Marion Fairfax, a renowned movie screenwriter and Broadway playwright, was born Marion Neiswanger on October 25, 1875, in Richmond, Virginia. After graduating from Chicago's South Division High School, she attended Emerson College in Boston. Initially, she pursued a career as an actress, but soon focused on writing.
In 1899, Fairfax married actor Tully Marshall, and she wrote under the name Marion Fairfax. She made her Broadway debut as an actress in "The Triumph of Love" in 1904, but it was her first produced play, "The Builders," that gained recognition. The play opened at the Astor Theatre in 1907 and ran for 16 performances.
Fairfax's subsequent plays, "The Chaperon" and "The Talker," were more successful, with "The Talker" being directed by Fairfax herself and featuring her husband in the cast. The play opened at the Harris Theatre in 1912 and ran for 144 performances.
However, her next two plays, "A Modern Girl" and "Mrs. Boltay's Daughters," were flops, closing after 17 performances each. Fairfax then moved to California and became a screenwriter at the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co.
Her first movie script, "The Chorus Lady," was released in 1915, followed by "Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo" and "The Immigrant" later that year. Fairfax collaborated with director William C. de Mille on nine films between 1916 and 1918.
In 1917, she wrote the screenplay for "Freckles," and in 1919, she wrote "The Valley of the Giants" for Wallace Reid. Fairfax then collaborated with director Marshall Neilan on six films between 1920 and 1921.
After adapting William Gillette's play for "Sherlock Holmes" in 1922, Fairfax directed her only film, "The Lying Truth," starring her husband Tully Marshall. Her greatest accomplishment as a screenwriter was the script for "The Lost World" in 1925, adapted from the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Fairfax's last credited screenplay was for the romance "The Blonde Saint" in 1926. Tully Marshall passed away in 1943, and Fairfax died on October 2, 1970, and was laid to rest next to her husband at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.
