Marion Fairfax, movie screenwriter and Broadway playwright, was born
Marion Neiswanger in Richmond, Virginia, on October 25, 1875. After
graduating from Chicago's South Division High School she went on to
Emerson College in Boston. She went on the boards briefly as an actress
before focusing her theatrical ambitions on writing.
In 1899 Fairfax married actor
Tully Marshall, who was born Tully
Marshall Phillips. Although she was known as Mrs. Tully Marshall and
Marion Fairfax Marshall Phillips, she wrote under the name Marion
Fairfax. She made her Broadway debut as an actress at the Criterion
Theatre in "The Triumph of Love," which opened and closed on February
8, 1904, after one performance. Her first produced Broadway play was
"The Builders," which was produced by her husband's Tully Marshall
Company and featured him in the cast. It opened at the Astor Theatre on
May 20, 1907, and ran a total of 16 performances.
Her next play, "The Chaperon", was more successful. It opened at Maxine
Elliott's Theatre on December 30, 1908, and racked up a total of 62
performances. Her next play, "The Talker", was more successful still,
with more than twice as many performance as her previous effort. Marion
herself directed "The Talker", which featured her husband in the cast.
Opening at the Harris Theatre on January 8, 1912, the play had a run of
144 performances.
Her next play, "A Modern Girl", written in collaboration with Ruth C.
Mitchell and produced by the Messrs. Shubert (Lee and J. J.), was a
flop, closing after 17 performances after opening at the Comedy Theatre
on September 12, 1914. Her next play would duplicate the run of of its
predecessor, as well as the venue: "Mrs. Boltay's Daughters" lasted but
17 performances at the Comedy after opening on Oct 23, 1915.
Fairfax moved to California and became a screenwriter at the Jesse L.
Lasky Feature Play Co. The first movie made from script of hers
appeared in 1915,
The Chorus Lady (1915), and was
followed that year by two others made from her scenarios,
Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo (1915)
and The Immigrant (1915). In 1916
she began a short collaboration with director
William C. de Mille with
The Blacklist (1916), which he
co-wrote with Fairfax as well as directed. From 1916 through 1918 they
collaborated on nine other films.
In 1917 Fairfax wrote the screenplay for the
Jack Pickford picture
Freckles (1917), directed by
Marshall Neilan. Three years later she
left Lasky after writing the Wallace Reid
vehicle
The Valley of the Giants (1919)
and hooked up again with Neilan, working on his
The River's End (1920). The movie
was made by Neilan's own production company, and released through First
National. They followed it up with another six films in 1920 and 1921,
including
Don't Ever Marry (1920) and
The Lotus Eater (1921) starring
John Barrymore. Their last film
together was Fools First (1922).
After helping adapt
William Gillette's play based
on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories
for Sherlock Holmes (1922) for
Goldwyn Pictures, with John Barrymore playing the famed detective,
Fairfax directed her first and only film, from her own script,
The Lying Truth (1922), starring
husband Tully Marhsall. The movie was produced by her own Marion
Fairfax Productions, of which she was president, for the Eagle
Producing Co. and it was distributed by American Releasing Co.
Her greatest accomplishment as a screenwriter was the script for the
classic Die verlorene Welt (1925),
adapted from the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle. She adapted her own
Broadway play Er soll dein Herr sein... (1925) for
First National. Her last credited screenplay was for the romance
The Blonde Saint (1926),
directed by Maurice Tourneur and
starring Lewis Stone, who headlined four
other of her First National pictures.
Tully Marshall passed away on March 10, 1943. Marion Fairfax died on
Otober 2, 1970, and was laid to rest in a grave next to her
husband at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.
