictures, and she headed west. Fuller became a major early film star who rivaled Mary Pickford in popularity.

She appeared in a wide variety of roles and starred in such melodramas as the serial Dolly of the Dailies (1914), and Under Southern Skies (Lucius Henderson, 1915), her first feature-length production.

However, two years later Mary Fuller just packed up and walked away from Hollywood. She made the films The Long Trail (Howell Hansel, 1917) with Lou Tellegen, and Public Be Damned (Stanner E.V. Taylor, 1917), and then disappeared.

A magazine writer found her in 1924, living in Washington, DC, with her mother. She said that she had tired of the hard work involved in making pictures, that she had invested her money and was living comfortably. She mentioned that she was thinking of going back to making films, but soon after the interview was published, she disappeared again.

Nothing was ever heard from her until 1973, when it was discovered that she had died, of natural causes, in a Washington, DC, mental hospital. IMDb and Wikipedia write that Fuller suffered a nervous breakdown due to a broken heart after a failed affair with a married opera singer. The death of her mother in 1946 brought a second nervous breakdown. After being cared for by her sister, Fuller was admitted in 1947 to Washington's St. Elizabeths Hospital, where she remained for 26 years.

The hospital was unable to locate any relatives, and she was buried in an unmarked grave in Congressional Cemetery. In the 2010s, a memorial bench was installed on the site of her grave, bearing a "Hollywood Star of Fame" and the inscription "A Personality of Eloquent Silence."