Actors - Lois Weber

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	Actors - Lois Weber

Lois Weber (June 13 1881 - November 13 1939) was an American silent film actor, producer and director, and was the first woman to direct a full-length feature film when she directed The Merchant of Venice in 1914.

Weber was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now Pittsburgh's Northside neighborhood), where she was apparently an excellent pianist. She ran away from home hoping to pursue a singing career in New York City. After leaving home she lived in poverty and worked as a street-corner evangelist, preaching and singing hymns in New York and Pittsburgh. In 1905 she joined the film-making Gaumont company as an actor, and married its manager Phillips Smalley. In 1908 she landed a role in a film she had written called Hypocrites, which was directed by Herbert Blaché. Hypocrites was the first of many films she would star in and later direct which addressed social themes and moral lessons considered daring for the time, which included abortion and birth control in Where Are My Children?, capital punishment in The People vs. John Doe, and drug addiction in Hop, the Devil's Brew. Because of their controversial nature, her films were often successful at the box office.

In 1916 she became Universal Studios' highest-paid director, and in 1917 she formed her own production company, Lois Weber Productions. Lois Weber was the first and only woman granted membership in the Motion Picture Directors Association. In the 1920s her fortunes began to change – she lost her company, obtained a divorce from her abusive, alcoholic husband in 1922, and had a nervous breakdown. She remarried in 1926. Her last silent film was The Angel of Broadway in 1927, and her final film was White Heat in 1934. A tale of miscegenation on a sugar plantation, it was poorly received, and she could later only find work as a script doctor for Universal. She died, penniless, at age 58.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Lois Weber has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6518 Hollywood Blvd.

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