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Finding Dorothy: A Biography of Dorothy Gibson
Edwardian cover girl and silent screen star Dorothy Gibson survived the Titanic, a disastrous marriage, even the horrors of a World War II concentration camp, but history didn't spare her. Randy Bryan Bigham reclaims the story of a life forgotten.
Finding Dorothy, the first biography of model and actress Dorothy Gibson (1889-1946), provides an analysis of her work as the muse of artist Harrison Fisher, and offers a critique of her brief but successful career as one of the first leading ladies in American silent cinema.
Dorothy Gibson's experiences in the 1912 sinking of the Titanic are related in detail as is the making of Saved From the Titanic, the first motion picture produced about the disaster, in which Dorothy herself starred.
6x9 Hardcover Dust Jacket 179 pp, 84 ill. First Published 2005 New Edition Released 2012 Revised Edition Printed 2014
Finding Dorothy, the first biography of model and actress Dorothy Gibson (1889-1946), provides an analysis of her work as the muse of artist Harrison Fisher, and offers a critique of her brief but successful career as one of the first leading ladies in American silent cinema.
Dorothy Gibson's experiences in the 1912 sinking of the Titanic are related in detail as is the making of Saved From the Titanic, the first motion picture produced about the disaster, in which Dorothy herself starred.
6x9 Hardcover Dust Jacket 179 pp, 84 ill. First Published 2005 New Edition Released 2012 Revised Edition Printed 2014
184 pages, Hardcover
First published April 11, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 20, 2023
Perhaps this book wasn’t aimed at me, despite the obvious connection, but I found it really difficult to get into. It was very dry and initially didn’t engage my attention at all. It picked up at some points, but I think the author has struggled to stretch out what little is known of Dorothy, due to the little documentation that survives.
People are probably saying “who?”. Dorothy Gibson was a “famous” star of her time. She was a model, a Harrison Fisher Girl, and she had that whole sleepy sexuality going on about her, when you see some of the pictures included in this. Her image was featured in Cosmopolitan in her day, and it is reported that she got so sick of seeing one of her poses, that she withdrew it from public use. She was also a silent film star, when Mary Pickford etc was around. Unfortunately, the majority of her movies have been lost, and only a few stills/posters survive. Even the one she was most known for, Saved From The Titanic, had been lost to time.
And there’s why I bought this (actually quite rare?) book. For the Titanic connection. Dorothy was on the Titanic with her mum, after an interlude in Paris, relaxing after the stresses of her career. Both her and her mum survived the sinking and a couple of days after arriving back in New York on the Carpathia, Dorothy was filming for Saved From The Titanic, the first movie to feature the sinking, which was rushed out to cinemas barely a month after the disaster. (Never mind the survivors who were still recovering from the trauma.) Dorothy is most famous for wearing the same outfit that she left the Titanic in, on film, and images of this outfit are featured in the book.
What shocked me, is how I felt she was manipulated into appearing by her then lover and future husband. I felt like he was quite forceful into making her appear and relive the horror that she encountered. Perhaps this was the nature of their clandestine relationship, with him being still married and all.
I’m not sure if this is was quite intentional, but Dorothy comes across as quite vapid and man hungry in this book. She had lovers, she had affairs while married, she was divorced, she was quite the Kim Kardashian of her day. She was an alleged spy during World War II, and I’m still not quite sure what she was doing in Europe at this point. It all seemed to be a bit of a cat and mouse chase, with Dorothy being imprisoned for being an anti-fascist, after trying to go from country to country and her mum seemingly on the Nazi side.
Did Dorothy ever find lasting happiness? It doesn’t come across that way, and she is mostly forgotten now, unless you have a lot of knowledge about the Titanic. One of her movies recently resurfaced (missing about 4 minutes) but frustratingly, not her most famous role. Her image is almost recognisable as from that sort of era, but many people would be hard pressed to provide her name.
Ultimately for me though, I think this would have worked much better as perhaps a fictionalised account of her life. There’s so little known about her, that I felt the author was desperately trying to find any information at all to pad it out over 120 pages. I think that’s why I found the beginning quite slow, as it was going into some of the background of her films, and some of the people who brought her to prominence, like Harrison Fisher.
From looking at various places on line, you’ll struggle to get a copy of this book. But if you are interested in this era of the silent movies/Harrison Fisher’s Girl or you know about the famous actress who was on the Titanic, it’s worth keeping a look out for.
People are probably saying “who?”. Dorothy Gibson was a “famous” star of her time. She was a model, a Harrison Fisher Girl, and she had that whole sleepy sexuality going on about her, when you see some of the pictures included in this. Her image was featured in Cosmopolitan in her day, and it is reported that she got so sick of seeing one of her poses, that she withdrew it from public use. She was also a silent film star, when Mary Pickford etc was around. Unfortunately, the majority of her movies have been lost, and only a few stills/posters survive. Even the one she was most known for, Saved From The Titanic, had been lost to time.
And there’s why I bought this (actually quite rare?) book. For the Titanic connection. Dorothy was on the Titanic with her mum, after an interlude in Paris, relaxing after the stresses of her career. Both her and her mum survived the sinking and a couple of days after arriving back in New York on the Carpathia, Dorothy was filming for Saved From The Titanic, the first movie to feature the sinking, which was rushed out to cinemas barely a month after the disaster. (Never mind the survivors who were still recovering from the trauma.) Dorothy is most famous for wearing the same outfit that she left the Titanic in, on film, and images of this outfit are featured in the book.
What shocked me, is how I felt she was manipulated into appearing by her then lover and future husband. I felt like he was quite forceful into making her appear and relive the horror that she encountered. Perhaps this was the nature of their clandestine relationship, with him being still married and all.
I’m not sure if this is was quite intentional, but Dorothy comes across as quite vapid and man hungry in this book. She had lovers, she had affairs while married, she was divorced, she was quite the Kim Kardashian of her day. She was an alleged spy during World War II, and I’m still not quite sure what she was doing in Europe at this point. It all seemed to be a bit of a cat and mouse chase, with Dorothy being imprisoned for being an anti-fascist, after trying to go from country to country and her mum seemingly on the Nazi side.
Did Dorothy ever find lasting happiness? It doesn’t come across that way, and she is mostly forgotten now, unless you have a lot of knowledge about the Titanic. One of her movies recently resurfaced (missing about 4 minutes) but frustratingly, not her most famous role. Her image is almost recognisable as from that sort of era, but many people would be hard pressed to provide her name.
Ultimately for me though, I think this would have worked much better as perhaps a fictionalised account of her life. There’s so little known about her, that I felt the author was desperately trying to find any information at all to pad it out over 120 pages. I think that’s why I found the beginning quite slow, as it was going into some of the background of her films, and some of the people who brought her to prominence, like Harrison Fisher.
From looking at various places on line, you’ll struggle to get a copy of this book. But if you are interested in this era of the silent movies/Harrison Fisher’s Girl or you know about the famous actress who was on the Titanic, it’s worth keeping a look out for.
August 21, 2017
A gorgeously produced and well-researched book by historian Randy Bryan Bigham about Dorothy Gibson. Her name might not mean anything to people outside of the world-wide Titanic community but Dorothy Gibson was one of the highest paid actresses of very early cinema, and she was on the Titanic with her mother, returning from a holiday from her stressful career and relationship with her married lover, movie mogul Jules Brulatour. I had known that Gibson, who survived, was involved with the very first film about the sinking (Saved from the Titanic, 1912). Filming began within a matter of days of her safe arrival in New York and she wore the same clothes she had been wearing on Titanic. Bigham, however, hints at Brulatour's role as pushy instigator of the film which throws a different light on the romantic relationship between the producer and his still-traumatised actress and girlfriend.
As it turns out, surviving the 1912 sinking is but a murmur compared to what was yet to come from broken marriages to her imprisonment by Nazis during World War II while her mother screams support for Hitler and his ilk.
The book is amply illustrated by a wonderful collection of photographs allowing us to appreciate Gibson's beauty and even note her sadness and strain in the publicity shots for the Titanic movie which unfortunately remains lost to this day.
As it turns out, surviving the 1912 sinking is but a murmur compared to what was yet to come from broken marriages to her imprisonment by Nazis during World War II while her mother screams support for Hitler and his ilk.
The book is amply illustrated by a wonderful collection of photographs allowing us to appreciate Gibson's beauty and even note her sadness and strain in the publicity shots for the Titanic movie which unfortunately remains lost to this day.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews