This day in history: Canadian-American film actress Florence Lawrence killed herself on this day in 1938.
Florence Lawrence was often referred to as the "first movie star", and was long thought to be the first film actor to be named publicly until evidence published in 2019 indicated that the first named film star was French actor Max Linder. At the height of her fame in the 1910s, she was known as the "Biograph Girl" for work as one of the leading ladies in silent films from the Biograph Company. She appeared in almost 300 films for various motion picture companies throughout her career.
Lawrence is also "credited with creating the first mechanical turn signals and brake signals. For the turn system, she rigged up a simple device that allowed drivers to press a button that rose a flag on the back bumper of their car to indicate an upcoming turn.
She followed this up with a 'stop' signal that would rise when the driver compressed the brake pedal. Unfortunately she failed to patent either of these inventions, or the electric windshield wipers she came up with a few years later." Source
She did not patent these inventions, however, and as a result she received no credit for, nor profit from, either one.
By the late 1920s, Lawrence's popularity had declined and she suffered several personal losses. She was devastated when her mother, to whom she was close, died suddenly in August 1929. Four months later, she separated from her second husband, Charles Woodring. While Lawrence earned a small fortune during her film career, she made many poor business decisions. She lost much of her fortune after the stock market crash in October 1929 and ensuing Great Depression. The cosmetics store that she and her second husband opened in Los Angeles also lost business because of the Depression, and the couple was forced to close its doors in 1931.
She later developed a painful bone marrow disease which, among her other financial woes, pushed her to suicide by taking poison.
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